Whose language?

A client nation in their own land. NOT.
There’s no plumbing the depth of this government’s ignorance. Actually that has to be a contradiction in terms. Something with depth enough to plumb would a thing of substance. The point here is that the measure of this government’s prescience is so shallow that it flickers on the surface of the country’s affairs. It is a mirage. The slightest shift in one’s line of sight and it disappears. It’s latest attempt to conjure an image of itself as getting things done (remember “practical reconciliation”?) is to declare that all Aboriginal children must learn English – the language of this country (sic!).

Some people never learn. Remember when Cathy Freeman carried two flags on her victory lap at the Commonwealth games? One was the Aboriginal flag. The other was the Blue Ensign – the flag that most people still to this day mistakenly think of the Australian flag. Mean spirited ignorant people berated her for having the Aboriginal flag with “the” Australian flag, wilfully ignoring the fact that there are at least ten Australian flags, one each for the states, territories and the Commonwealth, and the Aboriginal flag.

How many Australian languages are there? There used to be several hundred. But now the one spoken by the overwhelming majority of people living in Australia is English. That makes it an important language – not the Australian language.

Most of the languages spoken in this country before English arrived no longer exist. But those that do are spoken by people whose cultures have existed on this continent for tens of thousands of years. The cultural heritage value of those languages, if that is not too crass a way of putting it, is incalculable, and their maintenance is nothing less than a sacred trust. Those who are learning them at their mothers’ knees should be groomed in the manner a young Dali Lama. Yet all this government can do is threaten to withhold resources from people if they do not do things the way the government wants them done.

Lets be clear about one thing here: everyone living in this country should have the opportunity to prosper. Learning English would indeed be a good thing, and every effort should be made to provide that opportunity for all who are not proficient at English. But there is a an unbridgeable gulf between that position, and regarding indigenous people as wilfully recalcitrant in preferring their ways to white fella ways, and holding their very existence to ransom. Far from being people who need to be dragged kicking and screaming into white fella ways, Aborigines have an inalienable right to self determination, and Australian governments have an unequivocal obligation to foster that outcome and lead all other Australians in accommodating it and adapting to it rather than coopting ignorant and ill-informed prejudices for electoral advantage.

The way to get Aboriginal children to learn English is to value and support their culture; value them for who they are, and to support them in their most important task – being Aboriginal – and offering English as an additional language that will make them bilingual, and therefore significantly more skilled that the majority of the population who are monolingual; and provide an opportunity to play a vital role in the education of the non indigenous population.

Why wouldn’t the rest of us aspire to be bilingual as well, and learn the truth about the continent we occupy? Why wouldn’t we learn one or more of the most ancient surviving languages on earth and embrace the opportunity to know this country from the inside by learning languages that name its seasons and topography with an authority and subtlety that comes from relationships sustained over scores of millennia, instead of remaining uncomprehending, if sometimes fascinated and very possibly temporary occupiers?

This is not something anyone in this government is capable of thinking about - let alone contemplating. It’s a government that knows only the language of the bottom line – which may be another way for saying the lowest common denominator. Treating Aborigines as a client nation in their own land is as despicable an act as it is possible to imagine – especially in the light of what the world has learned about the importance of and need for human diversity in the era of decolonisation. It’s not too late to decolonise Australia. Non indigenous Australians can learn to become of the land, and we have the very best teachers available – and the language to mediate that outcome.

Welcome back (to the real world) Mal

Who can learn from whom?
What does it take for people to see that others do not share their values and priorities? Mal Brough is staggered that the Alice Springs town camp people have rejected $60 million to redevelop their housing because they do not want to lose control over their land. He sees squalor and no possibility of the kind of future he thinks would benefit them. They see the loss of the most fundamental underpinning of indigenous identity, and the kind of future that zealous outsiders promise but never deliver. And zealous outsider certainly describes Mal Brough.

He seems to have learned his policy development and implementation at the Neocon Academy. Remember the lead up to the invasion of Iraq? We’ll go in, throw our weight around, get rid of the dictator, and the people will rush to thank us and take up the democratic ways that we have on offer. Brough leaped into the Aboriginal affairs arena with all the grace of an ignorant ideologue swinging his big stick at Aboriginal communities and the NT government, as though the tortuous relationship between indigenous and white interests in the Territory was some sort of game that both sides were playing and could – would and must – stop at his insistence.

God knows the problems he is addressing are serious and require radical measures. But resuming the nineteenth century White Man’s Burdon approach – which didn’t work then – is never going to work. In fact, what is required is so radical, that no one in the government is capable of grasping it, and no one in the alternative government will have the guts to undertake it.

What’s required here is the same as what’s needed on a global scale to deal with global warming: justice. Not law, but justice – sustainable relationships. Taking what we are not entitled to is the problem. Taking a standard of living (as distinct from having a quality of life) that threatens the viability of the planet is the root cause of global warming. Yet this government is adamant: no measures will be taken to reduce greenhouse emissions that threaten the economy. See what I mean by no one in this government being capable of seeing what needs to be done? What needs to be done involves taking significant risks, including the possibility of a smaller economy, in order to lessen the likelihood of much greater catastrophe. Giving something up is also what is required of White Fella culture in order to bring justice to our relationship with Aboriginal Australians.

Other government ministers as well as than Brough have pontificated on the unsustainability of isolated Aboriginal communities. It’s always the they who have to give something up. Give up your land, we’re here to make it productive. Give up your way of life, we’re here to make you like us. Give up your title, we’re here to dig holes in your land. Give up your dreaming, we’re here to be your nightmare. Give up your hope of ever having justice, we’re here to take what you can’t stop us taking. Oh, and by the way, here’s $60 million. But to have it you’ve got to do things our way. Don’t ever expect us to think that we might have something to learn from you. This is our land now and we’ll do our damndest with it.

