New and Improved

I have arrived now in Adelaide to spend some time with my parents, my sister and her family. My sister, her husband and I have spent a pleasant evening discussing the evils of the modern world. We have been indulging in the privilege of being grumpy old men and women. English and Australian readers will probably be familiar with the television show of the same name (more or less) in which older men and women bemoan some of the aspects of modern life. There is, indeed, a wealth of material to draw upon. Much of this centres on technological “advances” and “improvements” in life – suitably served in quotation marks, of course.

Although I indulge in this pastime light-heartedly (I do actually enjoy many of these technological advances) I think it is fair to ask whether all of the advances that are presented to us are really improvements. For example, at Melbourne airport (at least in the domestic terminal) it is now possible to check in one’s own luggage, without waiting in the normal queues. This has been the case for at least 18 months. When I was in Melbourne 18 months ago the system had been in operation for only a short time, and there were several staff members helping people to use the new system. This is understandable, as people were naturally unfamiliar with it. However, today, eighteen months later, I couldn’t help but notice that there were still several staff members assisting people. I could not quite remember how to use the system at first myself, and, in the end, although I didn’t ask for help, two staff members were kind enough to assist me through different parts of the process. Now I was happy to accept the help, but it struck me that only one person would have been required in the old, traditional system. It also occurred to me that I now had to join two queues, one to get the ticket for the bag, another to actually check the bag in. There would be a third queue if my bag was overweight and I had to go to yet another point to pay excess baggage. These queues will only grow as more people come to use the new system. So will this system, in the end, actually save anyone’s time, either that of the passengers or that of the staff? I think it is fair to say that there is reasonable doubt about the matter.

My sister was also telling me about a new self-checkout system operating in some of the supermarkets. I haven’t yet used the system myself, but on my sister’s account it is a little challenging to use, at least initially. I’m sure in time people will get used to it. But will it ultimately save time? Will it result in reduced prices? (Here, I struggle to contain my laughter.) Probably not. We, the consumers, will be paying the same, if not more, for a reduced service, while companies increase their profits. I can well imagine that checkout rage will also increase as people wait behind others who are struggling to use this new “convenience”. Every customer will soon be their own checkout operator; very convenient indeed, but for whom?

In these two examples, the store and the airline are getting us to do their work for them, while selling this to us as an improved service. Perhaps they will want us to fly the planes ourselves next? Perhaps soon we will enjoy the privilege of stocking the supermarket’s shelves for them? If these changes were also to result in financial savings for the consumer, I might be more impressed. But I don’t think one has to very cynical to believe that it will be the companies that pocket the savings (if any) not the consumers.

Favourite song

Moving back to the theme of favourites, what is your favourite song? If you are like me, that changes over time and with your mood. There are many elements that go into the creating of a song, and in some it might be the melody that I like, in others the rhythm, and in yet others the lyrics. It might even be the way that a song is sung by a particular performer at a particular time. Others I may like because I associate them with a time or place that is important to me. My favourite song at a particular moment may be one that I have heard recently. So like so many questions, this simple question, “What is your favourite song?”, is not so simple after all. It touches on your very life history.

The song or songs that you nominate as your favourites may also reveal something about you as a person. The same could be said of anything that expresses what we call our “taste”. It may be a painting, a movie, a book. Our taste, the things that resonate most with us, reveal us precisely because of that resonance. We have the effrontery, sometimes, to talk about good and bad taste. There is a terrible snobbery in this, and even an element of cruelty. People are offended when they are told they have bad taste, or superficial taste, precisely because it reflects on them as a person. If I say that a person has bad taste I am asserting my superiority, my better judgement, my greater refinement – I am saying, “I am better than you”. It is a personal attack. We know that our likes and dislikes reflect our inner being. If I were to tell you the name of my favourite song, and you were to digitally sneer at me, I would be hurt.

Not all expressed differences in taste necessarily carry this sense of judgement. Sometimes we are prepared to acknowledge that a preference for opera, say, over jazz, while perhaps reflecting inner differences, implies no superiority of the one over the other. All too often, however, we are tempted to assert the superiority of our taste over yours, all as part of the deeply entrenched battle for top position that dominates so much of life. For this reason, then, we are often only inclined to reveal our true and innermost tastes to those with whom we have developed a close and trusting relationship. Otherwise, we will pretend to love the music we hate, and hate the music we love, to avoid losing face.

I have not told you my favourite song. And, in the light of the discussion, I withdraw the question. I don’t think we know each other quite well enough yet.

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Maybe they'll remember me by Philip Newey. On sale now.

On the inside

I am struck by how difficult it is relating to people. I have discussed language and communication many times here, and clearly this contributes to the difficulties that occur in relationships. But there is more to it than this. One of Sartre’s characters once said:  l'enfer, c'est les autres, “Hell is other people”. To other people, we are objects in their world. There is no way that they can get inside us and feel the world as we feel it, see it as we see it. We can sometimes guess what might be going on inside another person, by the outward signs (including language) by which they manifest themselves in the world. But we can never be as sure of this as we can be of our own experience – at least, we believe that we can be sure of our own experience, although drugs and psychosis should make us hesitate about that too.

