to mix art with activism

In the distance is the city, hidden from view.

K9 moved back into the combat area – Standing now in the Chinese youth sent the resistance message jolting clicking tilting through the pinball machine – Enemy plans exploded in a burst of rapid calculations – Clicking in punch cards of redirected orders – Crackling shortwave static – Bleeeeeeeeeeeeeep – Sound of thinking metal – “Calling partisans of all nations – Word falling – Photo falling – Break through in Grey Room – Pinball led streets – Free doorways – Shift coordinate points –”

Nova Express. Burroughs

As a result, therefore, man (the worker) only feels himself freely active in his animal functions – eating, drinking, procreating, or at most in his dwelling and in dressing-up, etc.; and in his human functions he no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal. What is animal becomes human and what is human becomes animal.

Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Estranged Labour. Marx.

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My four days of mona foma.

I was fortunate enough to get a festival pass to the 2014 mona foma. And so my thoughts.

Fishing boats high hot summer evening - wave upon wave fractal innumerable myriad. Ole timey working working places. The mystique of the proletariat. Sail boats sailing along the the setting sun wind.

So what did I like about the festival? The bands, the music. While I did not love everything I saw, and while I was not able to see every event, I have to say there was nothing I saw that was terrible; nothing I saw did not deserve to be there.

But the absolute highlights for me had to be Sun Ra Arkestra, The Julie Ruin, and the Ada Project. There were several acts that I was unfamiliar with and I was very glad to have had the exposure. I also greatly enjoyed The Ada Project. So much so that I saw it four times!

There was, as I said, very little I did not like. And the things I did not like, were more my perception as opposed to the music being made. For example I am not a great fan of the techno dance sort of sound. So I tried to understand the acts in what they were trying to do, more than what I would have liked them to do.

It is to the credit of the hundreds of staff that organise these events that very little went wrong. There was a slight hiccup on the first night, when the scanner had difficulties reading my ticket. But on subsequent days there was no issue. I am sure there where a few back stage dramas, but as a viewer I knew nothing of that, and things seemed to flow quite easily from one act to the next. Food and drinks were plentiful if a tad pricey, but not so much that one would think it was out of the ordinary. If one did not care about alcohol, and wanted to get a juice, there was no line and it was easy to purchase. I did notice some very long lines, but as it was not me waiting...

So at best only minor things went wrong, at least from an outsiders point of view, so any complaints are more in the category of quibbles and not complaints. Hats off the the many staff who worked on the stalls, and collected tickets and etc, as much as the musicians, this regiment of staff should be seen as integral to the smooth functioning of the festival. Or as Brecht said in his poem A Worker Reads History, “Caesar beat the Gauls. Was there not even a cook in his army?”

What would I change? I found the MAC Backstage room to be a stuffy, anxiety creating venue. This could have been just me, as the room was often filled with people, digging the music, bopping and having fun. Some people have complained about the ticketing and entry for the Faux Mo nightclub. I admit I did not attend this so I can not comment, but will note it as something I heard.

The smithies, working in the forecourt to create looped beats and a metal sculpture, were a great hit. As much as the work they were doing was interesting in itself, they also provided a focus for the gathering crowd. I was a bit surprised as to how little the forecourt was used by the event. To my mind there seems no reason why it could not be filled with local performers, buskers, fire eaters, spoke word artists and the like. This would provide an outlet for local artists, as well as giving them a bit of encouragement, and would also give spectators more fuel to allow them to speculate, and recharge.

And of course the main change I would make, would be to somehow make the event more woman friendly. I would like to see, in future festivals, something like one day of the four day festival be given over to only female artists. I know that some will say “ Do we have to have this discussion again?” While others can say the exact same thing, but with a slight change in emphasis and so “Do we have to have this discussion again?” But one only has to look at the program and see the overwhelming preponderance of male artists. Well over half were male, or male dominated performances. With only a few breaking this penile mold. The fact that The Julie Ruin was one of the few shows bent towards women proves in a rather ironic way this truth.

I know that such a suggestion would be controversial. But to me any back lash to the idea of creating a more gender balanced event would again prove the truth.

What did the festival make me think about? One thing that jumbled around my brainpan was the idea of the distinction between (for lack of better words) music driven and word driven music. Music driven seems to flow more organically and more freely, more like the proverbial river. With lyrics there seems to be more of an architectural feel, the music is built up around a scaffolding of words. Maybe a thing to do would be to investigate incorporating improvisational lyrics into songs.

I was to a certain extent disappointed with some of the electronic boyz and the sounds they were making. It seems to me, and I am happy to be proven wrong, that with all the computing power at hand, with the vast of array of electronics willing to due the maestro's bidding that something better than a constant pumping 1,2,3,4 beat could be found. It seems to me that we have the ability to make electric music that sounds like angels signing. There is no need for a beat, as the computer will never miss. I want something to dance to that is different. Of course the crowd went wild, so who the hell do I know. I did, for example, like the poly-rhythmic sounds of HIVE, their use of old and new ways to produce music.