Mal Brough had quite a trip - flight of fantasy - for a while, throwing his weight around, like a minister from a government with a Sense Of Destiny, to the point where he came to believe his own propaganda. He'd make an offer no one, in his estimation, would refuse, and be hailed as the great transformer. Well, they did refuse - to his chagrin and utter bewilderment. Clearly these people are beyond his estimation - not like anything he can imagine. They knocked back a inducement to betray their existence as indigenous inhabitants of this land. Icarus crashed. Back in the real world he now has a choice. Treat the people who have surprised the hell out of him as idiots; or sit down with them, admit that he hasn’t got a clue, say he's sorry, and ask them to tell him what they want. It’s that simple.

Copping it sour

People of the Lie
John Howard accused the script writers of Bastard Boys and McLeod’s Daughters of bias. In relation Boys it would be impossible to pick out any particular incident that illustrated his point. The show hadn’t even finished before people inclined to see it as biased were writing to editors all over Australia. It certainly made me feel proud of the role of unions in Australia, so it is not surprising that it made some people feel uncomfortable. But does that make it biased? In Daughters it was specifically the scene when the new owner of the truck stop told his mechanic he was fired, but offered him another job on an Australian Workplace Agreement. The mechanic heroically told him where to stick it, and his girlfriend rightly said, You can’t do that. To which the owner replied, I think you’ll find that I can. He then did the divide and conquer thing by offering the girlfriend the mechanic’s job, which she rejected, at first but then, less heroically, accepted, albeit on a limited basis, illustrating the vulnerability of people in the workplace to management thuggery. I say that this was management thuggery and that the girlfriend was right above because government commentators asserted that what the owner did would have been illegal under Work Choices. I’m happy to take their word for that. But that doesn’t mean that such things do not go on.

If government groupies were watching on Friday night (18/5/07) they would have seen Jean Price aca Penelope Keith make an excoriating remark in No job for a lady about nuclear as anything but a clean option for power, the more insidious because “you can’t see the dirt.” I guess that makes the BBC is biased against the Howard government too.

Ridiculous? Yes. As ridiculous as the government’s position on Boys and Daughters. What are they saying? You can’t make reference in a popular television programme to issues of significance in the community? No? Then, that it is unacceptable to misrepresent those issues? See Management Thuggery below on whether or not Daughters misrepresented what actually goes on in some workplaces in Byron Shire, for example.

Taken at face value, the government is behaving like a bunch of cry-babies. Even if they had a case, copping it sweet would do more to prove their worth than whining. But I don’t believe their snivelling is actually genuine. They’re using an old trick made infamous in the 1930s: Lie through your teeth – the bigger the lie the better – and some people will fall into line, not because they’re stupid but because it suits them. That is to say, the hearers know that what is being said is a lie and don’t actually believe it. But the simple fact that the statement is out there, and can be said to be true, justifies their acting as though it were true.

Now let’s get something straight. On the scale of possible lies – compared with children overboard, for example – this accusation of bias in a couple of TV programs that just happen to occur in the same week is pretty small fry. But it is how it fits into a consistent pattern of behaviour that matters here.

The government knows that the accusation of bias is ridiculous. They’re not that stupid. Deceitful, yes. But stupid? No. They’re making the accusation because they have nothing to offer. They’re on the ropes, and they are fighting foul. Foul because the deliberate use of lies gives people so disposed license to do likewise. It’s one thing to do what ever it takes to stay in power. But what sort of leadership is that? What kind of country are we becoming in order to keep this government in power? What does it benefit a government to gain another term in office but lose the soul of the country?

John Howard claims to be the better economic manager on offer in the upcoming election. Let’s suppose for a moment that he’s right. So what? Being the best economic manager may not be the best qualification for leading the country. Economics is about money. Right? And money, despite recent assertions to the contrary by Richard Dawkins, is the root of all evil. Right? And the biggest evil of all is to lie.

Management Thuggery

If I don't do it for peanuts some other monkey will
In an episode of McLeod’s Daughters the new owner of the truck stop sacks his mechanic and then immediately offers him another job on an Australian Workplace Agreement. The mechanic tells the owner where to stick it and his girlfriend protests: You can’t do that. The owner replies: I think you will find that I can. He then offers her the position. She refuses, at first, but then, in spite of knowing how taking the job undermines her boyfriend’s position, accepts the job, albeit on a limited basis, illustrating the vulnerability of workers to management thuggery.

John Howard objected to this, calling it biased, and another government spokesman said that the incident misrepresented government workplace relations policy (he dared not speak it’s name: Work Choices) saying that what the owner did would be illegal under the said policy. The implication being that, because it would be illegal, it wouldn’t happen, and therefore the incident in the episode was unfair to the government.

What’s with these people? Are they so far up their own fundament that they really do not know what’s going on; or do they think we’re stupid? Let me recount two incidents in Byron Shire, and give an account of a trend among some employers that the government ought to be worried about.

A twenty-something chef told me on day that he’s scored a job in charge of the kitchen at a fairly notable eatery in the shire. He was telling me about it because he know I would be able to tell him how to get an ABN. An ABN? I queried. Are you running the kitchen as your own business? No. He wasn’t running the business, but he was being paid as a contractor. Oh, a contractor, I returned. How much did you negotiate as an hourly rate? No. He didn’t negotiate anything. They offered him $10.00 an hour. $10.00 an hour! I shouted. Are you serious? Yes. He was serious. Maaaaate! I said. When you’re working as a contractor you’re supposed to negotiate a rate. You’ve got to pay yourself superannuation; take out your own work cover; and if you damage any equipment in the course of your work, you’re responsible for it. Oh, and by the way, you also get to pay your own tax out of your princely $10.00 an hour as well. He didn’t want to know. If he didn’t take what was on offer, someone else would.

