Seven years ago, I had very little presence in the digital sphere. As an oldschool comms marketer who was eager to cross over into the future – and, yes, as a writer with a little audience looking to find a big audience – the potential of the online world called to me with tempting stories of little people with big websites. And I was late to the party. By the time I got there, it was already a little like a Corey Worthington bash – the press, similarly to their ridiculous stories of businessmen who made it big from their garage (we liked those, didn’t we?), often toted around success stories of talents who had been “stumbled upon” online; but in the now crowded cybersea, nobody was being stumbled upon, because nobody was able to sit there in anyone’s way to be stumbled upon. But I knew enough from my marketing background to understand what this meant  - you had to be connected to something else, something big, something commercial, that people were quite deliberately stumbling into, and, through association, there you were. I needed to write about something everyone was talking about – or reading about – online. And I needed to write about something that also gave me the vehicle to slip in the same things I’d be writing about, anyway – disguised as discussions not about those concerns (psychosocial concerns, a the end of the day), but of the topic du jour. I investigated commercial hitrates, did a bit of cybersurfing, and found what I thought was too good a vehicle for Aaron Darc to be true: Big Brother. Aaron Darc meet reality television. Whether you like it or not.

To make it perfectly clear, I hated the thing. What I’d watched of the show repulsed me. But that, at the end of the day, became not a hurdle, but the very way in which I’d make my mark – as the antichrist of Big Brother, so successful in his brutal pulling back of the curtain for its fans, but somehow so engaging to them, even the show had to act in the end (“Don’t suppose we could… um… buy you over?!”).

And ah, the timing. I’d turned on the TV, not too long after the planes had hit those towers, and the west had declared war on… well…. pretty much anything other than a collectively aspired series of “norms”. We were hungry for blood. And Big Brother, as I soon realised, was going to ride this bloodlust and translate it into one of the most horrifying models of mass “entertainment” I’d ever had the misfortune of following for hours upon hours, or, worse, writing about for hours and hours, every single bloody day. Can you feel the disdain, even now, all these years later? I shudder, to remember it. And yet, it was also one of the most successful ventures I’ve ever conjured, and, to this day, I’m quite aware I wouldn’t have built the career or profile I did without it. Eye On Big Brother, as I christened it, would garner upwards of 400,000 hits – not bad, when you consider the show’s official website only managed to near a million. And by the end of its run, not only mainstream press and radio, but the show itself, was eager to uncover – and, in  some cases, employ – its enigmatic writer, known only as The Eye.

Why did I reveal nothing of myself and choose only a gimmicky pseudonym? I had a wonderful monologue – and it became true, at least – that it was all part of my clever plan, to reveal something to society about the nature of projection and discrimination of pigeonholes. Since Big Brother (and reality TV, most of the time) relied solely on this dynamic, it turned out to be true and a powerful tool, and, realising this, I used it to full extent in this way. Across cyberspace, there were ridiculous arguments and conspiracy theories as to who I truly was. Was I an angry feminist dyke? A pissed ex contestant? Or a clever ploy by the show itself? As far as viral marketing without me needing to lift a finger, it worked in my favour, needless to say. But I’ll tell you a secret, all these years later. I first hid anything about my identity, simply because I understood that I would be entering one of the most brutal broader social playgrounds there has ever been. There was blood on the slippery dip. I couldn’t afford my true identity to be dragged down it. To this day, not a single piece of vitriol (the total of which could easily fill volumes of books you’d never want to read ) emerges with a google of my name. Thank God for that. I understood what really pumped through the veins of Big Brother and the record-breaking audiences who lapped it up… cruelty.

You see, the world never really understood what to do about the towers falling down, about the apparent reality (however conjured and manipulated by opportunistic politicians and marketers) that we were – gosh - actually a threatened people hanging on the verge of possible bloody apocalypse (laugh if you want, but let’s not forget the sentiment at the time). It was quite a shock when we realised John Lennon was wrong. Nobody really understood how we got there, or why we ended up there. One, minute we were donating to Live Aid, enjoying the neon splendors of our capitalist haven. The next minute, we were at war. With whom or why, we weren’t even sure. Something about bad people from another culture who were jealous that we lived in a capitalist haven. Or something.

And it’s one thing to be frightened, anxious and angry. But it’s even worse to then not even be able to logically connect those emotions to a tangible understanding of why we came to feel them, or what we were going to do to resolve them. In psychology, it’s called “floating anxiety” – emotion that exists within no consciousness of the nature and meaning of that emotion. The problem is that it’s human nature to want to amend those emotions – to get rid of them – which is perfectly understandable, after all. But what if we don’t know how? What if we don’t understand them, to begin with? And what if, even if we feel we do understand them – and I suppose many, however simplistically (however wrong), did – we don’t feel able to interact with the thing we feel caused them? What was Kevin Briggs gonna do about Osama, after all? Not much, when push came to shove.

And so, we had what is then referred to as “transferred anxiety”. This is an emotion that, unable to either understand itself or directly interact with the perceived cause, is dealt with via a kind of symbolic or vicarious engagement with something that actually had nothing to do with that emotion. You’re smart boys and girls, right? You can see where this is going, yeah?

Big Brother was beautifully placed – as was the entire advent of reality television – for this mass transference. I’d suggest that if the planes hadn’t hit those towers, if post-9/11 culture hadn’t suddenly (quite brutally) arrived, the phenomenon of the genre as we know it – a decade of nasty, exploitative television that pushed envelopes to breaking point without anyone with common sense stopping to say, “Um, guys – this is… really fucked up, if you think about it” – would never have existed in the way it did. It would have died in the shallow waters of our short attention spans, long ago. But we needed the voodoo dolls. We needed the symbols. We needed a variety of poor bastards who wandered into the contemporary – illusory – promises of Fame, hoping they would amend their isolation, their pain, only to – oops, whaddyaknow – be cast as archetypes to represent a series of Others, for a threatened population who very much wanted to destroy The Other, but who couldn’t get near (or even really grasp) The Other they wanted to destroy.

