The Effect Of Australian Party-Political Culture On Your Soul

Jake Zanoni has a post up today on Pimpin’ For Freedom on the effect youth politics in Australia has on people. I do not agree with all of his conclusions, and he is factually incorrect on a number of points, but at the core, I feel he is correct in that the Australian political machine does have an effect on you. It does change you, and the result often isn’t very pretty (you can read a post where I set out similar concerns here).

Some extracts:

In essence that is THE natural journey for the student/youth political hack. Youth politics is a fringe activity of society, and an enclosed society with its own subculture and morality (or perhaps amorality). A downward spiral of ethics is the natural journey because unethical behaviour is the norm. Lying is not only acceptable, it is expected. Bullying behaviour is not only acceptable, it is expected. Oscar Wilde’s saying that “true friends stab you in the front” is very true for politics. Gossiping, exclusion, conspiracy, and hierarchy are all tools commonly used and abused.

The thing of it is that eventually you come to forget that this kind of behaviour isn’t on. You get so caught up in it all that not only do you embrace unethical behaviour, your entire perspective on morality shifts.

I did see myself change. Gradually I started to do things that were wrong, and I’d forget that they even were wrong. It took a very negative reaction from my fiancée to my behaviour at a branch meeting to wake me up, and even then it was a slow reversal. Politics had become such a central part of my life that all my major friends were involved. It became my social life and that is a very dangerous thing because you lose touch with normal people and normal behaviour. Yes political hacks out there, you are not normal people.

This isn’t about me feeling personally slighted; I just simply went out one night with basically a bunch of strangers who were welcoming and friendly. It reminded me of what real people are like. I went home and got really, really scared about the person I was becoming, the things I had been involved in, and the people I had left behind.

As Neitzsche said: “Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you”.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (or, Tim On Love & Relationships)

It is always amusing to look back at your earlier self, and to be able to laugh at various follies you once indulged in. And, as October/November seem historically to be the time for “introspective Tim”, I thought I’d pull something out of the archives, so we can all have a good chuckle at young, naïve & foolish Tim.

Back in late 2003, for a bit of a laugh, I decided to create a 100 question online quiz to see if someone was suitable to go out with me. All my friends ended up doing it (and, to protect their careers, I’ll refrain from mentioning names and scores). The test, alas, is now gone, but it actually was quite an accurate predictor of how I felt about people, and a few days after I put it up I wrote a short note explaining what was some of the thinking behind it.

Now, note this was back in 2003, and I have changed quite a lot since then. The whole protesting, pot-smoking, hippy part is most probably a relic of the past… but other points…Perhaps the most dissapointing thing for me, in fact, is how little I have evolved as a person since then. At times I feel 2003-2008 I was stuck in a personality-freeze. But that is a topic for another post.

Anyway… decide for yourself… and laugh with me at young, naive and rather silly Tim.

On Mentioning Your Friends In Blog Posts (AKA Web 2.0 Name Dropping)

One of the things that struck me, as I was catching up on a weekends worth of blog posts this morning, was the fact that, in six separate posts, someone prefaced a link to some other piece by saying it was written by their “friend”. This is something that seems frequently done in the blogosphere, yet it is something that grates on me. For the simple reason that I do not feel it necessary to inform readers that you are “friends” with someone else who writes something worth reading.

Why? Because, and it could just be me,, but I tend to find (with all due respect to people who do this) that saying you’re friends with a prominent writer comes across as a rather gratuitous form of self-flattery, and that this is not only rather unnecessary, but also demeaning.

After all, if you need to tell everyone that you’re friends with someone, what does that say about your friendship? If you are truly friends with someone, is it really necessary for you to hammer the point home with all the subtlety of an anvil falling off a cliff Loony Tunes style? More importantly, what does it say about you that you feel the need to back yourself up by this appeal to personal relationships? Are you really so insecure that you need to flaunt your personal relationships??? Do we really need to know you’re friends with all these important people??? It really is the web 2.0 version of “oooh, look at moi”

On Left-Libertarianism

One of the things I’ve been trying to do recently is to encourage more guest posts on Thoughts On Freedom, the blog of the Australian Libertarian Society, so that we can expand our range of writers away from the usual suspects (and if anyone reading this is interested in contributing, please let me know).