The second example was a not-yet-twenty young tearaway who triumphantly announced that he’d escaped the dire prospect of learning how to find a job when his mate’s dad offered him work on his building site. You’ve got your green card, then? I queried. Nah! He said. I was told I didn’t need one, but I have to get an ABN. I patiently explained the problem to him. If Work Cover sprung a surprise inspection, his mate’s dad will be in big trouble; and so will he. Working with an ABN means he would be a contractor, not entitled to superannuation, responsible for his own Work Cover and insurance – and tax. I won’t be paying tax, he said. Everyone on the job gets cash. And when you get sprung by the tax department – what then? Shoulders shrugged; eyes glazed over.

I could recount scores of examples, especially if I pumped my very well informed contacts. I won’t claim these cases are typical. But they are not rare. And here’s the worst part. Employers who engage in such criminal practices (by no means all employers – just far too many of them) meet from time to time to discuss the growing number of ways they can rip off vulnerable people. No one keeps minutes of course. You’d have to wonder why, wouldn’t you.

The government would probably claim that no amount of legislation will stop criminals from being criminals, nor protect people who can’t be bothered looking after their own interests – that the examples I gave would happen regardless of what the law was; and that the overwhelming majority of employers would protect their own interests by never stooping to such vile extremes. So why it is necessary to introduce a “fairness test” to the industrial relations package formally known as Work Choices?

Your Stars!! As You’ve Never Seen Them Before!!

Light relief in dire times
Recently a couple of friends reminded me about a “newspaper” I wrote some time after 911 in which I pondered what sort of world it is in which such things could happen. They warned me at the time that people of a certain mental bent would come gunning for me if I ever put it out in public. And we have indeed seen how in the last half decade some people have not only refused to consider certain issues but tried to silence those who have wanted to say uncomfortable things out aloud. I am not about to do that here.

Instead I want only to offer for your amusement (hopefully) the Astrology Section of the newspaper (which was called The Daily Mopup. The only edition ever written was dated 12/9/2001).

This, however, is astrology with a difference. I gave the constellations new names, and my challenge to readers is to match the new names with the old.

But first, a word on why a set of new names was used.

One of the legacies of the French Revolution that did not last was the revolutionary new calendar. The world had changed, reasoned the revolutionaries (although some people would question that the revolutionaries reasoned at all on anything) and that break with the past was enshrined in new measures. Hence the metric system which did last and the French Revolutionary Calendar which did not. Well, the world DID change on 911, and for that reason I thought it would be a good idea if we had a new set of names for the constellations of the Zodiac.

What follows is my prognostications for the whole human race during the month beginning 12/11/2001. The other point to be made here is that there are 13 constellations in this new version – for 13 lunar months. Soooo New Age. Oh, one more thing. An election was in the air when this was put together.

1 ELVIS There has been a celestial coup and Elvis is no longer King, so if you don’t know how things are in your castle, you should stay at home this month and give yourself time to consolidate before striking out on any new missions to the culturally challenged.

2 LIBERACE Always standing behind Elvis, Liberace’s fortunes have risen and fallen with the moods of the King. If you feel as though you’re running hot and cold, you should get out of the sauna before you get burned. Feather boas should be discretely closeted until it’s fashionable to wear them again.

3 MARILYN Public exposure of Bobby’s role in her demise has not calmed the wind that buffets this star of incalculable candle power. This is a good month to steer clear of politicians if you’ve got, or look like, a baby – and especially so if you feel like one.

4 MARLY Dreadlocks are in, especially in Byron Bay, but so are sniffer dogs. Beware good looking police officers, or you may find you have a willing nose in your crotch. So what’s the problem I hear you ask. Well, nothing a tasty bone wouldn’t fix.

5 MADONNA Every young man need one of these, especially when she assumes her alter ego. Whether you’re young or not – in fact you don’t even have to be a man – you can rent the video In Bed With Madonna to get through the coming month when the only show on TV is going to be Promises, Promises.

6 ABBA Mamma Mia! What a constellation! The sign of big time come-backs is the brightest it’s ever been this month. If you know any Liberal politicians try to avert their gaze from this sector of the heavens. We don’t want them becoming any more excited than they already are.

7 EMENEM Sugar coated chocolate seems a bit excessive, unless you’re an old smarty. But Hey! This is popular culture. If you’ve a mind to knock off someone else’s idea, don’t let good taste and manners stop you.

8 KYLIE Like background radiation Kylie’s always up there. In fact she’s the pole star. But no, she’s not the Pope. If you think the world revolves around you, enjoy it. Someone’s got to.

9 HOGES For all those who are having a Byron Bay address while they’re not living in Byron Bay, you’re in good company. Hoges is actually a planet rather than a star, but no one’s had the heart to tell him. If you start having illusions of grandeur, yet suspect you might actually be naked, you’ll never know if you don’t look.

10 MOLLY Never fear the ravages of ageing. Proof exists that once king of the kids, always king of the kids – or queen, or knave, or … whatever. If you have a strong urge to lash out and buy an Akubra, just do it. They’re great for bald patches.

11 PAULINE Paradox mesmerises. This black hole at the centre of the Southern Cross keeps flashing into view. This is definitely your time if you have a yearning to be noticed and to be heard. Beware old fields and earth ridges, however. Oh yeah, and don’t pretend to be a party animal if you’re actually a control freak.

12 ABBOTT AND COSTELLA Reincarnation is not always kind. Budd and Lu must have been naughty as well as funny to come back the way they did. If you plan on making promises this month, make sure they’re the kind that make people laugh with you rather than at you.

