Standing writes about 'the precariat' and provides a template for the Australian Budget

Guy Standing wrote about the
 'precariat' in 2011 and provided,
 unintentionally, a template for
Australia's 2014 budget.

Guy Standing unintentionally provided a template for the first budget of the Tony Abbot-led Coalition Government.

The British professor of Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London wrote about “The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class”.

Most everything the professor discussed in his 2011 book as damaging to society has been embraced through the intricacies of this year’s federal budget.

The “precariat” arises when people find themselves in precarious life positions; that it become increasingly difficult to find work and frequently they can only find lower-skilled, temporary positions that are inevitably poorly paid.
Our market-driven consumer society demands a regular and substantial income, something that is missing when people find themselves in casual, temporary and poorly paid work.

Those living in and operating on the fringes of society – that so-called “fringe” is now creeping into the fabled middle-class” - have long been the prime users of a societal welfare infrastructure that is now being eroded by a government that has declared an end to the “age of entitlement”.

Utilitarianism, much discussed and criticised by Standing, has been wildly embraced by the present government that believes all are equal and in applying its ideological strait-jacket expects all people, whatever their skills, talents or intellectual adaptation to the market system, to survive unaided.

Nice thought, but it is clearly wrong for not all have the necessary aptitudes to prosper in a society whose emphasis is on profit and has little regard for the welfare of people.

A market-driven society in which everything is a commodity, including people, and has no respect for idleness and leisure, both attributes upon which innovation is reliant, as they make no obvious contribution to the balance sheet.

This rude push to put an economic value on everything robs people of reflection, leaving them with no time to contemplate, ponder and simple wonder about a better way.

The agenda of our relatively new Coalition Government has seeped into every crevice of Australian society and nothing appears sacrosanct in its bid to make repairs to the country’s budget; repairs that disinterested economists argue are not needed and are little more than a fabrication.

Everything, even our intergenerational responsibilities, are being discounted as our government rails against everyone who finds comfort in renaissance-like values of literature, philosophy, art, music, politics, science, religion, and other aspects of intellectual inquiry.

The ideological neoliberal-driven agenda has the government muddling about in the past and pandering to populism; a populism fuelled by a fallacious fear of the other, a distorted sense of security and a misunderstanding of risk.

Standing explains how those any many other matters are giving rise to the “precariat”. His book is unsettling, but worth reading.

Idea festival exposes a parallel universe

Much of a recent week was lived in a parallel universe.

It was a world of ideas, hope, imagination, dreams, the impossible, concepts beyond the status quo and although exciting in the extreme, it was tiring.

The latter, of course, was not unexpected for once we step beyond what is familiar and embrace the new, we find ourselves entangled with fresh intellectual rigour and through just being different, it induces both physical and mental weariness.

Contemporary society does not encourage us to abandon the familiar rather; the market system prefers us to have a somewhat narrow view of value, worth and the causes of contentment to ensure the mental poverty of most enriches the elite.

Spending much of the week and the University of Melbourne’s biennial Festival of Ideas is an indulgence; gastronomy for the mind, a reminder of how little we understand, how remote we are from wisdom, knowledge and intelligence and how distant we are from having any real grasp of how, what, where and when.

Some would argue such pursuits irrelevant to their lives for they know who won the footy finals, what’s filling the movie theatres, what’s on the television tonight and what they need to do to ensure the pay checks keep rolling in.

But life is more than that, it is more than bread and circuses for human flourishing is about engaging with an idea that is bigger than you, an idea that both expands and demands more of your thinking and it is an idea that at first seems without rationale, but then becomes the solution.

Many things now are humanity’s staples were once ideas resident on the fringes of society or only thought about in moments of lucid madness.

We need more such festivals and maybe that is a project for the new Committee of Shepparton – Shepparton’s own Festival of ideas.

Ideas, no matter how vague, poorly articulated or inadequately thought through were not, according to the founder of Minds at Work, Jason Clarke, to be discounted or allowed to wither for all should be considered and welcomed to the conversation.

Victor Hugo.

Shepparton is in urgent need of a new idea as the 20^th century inspirational drivers of several decades are dying and maybe a universe in which fresh ideas are abundant will be found at our own ideas skirmish.

Melbourne has its Festival of ideas, Sydney its Festival of Dangerous Ideas and we should have our own agora, that ancient Greece marketplace-like concept where people met talked, considered and determined for their community, the best way ahead.

It was Frenchman, Victor Hugo who said: “One can resist the invasion of armies; one cannot resist the invasion of ideas.”

Let’s initiate that “invasion” and find a new idea for Shepparton.

Social capital - our most valuable resource

Social capital is, unquestionably, of more value to Australia and those who live here than any other resource.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse -
they have now been joined by a fifth.