And so, for a decade, we crowned strapping, young, white, straight, Aussie lads, and pretty, young, white, straight, Aussie bimbos – and, best of all, their crowning came off the back of months of hammering those horrible Others. There have been more studies of ex reality show contestants than you can poke a hidden camera at, and what they tend to have in common is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and a far too long list of once ordinary lives these contestants find unable to piece back together, after being hung on the neon cross and crucified. You might not be able to find my involvement with the genre online, but their abuse – the psychological violence these poor buggers endured for our “entertainment” – will probably outlive them. Having become a kind of public spokesman for them (one of the only people speaking up about just how vile it all was), I eventually was contacted by many, and their distress was always obvious – whether it was there to be seen in little ways, or whether they cried to me for hours (for some, years after their appearances). And go figure. Quite frankly, you’d be messed up by it, too.

But it’s 2012. Things – let’s all sigh, together – did eventually begin to change. The fruitless war in Iraq yielded very little, nobody blew up the Harbour Bridge, Bush and the era of conservative war mongerers met their political end, and – yes – eventually, a team of special US ops would burst the doors down of a Pakistani fortress and BANG! Bye bye, Mr Bin Laden. The world went on. The apocalypse never came. And yes, we have a bunch of new anxieties – climate change, the economic collapse of our civilisation, and so forth. But their origins are different, and so too are the ways we seek to transfer and amend them. Enjoying a social minority be collectively malled on a TV screen just doesn’t have quite the same vicarious thrill.

One by one, the Neon Roman Arenas fell – Big Brother being the first and largest thump. Public obsession turned to pubic outrage, and having pushed the envelope beyond all reasonable confines of sanity or legality, the only people people screaming at Dreamworld were riding roller-coasters.

Just as Big Brother finished, along came Master Chef, and, as I noted at the time, a potential shift from the sadism of the crass model of reality television that dominated the last decade. Most critics called it “tame” in comparison – some even referring to it as an “adult” counter-action to Big Brother. Really, both missed the point. The success of Master Chef that followed – alongside the terribly cutesy 80′s-ness of So You Think You Can Dance? – was not about being “tame”, and not about Big Brother being “immature”. Both lacked sadism as their prime dynamic of engagement. What the people wanted was changing. And what they wanted was to feel good. They wanted to champion a vicarious symbol – and not as that symbol brutally conquered their competing minority voodoo dolls with their frantic SMS’d help. This was victory for the sake of victory. And as the archetypes for winners emerged in a pattern from these shows, there was a startling difference: often these winners were now archetypal of minorities in their own way – or, more to the point, they were classic “Underdogs”. The previous decade was absent of the Underdog. It had always been a previous staple of Australian culture, in particular – hardly surprising for a country so plagued by feelings of global irrelevance – but in post-9/11 culture, we were desperate for the feeling of being an empowered collective. It was not about who we felt we were, but who we felt we wanted to be – like some sort of identity fantasy, touched through the magic of television. The Logan Brothers come to my mind – a pair of vile twin brothers (privileged, good-looking, smarmy, white boys) who, ten years earlier, would have inflamed resentment and jealousy within a national audience. In the early 21st century, however, they were gleefully crowned kings, after acting horrendously to any of the less-privileged who got in their way.

On the same series of Big Brother, I remember what continues to stick for me as the absolute pinnacle of everything so vulgar, so horrifying, about that era. One of the contestants bullied and ridiculed by The Logans was Rachel, a working class girl from Western Sydney. Quickly signaled out by the upper class alphas, and quickly destroyed for our viewing pleasure, I can’t help but wonder what would have happened to Rachel today, if she were to make the horrible mistake she did, ten years ago, and wander into our living rooms. But ten years ago, she eventually broke down and confessed – oh, Rachel – her past of domestic abuse (both physical and sexual), her time in the sex industry, her poverty, and her determination to find someone who would accept her, to love her like nobody in her life had. Our response? We evicted her, right there and then, and as she sat on the eviction stage with tears rolling down her face, the crowd yelled “slut” at her. The Logan Boys were further ingrained into our hearts. “They’re easy to love, aren’t they?” Gretel Killeen blushed to her, referencing how her heart had been broken, subsequently leading to her demise, by one of the Logan brothers. Rachel didn’t even hear it – she obliviously scanned the crowd, stunned and devastated, reading the charming range of cardboard signs that took pleasure in her destruction. She went there to be loved. but she was nothing more than fodder for our bloodlust. Thankfully, I didn’t start properly watching the show – and blogging it – til the following year. That was the one time I was free to turn the vile thing off. And I did.

So I’m not suggesting we live in a utopia, but let’s not let our gripes with 2012 blind us to the memory of just how dark it all became during those war years. Nothing has come close to that sort of entertainment, in recent times. And anything that does is met with a similar response (amazingly enough) as my response to Rachel, all those years ago. The country turns it off.

A few weeks ago, we fell in love with the latest heavyweight on the reality TV block, The Voice. The country is turning on in record numbers – now even smashing the records previously held by such moments of television as the crucifixion of Rachel, or any one of the other hundred crucifixions given to us by Big Brother. Master Chef was a clue to where it was all heading. But the last few months have, once and for all, cemented the contemporary mainstream mindset as it can be seen through reality television, and what was evident to me in Master Chef in ways subtle enough for many to dismiss what I was sighting, is now LOUD AND CLEAR in the success of The Voice. Cruel is out. Shmulz is in.

Master Chef showed a commendable change in attitude regarding ethnicity, both in the public’s willingness to receive it, and in the network’s willingness to show it. But The Voice takes it as far as exploiting the handicapped. And if that seems a jarring word, in light of what I’m proposing – “exploited” – let me make it perfectly clear. Supply and demand means that whatever we want, we’ll get. It’s the one argument I did repeatedly remind everyone of, when even I was leveling criticism at the producers of Big Brother: if we weren’t so sadistic, they wouldn’t have made such sadistic television. Network TV makes the advertising industry look like social workers – which they’re not. And they’re still technically exploiting everyday people – zero has changed, there. But what they’re exploited for does matter. It’s the difference between an exploitation ending in Rachel’s trauma or it ending in crowning an underdog victory.