13 MENINGA Supernovas are spectacular “dead” stars. That doesn’t mean, however, that they’re insignificant. This one burst on its first appearance and became an instant hero – the kind that could even turn around the fortunes of the number thirteen. Meninga is not number thirteen however, but number one. The first star of the new era. If you feel a dummy pass coming on, this is your sign. You’re definitely about to score.
(PS if you're asking Who's (Mal) Meninga, That's why he's a real star.)

Who’s got the biggest …?

Jason Koutsoukis on John Howard on John Howard as Mr Experience
John Howard recently claimed to be the leader with credible experience to be elected as Prime Minister at the upcoming election.

Jason Koutsoukis took a look and wrote up his findings in The Age. On 6/5/2007.

The link below will take you directly to it.

It’s seriously worth reading – especially if you like John Howard and intend to vote for him later this year.

http://www.theage.com.au/text/articles/2007/05/05/1177788462755.html

Please note – The Age newspaper has given permission to put this link in this post. The Age is in no way connected with this blog or its author.

How Could he?

Prime Minister Fails Leadership Test
If there was ever any doubt about what sort of man John Howard is, it’s become clear in the last little while in his response to two incidents.

The first was his initial comment that it was up to Big Bad Heff whether or not to apologise to Julia Gillard for badmouthing her in a way that was all but universally condemned by everyone else – and then telling his henchman to roll over when it became clear that he’d badly misjudged the public mood. He showed his real colours and then tried to camouflage them.

Then yesterday (14/5/07) he defended a Sydney newspaper’s headline How could she? about the mother who (presumably) abandoned her child at a hospital door. It’s what most people would say said the Prime Minister.

Never mind that people who said that would be wrong and could do with a bit of leadership. John Howard not only showed what a coarse mindset he has, but failed the leadership test dismally on both counts.

ZIMBABWE – How come anyone’s still asking?

Should the undisputed champions of World Cricket be going to Zimbabwe? Is sport just sport and nothing else? Well, tobacco companies are just tobacco companies. They make products people want to buy. They’re just giving people what they want. What’s wrong with that? Going to Zimbabwe in the present circumstances would be like turning up at the Holocaust Deniers conference in Tehran to give a paper demonstrating that the Holocaust did occur, claiming that academic activity is just academic activity.

But there’s this other problem isn’t there. If the Australian team doesn’t go they’ll be fined $2 million. So? By whom? The International Cricket Council? Who the hell are they in any scheme of things that actuall matter? There’s a really simple solution to this. Two actually. The first one is to kick Zimbabwe out of the international cricket community. Then there’d be no need to go and no fine to pay. Can’t be done? Then here’s Plan B. Pull out of international cricket as it is presently constituted and start again. Who’s in a better position to do that right now than Australia - the undisputed masters of the cricket universe?

Why are you sneering? Hasn’t Australia done exactly that on the gravest moral issue facing the planet today? The Australian government refuses to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and has rallied it big mates to an alternative response. Compared with Global Warming getting cricket sorted out should be a synch.

Cyclone Dreaming 16 – Cyclone Dreaming

[ This is the last of sixteen pieces comprising the

Cyclone Dreaming cycle.

For context and continuity start at item no one.

http://twogreytoes.blogspot.com/2007/05/cyclone-dreaming-1-introduction.html

Click on Newer Posts to move to the next item. ]

Cyclone Dreaming The universe that we observe is, according to Quantum physics, one of an infinite number of possibilities. Yet, that it exists at all is nothing less than astounding, depending as it does on the coincidence of so many precise conditions that it cannot be accounted for by chance, and implies the organising activity of consciousness and choice. Some physicists speak of an Anthropic Principle, saying that the universe exists as it does because it is chosen by the observer. Others speak of a self‑organising universe that comes to know itself in the self‑reflective mind of one or more of its diverse self‑manifestations. The cosmology embedded in myths about ancestors who created – by a series of violent acts – the landscape and all its life forms, including human beings and their complex interrelationships with everything in the cosmos, resonates perfectly with a quantum view of the universe. What we have always known by intuition is affirmed by modem science, which cut itself free of mythology by embarking on a program of observing the world in order to know it. At its cutting edge it has arrived at knowledge so paradoxical – the no thingness of the universe ‑ that it can be a gateway into genuine mystical experience. The self-organising no‑thingness of a cyclone could hardly be surpassed in this landscape as the totem that generates awe (what used to be known as "fear of the lord') and draws us into a cooperative role with the cosmos. A civilisation whose relationships have brought the earth's dynamic systems to the verge of chaos in little more than two centuries is not in a position to assert that its predecessors' claims about their relationships with the land and its biomass is just a lot of old dreaming. We may find, if we have the courage to try, that we too can dance the rain. 

CYCLONE DREAMING is the insight that recognises the cosmic significance of events in our environment; and the commitment to act/change within the limitations of the cosmic process as it manifests itself in this particular place over time.

Cyclone Dreaming 15 – Badi; Kulunggur

Badi; Kulunggur
There are two locations on the Australian coastline that sustain the highest rate of cyclonic landfall, both at approximately the same latitude BADI (also known as Cope Leveque) on the Western Australia coast, and KULUNGGUR (also known as Daintree) in Queensland. Their Aboriginal names are used here because they are direct links with the Dreaming: the way the cosmic process is conceived in this landscape by people who observed its pattern of change and prospered by conforming to the limitations it sets. The complex sustainable relationships of the Aboriginal peoples are expressed in Dreaming mythologies and celebrated in dances that, in Aboriginal experience, resonate with the rhythm of the cosmos, guaranteeing the continuity of life. Though multi‑cultural Australia cannot be expected to imitate an ancient culture generated in this landscape, it is all too obvious that the practices of the past two centuries cannot be sustained. Indeed, effort is now being made to adjust to the limitations of the landscape: to adopt relationships within it that will restore its capacity to sustain the fullness of life.

