Offensive, but understandably charming

Shepparton’s weekend-long “Spring Car Nationals” were decidedly offensive to the sensibilities of some, but for thoroughly understandable reasons, they charmed many.

A scene typical of the "action" at the
weekend-long Spring Car Nationals
 in Shepparton.

Thousands rushed to the city for a celebratory orgy of the energy of oil manifested in the bucking, sliding, roaring cars primped and preened to brilliantly exhibit their conversion of oil into power, noise and smoke.

An idea few understand or, if they did, acknowledge.

Humans, men in particular, have long been fascinated by power and to control it just for a moment, even if it is little more than on bucking, sliding and roaring car, gives admission to a select group, as distorted as that may be.

A 15-year-old boy I once knew (me) would have stood with that group and throughout the weekend, would have been would have been breathlessly watching, almost high on the exhaust fumes and the testosterone cloud, and gleefully joining in the strange bonding that such hedonism brings.

In view of the world’s evolving difficulties, such blatant pleasure seeking events are an aberration when the resources that make it possible are in serious depletion and with our atmosphere absorbing the true cost.

Of course what happens at Shepparton’s Spring Car Nationals is insignificant compared to the world’s Grand Prix events, America’s National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) and Australia’s V8 Supercars.

Together they promote a paradigm that is the antithesis of how we should live; a paradigm we cannot escape until we understand, or least learn that conquest is not about brute force, rather collaboration.

It is about understanding and learning to live with nature, rather than compete with and subdue it; the world is a finite place and rather than align ourselves with the misplaced desire of growth and progress, a code word for exploitation, we have to learn about conservation and care.

The second law of thermodynamics discusses the fact that disorder in the universe always increases and that surging disarray brought on by the transformation of energy into less usable forms was been forestalled first by coal and now oil, the principle portable energy used by for humans for more than two centuries.

Bruce Springsteen.

The power of that portable energy was demonstrated for all to see, and hear, at the city’s showgrounds over the weekend.

Listening to the wail of what sounded like dying dinosaurs, which they are, I thought about the words that rock poet, Bruce Springsteen, who wrote in his song “Something in the Night” in which has sang about driving in his car:

“….I take her to the floor,

Looking for a moment when the world seems right ……”.

Maybe participants pursued that “moment”, but any legitimizing argument of incidental economic boost to the city quickly evaporates when the full costs are considered.

 

Addicted to the pleasurable rock of life

Work has always been, and still is, the rock to which my life is anchored, as is that of many others.

Bruce Springsteen

That, however, is a habit I don’t want to break as it pointedly enriches who and what I am. It makes me, in my view, a better person.

Naturally it is easy to be philosophically flippant about the pleasure work brings when not locked into seemingly endless and equally pointless and heartless sweat inducing toil, reminding me of the words from the Bruce Springsteen song “Factory”:

“End of the day, factory whistle cries,
Men walk through these gates with death in their eyes.
And you just better believe, boy,
somebody's gonna’ get hurt tonight,
It's the working, the working, just the working life”.

Work, for me, however is not about that sort of drudgery (of course some jobs  have had that flavour), rather it has largely been an ongoing joy through which the human interaction brightens my being, makes me smile and brings satisfaction to every day.

Interestingly though, our addiction to contemporary understandings of work, sees us devote a hefty, and almost irrational portion of our lives to maintaining a structure that ultimately enriches only a few, while the many toiling endlessly, get little.

The “responsible men” who, by what they make appear default, but which is really intent, and call the shots in society repeatedly bleat about the need of the “many” to work harder and longer, for less, to ensure, they argue, the integrity of an economic system that ultimately serves only them.

The disparity between rewards to the worker and ever bulging bank balances of the few is what ignited the unrest that become known as “the occupy movement”.

The “occupiers” have my support and sympathy as I can sense the injustices they live with and the subsequent unfairness that assaults them every day as a system deemed to be as it should be favours only a few.

However, as understandable as their cause is, it seems somewhat ill-directed in that it seeks equity, or at least an increased sense of fairness, in a system that is in itself fundamentally flawed.

The literal meaning of work has been so distorted by capitalistic tub-thumpers that it equates more now with drudgery than a vocation or a soul-enriching contribution to the broader betterment of the human experiment.

Modern times have seen most people enslaved to an economic paradigm from which we need to urgently disengage, both individually and as a society.

Economics is invariably politics in disguise and is structured with the intent of the few to profit, control and provide substantial individual short-term comfort ignoring, to the long-term peril of all, the ecological significance of our finite world.

•Next: Considering the four-hour day.