So enjoy it, by all means – but don’t completely buy in. The Voice’s clever use of disability – particularly the “blind” audition with the blind contestant (I mean, really!) – is nauseatingly contrived, but the result is that we champion the Underdog and get our hit from their triumph – as opposed to getting our hit out of watching the blind girl picked on and eliminated in front of ten thousand bogans yelling out “You can’t even see my cardboard sign!” – which is not that far fetched, when all is said and done. Or, perhaps, simply stick with reality, and cast your mind back to the very last season of Ten’s Big Brother, which actually did go as far as to finally use physical disability; casting a midget who was eliminated as quickly as Rachel, and made to kiss her (six foot) partner on the eviction stage, as the crowd shrieked ”eeeeewwww!” en masse. Nice. There’s not an inch of my being that wants to engage The Voice, but after selling advertising space between jeered abuse victims and midgets? It’s hard to scoff at the country’s love affair with this new breed of rubbish.

Several weeks after its arrival, the shift in cultural mindset was affirmed yet again, when Master Chef made its return. The last season of Master Chef – a show that, now a good few years ago, was one of the first success stories to capitalise on this change – was an interesting one. Faced with the problem of how old the show now was, producers responded to a desperation to “make it fresh” (famous last words in TV land, so very often) the only way TV producers know how – start writing and manipulating the drama themselves. Short memories, it would seem, for any of them who had watched the rise and fall of Big Brother. Master Chef was suddenly hit with a constant barrage of negative press and public reactions to the show becoming yet another “fake” and “nasty” reality show (the public have short memories, too – or, at least, a bizarre ability to reconstruct their own affection for such nastiness); the ratings finally starting to sound the alarms by last season’s end. By last week’s return, after the advertising that followed as a response to last season’s lackluster ending, it was clearly confused – its brand now weakened by not having the guts to be anything in particular, and, therefore, fatally coming across as nothing at all. And all this, just as the country was linking youtube videos of blind girls with beautiful voices all over their facebook walls. Not only did Master Chef fail in return, this week – its launch came in fourth - fourth – on the night, beaten even by secondary news bulletins. All those years ago, Big Brother’s cruelty revived a weakening Network Ten. But it is The Voice’s heartbeat – however contrived it may be - that is reviving Nine. For the first time in six years, Nine managed to win six of the top ten ratings positions for the week. As far as impersonations of Lazarus go, that’s pretty impressive.

And what does Nine also have up its sleeve? That’s right – a potentially ironic circle, of sorts. Soon, we will see if the rather expensive purchase that so many scratched their heads at was in fact a wise decision. Nine will revive, of all things, Big Brother.

It’s on a very different network. But that’s much of a muchness, at the end of the day. If Nine believe the show will be most profitable rehashed as Ten’s old beast, it will do just that. Rather, we live in a very different world. The thought that led us to salivate for such blood was driven by a fear of the world outside us, beyond the neon capitalist haven of the 80′s and 90′s. I’ve already sighted the end of those boogie man. But what of today’s boogie man? What of the possibility that our neon capitalist haven is killing the planet that haven exists on, the very world we live in? What about the stockmarkets being in the hands of the suits we used to revere, and the ones we, as little people, are far too below to have any control over? Ten years ago, the boogie man was them. In 2012, it’s us. Whoever do we crucify, this time? We can’t deal with the climate crisis, because then we’d have to give up the flatscreens we watch our reality television on. We like our flatscreens, thanks very much. We cannot give them up. And we need the men in suits to keep feeding us the little pills of industry that lead to our flatscreens, sitting there, shining as if a burning bush on a holy mountain, in JB Hifi. How can we get angry, when it’s ourselves we would have to get angry with? Is there really something wrong with us? Are we really that toxic? Please, someone, assure us we’re not. I mean, we’re beautiful people. Aren’t we?

Hot tip, Nine. The masses have a new need. Your forthcoming juggernaut might, technically speaking, be an old show. But it better be wearing a new face. And by God, that face better have a tear in its eye. C’mon, Mr Brother, get them happy.

They’re ready for the Judgment Day.

Martin Luther King

Earlier today, I had the misfortune of finding a copy of The Daily Telegraph (yeah, I know), which led me to experience the displeasure that was Miranda Devine’s creative take on the London riots. I say “creative”, because she somehow managed to turn a riot that happened under a conservative government into another case of left-wing mismanagement. You gotta hand it to her, she doesn’t let reality get in the way of what they pay her so nicely to spew out. For Devine, it was all down to “politically correct policing”. Yes, that’s right, lovely Miranda actually proposed that, far from having too much racism and cruelty in our social policies, we have not had enough – and if we did have more, like… say… the freedom to basically lock away the immigrant portions of our society (they did that in Germany, once), then this damned riot wouldn’t have happened, because they’d all be… I don’t know…. locked up… or killed. Elsewhere in the paper, random fuckwits on the street (they’re not exactly thin on the ground in this country) answered the searing question: Could the riots happen in our own country? My favourite was the guy who answered, “No, because though they have the same problems, they have some on a much bigger scale that thankfully we don’t, like immigration.” And it struck me, really, because at the end of the day, everybody knows it – we know very well what this riot “was” – and yet the media, none of it, has had the guts to outright call this… hello… a race riot. It’s also a class riot, yes (we’ll discuss how aspirationalism has given birth to a new monster in a moment), and certainly there’ll no doubt be plenty of white looters and rioters. But class and race are ultimately inseparable in this society of ours, anyway. And if there is shown to be no element of race in the rioting – taking note of the current absence of race in the actual reporting (as opposed to the op ed pieces, where it’s perfectly acceptable to basically invoke genocide) – we have taken it upon ourselves to imagine it was (hence the mountain of racist op eds and abominable forum comments) – and that in itself says so very much about the racial divides in Post 9/11 West.