A culture that celebrates this landscape shall flourish when our roots are truly sunken into it. When we experience our cosmic significance in imagery that it generates in our unconscious and becomes our Dreaming.

Cyclone Dreaming 14 – El Nino; La Nina

El Nino; La Nina
Looking down the barrel of a mathematical model is like using a telescope and a microscope at the same time. It extends the limited capacity of our senses to see and feel the big picture and to recognise its inner structure. When modelling the relationship of ocean currents and the air above them a galaxy of numbers from vast areas of the earth, each representing heat and force that can be felt by the body, but only in one place at a time, are processed by computers that disclose something of the scale and structure of the energy exchange between ocean and sky. The observer "sees" and "feels" the whole event. S/he feels the cool water off the coast of Peru and the warmth of the Coral Sea and sees the sun driving the wind like a giant Ferris wheel over the equator, dropping down dry in the east, rushing west across the Pacific picking up water, and pouring it out over Australian and Asian landmasses. When s/he feels the eastern Pacific warming, lowering the pressure that forces the wind westward s/he knows that EL NINO will bring drought in Australia and Asia. And when LA NINA drives the temperature down off the Peruvian coast s/he knows that the big wet is coming in Australia. But because it doesn't always happen this way s/he feels the land, sea and sky continuously, watching for patterns in what s/he sees and feels, hoping for insight and understanding, and, occasionally, being drenched in wonder. At such moments the Poet s/he embodies addresses the wind and the ocean in person and hears their reply.

Perhaps, in time, s/he will know them as relatives who will share their family secrets ‑ their resonance of the cosmic dance – and respond to our performance of it.

Cyclone Dreaming 13 - Metsat

Metsat
When quantum theory is applied to obtain technological results, miracles occur. Satellites are launched into orbit to transmit prodigious amounts of data around the world. This awesome flux of information goes right over our heads as we place our bets at the TAB on races at the other end of the continent and collect payouts calculated by a central computer at the same rate for all winners, after the race has been seen as patches of light on screens all over the country. In a nearby office tension mounts as a duty officer watches a dark patch on another screen approaching an irregular line sloping downwards from left to right, with tiny dots to the left of it. This in itself could hardly account for the apprehension s/he feels. But what it represents is potentially tragic. High above the earth in stationary orbit METSAT, a satellite capable of watching and reporting the weather, has given the meteorologist eyes to see into the vortex of a tropical cyclone approaching the coastline, threatening tens of thousands of homes.

An involuntary gasp shapes itself into words addressed to no one in particular ‑ except, perhaps to the void represented by the dark patch on the screen: "Oh my god..."

Cyclone Dreaming 12 - Quon

Quon
The widely experienced and variously expressed intuition that all things and events are manifestations of one underlying reality is affirmed by Quantum Physics. The Quantum view of the Universe is of a single but infinitely diverse and ever changing whole, manifesting itself as an infinite number of identical particles, each of which is the whole, existing in a relationship with one another that gives each its identity and function. The particles, known by various names depending on how they are detected, are given the class name QUON. They change from one to another but only in a limited number of ways determined by the dynamics of the whole. Other kinds of change would destabilise the Universe. This echoes the awareness expressed in ancient philosophies that to know oneself from the perspective of the whole empowers one to live fully: to embrace the fundamental fact of change within the limitations set by the process of the cosmos. Quantum physics also affirms the no‑thingness of the Universe. Quons are not actually particles at all, but patterns of energy. In a very real sense the Universe is an illusion.

If I live in a hole and think that I can't change it, it may be that I expect what I cannot have. If I embrace the Whole my life will change, and I won't mind how.

Cyclone Dreaming 11 - Lolamai

Lolamai
Before the sun rises over the Pacific it has already scorched the desert land of northern Arizona. On the mesas, rocky flagships of the desert afloat on waters of sand, the Hopi trim their crops of blue corn, maintaining the bearing of their voyage through their cosmos, virtually unaffected by the catastrophic storm that for five centuries has devastated other Native Americans and their landscapes. The rainmaker scatters corn meal on the earth, gently, and gives the signal. The bowman shoots his arrow directly at the sun. It doesn't return. But the cloud people gather and the rain falls. The rainmaker exchanges the greeting with the bowman: LOLAMAI – all is wonderful.

The Hopi have made their home on the mesas for 1000 years – a landscape stripped by wind and rain of anything that people seeking wealth might covet. Yet there they learned to prosper, and when the Pawana (pale skins) come with inducements to change their way of life, they maintain it as a sacred trust knowing that in time even the Pawana will want to restore the balance that their way of life has destroyed.

Cyclone Dreaming 10 – Ta-Whiri-Ma-Tea

Ta-Whiri-Ma-Tea
In the Pacific, though there are several different cultures (Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian to name but three of the broad groupings) there is a widely shared class of myth about the separation of the sky (father) from the earth (mother) by their offspring. In a Maori version, five of the six children (the progenitors of humanity, forests, cultivated food, fishes and reptiles, and wild grown food) collaborate in pushing the sky away from the earth. The wind TA‑WHIRI‑MA‑TEA, however, is opposed to his siblings’ actions and drives the fishes into the sea and lays waste the forest. The earth shelters both kinds of food. Only humanity withstands the fury of the wind, though not without casualties and fear. It is, of course, the very wind itself by which the oceanic peoples orient themselves in the world, naming the winds, not after the points of the compass, but according to their influence, and the points of the compass after the winds, which are differentiated into no fewer than thirty‑two distinct influences.