I’m particularly excited about a post put up yesterday by Amy, who recently started up her self-described left-libertarian blog, Civil Tongues, (which I would strongly encourage everyone to check out).

I’ve always been interested in left-libertarianism, because on a cultural level at the least, I have strong sympathies with some of the left’s critiques of modern society; however I genuinely can not see the logic behind the left-libertarian argument. In her post, and the quite stimulating discussion in the comments thread, Amy makes quite a good case on how essentially that the difference between left and right libertarians is while we have similar outcomes in mind, we have very different ways of getting there.

I would strongly encourage all to read the post, and engage in the debate!

UPDATE: I forgot to link to the article! Oops! You can find it here.

Fall Of The Berlin Wall, Freedom & The Hoff

Monday Morning Music & Russian Poetry

Listening with considerable enjoyment to Music Of The Night, which was posted on Tim Humphreys’s Blog Mothypress, I’ve decided that I should occasionally post some music to bring some culture into your lives.

So, to brighten up the dreariness of this Monday Morning, here is the overture from Russlan & Ludmilla by Glinka (one of Russia’s most under-appreciated composers)

If anyone is interested, some Russian poetry is after the fold. Also, I should note that the idea of Monday Music is completely plagiarized from Jonathon Blanks. But my alliteration is different. I replace mood with morning. So it’s quite ok.

An Ode To The Soft-Boiled Egg

There is no food greater than the egg.

Whether it be boiled or poached, fried or scrambled, it represents the pinnacle of culinary glory. Made into an omlette, it can be simply divine. Even simply poached, and eaten on fine bread slathered with good butter, it truly is the food of the gods. Simple, delicious, and signifying all that is great in the culinary world.

Which is why it saddens me that the humble egg is so insulted by pretty much anyone who attempts to cook it these days. I do not even speak of failure to attain elaborate egg constructions; complex French omelets, or poached eggs with caviar on rye. Rather, the fact that the simplest tasks seem beyond most people. How few people can poach truly is a national tragedy.

However, the real issue in abusing the egg is how they are no longer appreciated for their inner glory, but rather used only as mere supplements for “greater” things. For in trying to create complex creations, they destroy the delicate beauty of the egg.

And so I call for a revival of basics. For tradition. For going back to our roots. We need to recapture the truly good things in life, the simple pleasures that we so often neglect. And it begins with the soft-boiled egg. The simplest of all egg dishes, yet one which is consistently neglected. And, when tried, done abysmally. By neglecting the soft-boiled egg, we are neglecting not only our history, but our culinary soul.

Just think about what a soft boiled egg is for a moment. How it is a self-contained unit if pure flavour. Of pure goodness. Like you are eating the raw essence of life (quite literally!). It needs to garnishes, it needs no preparation. Just boil it well, and voila! Glory incarnate. It embodies good food at its core.

So. The next time you are making breakfast, the next time you need something to eat, consider the humble soft-boiled egg. Cook it properly, relish it in its beauty and simplicity, and hearken back to a simpler era of pure, and unadulterated, goodness.

(By the way, in case you are wondering, there really is no deep symbolism to this post. I am not writing about how the egg represents the nascent state of pure potentiality or anything like that. I just really like eggs).

The Joys Of Argument, & The Tyranny Of The Pastels

To continue my previous rant against the blandification of society, and to stress the points made therein, I make the following appendum:

No greater evil has befallen the world of conversation than the dictum to never speak politics or religion around a dinner table. And no greater tragedy has befallen interpersonal relationships than the fact that this dictum is almost universally blindly followed. For underpinning this vile doctrine is the foul stench of the odious construct, apparently so ingrained in modern consciousness that it is now accepted as a given, that we ought minimise difference, eliminate conflict, and do little more than politely agree. And as such, this doctrine symbolises all that is horrid about modern life.