We certainly seem to be enjoying the angry aftermath. The truth is that we – the Great White West – were as hungry for this riot as they were. We love nothing more than hate campaigns against The Other – than acts that justify our fears and aggressive urge to “protect” our society at the expense of those Others. We completely ignore the fact that during the course of this riot, it has been discovered that – just as his family had swore (which nobody believed) – Mark Duggan had not fired at police, and that the bullet lodged in the police car that was used to justify them holding him down and blowing his brains out came from the gun of another policeman (Cameron will no doubt happily whip the public anger up to completely overshadow the incident that sparked all this). These people complain – to deaf ears – about how they are harassed by white policemen, their children strip-searched for no reason (exploiting laws that were supposedly for the fight against terrorism), and it boils over when eventually a group of policemen hold a member of their community down, kill him, then create a false story to justify their slaughter, before then completely ignoring the family. I mean, really, why ever would these people be so pissed? They live in a society where, whilst existing in huge numbers, they are segregated and used – at best – as the city’s spat on services industry (janitors and hustling taxi drivers), constantly subjected to racism, growing up in the nightmare of British public housing projects. They have been slowly watching their welfare be stripped from them as Britain’s increasingly Orwellian government continue to increase the wealth of the white elite, and subjected to the rampant and self-indulgent white consumerism each modern child is raised on and pumped full of from the minute they are born and sat in front of a television (a consumerist joy they can never aspire to knowing). And the white people think there’s not a problem because, like, they had Beef Jerkey in Brixton just two weeks ago (how Cultured™!). We rob them of the right or voice to even complain, we tell them to comply and accept. We even tell them they should be grateful.

Why on earth would they be grateful? And what would motivate them to obey and conform to this society? Humans are motivated by reward – I do A because I know it will lead to B. What do they have in front of them? We just think they will stick to our conditions because we told them to, even when those conditions screw them over? Of course, not. And they didn’t. And London went up in flames and fear. The Other rose up, in a terrifying and blinding meme of pain, and struck out. They were so driven by the culmination of emotion this riot was that they even destroyed parts of their own communities. They hated the world. They hated their world. All of it. That’s all that drove them to these riots – an existential angst that was not, as many are sighting, opportunistic, as much as it was simply triggered, the fuse lit, the explosion finally erupting, and their individual turmoil validated – empowered – by the collective. No longer would they comply, because with the power of numbers, they no longer had to. And, yes, they acted with a cold and vengeful indifference. Because that’s what the world they grew up in is like, after all; the generations born in this society will act as their world has shown them, a world where they are displaced because their fathers and mothers may have been a part of a different world. But they don’t know that other world of their parents, after all – they are a total product of this – our – society. And it has shown them nothing but savage indifference, and largely because of their connection to another world they themselves have never even known. That must seem awfully unfair, don’t you think? Hare dare we expect them to act with compassion? How has the world we’ve forced them to live in shown them compassion? It hasn’t.

I was sitting on the train, a couple of week ago, coming to the city from Western Sydney. I’ve never really been out that way much, so traveling to and from their for my latest contract has been a bit of an eye opener. I had the audacity to complain about the ridiculous ticket price ($12 return for me to travel from Western Sydney to the city) because I noted the need to actually purchase one – unlike traveling any other direction, transit guards and hordes of police jumped on and off the trains, leaving no stone unturned. Over my travels I began to witness groups of young boys – mostly of immigrant descent – being harassed by the police, endlessly grilled and taunted, whether they had tickets or not. I heard the groups of boys, and how they would talk of the police, after they’d finished harassing them and walked away – needless to say, the boys weren’t overly fond of them. And we’re talking boys as young as 9 here – perhaps, younger. What do we expect these boys to grow up and think of the society that looms down on them in such a way? What do we expect them to think of the righteousness of law? How do we expect the to have compassion for the society those white policemen “protect” and ultimately represent? Not much, I reckon.

Where are the police on the North Shore line? Nowhere. When I was working in St Leonards, I knew never to worry about buying a ticket. There were never any guards or police, and even if someone was standing at the gate, they’d do nothing more than tip their head and smile. What a different world it is when you’re white and affluent. And these boys from out West, they see this world, they know how they exist on the outskirts of a world they will never be able to know. You can’t honestly expect them to hold much respect for them, for their privilege, for their things.

In London, they decided to just take those things. The government and press knew to throw the word “violence” around – and while there was an element of violence, most certainly, it was still slightly unrepresentative to put it down to that, as the crowd were not hellbent on violence, but on theft. This was a looting riot – and that’s very different to aggressive physical riots. Looting will always happen around those, but in this instance the looting was the point. And that says so very much about the psychology of the meme (which is ultimately what a riot is – a physical manifestation, unification and mobilisation of a meme). They struck out at the consumer world, because to these kids, that is the world of the white and privileged. And it is the logical product of the same consumer culture they, being here, are still raised on, even if they can never attain it. Consumer culture is designed – every inch of it – to create anxiety within us, to make us strive for something, something someone is selling, as a perceived necessity to attaining wellbeing or joy. They are not immune. From the minute they are born, they are made to want it. Just like us. But, unlike us, they can’t have it. The only way any of them ever get to have it is through dealing, so the price of having it is either ending up locked away in our system, or – perhaps like Mark Duggan, depending on what the truth is – being slaughtered. But in the end, fuck you, they took it. They bust through the barriers that divide these things from us – all upheld by law – the windows that keep us out, the properties that house these things and relinquish them only for the exchange of cash – and they took them. In days gone by, they would riot to bring down a government. These kids rioted to get iPads. Grasp that for a moment. It’s all going terribly, terribly wrong.

And usual, we have lapped up the outrage. And we should be outraged. But we are allowing the powers that be to manufacture that outrage, a shallow outrage that does not see the bigger picture. We just can’t empathise – that’s how we got into this mess, after all – and so, nothing will be solved. We no doubt have more strange scenes ahead of us, god knows where. And this, just weeks after another manifestation of racism boiled over in an individual in Norway, a very different – but even more unsettling – consequence of conservative and capitalist culture. But we didn’t tie our outrage to the killer in Norway to the fact that he was a manifestation of us, heavens no. But this – this is those little monstrous immigrants. It was the immigrants the dude in Norway slaughtered in the name of getting rid of. It doesn’t matter what race it is we are trying to get rid of, whether the racism du jour is anti-Arab or anti-African or anti-whatever. It’s all The Other. But The Other is starting to rise. Push groups of people in large enough numbers into a corner and they’ll do that. The government won’t change anything because of London. Already, David Cameron has publicly vowed to wage brutal justice upon the rioters, calming our fears by telling us not to worry because “we will not let any phoney concerns about human rights get in the way.” Oh, good. For a second there, I thought the tax-dodging upper class elite who run the place might be considering human rights in the way they deal with the uproar of the lower classes they spit on. We can all rest easy. They won’t be.