It would be very difficult to imagine a more intimate image of human prosperity generated by its engagement with a ‘cosmic adversary’.

Cyclone Dreaming 9 – Wu-Wei

Wu-Wei
The explicit reliance on intuitive knowledge as a source of wisdom is deeply embedded in Chinese culture. Its schools of philosophy are each in their own way concerned with life in society, human relations, moral values and government. The organisation of society the education of the young in particular ‑ reflects the strict conventions and etiquette of Confucianism. Yet the highest aim of Chinese philosophy is to reach beyond the things and events of the world and everyday life to a mystical union with the Universe. On this point, China ‑ practical, pragmatic and socially conscious ‑ is at one with India – imaginative, metaphysical and transcendental. But whereas Indian thought personifies the one underlying reality as Brahman, it is conceived in China as the impersonal process of the cosmos which manifests itself in observable patterns of life that nevertheless change spontaneously. It is known as the Tao or The Way. Human endeavour is not always consistent with The Way. Social organisation in particular resists spontaneity. Taoism therefore exists as a means of liberation from the world as it is made by strict rules and convention. Mistrust of conventional knowledge and reasoning is stronger in Taoism than in any other school of eastern philosophy.

Trusting our intuition, according to Taoism, enables us to observe and conform with the movements of the Tao. Such a disposition is called WU‑ WEI.
(Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics)

Cyclone Dreaming 8 – Prajna; Kurana

Prajna; Kurana
The impermanence of things is recognised throughout Asia as the fundamental condition of the Universe. The inability to come to terms with this basic fact of life – the habit of clinging to or grasping at illusions – is seen as the cause of human suffering and frustration. Where there is no sense of the origin of impermanence in divine activity that also restores rest to the troubled, the mitigation of suffering is seen as a human imperative. This is said to be achieved by overcoming the point of view that creates self‑ interest by distinguishing between things thereby separating the self from the whole. The undivided nature of reality is grasped by direct mystical experience but not in concepts and ideas of the intellect. It is therefore called "the void" or emptiness ‑ (no thing). In practice this "right awareness" is arrived at by right meditation supported by and at the same time clarifying right seeing, knowing and action ‑ "right life style".

It is intuition PRAJNA ‑ that sees beyond the distinctions drown between things in the intellect. To shift one's focus from the self to the whole is an act of compassion – KURANA.
(Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics)

Cyclone Dreaming 7 – Nataraja

Nataraja
On the Indian sub‑continent destruction and prosperity are not seen as contradictory fortunes but as contrasting aspects of NATARAJA: the dance of Shiva. It is said that the dance sends waves of awakening through inert matter, which comes to life as the myriad forms of the Universe. These forms are said to change as the dance changes. All matter and forms therefore are understood to be ever changing though they have the illusion of permanence. In the fullness of time the dance destroys all forms and names.

Through the activity of Nataraja, Brahman becomes the Universe, which in turn becomes Brahman again.
(Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics)

Cyclone Dreaming 6 – Wandjina

Wandjina
In north western Australia the WANDJINA are renowned for the exceptional violence of their creative acts. They are depicted with no mouth. It is said that this is because they would otherwise cause perpetual flooding of the landscape. These two features are no doubt packed with significance for the initiated. They invite speculation by other interested observers to the effect that the violence may have been that of cyclones; and that there has been a change of climate in the region. In this regard it is interesting to note that since records have been kept no cyclone has ever made landfall along the three hundred kilometre coastline of the region.

Speculation aside, the mythology of the Wandjina whose awesome violence leaves a legacy of abundance is perhaps the oldest surviving form of the conviction that creativity and destructiveness are both necessary aspects of being.

CYCLONE DREAMING 5 – Vulnerability as Blessing Part II

Vulnerability as Blessing Part II
The perhaps second most intimate possible experience of vulnerability is the sight of one animal making another its prey, especially if the preyed upon has the means of making its attacker the victim of the encounter. Its very commitment to staying alive leads the predator to its own death if it does not succeed in killing its prey. It could be thought hardly surprising if, in such circumstances, a species that acquired a competitive edge in the struggle for existence, perhaps through the ability to reflect on its situation, responded with hostility to everything around it, developing habits of contempt with its growing power to assert itself in the landscape, to define anything it found a use for as a "resource", and to eliminate whole populations as "pests"! What is truly surprising, therefore, is the elegant relationships that human beings actually developed with their fellow creatures, most profoundly evident in the assurances given to a slaughtered animal, by those who hunt what they eat, that its death serves the life of others.

Such a gesture implies a conception of the world extending beyond the visible, and life as an aspect of being. The hunter Poets conceived of all living things as parts of a creator ancestor whose body also includes the landscape with its wind and rain, its sun moon stars and planets, all continually interacting together, all continually changing, merging and emerging. The role of human beings in this view of the world is to maintain the integrity of the world by performing its Increase Rites. Such a conception does not diminish the instinct for self-preservation. But it transcends the sense of vulnerability by embracing a sense of destiny understood not merely as the end point or culmination of life, but as the end (purpose) of life.

Reaching beyond what is apparent (such as the sun rising and setting over a landscape that, mountains and valleys not withstanding, is always flat as far as the eye can see) to convictions that have no obvious basis (such as the roundness of the Earth and its motion around the sun) is probably the single most important human characteristic. Without it there would be no culture ‑ no organisation of effort, and no technology of any kind. But if, as is assumed here, vulnerability is the primary human experience, then effort and technology focused upon the preservation of an organised group could be expected to function as a powerfully conservative force, serving the interests of those with a capacity to dominate the organisation, turning Strong Men into Generals and then into Kings or Emperors, and, even into gods. Social, political and religious orthodoxies, however, are vulnerable to radical insight and action.