In a similar vein the festival made me think and cower in wonder at the process. A puff of air, the vibration of a string or skin, the rush of electrons. More a way things happen, than a thing. Nothing but vibrations. Resonance. And I can not even find the words to describe the flow of images and thoughts that crowded my mind, like the crowded venue floor, surging and swaying. From almost nothing comes music, in the way that a monsoon is little more than warm moist air rising from the ocean, so to the music is simply the vibrations moving through the air. And both the storm and music emerge from the chaos become so much more.

Over the four days of the festival the temperature rose and fell here in Hobart. Dangerous climate conditions caused distress on the mainland. Bushfires burnt up the east coast of the big island.

Daily the news spoke of increasing confrontation in the northern seas. Shots were fired across the bow of ships filled with children.

Compassion is becoming a dirty word. The assault, the counter revolution, is gathering pace. Education and disability care, and education are all in the firing line. Same sex marriage is being brushed aside, howled down in a mocking chorus of convenient morality. The “be excellent to one another” idea of Jesus is being ignored, and in America anyway there is talk to rewriting the bible more in line with tea party politics.

We are trading our freedoms for the idea of an illusionary choice. Are we to control the machines, or are we to be controlled? Are we to simply be an adjunct to the machine, or the machines to liberate us. Computer technology in many ways starkly shows the Marxist idea of alienation, of working people building a productive capacity is which is then used against them. A vast network of control that can constantly monitor citizens. The greatest, never tiring, surveillance network every made. Is this to be our future? Should we not make the machines work for us? Maybe lower the hours of work to only 20 hours a week, allowing more time for creation of life, family, of art.

The PM is off skiing in France, while the media slumbers contently after a long and tiring campaign of social control.

We live in an age of urgencies. We are hurtling headlong into a crisis, into the abyss. I felt that foma missed the opportunity to highlight these urgencies. I did not see all the bands, so I may have missed some important things. Most of the acts I saw at best only hinted at, or spoke indirectly about what is to be done. From what I saw only The Julie Ruin seemed willing to discuss directly the problems we face, and to offer some sort of a solution.

The solution being to mix art with activism, to build community.

Suicide and Revolutionary Action

If the wealth of society declines the worker suffers most of all, and for the following reason: although the working class cannot gain so much as can the class of property owners in a prosperous state of society, no one suffers so cruelly from its decline as the working class.

Let us now take a society in which wealth is increasing. This condition is the only one favourable to the worker. Here competition between the capitalists sets in. The demand for workers exceeds their supply. But:

In the first place, the raising of wages gives rise to overwork among the workers. The more they wish to earn, the more must they sacrifice their time and carry out slave-labour, completely losing all their freedom, in the service of greed. Thereby they shorten their lives. This shortening of their life-span is a favourable circumstance for the working class as a whole, for as a result of it an ever-fresh supply of labour becomes necessary. This class has always to sacrifice a part of itself in order not to be wholly destroyed. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 - Marx

I suppose I should start at the beginning and say a few words about myself, and how it was I came to write this thing. Then I will lay out some of my thoughts in a breathless run-on sentence sort of way. After a bit of this nonsense, I will, knowing that the point of philosophy is to change rather than interpret the world, attempt to offer a few utopian suggestions. So let us, as they say, crack on with the confusion.

One Sunday Father's Day morning I fired up my browser and looked at various news articles to find out if we had gone to war while I slept. Pleased as I was that here was no new war, I continued scanning the news and read this Fathers Day article in the SMH.

Being at least passing familiar with Churchill's black dog, I felt it to be my civic duty to add my two bobs worth to the table. Even if this petty amount will not allow me to buy a nice dinner, or even a bottle of wine, my small donation does at least allow me to partake of the conversation. As much as anyone else; more than some, but less than others, I feel I have the life experience to talk about this subject. Not as a professional, nor as one trained in these things, solely as one who has lived a life and met many people, and as one who has suffered with depression.

In The Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens offers, what seems to me, to be an appropriate quote for this discussion. In seasons of pestilence, some of us will have a secret attraction to the disease--a terrible passing inclination to die of it. So too with depression. It is becoming a bit of a fashionable ailment to have these days.

So fashionable indeed that every other football player and retired Liberal Party hack brags of their fight with depression. So fashionable that there is talk of a cultural epidemic of suicide, while simultaneously there is much soft and muddle-headed talk about the main group killing themselves. That is the group of working-age men.

But what does this mean, who are these working-age men? There is a hint perhaps when Brendan Cowell says "It wasn't until I escaped it (it being his boyhood home of Cronulla) that I went whoa, hang on, that's not normal." This raises a question as to what is normal, a question far too vast to be answered in this article. More importantly it forces us to face the question as to who is killing themselves. Maybe it means that working class men kill themselves at a higher rate than others.

In the Telegraph newspaper, discussing a match between the Sharks & the Roosters, we get this "you’ve got a working-class team against the golden boys from the Eastern Suburbs.”