And so, what will be changed? Nothing. The irony is that more fuel will be put on the fire. You think they hated us when we blew that guy’s head off? Wait til this is over, and see if they feel any better about us once we finally see an Orwellian England rise and put its foot on them. I’m thinking they won’t. I’m thinking times are about to get a little interesting in the mother country.

Further reading:

One of the more interesting commercial blog piece I’ve read on the riots: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100100708/the-moral-decay-of-our-society-is-as-bad-at-the-top-as-the-bottom/

David Cameron’s incredibly scripted interview for the Telegraph, unashamedly and explicitly announcing the arrival of a “Nanny State”: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/8699770/UK-riots-zero-tolerance-promises-Cameron-but-will-this-be-his-finest-hour.html

At least our Western leaders were kind enough to grant us the ease of not having to actually confront the reality of what was happening. Unlike, say, India, who had the audacity to be honest about how it refused to weaken itself economically on the global structure for the sake of mankind – somewhere, down there. We thought that was shocking that they would do that – how callous! What an inconsiderate government, making its people rally for the truth of why climate change policies will never actually happen! Ours, like Rudd, were much more convenient. He got in, back when it was a hot topic and such an entertaining relief from the daily Terrorism™ stories, on the green slogans of protecting our future from this new, exciting threat to our egos-slash-existence. Sure, by Copenhagen’s end, we committed to basically fuck all – but at least he bothered to continue spewing out those same slogans – empty, meaningless slogans – however contrary to reality they were. Reality sucks. It has no place on our flatscreens.

And what about Obama? Mr Change™, himself! He certainly didn’t disappoint in the dramatic speech stakes, did he? Something about coming to Copenhagen for action, not words – fucking brilliant! A great change, after being reduced to the comedy of laughing at Bush’s stupidity as a way of side-stepping the reality of the people who own our souls. Obama is all gutsy and inspiring and stuff. I wish he was my Dad. How cool would it have been to have had Obama as your Dad, when you were a teenager? Can’t you imagine it? He walks into the classroom when the teacher you hate gives you a fail, and he just demands that pass, and you get it, because how could anyone not submit to the drama of his presence? That teacher you hate acts, and gives you that pass. That’s what Dad wants, motherfucker. He doesn’t want words. You fucking act!!

Oh, yeah. Okay, so he sold his speeches out, and didn’t actually act, at all. But, whatever. I was too spellbound by the headlines and those images of his strong, beautifully determined face, to notice. America didn’t care. What, you think they got through defending themselves against the arabs, to just throw away their comfortable, cushy, meaningless lifestyle… sorry, I mean… Freedom™? After they went to so much trouble over the muslims who wanted flatscreens for themselves? Fuck, no. They’re not going to defeat those Terrorists, and just to give them up, only to see the Chinese rub their hands together and sit there with the flatscreens. No way.

I was in Dick Smith, the other day, because I’m a smart man, and I know that the best time to buy electronics is the week after Christmas. And you Greenies out there are going to be so proud of me – you know what happened? I actually got into a fight! I was looking at flatscreen TVs, when I overheard one of those pimply young electronics salesmen who was fast on his way to becoming a trained, certified, moral-less prick, selling a 40 inch plasma to a naive, middle-aged suburban couple.

“Why not?” the woman asked.

“Because they eat electricity like nothing else – they take 40 percent more electricity than LCDs. They’re destroying the world; that’s why nobody buys them anymore.”

Silence.

This is the problem with the green pitch, mind you. It has not figured out how to talk to everyday people about their everyday concerns. This, after all, is my job – to make them want whatever I’m selling, because I know how to connect it to whatever it is they actually care about. I tried another approach…

“It will cost you a fortune to run,” I offered, instead. “I had one. And when I lost it in my break-up, my electricity bill went down $300! The LCD will save you hundreds, every year – that’s what these guys don’t tell you.”

“Oh,” she said, her face looking like it no doubt did when she saw those towers fall. “Oh, I don’t think I’d like that.”

“No,” agreed her husband in the flannelette shirt.

Needless to say, the pimply young salesman didn’t like this, at all. But all he could do was stick to his script. “But no, because they watch mostly sport and the kids play video games, so plasma is much more suited to their lifestyle.”

“Oh, please,” I laughed. “Much more suited to your commission, more like it. That’s rubbish. LCD technology has now advanced, the motion problems no longer exist – you’re just trying to sell the TV you can’t get rid of to anyone who knows flatscreens.”

Well, what could he do? He had “What the fuck is your problem, faggot? And why would you do this to my sale?” all over his face – but it’s his job to smile, while sticking the knife in you, and this meant he had to continue doing so, even as I stuck mine into him. In the end, they bought the LCD. Then, to rub the salt in, I made him serve me for my own purchase.

“You’re looking for an LCD, I take it,” he began, his resentment literally pulling his face upwards into a snarl that could not be restrained by his role – even if his voice stuck to the perkiness of it all.

“Naturally,” I smiled.

And I bought that LCD. I adore it. And you’d be thrilled to know that I downsized from my last 42 inch plasma, and went for only a measly 33 inches. And I hardly watch it, so it’s not like it’s really killing the planet – it’s rarely turned on. And, truth be told, I only got it because since my ex had taken the 42 inch plasma, the room had felt so… incomplete. There was an entertainment unit that had nothing on it but a telephone, and a gaping big white wall that completely killed the carefully crafted aesthetic of the rest of the room. There needed to be a flatscreen there. It looked wrong without it.

