The Death of Mr Practical: The Practical man and Globalisation

July 23, 2008 at 11:08 pm · Filed under gadfly, politics

(An article I wrote in 1995 and published on my blog in 2003…follows from the previous post)

There is a prevailing historical connection between Australia’s colonial experience and our dominant intellectual tradition. Throughout the nation’s short history of settlement, most of our leading intellectuals and rulers have displayed a certain ‘practicality’ that is an Australian adaptation of a British creation. This practicality disguises its hegemony through the doctrines of ‘commonsense’ and ‘factual truth’. Practical thinking has its roots in a form of Utilitarianism that is perpetuated by and primarily beneficial to a powerful Anglo elite (link)

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The Great English Practical Problem (brough to you by Heathrow)

July 23, 2008 at 10:34 pm · Filed under gadfly

All counties have their problems; their institutional problems, their ‘thinking’ problems. Australian intellectuals are often accused of being too broad and general in their thinking, unable to command the towering heights of research-speciality within the rigours of a solid intellectual paradigm. American intellectuals are often accused of being too careerist; doing what is good for the career rather then good for the public knowledge in which they are entrusted to critique, advance, and preserve.

But the great English problem is short-term practical thinking. This is a country that has the institutional strength and wealth to build long-term visions, to navigate itself through social complexity, but instead this is a nation whose institutions stumble from one crisis to the next, limited by the practical constraints of what ever funding is available, mistakes were made, or ideas are fashionable. Heathrow, the train systems, the roads, and universities are all impoverished by a Kafkaesque hell-ride of uncritical social realist practicality; unable to imagine a world that isn’t about filling in one pot hole and then running to fill in the next (then forgetting about the first one and wondering why they need to be filled in anyway because the workers weren’t told about the road).

Whilst most Western countries (notably my own, Australia), used the boom years to pay off Government debt, England went into more Government debt unable to fathom perhaps that economies eventually crumble. So rather than have some money in the bank to navigate through the bad times, a short-term practical solution will now need to be found (borrow more money).

Practicality is a English game; it is theatre, it is the uncritical deference one must make to this culture in order to survive (like one must to ‘Egalitarianism’ in Australia). It is how England got here. Two thousand years of stumbling-practically through the word; learning by doing, then forgetting. Two thousand years trapped in the practical now; the parochial practical present. Sure practicality can be useful, but then again, it needs just a tad more intellectual scaffolding otherwise enjoy your wait at Heathrow.

The views expressed in this blog are always entirely my own and I wrote about this stuff many years ago as an undergrad. Here is the link. The link to ‘the English disease’ (short-termism) and Heathrow was first made by Ken Livingston.

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Well, I’ll be googled

April 21, 2008 at 1:52 pm · Filed under gadfly, mobile

(This is from a Journalist friend on mine writing in the Melbourne Sun)

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23562498-5000117,00.html

James Norman
April 19, 2008 12:00am

THERE comes a time when it is worth taking a step back
and reflecting on the depths of stupidity to which we
as a race are sinking.

I had such a moment of cynical epiphany recently when
I heard news from London that they have had to start
installing “texting-proof ” furniture in public
thoroughfares.

Read the rest of this entry »

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The death of reality

March 7, 2007 at 8:30 pm · Filed under gadfly

Jean Baudrillard, a French philosopher and social theorist known for his provocative commentaries on consumerism, excess and what he said was the disappearance of reality, has died at the age of 77. Baudrillard died on Tuesday at his home in Paris after a long illness, said Michel Delorme, of the Galilee publishing house (from the Sydney Morning Herald…Link)

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Snow in London

February 9, 2007 at 12:12 am · Filed under gadfly

When I got up today and walked outside of the little flat I am looking after in Islington, the streets were covered in snow. I have never seen snow in London before; it makes it seem so cosy and warm. I slushed along the streets to the tube and had to put the ridiculous hood of my jacket over my head. I have always wondered what that was for.

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Australian Journalism at its best!