So if we find the Telegraph describing an area as working class, knowing how fearful the press is about even acknowledging the class nature of society, I think that one should take notice. So let us take this as a basis. Brendan Cowell mentions that he knows at least ten suicides of friends from his days in the Shire. He then states then when he escaped he realised that this rate of self murder was too high, it was not normal.

I too came from working class neighbourhood and I too can point to a similar number of suicides, and attempted suicides among my friends and friends of friends. Sadly my career has not been a success, so I have never escaped my working class heritage, so I may often a different viewpoint.

Now I do not want to be seen as criticising Mr Cowell, as I do not know him, but I am sure that his heart is in the right place, I am sure that his actions are situated in an environment of great affection and love, and an equally great loss of sorrow for his departed friends. And for the sake of this essay I am happy to agree with him that too many people are dying. This is more an attempt to view the situation through the prism of class consciousness.

Rather than mentioning smoking pot as being a contributing factor let us look deeper. This is not to say that drug and alcohol dependency has no part to play in suicidal ideation. But from where does this mass addiction arise? Knowing how aggressively the enemies of the working people promote a drug and drinking culture among working people, one can rightly ask how great a role do cynical business people play, how much do multi-millionaire beer barons, rewarded as they are with knighthoods and other awards, generate this epidemic, this culture of self harm? This is not to say that they have produced this crisis, but one again may rightly ask if they are doing much of anything to help stem the tide of young male self harm. For the commodification of alcohol, and therefore alcoholism must surely play a profound role in the deeper, structural causes of suicide among working age, working class men.

Watching on DVD the charming, bittersweet Woodley series with my children, this sad, lonely, dejected character seemed to be a symbol for my thoughts. For the hero was lost after his marriage had broken down. Forced into poverty, our hero was then compelled to take a menial, soul destroying job. Dressed in a humiliating costume, he had no choice but to travel the streets of the city, handing out leaflets. Alone and isolated, having lost control over his own life, he was abused and ignored by the passing crowd. In the end it all became too much and he stood on the bridge looking at the reflections of the busy city on the inviting surface of the Yarra River. Contemplating ending his life. For the sake of the series he, at the last moment, remembered the love of his child and backed away from the abyss. As reality differs greatly from fiction would he not, in real life, have jumped? If he did not jump, would his life not become a endless drudgery, devoid of hope, and the chance of long term happiness?

Many studies into workplace stress point to a simple fact, that it is not working hard that causes stress, it is not even overwork that causes stress, rather it is the loss of control that causes stress. It is pretty much true that the lives of working people are identified by having no control. We are told to be at a certain place at a certain time, we are not allowed to eat, or even to piss or shit unless the clock allows it. Our lives are controlled by other people, and there is constant uncertainty due to failures to meet arbitrary KPIs. Even worse poor decisions by management will result in large numbers of workers in an enterprise being let go in an attempt to solve a problem that they have not created.

In a world were to be poor is the unpardonable sin, were visions of wealth and power are pushed into our faces at every turn, in a world were all that matters is money, in a world based on exploitation, in a world where the short term profits matter more than the training and extending of the workers, one has to ask, not why do so many kill themselves, but rather why do more people not kill themselves.

For the ones that fall by the wayside, for the young men who buy into the false ideology of the strong man, for the ones who live dreams of football heroics and nothing more, egged on by zealous, vicariously living parents and equally zealous, heedless of the future coaches; life becomes a bleak world with no future and no hope, life becomes little more than a five day grind dulled only by mindless entertainment, and a weekend of binge drinking. Equally for the soldier sent off to foreign lands to kill or be killed, and returning home to little of no support from the war mongering old men who sat out the bullets safely in air conditioned bank vault offices, it is not so much that governments do not spend enough time and money and effort on mental health, although this is part of the problem, it is much deeper and simpler. They, the ruling class and their allies, do not care about poor working class men and women who have no money and therefore no power.

To paraphrase and extend Aristotle -- we all, by our very nature, take pleasure in learning things, in gaining mastery over ourselves and the external world. This changing the external world to our image is what gives us pleasure. This mastering pleasure could come through work or through art or raising a family, or even from our hobbies and interests. When this natural desire, this natural right, to become full members of society is denied to large segments of the population, when their heads are filled with fear of the other, or with vain ideals of getting rich, many will fall and be ground down into the dust, or like the raisin that withers in the sun.

Maybe in a world with no future, in a world ruled by fear and the love of money, suicide can be seen as the final cry of the heart in our heartless world, maybe suicide is the only way left for people who have nothing, and who have no future, to gain some measure of mastery over the external world. Lied to and molested by churches, cynically abused in the quest for power and then discarded by politicians, slipping through the cracks of an underfunded and unappreciated education system, scorned and reviled by a vicious and hateful media that loves success, and abominates failure, what is a poor boy to do? Maybe we should see suicide as that final cry of NO that says I would rather die on my feet than live the rest of my live as a wage slave, under debt bondage.