I can think of no greater horror, no greater tragedy, than a world bereft of the intellectual fight. Of a friendship bereft of conflict. Of a world where pleasantness rules the day.

Conversation thrives on conflict. On emotion, on passion, on the true exchange of ideas. The fight, however abstract and intellectual, however obscure and theoretical, is what makes it exciting, what gets the blood rushing, and makes you feel like you are truly alive.

There is nothing greater than an argument that gets the blood boiling, that arouses your true feelings, and that forges a true connection between you and the person with whom you are speaking. Vitriol, insults and abuse, rather than things to look askance at, when underpinned by a common understanding of the rules of debate, are glorious in their very essence. For they are marks of feelings.

How can you form any true relationship based on agreeing? How can you truly appreciate the burning hot fires of passion without the conflict that make them appear? It is for this reason that I could never understand why political people often refuse to date their ideological opponents – what could be worse than a relationship where you do little more than stare at each other doe eyed and repeat “I agree”. What passion is there in that? What life??? Our emotional range ought never be limited to “happy” and “content”; it is the disagreements, the fire and brimstone, the pain that truly allow us to grow. It is at the extremes that true emotions are found – never at the centre.

We have become a society compromised not of bright colours and vivid lights, but rather one made up of pastels. Where the subtle hues dominate, and the extremes are left to languish.

And I can think of no greater hell than that.

Random Fun Facts About Tim

To celebrate National Blogging Month, here are some random facts about me that you can use to attack me about down the track.

• I have a pathological hatred of roller shoes, and believe them to symbolise all that is wrong about modern society. Seriously.

• I have strange obsessions about numbers and symmetry. I cannot stand numbers on volume controls etc to be 1 off a multiple of 5. So it must be 10, 12,13,15,17,18, 20 and so on. If I overshoot – for instance I am aiming to go to 20 but accidently get to 21, then I must go down to 19 before I hit 20. If this doesn’t happen I get incredibly annoyed. More recently this has started with food items, and also with lists (note how many bullet points this note has – same with all I write really). I also occasionally have symmetry issues, where if I do something with one side of the body (for instance wink), I must balance it up by doing the same action on the other. This can lead to some awkward interpersonal situations (particularly in cases it’s combined with the first obsession)

• In 1984, I won the Daily Mirror’s Baby of the Year competition (I peaked too soon).
• At about the age of about 9 or so, I came up with an elaborate way to analyse my own psyche: I created an internal parliament in my head. Different MP’s represented different facets of my personality. It became incredibly complex and detailed rather quickly, with major parties (each with their own factions within them), minor parties (it was a proportional representation system), a separate executive – at one point it had a bicameral legislature, but that came a bit later. But I remember swimming laps in Ashfield pool when this first started thinking about this for hours at one time and then building on it through the years. I still occasionally revive this concept to this very day when trying to understand my general schizophrenic nature.

• I am an Instructor in the National Orgnisation of Russian Scouts
• I was once a Marxist. Quite literally. Although I would have called myself a virulent anti-communist at the time, I remember at the age of about 8 jumping on the trampoline in our backyard and thinking how great it would be if the central government assigned everyone their job based on what was needed for society, and how much more efficient this would be. This idea stayed with me for a few years. It was replaced with the notion that government would be much more efficient if we chose the best people before they reached the age of 5 (through various tests), and then brought them up to govern the rest of society. This idea lasted well into my teenage years (and brought me much mirth when I finally discovered Plato)

• The first election I voted in was the 1993 Australian Federal Election, when I filled in my grandmother’s ballot. The first campaign I worked on was the 1996 Lowe election.

• I like the game bridge

So yes, in short, I am utterly insane.

Behold The Awesome Power Tim

There is a reason they call me “feared numbers-man and Liberal head-kicker“. Why, (a before realizing I had better things to do with my life & withdrew), I was the frontrunner to be Chairman of the RNC. Why the political graveyard is filled with the decaying carcasses of those who dared oppose me.

And thus, it continues.

Exhibit 1:

Exhibit 2:

QED.