The goodwill we demonstrate toward others, regardless of who they might be, will benefit people of this island nation, and by implication Shepparton, more than anything we might care to point to.

Social capital, being such an intangible part of society and a concept that escapes traditional forms of measurement, is considered by pragmatists to be simply pointless philosophical meanderings.

However, should the life of an individual, a community or even a whole nation be facing tremulous times, then people instinctively turn to the well of social capital to sate their thirst; or need, for the warmth, support, encouragement that only another can give.

Although a nebulous and so ill-defined thing, social capital has meanings as numerous as those who have attempted to define it.

One definition of social capital declares it is about the value of social networks that bond similar people and build bridges between diverse people, with norms of mutuality.

Social capital is also about sharing information, having trust in others and living a life of reciprocity, which in colloquial terms means you return a favour, and often the help given is often simply humane or philanthropic and so not ignited by any previous actions that warrant re-payment.

The Goulburn Valley was once as xenophobic as most places in the world, but that intolerance was first softened when Chinese people arrived in the area about the time of Victoria’s 19^th century gold rush, followed by an surge in the arrival of southern Europeans after the Second World War and continues with the flood of settlers from Middle Eastern countries and many from parts of Africa.

The arrival of new people enriches a community’s social capital and the diversity of Greater Shepparton is such that it is becoming one of Australia’s richest resources.

Social capital’s arrival in the Goulburn Valley, and Shepparton and Mooroopna in particular, has been partly organic, becoming a growth that is orchestrated by a few, but in general is a response by new arrivals to the tolerance, generosity and support given by those already living here – that is social capital at work.

The strength and social validity of the community has become known and so, simply, more people want to live here.

We have generous dollop of social capital, but not for a second should we assume plain sailing for loitering on the horizon are the “Five” Horsemen of the Apocalypse – energy scarcity, burgeoning populations, human-induced climate difficulties, the militarization and fracturing of the world’s economy, and a strange and inexplicable reluctance of most to consider their behaviour.

Social capital is the only thing that will help us confront, and move those horsemen on.

The choas of democracy is our responsibilty

Canberra's Old Parliament House is
 a museum of Australian Democracy.

Democracy and chaos are somewhat symbiotic.

 

As a political process, democracy appears to be at its best when the noise is loudest, opinion discordant and the idea of a civil and just society seemingly lost in a fog that obscures the common good.

However, beneath all that jarring chatter, flows a placid river of common intent; a commonality that bonds people, a mutual understanding and a strangely silent agreement that the process will, finally, enliven and enrich the lives of all.

That, of course, doesn’t make the art of democracy any easier.

Wrestling with the seemingly unassailable dichotomies of democracy we should remember what the former Great Britain Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, said in 1947: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time".

The success, or otherwise, of democracy is deeply subjective for personal judgment is shaped by ideology, morals and ethics.

Where you stand in life, a position that might have fell your way because of hereditary fortunes or the circumstantial happenings that might have simply dumped you where you are, is what shapes your views.

Should you have landed on your feet among the favoured few, then, for you, democracy works perfectly; the machinery of politics is in good working order; but if the events of life have not been so kind, then democracy seems weighted in the favour of others.
From this unappealing mess of personal wants and needs, peppered with ideological passions evolving from nurture, society must plot a course toward some sort of social good that allows for diversity, but in the same breath encourages a discipline that keeps the barbarians at bay.

Considering Churchill’s view, democracy does appear the best of societal administrative processes, but right now the idea that a free market unimpeded by government is testing its inherent fragility.

Free market ideologues argue the democracy they favour encourages endeavor, entrepreneurship and rewards individual effort, while those who might be called “social-democrats” see an enriched life for all arising from an understanding and appreciation of, and the application of, all that is public.

Through whatever prism you see democracy its validity depends on people engaging with the process; it depends on a willingness to declare ownership, a willingness that can only be expressed by expanding your life to encounter that of others.

Athens is the celebrated birthplace of democracy and one who was there at the time, Pericles, said: “We do not say that man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own affairs; we say that he has no business here at all”.

It is both our business and in our interest to participate in politics and ensure the chaos continues.

Unfathomably complex societies

Quote: Waleed Aly -
It follows, then, that societies are unfathomably complex - far too complex to be grasped by even the most intelligent person. So much about them is intangible and mysterious that they cannot be altered by design in a way one alters a machine. This is why evolved tradition, custom and culture are important: they capture the sorts of intangible wisdom that philosophy cannot. Accordingly, any social change that is dismissive of tradition or believes it can be swept away dangerously misconceives the nature of humans and human society and invites great ruin. Tradition has its own force and wisdom.

Quarterly issue: 'What's right'.