Add to this the fact that most of us are somewhat wounded and battered on the inside, no matter how “together” we might like to appear on the outside. And because of this woundedness we build up defences, that often take the form of an attack on others. The best form of defence, etc. etc. We are also very sensitive to what appear to be attacks by others upon us, even though they might not be intended as such. All of this makes relating to others very difficult. 

So why bother? At one level the answer is simple: We need each other. Working together we are stronger, more versatile. But there is a deeper reason than this, and one that perhaps defies a purely pragmatic explanation. There are moments when we really do feel that we connect with another person, that we meet at some place that feels “real”. This may not last long, but it is one of those moments that make the rest worthwhile. Perhaps it is a recognition that we are not, in fact, alone in this world. That those other creatures moving around out there, that look and sound something like us, really are like us. They have an inside, just as we have. 

So, I guess maybe you are all real after all (well, most of you – I have my doubts about the little green elf sitting in the corner).

This is Australia

It was nine a.m., and I was sitting in my daughter’s house, looking out of the window at her garden, in a fairly typical Australian suburb. It was already 25° C. The sun seems (and probably is) much brighter here than it ever seems to get in Europe, the world is much drier. There is a mixture of native and exotic plants in this and the other gardens that I can see. But it is the eucalyptus and the melaleucas that stand out most. The houses are all red or cream brick, mostly with red-tiled roofs. Magpies are perched on the branches of the big gum tree in the garden across the road. I can hear the noisy myna birds, probably on the roof – these are not native, but are certainly ubiquitous. One glimpse of all this, and I know immediately that I am in Australia. The colours, the sounds and the smells are somehow uniquely Australian, even when they contain exotic elements.

It is this that constitutes Australia for me. Not the beaches, not the wide open expanses of the outback, but this suburban vision. Australia is one of the most highly urbanised populations in the world: sub-urbanised, really. Not many people actually live in the cities themselves. Most live in the vast expanse of suburbs that surround these business centres. There is a sense of space, even in these suburbs. Perhaps this is also one of the things that changes the quality of the light. Once in the suburbs the buildings are low, the sky seems more vast, the sun has more freedom. Even the eucalypts, with their distinctive open canopies, seem to frame, rather than limit, this openness.

It is also this mixture of the native and the exotic, which seems so very characteristic of Australia. It is noticeable in both the plant life and the bird life. European visitors will find here many of the birds they are familiar with: pigeons, sparrows, starlings, blackbirds. But this seems to add to, rather than replace, the local avian fauna. Alongside these introduced species are the magpies, the lorikeets, the honeyeaters. Magnolias and jacarandas grow alongside eucalypts, flame trees, melaleucas and bottlebrushes. In the suburbs, at least, this seems to work, even though ecological purists might object. There is also an increasing mixture of cultural and ethnic origins among the human population, with cultures sitting happily side by side, and sometimes mixing and spilling into each other. A good thing, I think, although not all would agree.

It is difficult to capture and describe what makes Australia Australian. Australians struggle a great deal with this, with trying to describe, or even establish, a clear identity. Yet somehow it is clearly there, a gestalt that can’t really be captured in words or photographs. You just know you are here, the minute your feet hit the ground. When coming through customs, and the customs official says “G’day. Anything to declare, mate?”, where else on the planet could you be? Perhaps they are trained to say this; perhaps they make themselves more ocker to satisfy the incoming tourists. But, Jeez, even that tells you you’re in Australia!

'Tis the season

“’Tis the season to be jolly...” It’s nice that we have a season to be jolly, otherwise, how would we know when to be? Most importantly, I wouldn’t want to be jolly out of season. What a terrible faut pas that would be. How embarrassing to be the only jolly person in, ermmm, grumpy season. When is the season to be grumpy, anyway? Or is that every other time?

It seems that the word jolly derives from the Old French jolif, which in turn may derive from the Old Norwegian word jol, which in turn may be related to “Yule”. Lots of maybes and might bes and possibles in this etymology. So it may indeed be the case that we can only be jolly at Yuletide, because to be jolly is to be “yuley”: full of the Yuletide spirit.

Being jolly is a little bit weird anyway, isn’t it? It’s not just being happy. Jolliness seems to involve a great deal of chuckling and the bouncing of body parts. There is a certain physicality to jolliness that is lacking in mere happiness.

Thinking about it, it is probably just as well that jolly-season is limited. I can well imagine that I might want to shoot someone who was jolly all the time. But for today, be jolly. Chuckle; bounce body parts, your own and other people’s. But be sure to limit your unbridled jolliness to Yuletide.

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Bon Noël to those who celebrate it; Bonnes Fêtes to those who don’t. Either way, have some jolly jollification.