I don’t know what will happen to our world – whether the seas will rise and drown us all, or the sky will heat til our bodies burn away. I’m left to trust, based on nothing more than my subjective assessment of the figures in the middle of all this who tell us what is right and wrong. I will choose some for as ultimately superficial reasons, as the right-wingers will choose others. I believe in climate change. I think, no doubt, that something will happen. But I don’t think we’re ready to do anything about it. And until we dare, at least I know my living room is complete. Control is what we will always opt for, in the end, once the anticipation of change has proven too difficult. Just ask Obama.

So says the wisdom of Peregrine, from the abc.net forum boards, in response to today’s salacious news that world champion runner, Casta Semenya, does not perfectly fit into the scientific categorisation of what we call a “Woman”. Naturally, gender is more than nature, itself – beyond the science, it is cultural. And one has to wonder what is more at play, as we watch the world so self-indulgently lap up this incredibly sad scandal. The question of what this story “means” to people is not a simple one that I’m going to answer in entirety, during a blog I’m penning on late Friday afternoon. There’s the deep-seeded role of gender – but, so too, is there a case for racial undertones, particulalry when viewed in light of the culture clash that had already erupted when South Africa defended its beloved champion against the white detractors who had so viciously claimed their star was invalid. But all it meant to me was a distinct sensation of pain: a sympathetic moment where I couldn’t help but sigh for Casta Semenya, an individual who will undoubtedly be lost in all that follows. Through absolutely no fault of her own, her road to glory has led her to a very dark place, indeed. You thought the devouring of Susan Boyle was sickening? I have a feeling this is going to eclipse the public consumption of the developmentally challenged Scottish Christian who just happened to have a decent voice. The public consumption of the African hermaphrodite who happened to be able to run like the wind is, I dare say, going to be a far bloodier affair.

The story really began, a month ago, when the teenager won the 800m world championship title. It has now been suggested that before this event, South African Sporting authorities had tested Semenya, and must surely have known that she did not possess the typical gender traits of a biological female. This has already enraged former coach, Wilfred Daniels, who is not happy that, when all is said and done, the sporting authorities knew full well what the deal was and what was about to happen.Yet, they refrained from informing Semenya, who, by now, was far too important symbolically – and financially, of course – to be treated as a human being with any rights in her own horrifying drama.

“We didn’t brief her about the procedures and the protocols, we didn’t inform her of her rights in this situation, and we didn’t prepare her for the aggressive media onslaught that she was confronted with in Berlin,” Daniels said.

That “aggressive media onslaught” is referring to the initial controversy that erupted during the world championships where she would stake her claim as the fastest woman on Earth. One has to presume that the authorities who no doubt already knew the truth about their star athlete are where the initial leak must have originated – one that was fed to press, who were more than happy to run with the speculative accusations that the champion was not all that she seemed.

This was perfect for a nationalistic sporting event, like the World Championships. These kinds of events (such as The Olympics) where the competition is blatantly racial, have always been tainted by a patriotic aggression that is nothing short of logical. That’s why I hate them so much. They mean so much to our society, that we delude ourselves with functionally self-deceptive slogans (“the world comes together to celebrate one globe through the act of sport”, bla, bla, blaaaaaaaa); but it’s all bullshit, designed to protect the part of human beings that enjoy taking a sense of purpose and belonging from vicariously living through athletes symbolically triumphing over other nations. It’s nationalism. It’s racist. I mean, seriously. Use your brain a little. What else it it? “Yay! We beat that other country! We’re so much better! Through my belonging to this group on the basis of geographic entitlement, I feel superior!” Hello?! YUCK.

And so, the world was more than happy to engage the “debate” – because it was a bullet aimed at the champion, by the countries that lost. And this wasn’t just any country, after all; but South Africa. I’m reminded of being a little boy amongst my shockingly racist step-family, as they joked about the propensity of black nations to produce top tier running athletes being due to them “running from the scenes of their crimes”. Hardy ha ha.

This vile exploitation of a running race - I mean, really – for the nationalistic racial insecurities of our fucked up little world escalated, until South Africa was thrown into a state of uproar over the victimisation and racism it (quite rightly, mind you) had been subjected to through the questioning of their champion’s authenticity. You look back, and you can’t help but cringe, can you? Hear they were, the poor buggers, completely unaware, desperately clinging to their star, rejoicing in her victory, embodying her as a cultural symbol of their endurance, exponentially to the increasing ferocity of the rest of the (white) world. It’s like watching the passengers on the Titanic look forward to their new life on distant shores. You want to rewind time and tell them to take a very different path. But, of course, you can’t. In the end, the iceberg will hit, and the whole damn thing will sink.

Today, the iceberg hit the fate of Casta Semenya. And who should be responsible? Australia. Way to go. Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!

Goodness, it’s nearly Christmas. It’s nearly the end of 2009. What about that? Sad about that? Glad to be rid of it? It’s been a fairly big year, on so many accounts. For me, I’ve been torn away from this website, this year – and I have disliked that, immensely – because my own world has been so… compelling… I’ve found myself pulled from the world beyond the little bubbles we each live in. This week, I decided I wanted to reconnect a little. What a year it’s been for me – intense highs and some of the most intensely difficult situations I’ve been in since I don’t know how long (ever, for a couple of them). Lightning-bolt shifts in the ongoing struggle of career in the middle of a recession (at first, it was terrifying – in the end, I’d done extremely well); dealing with the simultaneous demise of the two loves in my life – my Great Grandmother who raised me (why, oh why, oh why did it have to be this year?!), and my partner I had spent almost five years with (sometimes, you decide to break up with people because you kinda have to – it doesn’t necessarily bring the moment where the smiles break out again); juxtaposed with my sudden departure for Europe, and my experiences with a young German I had met, my old party pals from London town, an old friend from those very good old days, a bunch of fresh faces, and those beautiful, beautiful cities (that was… well… pretty damn cool!). Great ups and great downs, really – I couldn’t say if 2009 was a good or a bad year in the cellar rack of my life. It’s both. But what about the rest of the world? I decided to see how it had been going, and had heard about a new series with something to say about not only that, but where we’re heading into 2010.