Of course it would be wrong of the reader to think I am calling for a mass outbreak of suicide, or that I want working class men to kill themselves. Indeed I would wish the exact opposite, for the cure for isolation and despair must surely be action. For many, however, this is not even an option. Since the good old days of Reagan and Thatcher the rulers and ideologues of our current crisis have not only smashed the working class organisations, but more importantly they taken from us optimism, they have destroyed the very idea of the co-operative spirit. So the “working age men” who kill themselves are ones who have been left with nothing and with nowhere to turn. Force fed images of success and manly pride at every turn they have nothing to fall back on, they have no vision for the future. Little one so many fall into the grave prematurely.

I can understand how this article can be seen as offensive, can make some upset. I am speaking, in an informal, mostly anecdotal manner, based on my experiences with depression and suicidal thoughts, and the observations of those whom I have met over the years. I have left out a myriad of possible causes of suicide, I was only wandering around some of the motivations for suicide. In my investigations I have chosen to focus on social economic factors that could lead one to self murder. There are many more issues that have not been named in this article, for this is not the place to enumerate all of the potential causes and triggers of this drastic solution. I understand how this topic may bite with some and cause anger or sadness. That is not at all my intent, like most things my intent is to make sense of the world as I have experienced it.

So what I would like to do now is to offer up some suggestions that may help. First off I would agree to more mental health spending and all those official, bureaucratic sort of solutions that people love to talk about on chatty, vapid current affairs shows. As to the medical, chemical solutions I can only say that I am not so keen on having a generation of young men taking anti-depressants for the rest of their lives. As I am not a doctor so I am not able to comment much more on that aspect of the suicide crisis solution.

I do know that, like the junkie who comes out of rehab and goes back to her old life with her dealer boyfriend, and her crappy housing and her lack of a job and future; or the prisoner released from gaol, set back with no support into the old habits with his old mates, so it is for those who attempt or even contemplate suicide. The crisis averted, the system moves on to the next crisis not able to give the patient the time and effort required.

There is no sense in “curing” a patient, if like the junkie or criminal, they return to same quiet desperation, if they return to no job (or what is even worse than no job, a mindless one-sided sort of work) and no future.

So what needs to be done?

In no particular order, but set out like a list for rhetorical reasons, I have some practical solutions. Maybe not practical in the way a small government, free-market accountant would think of as practical, but practical in the sense of realistically demanding what it is we all should have from life; that is impossible freedom and everything, the entire world. Firstly one must look into education. When Plato wrote of his utopian republic he spent most of the book discussing the need for education. True progressives have always known the importance of education. For education is the royal road to success in a capitalist society. Short of being born wealthy or having some extraordinary good fortune, education is the key to work in our current and future knowledge economy. So access to quality primary and secondary education and affordable high quality child care, as well as access to free tertiary education is the bare minimum for reaching the worthwhile goal of halving the suicide rate in ten years.

In our society of over production and mass consumption it is now possible to cut hours of work to no more than thirty hours a week. People should not have to work any more than two or three days a week, while food and essentials can be made effectively free. Workers who are sick or injured, or mentally disturbed should not be treated as thieves first and humans a distant second. While I do not have the figures at my fingertips, I would be willing to believe that all the fraud against all the dole offices in all of Australia would be significantly less than the seven billion dollars in profit the CBA made last year.

In the same way that poetry ossifies as it moves away from song, so too psychology turns to stone as it ignores and moves away from the class struggle. As important as the sexual urge is in development of the self, so to the urge to work and gaining control over the external world is of equal importance. If one sees the concept of Eros as being greater than the sexual urge, if one understands Eros as being the generative spirit, than one can understand the need for an understanding of class struggle in psychology. Further from this one can see that the role of medical intervention in the suicidal crisis must be something more than getting a person to a position where they are once again content with wage-slavery and debt bondage, with alienating their labour as an end in itself. There is no reason to save someone from suicidal feelings if they are not going to be supported, if they are forced to go back into their poor suburb, back to insecure working conditions, forced to rely on their own devices, and treated like so much refuse that can, and should be tossed away.

Whether it is the soldiers used and abused in imperialist wars, or the unskilled worker, or the single mother, the support should be there and it should be ongoing.

Will this solve the problem completely? No it will not, but with a shorter work week and a more democratic workplace, with greater education and broader training, with proper and on-going support society can go a long way to reducing this tragic statistic. As this would cost money and require effort, sadly in our world dominated as it is by greed and short term idiocy I am not confident things will get better.

Misew

Misogyny, Sexism and some (rambling) thoughts on language.

Odysseus - the hated one, the accursed one.

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As a note, I have used in various Greek words the convention of
writing omega (big or long O) as a w. Also I have used the
uncontracted version of the verbs, making it that little bit easier to
find in dictionary.