The Poet, in courtier and stave alike, who knows the space in which s/he is invulnerable to all things also knows that no thing can be the source of lasting security or satisfaction, because no thing lasts. S/he reserves the option of not submitting totally to the necessity of what is apparent (the norms of society and the socially constructed ego) so that s/he can merge with the source of all things (with no‑thing) and dwell in the worth s/he experiences, and emerge empowered to endure the poverty of the relationships in which s/he is enmeshed, and, when the opportunity arises, to put pressure on those relationships to change.

CYCLONE DREAMING 4 – Vulnerability as Blessing Part I

Vulnerability as Blessing Part I
Cyclones play an important part in our lives. Apart from the prosperity they bring through the rain that greens the landscape, they drive certain aspects of our technological and social development. When they blow away our homes we find ways to make them more durable. We track cyclones with satellites and radar. And we devise community strategies for coping when they come. The media keeps us informed and in a very important sense draws us together: when we hear the pulsing warning signal on our radios we know that we are all focused at that moment on the awesome uncertainty of the approaching event.

Such moments are opportunities for the Poet in each of us to reach beyond the event at hand. This we do in any case through the shared hope of being spared ‑ of being the same after the event as before it. But the Poet knows that everything changes even when it appears to stay the same, and in such critical moments reaches for the benefit that change can bring to our lives and actively embraces it. In so doing s/he celebrates our vulnerability.

Celebrating our vulnerability may seem like a strange suggestion to make, but only if we ignore what is really quite normal activity. In Australia, for example, the one day of the year that can be described as a truly national holiday celebrates an experience of devastating vulnerability. On ANZAC day we continue to discover more about ourselves through our annual remembrance of the events at Gallipoli. The Poet is drawn by such events into the single continuous field of meaning in which words and the things they signify exist, not as hard edged and immutable forms, but as resonances of the mind, neither separate nor permanent, but merging and emerging as new forms, shaping and being reshaped by the minds they flow through. The Poet merges with the event and emerges with a sign that effects what it signifies: a constellation of words that evoke the experience, not of the event but of the field of meaning ‑ the Universe ‑ as It unfolds in that event. Such activity has roots reaching back as far into human history as it is possible to imagine.

AS well as ANZAC day, for example, the two focal points of our year ‑ public holidays when the nation stops work for more than just a day and turns its efforts to making merry ‑ have their roots in celebrations that arise out of a sense of vulnerability. Easter has its origins in festivals of the Vernal Equinox celebrating the death and rebirth of the annual cycle of seasonal life. Christmas coincides with a much older festival dating back to Palaeolithic times, celebrating the passing of the Northern Winter Solstice – after which the days begin to lengthen and, in ages past, the chance of surviving for another season also increased.

Hoping to be spared the worst that the chaos of winter – or a cyclone hovering off shore – might inflict is a natural response to vulnerability. It reflects our instinct for self-preservation. But it is a passive and ultimately futile disposition, for we have learned from our experience of the landscapes in which we have taken root, that the continuity of life is maintained by the destruction of all living things. Aroused by the same instinct, the Poet in each of us takes the initiative and discovers a "space" in our lives which can be touched by no thing: in which we know our intrinsic worth and our ultimate invulnerability to all things.

Cyclone Dreaming 3: Tropical Cyclone Advice

TOP PRIORITY CYCLONE ADVICE
ISSUED BY THE BUREAU OF MYTHOLOGY
AT ONE SECOND TO MIDNIGHT ON
TROPICAL CYCLONE DREAMING

Profound Tropical Cyclone Dreaming with a deep core measured at 40,000 Quons is located over the Australian mainland, with counter ideological gusts extending radical influences across the entire Asia Pacific region.

Extensive structural damage is occurring in all parts of the Eastern Hemisphere. The Soviet Block has been swept into history, and the People's Republic of China has sustained minor changes to its economic system, but is attempting to secure itself against further impact. There are confused reports from Fiji; and other Pacific Nations are nervously awaiting developments.

Cyclone Dreaming has set the tigers loose in East Asia, and closer to Australia it has caused extreme difficulty on the islands of Bouganville and Timore. New Zealand is at the point of collapse under the strain of measures taken to counter the effects of Cyclone Dreaming. Norfolk and Pitcan Islands have succeeded in isolating themselves from all knowledge of current conditions.

Cyclone Dreaming is showing a tendency to contract over the Australian mainland bringing gale force instability to the off shore island of Tasmania. Coastal areas of the mainland are also reporting early signs of impact.

If present trends continue Cyclone Dreaming will contract northward to a singularity over KAMBURE leaving a shallow depression, which is expected to join with ongoing equatorial instability, resulting in a prolonged period of prosperity flowing from the Monsoonal Trough.

Cyclone Dreaming 2 - The Celebration of Cyclone Dreaming

The Celebration of Cyclone Dreaming
Like Wandjina dreaming, cyclones erupt in space-time, wander erratically, wreaking havoc, and vanish, as unpredictably as they appear, leaving a legacy of abundance: the rain that nurtures our prosperity.

In eras long gone we sought refuge in the hope of divine intervention from the uncertainty and fear of cyclones and the slow pitiful tragedy of drought. In these less poetic times we face the fury and the pity alone, stripped, by a storm of our own making, of any sense of relationship with, or responsibility for, the Earth and the Cosmos beyond.

Like the paradoxical legacy of cyclones, however, the aftermath of the meteoric turbulence of scientific discovery, that shattered and scattered the sacral habits of tens of thousands of years, is a new era of sustainable prosperity, reflecting the recovery of our sense of relationship within the Cosmos, and a new sense of Mystery – the latter mediated by mathematics, but possessing the qualities of poetry.