The "Fall"

I am a very self-conscious person. Now we are all self-conscious of course. By this I mean that we are all able to take a step back and observe ourselves – we are conscious of our “selves”. There is an “I” which recognises and observes the “me”. We can recognise ourselves in the mirror. But I tend to take this to the extreme. The part of me that is observing me is quite noisy and intrusive. It is always watching, checking, and – this is the worst part – judging. This process is virtually unceasing for me, which means that it is very difficult for me to just “feel” something. Even while this is happening, a part of me – and it feels like a large part – is watching rather than feeling. This is amplified even further when someone actually asks me how I feel. In that situation, not only am I judging and assessing myself, but also wondering how the other person judges and assesses me. Am I feeling the “right” thing? Is there something wrong with me if I don’t?

Most animals (or so it seems – but it also seems to me that it is very difficult to measure such things) do not have this “self” consciousness. Now I am more than prepared to be proved wrong about this. But in any case, it is possible to imagine a state of mind in which one simply feels something, or experiences something, without this overlord (superego?) intervening. It may even be possible to move the centre of our being, so to speak, from one of these positions to the other (there may be other positions too). That is to say, I can live in the me that is experiencing, or the I that is observing. It is likely that as a very young baby we tend to live in the me, and the I only develops some time later. This is why babies (like many animals) are not self-conscious in the sense I am describing it here. This is why they can poop, fart and burp without shame (which is how self-consciousness often manifests itself). It seems to me that many meditative and spiritual practices are actually techniques for living in the me rather than the I. I have never been very successful with these methods. I find it very difficult to get out of the I.

It is not a huge step to conceive of this development of the I, this separation into two parts, as what some religions have traditionally referred to as “The Fall”. Now I know that this is not an original idea, but this is not an academic treatise, so I am not going to go in search of the sources. It is clear to me, anyway, that this bifurcation of the self into at least two parts, the I and the me, is a source of pain and loss. We long to return to the state of unity that existed prior to this. It would seem to be easier to live simply as me, to live in the moment, or however else this might be phrased. Unfortunately, I do not believe that we can ever return to this state of innocence. And perhaps it is not even desirable in the end. I haven’t found the answer to this yet, and almost certainly never will. But I suspect that the path should not be backwards towards a pre-existing (real or imagined) state of unity. Rather it needs to be forwards, towards a higher state of unity. And here we are, once again, at the Hegelian dialectic, at least according to my limited understanding of this. We begin with this initial unity, which falls apart into a thesis and antithesis (I and me). The challenge is to find the synthesis which brings these together in a new unity, which is not the same as the initial unity. I’ll send you a message from there if I ever make it.

Favourite literary characters

I am curious to know who are your favourite literary characters? If you are not that much of a reader, perhaps there are movie characters that stand out for you. And what is it about those characters that make them particularly interesting or attractive to you? They might be heroes or villains, major or minor: it doesn’t matter.

When I asked myself this question, one character in particular springs to mind. This is the character of Mary Hare in Patrick White’s novel, Riders in the Chariot. Many of you may not be familiar with this novel, or even with this author. He is, so far, the only Australian author to win the Nobel Prize for literature. I suspect he is not widely read these days, even in Australia. Nevertheless, Riders in the Chariot has been one of my favourite novels since I first read it in high school. And, of the four central characters in that novel, Mary Hare remains one that I love.

The novel tells of four very different people, with extraordinarily different backgrounds and cultures, who share a particular type of mystical experience, each in their own way, and whose paths converge to some degree. Many of the names White chooses for his characters in this novel are unashamedly symbolic and/or ironic: the Jewish holocaust survivor, Mordecai Himmelfarb, for example, whose last name means “heaven’s light”; and Ruth Godbold, who appears almost in the guise of motherhood and nurturing incarnate. Mary Hare is one of the four characters who share this experience. The Hare, like the rabbit, is associated with fecundity; but, with reference to Mary Hare, this is very different from the fecundity associated simply with giving birth. It has more to do with the wild, untamed growth of the natural world. Mary Hare is the reclusive, unpretty, eccentric daughter of Norbert Hare, who had built an extravagant, grand house called Xanadu, modelled on images from Coleridge’s poem, Kubla Khan, on the edge of an Australian town. Long after her parents have died, Mary lives on in the house, allowing it to decay around her, accompanied only by her housekeeper/tormentor , Mrs. Jolley (who most definitely is not). Mary rarely leaves the house, except to crawl through the overgrown gardens to some secret places that are special to her. She is wild, timid and very animal-like. Ultimately she seems to simply to dissolve into the natural background.

To me, not only does Mary Hare embody nature in “nature”, so to speak, but nature within the human being also. She is the timid, shy creature that lives within us, and peeps out from time to time, but is so often kept in check by our own internalised version of Mrs. Jolley. Mary Hare is the part of us that wants to play in the dirt, that wants to kick of our shoes and feel the sand between our toes, or perhaps even to take of our clothes and feel the sun and rain against our skin. She is that from which we emerge, and that to which we ultimately return.