Many of us, including myself, were thrilled to see Julia Gillard stand
up and confront the rabid sexism and misogyny coming from the leader
of the Opposition Tony Abbott. This is reflected in the youtube video
of the speech having garnered over 1 500 000 hits. Not bad for a
speech in parliament. Usually one of the last place you tubers like to
go to, with cute cats and children falling down generally getting the
lions share of hits.

Many people have been stunned by the consistent media refrain that
this was a bad speech and shows Gillard at her shrewish, hysterical,
fish wife, school marm, or what other sexist remark you want to fill
in best. Some have even hinted that she was somehow responsible for
the text massages of a (at the time) sitting LNP member. Putting aside
the obvious sexism and attempts to muddy the waters of these sorts of
comments, I want to focus on one point of the 'counter-speech.'

It seems to me that, in an attempt to side step the issue and confuse
things among the people, the reactionaries, in their usual legalistic,
language perverting manner have fixated on the question of
hatred. Tony Abbott does not hate women, he has a wife and three
daughters, they scream red faced back at the PM. Leaving us with the
more than farcical idea that Tony Abbott is such a supporter of women
that his sperm can bring forth nothing but more women. I will leave it
to others to explain this ludicrous bit of science.

But let us use some dictionaries and some understanding of Greek
language to investigate this point further. Working in a book shop I
have access to numerous dictionaries. Some of them define misogyny as
hatred of women, while others extend the definition to include
contempt for, or dislike of women. Since the draft of this it has been
reported that the Maquarie Dictionary will extend (not soften as some
say) the definition of misogyny to include 'entrenched prejudice
against women.'

To fixate on the one word 'misew' the reactionaries and their running
dog media lackeys fail to see that the language has evolved (of course
evolution and reactionaries are not the best of friends) over the
years, and that there can be various levels of hatred. Indeed if I was
to say that I hate Collingwood; for example, does that mean that I am
unable to admit that some players are very good, could I not also say
that they are a very good team who have been a fixture in the league
for over a century? Only the most narrow and useless understanding of
language would force me into a position where I must hate without
reservation every single player who put on the black and white across
their entire history of the club. Most of us use words like hate in a
more elastic sense, and see that it is does not have to be a universal
principle held with no regard for nuance and changing circumstances.

So let us now turn to the Greeks. It did not take much research to see
that the ancients, like us, had many different words for hate. Misew
being only one of these words. And even this word had subtlety. For
example in one section of the Iliad (17.272) the verb is used when the
poet has Zeus say that he would hate to see the Achaeans be made a
feast for dogs and vultures. One can easily translate this word as
hate. But most people can see that Samuel Butler makes a better point
in his translation when he makes this line say, Zeus would not suffer
for the Achaeans to be made a feast for dogs and vultures. So with
almost no effort on my part I discovered a 'lesser' connotation of the
word. Does Tony Abbott and the LNP not suffer women to take their full
place in society? One can argue this point, but from my point of view
I would have to say yes. One only has to listen to quiet bubbling up
of opposition to the idea of no fault divorce within LNP to see this.

More research led me find other words used to mean hatred. Oddussw
(the possible root of the name Odysseus) also means to hate, or to be
incensed. In the case of our wandering hero he could seen as having
been named 'the accursed one.' Indeed our hero says in book five, "For
I know that the glorious Earth-shaker is filled with wrath against
me." This would seem sensible as he was cursed and tormented by the
Gods.

Misew as we have seen means to hate, as in seen in this Aristophanes
quote. 'I hate the rough (brazen) women, I hate the prudish ones.'
Besides the apparent confusion of the character who spoke these lines,
does this not imply a more light hearted, more frivolous usage of word
hate? One may think so. The wrath of Poseidon towards Odysseus, based
on blinding of his son Polyphemus by Odysseus seems to be much
stronger than the confused hatred of Aristophanes comic creation.

Some other words used by the Greeks to describe hatred include;
Bdelugmia, loathing, disgust, nausea; Fthonew, bear ill-will, envious,
grudge, malice; Stugew, abominate, loathe, hate, this is used by
Sophocles in his tragedy Ajax 'the gods hate the evil ones'; and
finally echthairw, to hate or detest. This can be found in the phrase
used by Sophocles, echthos echtheras mega - hating with a great
hatred.

So here we find a continuum of words which mean hate, with misew being
at the bottom end, while loathing, disgust and nausea being on the top
end of hatred. This is true in English too, I can say I hate my
landlord, but I really may not, as I have never met him. But if I was
to say my landlord fills me with disgust and makes me nauseous, I
think we may be talking about real deep down in ones bones hatred.

Of course I could be wrong, as I have never met Tony Abbott. He may
very well love his wife and family. This absurd line that having a
wife makes on immune to accusations of misogyny can be seen in the
fact that (and I am not saying Abbott is a wife beater) one must have
a wife before one can be a wife beater. Surely a great deal of
misogyny is hidden behind closed suburban doors. But I see no reason
to dispute the PM's comments on his misogyny, as it is something we
see everyday. From his support for people like Alan Jones, to his
opposition to HPV vaccine, to his opposition to RU486 contraception, to
his life long support of one of the great pillars of womens oppression
the Catholic Church. This includes his statements like the lovely one
about women not being fit for command. Coming back to the Greeks this
seems to echo the ancient idea that a woman was a deformed man, this
deformity is echoed in the Pythagorean idea that if a man was immoral
in this life he would be reincarnated as a woman.