You know, it’s incredible to think it – for those of you that have followed me from the very beginning – but I’ve actually watched absolutely no television since July. Yes, I know. If there was one good thing to come out of my breakup, it’s losing that almighty bigscreen plasma. I mean, really, BYE! And if you just thought, “Well, how does he stay connected, at all?” then you need help. The irony of the medium of television is that it hardly connects us at all. In comparison to online, it does almost zero. Most of it is rubbish – far from connecting you to the world, it’s main sell is enabling your disconnection. Part of my love for dissecting our consumption of bad TV is that you can still find something kinda comforting, beneath the hypnotism: we have these human needs to digest and express our lives that still come up – almost metaphorically – in the way we approach our bad TV (especially, reality TV). But it’s rubbish, just the same. It’s not reality, at all. I haven’t watched one episode of Australian Idol, this year – not one – and I couldn’t be happier about that! And the irony is that when I first met my partner (I had not owned a TV for years), one of the things I loved was (how Gen Y is this?!) that his msn tagline was “kill your television”. I dug it. And six months later, there we were, buying that 42 inch plasma. But three months ago, he walked out that door with it. In the brutal division of property, he fought for it more than anything else. And he got it. In the end, he killed my television. Strange, the way things turn out.

But there is some good TV, of course – a slither – you just have to seek it out. It’s not on the commercial channels, needless to say. Tonight, I watched an amazing new series on ABC. It’s a little over the top, to be fair (the script injected with far too much conceptual metaphor – but maybe the mainstream viewers would find it easier to digest), but it’s convincing and confronting, just the same. To kick off the series, tonight’s premier episode told the story of the current economic melt-down. Some of us know the story and some of us don’t, when it comes to just “how” this happened – Addicted to Money told this on two levels: from a technical perspective (nicely dumbed down a little for those of us who do not work in finance) and on the broader social ideological level. And I pretty much knew it. But still, it was powerful to sit there and behold the greed and the sickness of all involved – the terrifying lack of ethics for the profit-driven banks and companies involved in the credit empire that was always going to fall, the insolence and compliance of a corporate-whipped government, and, yes, the downward spiral of a people hooked on consuming without thinking. Viva Capitalism! I mean, sheesh, whaddya say? And in the end, we’ve had to bail the bastards out and cop the fall, and God knows how long we’ll be on the ground. There’s a slight murmur in the press that things are picking up; but it’s an optimistic murmur, and while some profits are rising and the consumer spend gaining some ground, there’s not a great deal more going on, and we’re certainly not out of it. We will end 2009, economically, as we entered it. And the world, one has to wonder, will enter 2010 no more aware or in control of their own blindness – and emptiness, of course (that lied beneath the smiles of consumer aspirations) – that was sucked into the inevitable vortex of a “booming economy” that was actually just a mirage, the whole time. It was never really booming, after all – the magic numbers didn’t really exist, because the money didn’t. And we should have known that. But we couldn’t resist the sale, we couldn’t say no to the banks when they rang us and asked if we’d like that new credit card. “I really can’t afford that – it’s unbelievable they’re offering it to me!” we’d think. But then, we’d accept it. And it wasn’t really “unbelievable” – it was one of the most hideous exploitations of our modern society. But, then again, maybe karma’s a bitch.

And what about the environment? It was the issue du jour in 2008. I guess it’s 2009, though. My, how we have come to treat real issues like cultural trends – dangerous, considering real issues extend beyond the cultural attention span and our lust for something new to engage. On the brief, nauseating stop I had in the world of commercial news, I saw a story where this issue actually intertwined with the economic dilemma. It was about how people are still bending over backwards and mortgaging themselves into oblivion (what aren’t you learning, people?!?!) just to own beach-side properties (they sell more than ever, at record-breaking prices). But what really made me just think… “wow”… was the anchor’s intro. There he sat, his disturbingly perfect hair as shiny as his desk, in front of a computer graphic of happy homeowners jumping, Toyota style, in front of a beach-side property. And with the most grating, disproportionately volumed smile, he said: “Well, despite global warming, Australians have not lost their love for the dream of the seaside home.” This cheerful intro was for a story about how we are throwing ourselves into more credit, just to own something that may inevitably be destroyed by the environmental impact of our consumption. And I just thought… “wow”. Don’t let your ridiculous consumer and lifestyle junkie impulses stop reaching for the impossible fulfillment, just because it will only lead to drive the world into economic melt-down, or because, you know, we’re destroying the environment in our quest, so much, we will ultimately find out the dreams most of us can’t afford anyway, sliding into the rising oceans, heavens no!

And I’m not just blindly finger-pointing, here. I did just confess that at one stage of my not too distant past, I stood, wide-eyed, in front of a 42 inch plasma, and shared the joy of owning it with my wide-eyed “kill your television” partner. I hardly jumped in and said “don’t buy it”. It was on sale for $2000. We got it on credit with a David Jones card. We ended up paying around $4000 for that television. And even now, what’s the one thing that binds us together, and instigates our reconnection? Sorting out the debt left over from those years. How terribly modern is Aaron Darc?!

And even watching the “Addicted To Money” premier, at one point I couldn’t help but look at the journalist, crucifying capitalism with such passion, and think, “I wonder how hard you negotiated the salary you got for doing this?” We all like more money, so we can… you know… buy more shit. But at what cost? And do we really care? Since we’re now paying the price, we get to see the answer to that question. It seems to be no. That’s… a little off-putting, let’s face it.

Of course, there are other disturbing chapters in the current story of our world – the oil spill (our oil spill) is not generating the attention it should be, and (getting quite a lot of attention – because nothing gets us going more than the issue of foreign invasion) there’s the asylum seeker debate and the first real hiccup for Mr Rudd. We will discuss more soon, and hopefully have the interactive components of the site restored. I’m reconnecting. I hope you can come reconnect with me.

Mental Health

As someone who has studied and worked in the mental health industry, and, quite frankly, as someone who engages and dissects a society increasingly unable to psychologically cope with modern life, the bureau’s stats on mental health are not surprising to me, but, even so, are incredibly disturbing to consider.

• 45% of Australians have suffered from mental illness
• Mental Health has an annual cost of 20 Billion

But here’s one I found quite startling, when you compare it to the awareness out there of other disabilities we would presume to be more a part of social life:

• Mental illness is the number one cause of disability leading to loss of healthy life (inability to work, etc).