We are not, it seems, mere objects in the Universe, but unique personal manifestations of the One, undivided yet infinitely diverse, Whole. The dancing Brolga and the flowering Kapoc are indeed our relatives, and our consciousness is intimately implicated, not only in their destiny and that of the Earth, but also in the very way that the planet – indeed, the Universe itself – exists.

What, then, are we to make of the efforts of those who danced the rain in dry season? Did they know, by the power of poetry, how to live in a mutually co-operative relationship with the elements? Is that relationship still accessible by the same means? What might be swept away, should we discover, by the fusion of poetry and mathematics, that the relationship between cyclones and the El Nino (the bringer of drought) is not a one way street, and that we have the power to influence it?

Dare we hope for Cyclone Dreaming to keep our relatives prosperous?

Cyclone Dreaming 1 – INTRODUCTION

Here is my meditation on the (potential) role of cyclones in our lives. There are a number of things I want to say by way of introduction. Firstly, it is in several parts – it does not read from beginning to end in the same voice.

We start of by jumping straight into the deep end with the prose poem The Celebration of Cyclone Dreaming. It’s the next post, and already posted under What about climate change then, but it’s repeated here in the interests of completeness for this work. It was the first thing that its intended audience saw. It was on the back of the menu in our restaurant for several weeks in 1995; and for the Bureau of Meteorology golf tournament in Townsville in 1996. So I recommend that you read it first.

That is followed by a pamphlet made for interpreting the names in the menu itself. I should explain here that it was our practice to make themes for all of our menus, the names of which celebrated people places and events in the local landscape. Local is a word that can mean many things. In this case, local is not only Northern Australia (Cyclone Country), but many places on the Earth with which a connection is established by the point of view taken in the meditative process. It is the point of view in which our locality is the Universe, by virtue of the fact that each of us is the Universe.

The first part of the pamphlet, a Tropical Cyclone Advice such as you might hear on the radio, takes the point made in the prose poem into the realm of geo-politics. It is meant to be light hearted – to show that the deep and meaningful tone of what follows is not the last – or even the first – word to be uttered. If you get through the prose poem you may well need some light relief to come back to. But if you don’t manage to finish the long meditation that follows, you’ve got the essential point in opening skit.

That brings us to the Main Course. We welcomed you with an aperitif – the literary equivalent of a good strong drink – or a joint – to get you into the right head space. Then we brought you to the mood of celebration by providing an amusing little entrée. And now that we are in a state of at-one-ment through our shared laughter, we can enter together into the somewhat more serious, and hopefully more satisfying, business of taking substance and transforming it into ourselves – of trans-substantiation.

The next two parts introduces the theme of vulnerability and our response to it – specifically, the notion that by embracing our vulnerability we prosper.

Then comes apiece on a character which shares top billing with cyclones – the Wandjina, which, like cyclones, is not limited to one manifestation.

The next few parts highlight similarities in the disposition towards vulnerability developed in various parts of the planet – India, China, the Pacific and Meso America.

There is then a bridge that connects the forgoing to modern science, specifically, Quantum Physics, in which startling similarities can be seen with ancient intuitive forms of thought.

Science, at its cutting edge enunciates a paradox that itself is the gateway to Mystery. Yet it provides us with the means of penetrating the physical nature of cyclones.

That leads on, finally to the explicit elucidation of Cyclone Dreaming as both Name and Process (as Yahweh is both the Name and Nature of the Hebrew God) in terms that reconnect with the context of the Wandjina.

Clear? No. I didn’t think so. But then, it wouldn’t be a meditation if it were, would it?

A deliberately barren case

No case to answer
Have you shared my feeling that the attack by the government and the big end of town on the opposition’s IR policy lacks substance? Can there be any doubt about this after the government's response to Senator Heffernan’s latest outrage? The Senator said that Julia Gillard, the main proponent of the opposition’s IR policy, is deliberately barren and therefore unsuitable for high office. What do government members not like about this foul mouthed utterance? Firstly and most importantly, it was simply unacceptable for anyone to say such a thing about someone else. So far so good. But then! But then!! They reveal another motive for their displeasure with their colleague: it has blunted their attack on the opposition’s IR policies. Hello? A vicious personal remark has blunted their case against an opposition policy? How is this possible? If the case against the policy consists of sound reasoning, the validity of that reasoning cannot be diminished by remarks that are irrelevant to the debate. The only way that the Senator’s remarks can have blunted their case is that their case is deliberately barren - there is no case to answer.

Business as usual: not an option

Barefaced deception and a naked gamble
One thing John Howard has done for us by being so hysterical about alternatives to coal and nuclear is to demonstrate that business as usual is not an option. Actually, before going any further, I would like to make the very important point that Howard’s position is actually the alternative. The need for renewable energy is so obvious that Howard’s vociferous insistence on coal and nuclear to the total exclusion of renewables is exposed for what it is far more compellingly than if had conceded a role for renewables. In fact, a role for renewables is precisely the position of everyone who backs them. No one has ever suggested that renewables are the only option. Howard has fatally overplayed his hand by misrepresenting the supporters of renewables – by saying that they propose a base load role for renewables. What renewables can do is significantly reduce the role of coal – not abolish it. And by crying wolf about Australian jobs if less coal is used he is hoping that people will not remember that every new technology has produced more jobs – not less. Jobs are going off shore right now: the development of renewable power technology. Howard’s naked gamble on clean coal and nuclear demonstrates the unviability of business as usual as nothing else could. The interests of the big end of town are shown to be such a threat to the future of the planet that we simply cannot allow them to get their way. Theirs is the alternative interest – the alternative to a sustainable future. Business as usual is not an option.