This next quote comes from The Geography of Strabo, in which he
describes Misogynists as complaining about their wives spending too much
money. Is this not an idea which is still current in our society? Is
this still not the punchline of many lame jokes on many lame situation
comedies? And is it an idea that comes back to the idea that women
are deformed men? Not as able as men to handle command and fiance?
And are this not similar words to the words used by Abbott and many
other LNP hacks? (To be fair I am sure there are many men in the ALP,
or even the Greens party, who hold similar views.)

And again attend to the words of the same poet when he speaks in one
of his characters, bringing in a man disgusted with the expenses of
the sacrifices of the women. ‘The gods weary us indeed, but
especially our married men, who are always obliged to celebrate some
feast.’ And his Misogynes, complaining of the same things, exclaims,
‘We sacrificed five times a day, while seven female slaves ranged in
a circle played on the cymbals, and others raised their suppliant
cries.’ (the poet mentioned being Meandear.)

More than enough ink has been spilt in the last week or so on this
subject, so I will leave with a quote from the delightfully absurd
'Philosopher's Dinner Party' by Athenaeus.

Euripides the poet, also, was much addicted to women: at all events
Hieronymus in his Historical Commentaries speaks as follows,—"When
some one told Sophocles that Euripides was a woman-hater, 'He may be,'
said he, 'in his tragedies, but in his bed he is very fond of women.'"

Sorell Council Sesquicentennial

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On one of those cloud slate coming the end of winter mornings when the sun seems to be a feeble flame shining with a false light I trotted down the road to the Sorell Memorial Hall to partake in the festivities of 150 year anniversary of the foundation of Sorell City Council.

Being an old school history geek this sort of this always captures my interest. Indeed when I move to a new town or suburb I like to find out as much as possible about the history of the area. This knowledge helps to put things in perspective and helps one to learn the lay of the land. History is honesty, or at least it should be. History (from the Greek istoria, meaning enquiry) should be, like science, based in the first instance on observation. Then a hypothesis can be created, which of course must then be tested by more observation and etc. History must be seen as an iterative process. A process of continual criticism and self criticism. In this way can the science of history develop and advance.

The Memorial Hall has the numerous, obligatory monuments to the war dead that one sees in all the small towns dotted across the landscape. The saddest one being a small reminder for two local lads who drowned on the return trip from South Africa after the Second Boer War. A war which was a harbinger of the terrors of twentieth century total war. A war that gave us commandos, free fire zones, scorched earth, guerilla warfare and concentration camps. A war eagerly (and to my mind surprisingly) supported by a recently sobered up Algernon Charles Swinburne. It was passing sad to see the two names and the forlorn words buried at sea.

I arrived and was greeted by local school kids dressed in period costume, playing period games. Once in the hall I made myself a cup of tea, and had a quick look at the various artefacts on display in the room used by the local historical society. I found a place and was able to sit down and hear one of my favourite tunes, The Wild Colonial Boy played as a sound check.

Sorell pivot of the Black Line, surrounded by shallow rapidly changing ever flowing ocean waters. Home of one of the oldest continually operating schools in Australia. Mooted as a potential capital of Tasmania. Sorell once a stockyard centre of boat building, busy with ferries full of bags of wheat destined to support the struggling colony of New South Wales. Now the ferry-men are no more, the bullock drivers the wheat farmers the original inhabitants all gone into the dust of the past, moved along by the rapid changes of history. Henry Reynolds tells us how the wind carries the cries of the betrayed and the dispossessed and the murdered through the trees of windy Tasmania.

Being a great fan of folk music, it was with particular interest that I listened to the Greenhill Two. Local Peter MacFie scoured the archives to unearth the long silent tunes of Alexander Laing. Sent to Van Diemen's Land due to his getting drunk and spending the money entrusted him to help recruit for the 92nd Gordon Highlanders Regiment. Like the droogs of Alex DeLarge he worked his way from convict criminal to become police officer, to being the jailer of Sorell Gaol.

The duo played on fiddle and guitar a set of seven songs. All songs by Laing and all based around the local area. Starting with Sorell Wind Mill, with the fiddle creating the impression of the whirling arms of the wind mill. Gordon Street, Sorell, a much more rollicking number which may have been formed from the the impressions Laing had looking out the window of his 'office' in the old gaol. Miss E. E. P. Reardons' Quadrille was written to commemorate the birth of his grand daughter. Mrs Champ's Reel in honour of his second wife. Brady's Lookout 1825. Brady being a famous bush ranger who held up the town of Sorell. The duo played one more piece the name of which I did not catch.