December 1, 2006 at 9:39 am · Filed under gadfly, video diary

This is sort of funny. Steven Mayne can be a bit of a wanker; but still, to try and push him off stage when he is accepting an award is a little too much. Even I wouldn’t do that. I would wait until later and get him in the car park! I hope the other bloke doesn’t get into trouble because this is exactly the type of behaviour that Steven Mayne has built his career upon. We remember the Victorian Sate election of 1999 dear Steven; thanks for that. One rule for everyone I say.

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Global Orgasm Day 22 December 2006

November 23, 2006 at 9:54 am · Filed under events, gadfly

(MX isn’t my usual source, however this protest looks interesting to say the least…perhaps we all do have something in common) Thanks to Stephen K for the link)

SOURCE:
MX News, 21st November, 2006.

GLOBAL ORGASM
Peace Protest coming

Peace demonstrations haven’t helped much. Nor has arranging naked bodies into peace signs. So now veteran anti-war demonstrators Donna Sheehan and Paul Reffell are hoping that a Global Orgasm for Peace can finally bring an end to conflict in the Middle East, it was reported today. The idea for the ultimate Make Love Not War action is for people around the globe to have an
orgasm on December 22 and to focus their moments of pleasure on world peace.

‘The orgasm gives out an incredible feeling of peace during and after it,” said Reffell, 54. “Your mind is like a blank. It’s like a meditative state. “And mass meditations have been shown to make a change.”

The event is timed to coincide with the northern hemisphere’s winter solstice - the shortest day of the year - and with the holiday season’s tradition of peace on earth. Sheehan, 76, made headlines when she started the naked protest group Baring Witness, in which thousands of people across the US arranged their naked bodies into peace signs and anti-war slogans in order to protest against the war in Iraq.

Sheehan thinks the new initiative will be more successful.

The group’s website, www.globalorgasm.org , has attracted more than 26,000 hits.
The goal is to “effect positive change in the energy field of the earth through the largest possible surge of human energy, a Synchronised Global Orgasm”.

An earnest Sheehan explains that “the combination of high energy orgasmic energy combined with mindful intention may have a much greater effect than previous mass meditations and prayers”.

And even if peace on earth remains unattainable, participants will at least have the satisfaction of making their earth move.

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How Much is Your Blog Worth?

November 21, 2006 at 10:27 pm · Filed under gadfly

I wish that this was true. You can buy it off me if you want. I’ll give you a discount!

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Buy Nothing Day 24-25 November

November 21, 2006 at 8:48 am · Filed under gadfly, politics, web2.0

Are You a Greedy Pig? (check out the vid)

Every November, for 24 hours, we remember that no one was born to shop, we make a small choice to participate by not participating. If you’ve never taken part in Buy Nothing Day, or if you’ve taken part in the past but haven’t really committed to doing it again, consider this: 2006 will go down as the year in which mainstream dialogue about global warming finally reached its critical mass. What better way to bring the Year of Global Warming to a close than to point people in the direction of real and effective alternatives to the unbridled consumption that has created this quagmire? (thanks to Adbusters...link)

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Elect Borat ?

November 19, 2006 at 9:36 pm · Filed under gadfly, video

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Virtual Sit-in of G20 Web site Today

November 17, 2006 at 9:19 am · Filed under gadfly, politics, web2.0

(this was a bit of a dud…bring back the good old fashioned denial of service attacks I say)

This is on at 1230 Today (Melbourne Time…more details link)

Start: 17/11/2006 - 12:30pm
End: 19/11/2006 - 1:00pm
Timezone: Etc/GMT+10
Whats happening?
At midday on Friday the 17th of November the Online Resistance Alliance is calling a virtual sit-in of the G20.org website. Starting at midday, this action shall continue for half an hour each day, until the conference finalises on Sunday the 19th, with the largest action to take place on Saturday the 18th. This has been organised to coincide with and complement the vast street protests taking place in Melbourne against the 2006 G20 meeting.

How do I participate?
To join the virtual sit-in simply visit www.G20.org and start downloading some of the many publications available in the ‘Publications’ section. Once they have finished downloading, download them again, and repeat. Through the collective action of all participants continually requesting information from the G20 server, it will become jammed.

