Anzac Day further militarizes Australian culture

Australian culture will be further militarized on Friday.

Poppies have become aligned
with the Anzac legend. 

Anzac Day is a right and proper way to remember those who donned our colours to protect values important to Australians, but what happens on Friday is little more than the exploitation of populist sentiment for political gain.

That will be an unpopular view as many are clearly unable to separate the brutality, violence, death and catastrophe of war from the sentimentality they experience for events such as Anzac Day.

War is clearly a human failure bringing only sadness and while we should recall that fragility in our thinking, our focus should be on those things we have done well, and going to war is certainly not one of them.

Next year is the centenary of the ANZAC landings at Gallipoli and its recognition is going to cost you and me money; cash that could resolve many national social problems, and maybe even ease the apparently overwhelming budgetary problems Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey repeatedly bleats about.

It is correct that what is forgotten is repeated, but let us remember those who wore our colours in a dignified, simple, and cheaper way, and turn our attention, resources and innovative ideas toward today and the creation and building of a nation best equipped to deal with such things as energy scarcity, climate change and an economy teetering on disarray.

Rather than pander to populist views about something that has become distorted by a century of myth, we should break loose from the past and prepare ourselves for a future quite different from what was.

Greens leader, Christine Milne.

Greens leader, Christine Milne, has said that what is happening in Australia presently is a struggle between the past and the future and although she wasn’t referring directly to events such as Anzac Day, she was making reference about our inability to escape the past and willingly acknowledge the challenges of tomorrow.

Tony Abbott’s strange decision that saw him reach into the past and drag into today the considered long-dead idea of Sirs and Dames along with his perverse unwillingness to accept the unfolding realities of climate change gives another clear hint why his government prefers the certainties of the past rather than confronting the dilemmas of tomorrow.

The militarization of Australia suits the dated ideologies of the neo-liberals, such as the present Australian government, for with it come understandings that the men of yesterday can grasp.

Confrontations of a century ago, or even recent contemporary history, are as dead as those who died in them, and so rather than spending time, money and our creative energy on remembering them, we should be switching our attention to the future.

Celebrate Anzac Day if you must, but then turn your attention to tomorrow, the future.

The G20 - don't know, don't care, don't understand

The late Donella
 Meadows.
 

Joe Hockey and his G20 counterparts don’t know about, don’t understand or don’t care about the indisputable facts spelt out in the 1970s by the Club of Rome.

Arising from their recent Sydney meeting was a pledge to develop “ambitious but realistic” policies to add more than $US2 trillion to global gross domestic product over five years.

That pledge, if you take note of the realities described by the Club of Rome in its 1974 book “Limits to Growth”, is not only unsustainable, but wholly irresponsible.

The late systems analyst, author, environmental scientist and teacher, Donella Meadows, examined and explained the finitude of earth’s resources, considered present and likely usage, population growth, wrote about her findings and warned the world of difficult times ahead.

Meadows’ work was acclaimed by those aware of the world’s unfolding social and resource difficulties, but subjected to a barrage of criticism from many.

Ms Meadows penned the book in the 70s and although there was then an understanding of the damage caused to our atmosphere by fossil fuels it was not until the eighties the American scientist James Hansen spelt the complications of human activities linking it irrefutably to market-driven growth.

Mr Hockey, his fellow finance ministers and central bankers have, in signing up to boost world growth have simply worsened difficulties the world already faces.

The G20 pledge is populist in that it fits neatly with what has become human nature to have more, but today we know that “more” in its modern sense equates with a damaged climate, manifested as weather foreign to what most are familiar with and upon which humanity depends.

Rather than align themselves with the brutality of unfeeling growth, those who attend such events as the recent G20, need to be considering how nations understand and deal with the certainty of contraction and a world in which resources will become rarer and subsequently more expensive.

Rather than exhorting people to seek solutions to what ails them through growth, they need to work at understanding the “Limits to Growth” and lead a discussion about how people of the world can find contentment through living a more restrained life.

Such a conversation is contrary to the urgings of the market-driven system, but it is a necessary one for if we continue with business as usual and such things as the G20 Pledge, humanity’s grip on this rather slippery slope will be weakened even more.

The courage to address such ideas is in short supply for it demands a break with what exists and a willingness to take society in a fresh and safer direction; a challenge that is beyond most world leaders who do nought but muddy facts through the proselytizing of fallacies.