As Pilate asked, in John 18:38, of Christ 'Ti estin aletheia'. What is truth? This question is most important in any historical reckoning. Even when the music of Laing is written down and note for note played, one is still left with the lingering doubt, is this what Laing meant? Does this sound like the tune he wrote, what he heard in his secret lonely head? 'Truth is', Kierkegaard witheringly answered, in a manner that still haunts modern thinkers, 'an objective uncertainty passionately held in an inward appropriation process.' This is even more clearly
seen in the quest for historical truth, in grand sweeping histories of countries and nations and peoples. How can any historic narrative be said to be true when talking over masses of people over many years. This can be seen most pointedly in our modern dissections of the history of race relations in Australia. Some talk of black armbands while others talk of genocide, and there seems to be no grounds of agreement between
such opposing views.

This question was again raised when the local theatre group Sorell On Stage reenacted the first meeting of the Sorell Council. On July 1 1862 the Sorell Council had their first meeting. The same day as the Battle of Malvern Hill in the American Civil War, and the marriage of one of Queens Victoria's daughters Princess. Even with the reading out of minutes of the meeting, one has to ask how much left out? Minutes are not always complete, as things may be missed, words misquoted etc. Also with the bare minutes there was no context given, no idea of body language, no ability to understand the dynamics of the relations between the various members of the committee. This is of course not a fault of the theatre group, in fact it is not a criticism at all, but rather a problem that all historical research must face.

As an aside it is worth noting with some pride that in 1862 all of the councillors where all men, but in 2012 we have a woman, Carmel Torenius, as the mayor of Sorell, Laura Giddings as the Premier of Tasmania and Julia Gillard as Prime Minister of Australia. As they used to say (in a patronising way) when advertising cigarettes way back in the 1970s, you've come a long way baby.

And then the local school kids in period dress played the games kids would have played in the 1860s. Cake was eaten, tea was drunk and the locals had a lovely forenoon taking and chatting among themselves.

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Alone

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On her own, on the small satellite
Orbiting around gas giant Jupiter.
Planet spinning, patterns swirling
Rusty red brown hydrocarbon colours.
Flashing glowing gathering lightning
Deep within the roiling endless clouds.
An accident on the mining site.
The others all dead, communications down.
All on her own, alone on the dusty
Frozen boulder. And Jupiter huge fills
Her vision, fills the dark radiating space
Sky, glowing a false light from the far off sun.

Colours of the planet. Echoing
Of children's over excited, uncensored
Direct from young brain to hand to paper.
Children's crayon drawing wild and free.
She thought of her loved daughter's drawings
Her son's bouncing bounding rolling walking.

Her husband, tell him I love him very much,
He knows. Echoing into the void of space.
Tears well up and blur her sight, smearing
Colours like the child's chalk drawing
On the pavement, after a rain storm.

She composed herself, stood herself up straight.
And said aloud, to no one, I shall go
On my own terms, at my own time. I will not
Allow random accident, liquid chance
To dictate to me. I shall decide myself.

She lifted the metallic UV blocking
Shield, unscrewed the holding screws.
Epamerai, she half recalled long
Ago Pindar verse, things of one day.
I stand for my own will, for my own self.

She lifted the helmet, letting the bitter
Cold thin cold emptiness enter her lungs,
She let the endless darkness smother her.

---

Some people may see this as an apology for suicide or euthanasia. I
suppose in a sense it is, but more importantly it is a paean for human
freedom. The other main theme was of course the still horrible
statistics concerning industrial accidents and deaths.

pic comes from http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/planets/images/browse/jupiter/jupiter.jpg

The Dream Factory

As all people in all times of human history, we live in a new world,
a world that is changing rapidly. We live in a world where we are
surrounded by a glaring contradiction. A contradiction that the
various media savvy pundits and interpretors of the world fail to
mention. When they do attempt to face this contradiction it is only to
belittle and expose their own confusion.

What is this contradiction? That all things are made socially, but are
appropriated individually. (From the Latin meaning not to be divided.)
So all things are made socially, but not to be divided.

What does this mean to me? It means that the world is drowning in
wealth, yet I have to struggle to pay the rent. Google reports the
world GDP to be some 63 trillion dollars! And yet this wealth is not
to divided. How far would even one trillion dollars go towards feeding
the hungry, clothing the naked etc.

But even more than the things of the world we have created, even we;
our very selves are socially created. In a world dominated by fictions
of individualism and Robinson Crusoe stories it is sometimes difficult
to see ourselves as socially created products. But of course on the
most superficial level we can see we are born of preexisting
parents. The beginning of the production process being the production
of other human beings. And so much flows of this simple fact. All
language, all history, all economies, all education is a huge process
to create human beings, to create individuals. Sadly for the great
bulk of these individuals life is lived as a commodity. Not as what
they truely are, unique, real, actual human beings for in the some 4
000 000 000 years of this earth that strut and fret their hour on
the stage.

