G’day all.

A ‘Net friend writes:

[21 March 2001]

>Your attitude is typical of today’s. Straight away you approach things from

>the victims position. I don’t care about Martin Bryant. As far as I’m

>concerned he should be given a lethal injection, and save the taxpayers a

>lot of money. You show no (apparent) concern for the his victims, or our

>social order that is the victim itself by having the possibility

>(probability?) of these massacres inflicted upon us.

I thought we were talking about this event to illustrate what’s happened to society recently. To try to understand what caused it, looking to Martin Bryant’s victims doesn’t help much because they were innocent parties.

If you’re finding someone to blame, our dogmatic deinstitutionalisation of the mentally ill played a big role. Unfortunately, the pendulum has swung the other way. The 1950s dogmatic keep everyone in an asylum meme has been replaced by a keep everyone in society meme. We’ll find a happy middle ground on that score eventually.

>> Now let me get something straight here. I’m not trying to villify the

>> 1950s by any means. It was neither better nor worse than any other

>> period in history, as far as I can tell.

>That’s rubbish.

What you mean is that _your_ life seemed better then. Which is a perfectly understandable thing to say. But it doesn’t follow that everybody, or even most people, were better off.

>> However, putting a utopic

>> slant on it is neither accurate nor helpful.

>You love to fly off in all directions, and get away from the point, don’t

>you? 🙂 I never mentioned utopia.

No you didn’t, but I do think you’re picking and choosing from the era and aren’t looking it as the whole package. When you only look at the good parts, or explain away the bad parts as not so bad, it does look a bit like a utopic vision, or at least a rose-coloured vision.

>I said society was much better then than

>it is today in lots of ways, and I stand by that. If you want to argue

about >it, then give me some examples of things that were worse then than they are

>now, as far as our daily lives are concerned.

I thought I did. I mentioned the forced removal of Aboriginal children, the forced deportation of British orphans to Australia and the increased tolerance of domestic abuse. But if you need more: Women now have greater educational opportunities and an increased participation in society at all levels, smoking is no longer considered acceptible, industry now must consider of the impact on the environment in any processes or products that they use and there is far less threat of nuclear war.

>Would any woman in her

>right mind walk home alone after dark on Melbourne suburban streets today?

>You could in 1950.

Fewer women were out walking alone in 1950.

>Without wishing to misrepresent the distinguished gentleman (Mr. Jones) the

>point of his arguement, in summary was if I understand correctly, that

>Australia has been ‘culturally enriched’ by such ethnic diversity.

>Culturally enriched my ass. If this is cultural enrichment, then give me

>cultural obscurity anyday.

Barry Jones is looking at the bigger picture, as professional thinkers and politicians (of which probably Barry Jones is the only person who fits into both categories) must do.

If you haven’t read his book, “Sleepers Wake”, I suggest you do. He has a lot to say about monocultures. This is a term borrowed from agriculture, but it works really well in economics and sociology, too. I’ll try to summarise.

We don’t plant only one variety of wheat in Australia, or even in one state of Australia. The first virus or pest which attacked that variety would wipe out the wheat economy in one go. Instead, we plant different varieties to protect ourselves from disaster.

An example of an economic monoculture (which I think Barry Jones dealt with in his book, or it could have been an interview I heard once; it’s been a while since I read it) is the stereotypical coal mining town. As coal became less used (increased use of natural gas, less reliance on fossil fuels), coal mines closed, and whole towns were devastated as a result. Whole generations of kids who grew up assuming they’d become coal miners like their parents and grandparents were left without a future because they didn’t think outside the box.

This, I believe, is a small part (a very small part, in fact) of what Barry Jones meant when he said that Australia was “culturally enriched”. Multiculturalism has deepened our social “gene pool”, and you may just find that it’ll save us from some kind of social disaster one of these days. Personally, I think it’s helping us through these transitional times quite well.

>I’m not saying that crime didn’t happen in 1950. It did. But nothing like

we >have today.

I agree with you! But you’ve got to remember all the bad things we’ve lost along the way too.

>I will not be too critical of you however, since (respectfully intended)

you >don’t know what you are talking about.. since you weren’t there. Name

almost >any aspect of society and things were better. Public transport, employment,

>education, etc.,

I don’t know about public transport, since I’ve never studied the history of public transport. Ask my brother about that one.

Employment is much better. Women are now counted in the unemployment statistics, so we have a much better picture of how many are in and out of work. Occupational health and safety is now finally understood as important, and every business has someone responsible.

As for education, I found a great quote from a report to the Western Australian government which touched on the topic of university funding:

In the 1950s it has been said “more Australians had spent time in a mental asylum than had been to university”; now more than 20% of the youth age cohort undertake tertiary education studies.

Since the 1950s we got free higher education (in 1974, to be precise), which has now been replaced by HECS (which, like it or hate it, at least means you don’t pay up front), so higher education is no longer just for the rich.

>I agree with you there. But it helps if things have gone from good to bad,

>or even bad to worse, to look at the reasons, so as not to repeat the

>mistakes of history.

Ah, but to learn the lesson of history, you have to look at the lot. You can’t just point to one era and say “that was good; let’s do that”. History is a continuum. There are cycles, there are patterns and there are rhythms. No era, good or bad (misleading though those adjectives are) exist in a vacuum, and all eras have good and bad parts.

What it seems to me is that you’re trying to take a small piece out of the whole and concentrate on that. If you do that, I guarantee you will repeat the mistakes of history.

One bit that I think you’re missing completely is that the 1950s _inevitably_ led to the 1960s and 1970s. Children brought up in a 1950s-style society end up like 1960s and 1970s-era young adults. They are also the CEOs of multinational companies and the politicians of today.

Lest you think I think the current era is great, here’s one complaint: History isn’t being taught well any more. People get most of their history from movies and telemovies and get no context. History education is no better. Students learn by “picking and choosing” and get no overall context.

Cheers, Andrew Bromage