What is electronic civil disobedience (ECD)?
In 1848 Henry David Thoreau published Civil Disobedience stemming from his own personal refusal to pay a poll tax as an expression of his opposition to the United States’ war against Mexico. Throughout the last few decades, this tactic has been utilised by numerous grassroots social movements as an effective tool to voice their opinion. In 1996 with the growing use of the internet to exchange information the Critical Art Ensemble published their own book, Electronic Civil Disobedience. For more information see On Electronic Civil Disobedience by Stefan Wray available at http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ecd/oecd.html

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Morning Coffee with Craig: What is Activism 2.0?

November 6, 2006 at 11:15 am · Filed under gadfly, media, political communication, politics, social media, video diary, web2.0

Net Activism 1.0 = Libertarianism
Net Activism 2.0 = Governance

Political Communication and Information Scarcity

The Internet arrived on the global stage during a tumultuous juncture in world history. The Soviet Empire collapsed; ending a 50 year ideological battle between the centralised command economies of the Communist East, and the free-market economies of the Capitalist West. A world that was sharply divided between the Socialist ideologies of centralised planning-coupled with tight information controls-and the Capitalist ideologies of individual agency and individual expression was replaced by the later world of increasingly unfettered ‘flows’. Primarily driven by the United States, its allies, and the post World War II Bretton Woods Institutions such as GATT (General Agreement on Tariff and Trade); freedom of expression, freedom of trade, and freedom of the market prevailed in all major international interactions. The Internet entered the global arena during this period of great change and is defined by this change and defines this change (and it may have developed very differently if it was conceived during another period of history). It is perhaps not unusual then, that tentatively entering the post Cold War period, many early researchers first understood the Internet’s political potential firmly grounded in the Communist ‘information scarcity’ and censorial anxieties that derive from the ideological divisions of the ’short Twentieth Century’ (Hobsbawn; 1994).

Read the rest of this entry »

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An Historian and his facts

November 5, 2006 at 10:41 pm · Filed under gadfly

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3) Morning Coffee with Craig: What is a ‘publicly articulated career’ blogger?

October 25, 2006 at 11:36 am · Filed under blogs, gadfly, politics, video diary, web2.0

Today I talk about the notion of the ‘publicly articulated career’ blogger (or the ‘resume blogger’).

Also, check these links out:
http://homecookedtheory.com/
http://snurb.info/
http://jilltxt.net/

Also check out Danah Boyd’s blog: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/

And also her somewhat ironic paper: Friendster and Publicly Articulated Social Networking.

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Is Australia the New Second World?

October 14, 2006 at 10:09 pm · Filed under gadfly

Australia makes me nervous. Although the cash registers are ringing, I feel as though we are in terminal decline. What appears to be stability and prosperity is merely the reckless and narrow illusions of one class of Australians who purport to be speaking for us all, but don’t even know where to look.

We are the world’s ‘rich working classes’, the new Second World after the collapse of Russia, the mediocre repository of US middle ware software and secondhand European books.

Our economy is an illusion based upon pulling rocks out of the desert and selling them to a country that is about to screw us blind. Then we build unproductive tombs of consumption with the money and call it a home. We are looking to the wrong people for leadership; the new middle classes can’t see beyond themselves and essentialise their second-hand wannabe culture to the real Australia that is busting to culturally innovate. We deserve better; our Administration is holding us back, rewarding some of the vilest Australian characteristics whilst failing to engage the full potential of all our people.

We are Mexicans with Mobile Phones, we are Indonesians with Dental care, and we are Fijians with alarm clocks. We aren’t intellectuals, we ain’t got the guts. We aren’t researchers as we are so arrogant that we think that we already know all that needs to be known. We leach of the United States because our universities can’t innovate, only imitate. We leach off their technological innovations because our lazy and weak-minded Administration can’t see the forest for the rocks they dig out of the desert (and place in their head).

I look at the terminal decline of IT education in Australia and I see a country with as little economic foresight as social courage. The Australian education system got burnt by Web 1.0 because it listened to fools. And now Web 2.0 is passing us by. But soon all the rocks will be gone and the great unproductive mansions will sink into the soil of debt and the real Australians will be left to build our country again, to rediscover our heart, to rediscover our mind, to rediscover our courage, and to rediscover our life that was swallowed up by those who have never had one but own a nice lounge suite.

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