We are now in a world where we are on the cusp of the fabled 'Brave
New World', a world were energy can be drawn from the sun, from the
wind, from the heat of the earth itself. And yet too many argue that
we should never change. To my small position it seems that the
opposition to renewable energy comes more from a posture of not
wanting to give up their power. With solar for example people can heat
their houses, run their computers and more without the need to buy
electricity from the large corporations.

In this coming world of super abundance we must fight for a new order,
a new way of doing things. We should fight for socialism, a new type
of socialism were we understand that socialism must be the dream
factory.

Some simple demands we must make that will take a long way forward.

Free education for all. Education is key for anyone to become the
person they want to be, it is a right that everyone should be able to
go as far as they want.

An immediate cut in the hours of work. Solving the problem of
unemployment, and underemployment. This will allow people to work, and
to contribute to society, while also giving them the time to be able
to fulfill their love, love of family, love of knowledge. From a
Christian point of view all people are equal before God, and are made
in Her image. If this is to believed than why are some allowed to die
in the gutter, while others roll in incredible wealth. From an atheist
position there is no afterlife, we only have what is in front of us,
why should so many suffer and die, never to get their life back? Why
should this be allowed to continue just so some lucky few get to
increase their wealth?

Equal rights for all people. Nothing more needs to be said.

In this way we can edit Lenin to raise as a banner, Democracy plus
solar power equals socialism. True grassroots democracy. Democracy
based around where people live and where they work. No one should be
forced to give up their legal rights when they clock on to work. Many
people despair of the current political crisis, but many then turn to
the lure of facisim and dictatorship as a way to get past the
crisis. Many seem to despair of democracy, and then cry out to lessen
democracy. But of course falling into a dictatorship is easy, it
allows one to keep their head down, work and shop and all will be
well. However on the side of socialism we can only offer years of
struggle and hard work, years of vilification for an uncertain
goal. But this goal shall be the dream factory, shall be a world of
expansion and personal growth. The begining of history, not as the
right wing pundits will say the end of history.

As all political failures are failures of imagination it is important
for use to keep in mind that we need to create the dream factory.

Golden throned Hera

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Hymn 12 To Hera.

Of golden throned Hera I sing!
She was born of Rhea.
Queen of the deathless ones
She is foremost in bearing.

Sister and wife
Loud thundering Zeus.

Glorious she is,
And all the blest
Of high Olympus
Stand in dread of her.

And they honour her
Equal with Zeus
Who delights in thunder.

---

Hera is an old god, attested to in Mycenaean tablets as E-ra. Her name
is open to interpretation. Maybe related to Hora, or season, to show
that she is ripe for marriage. One of her roles is the Goddess of
marriage. She is often represented (as is Demeter) in a three fold
aspect. The Girl (Pais), The wife (Teleia, which also can mean the
perfect, the fulfilled, without blemish), and finally the Widow
(Chere). In this she shows a history the live of women. Is it also
representing the yearly cycle spring, summer, winter? Every year she
regains her virginity by bathing in the sacred stream Kanathos, in
Samos her anionic plank was washed in the sea.

Chadwick sees her name as being the feminine version of the word
hero. Or maybe it is the feminine version of master, that is
mistress. Regardless her temple at Samos is the first enclosed temple,
dating back to 800BC. Before this she is represented aniconicly as a
pillar in Argos, and a plank of wood in Samos. Argos being one of the
cities she loved best, the others being Sparta and Mycenae. 

Was she a remnant of earlier matriarchal religion and society? Rather
than seeing myth as 'other people's religion', it may be better to see
myth as other people's history. Was her marriage and subordination of
Zeus, as well as her frequent opposition and jealousy to Zeus an echo
of this great overturning? Do not the frequent punishments that Zeus
feels he has to mete out to his wife point to the period of struggle
that must have arisen from an overturning of matriarchy, and could the
overturning have proceeded any other way than by violence? I do not
know enough to be able to give an firm answer, but my 'feeling' would
be yes, this is what happened and the marriage of Zeus and Hera is a
record of the rise of the patriarchy.

We can look at for example her hostility to Herakles, her hostility to
the many 'affairs' of Zeus, and also his response to her infidelities.
Many beatings and once even tying her to a cloud, with anvils on her
feet. The punishments of her lovers, Kalypso, complains in book 5 of
the Odyssey about the unfairness of the male gods taking lovers, and
punishing the females for doing the same thing. Could we also see
echos of this in her various epitaphs, such as (Iliad 8.209) Aptoepes,
fearless in speech, as well as Neikei, fond of quarrels or strife. How
many women toady to are referred to in these shrewish terms? Does all
this point to Hera as being a woman who is oppressed and yet still
striving for her freedom?

Cows are sacred to her, as are peacocks. She is also often shown
holding a pomegranate or an opium poppy. The pomegranate, as well as
being the symbol of Kore, is the symbol of the ancient Great Goddess.

In my translation I down played her beauty and tried to reinforce the
idea of her being equal to Zeus. I hope I did not do too much violence
to the originate poem.