Environmentalism

We all know my thoughts on the reality of our environmental concern not matching up to the reality of our actions. With my 50 inch plasma, I don’t pretend to be helping the environment, and I am, in this much, in the same boat as most people in this country. But hey, at least I don’t pretend – what’s most interesting in these findings is how they show people to be so incongruent in what they believe they’re doing to what they’re actually doing. Here’s some black and white to the green era:

• Household Energy consumption is still rapidly increasing
• Non-renewable electricity (where the carbon footprint comes from) has increased 37% since 1998 (and continues to).

And here are some stats that, together, paint our inability to put our thoughts into action:

• There was a 70% awareness in “green” energy options
• Most people said they would be happy to pay extra for green energy

However….

• Renewable energy use has decreased (while the non-renewable has increased!)

Debt

I must say these figures surprised me. We all know debt has become one of the true evils of modern society, and is a large part of the economic crisis we are now in. And yes…

• There has been a six-fold increase on debt since 1990
• In 1990, national household debt was 190 billion. Today, it stands at 1.1 Trillion!

However, I must confess I falsely presumed credit cards to be the source of this. Not so. While obviously, credit cards have contributed to the increase, the biggest facet in this was

• Nearly 40% increase in property debt.

So, we’re definitely now in a changing cultural environment, regarding that Aussie Dream™. It now involves bigger houses (which can also be connected to increase in energy consumption) and, therefore, higher mortgages. As for the impact of the economic crisis, stats compared where we are now, to a year ago…

• Credit card debt has decreased 22%
• Property debt continues to increase.

Partnering

Ah, love and… well… all those other things that are perhaps part of our instinct to get together. Have we changed, since 1996?

• 4% decrease in partnering

Not much, no! And this drop can perhaps be attributed to the increased social independence of women, and better access to (and cultural acceptance of) divorce. Regardless, 4% hardly evidences any dramatic shift in this area.

However, this is a stat referring to any kind of partnering. How about the more traditional context of marriage?

• Registered marriages down 10%
• Defacto relationships up

So, a more marked changed in this element of partnering, at least. But the really fascinating stats come when partnering is linked to religion. Stats showed that relationships hardly ever fell out of “same-faith” scenarios – including non-religious individuals, who seem unable to have relationships with the religious (it’s no doubt mutual!). But… here’s what I really loved, and let’s all just stop and think about this one for a minute… out of all the religions, who is most unable to partner outside of the faith?

• Christians! 85% of Christian partnering were same-faith relationships
• Muslims? 78%

Not exactly the idea we have shoved in our face, every day, about the Muslims, hey?! You would think they were surely more unwilling to partner outside of Islam, than those progressive, superior Christians! But, no. It should be noted that, with no shred of surprise, Buddhists were the most likely to disregard faith for relationships, with only 38% being in partnerships with other Buddhists.

As for same-sex relationships?

• Double the amount of same-sex partnerships, compared to 1996

Although, even the Bureau points out that it was difficult to gage a picture of this issue, while it was still so discriminated against. Many gays and lesbians would still not refer to themselves in this manner, so it’s impossible to know whether the increase is suggesting that more gays and lesbians are choosing relationships over being single (God, I hope so!), or whether those who are in actual relationships are more inclined to be proud about their sexuality on surveys. It’s amazing how quickly people come out, when they’re in love! According to the survey, however, there are now 50,000 same-sex couples in Australia.

Work (and gender constructs)

So… is that 50’s dream finally biting the dust? Have the cavemen forever retreated into their caves, and taken their archaic gender constructs with them? Not exactly. On the one hand,

• Women in paid work increased 8% in the past decade

Okay, not bad. Not earth-shattering (that’s less than 1% a year), but still an increase. BUT (here’s the but!)…

• No decrease in the amount of hours women are spending on housework

So, while women are slowly moving into the male domain of the paid workforce, there’s no offset happening. So women are simply working more, full stop! Is it a case of, “Sure, come and do more paid work, but there’s no bloody way we’re going to do the housework”!?

Maybe. Maybe, not. Because here’s how the same areas pan out for men:

• Men spend the same amount of time doing paid work
• Men increased the hours they spend doing household work

So, in fact, there’s a bizarre kind of inversion going on – you could call it a move towards some level of equality. But what’s interesting about these, if we move away from looking at them in terms of gender, is that it suggests – because there isn’t that offset happening – that we are simply doing more work, full stop, regardless of gender. This then becomes interesting, when viewed at a non-gender related set of stats that showed:

• Australians are spending increasing amounts of hours, sleeping!
• Increased amounts of hours sleeping come from decreased amount of hours awake during free time!

So, we’re working more than ever before, and seemingly having to sleep more to cope with everything, while we have a decreasing amount of free time. God bless Freedom, hey?! Are we just exhausted from the amount of work – paid or unpaid – we have to do? Is it related, then, to the mental health stats (sleep being the first symptom of psychological distress)? Is that also related to the amount of debt we’re now in? Everything interconnects, of course – we could spend hours pondering how or why.

Let’s all look forward to retirement, I say! But, then again, there are retirement stats too:

• 36% of those who retire end up returning to the workforce.

Guess that pension isn’t enough, hey? Except, that isn’t particularly the case. Here’s the irony I find most ironic, about the modern human being, who, after a life of being worked to the ground, caught in a treadmill of debt and stress, and without hardly ever time to his or her self, finally gets to stop, relax and…. well…. be his or her self….

• The main reason people go back to the workforce from retirement is that they feel “bored” and without purpose,  and need work in their life to live through and for.

Hmmmmmm. That’s the thing about the rats. In the end, they know nothing else than the race.

The greatest sports men and women of the world are currently a part of the greatest show on Earth. Let’s stop in on The Beijing Olympics and peek behind its shimmering silk facade.

But, I guess it’s that, or Michael Phelps: the young symbol of the modern – or not – American ego, the fierce competitor who roars, “Yeah, baby, that’s right!” at the people he beats. Charming.

Chinese propaganda. The American ego machine. What a very modern choice.