Its been a while....

[littlejenmc]

yeah so like after 6 months of office bearing, campaigning, motivating and informing students and trying my darndest to stop VSU its become apparent that the conservative forces are just too much and we're not going to win. nay, we never really had a chance. (but the battle had to be fought

Comments

[illykai]

During the vote counting for the most recent US election was the point at which I realized that I seem to live in a different world to the majority of the English-speaking world. The last few years have been big political disappointments for me, running from the fizzling of the reconciliation agenda after such a tremendous turn-out of supporters, through Labour crossing a union picket line outside NSW parliament over the WorkCover issue, attending Socialist Alternative meetings and finding that they were so fixated on modern class distinctions that they couldn't see any pre-capitalist precedents for racial discrimination, war in Iraq despite huge protest, conservative governments being elected all around the world - particularly the re-election of Bush in the US, and now the seeming ineffectiveness of anti-VSU protests.

It just seems that everything goes wrong for the left these days, and the views of the left are increasingly marginal in mainstream society. I can no longer really work out what crack mainstream Australians are smoking. It seems like they get all the same information as me yet make completely different decisions on that basis. I don't understand why and it frustrates me.

[tull]

Stability? Equilibrium?

40s-50s - The world was loaded with oppressive class structures, traditionalist normative beliefs and post-conflict self interest, right? It didn't happen over night, it happened over years across a generation. Some people may not have liked the values that mainstream society was taking, but it was just a talking point until enough people reached the threshold where the discomfort of present society was worse than the discomfort of taking action. Eventually there was a rebound, this too took time, but it seems human nature to diagnose a problem and then embrace the treatment as an ideology:
World too unstable? Live to make money and babies!
World too square? Live for peace!
World too touchy feely? Live for cocaine!
World too obnoxious? Live for pluralism!
World too complicated? Live for yourself!
World think you're selfish? Make them live like you, or kill them trying!

..aaanyway, what I mean to say is that most shifts in mainstream ideology gain so much momentum that they overshoot their desired society and the usual reaction is that the dislodged social forces (that lose out from the original movement) rebalance by overcompensating in the other direction.

These things come in decades-long waves, this is why I keep saying that I wish I was born in the 40s. :)

[littlejenmc]

You're right... I just wish that it did not have to be that way. Why does there have to be such a selfsish level of extreme suffering before we're knee-jerked into systemic change to re-balance the equilibrium? Surely we can the likely results of these actions before they take place.. and maybe prevent our own path of destruction before we've tipped the scales so far in the direction of desperately needing change that we create some kind ad-hoc solution that addresses that problem only long enough to create many more down the track (see your above list of examples)!

What's lacking is foresight and community-level thinking. If we could only get our head around these two concepts in our decision making and conceptualising then I think the world would be a different place.

I know that if Howard's Industrial Relations changes succeed in destroying unions that conditions will become so shocking and the minimum wage so low that unions will at some stage form again. But why do we have to get to that level of suffering first? Surely if at this stage we could see the likely long-term results of this policy in undermining and eroding working conditions, and could understand that we are so much stronger together - workers rights are shared rights yadda yadda - and that on our own we can never achieve justice or bargaining power - surely if everyone could see this (as some of us can) then these kind of decisions would not be made, and these kind of problems that tip the equilibrium could be avoided, and then there would be no need to dramatically push it back.

There are so many problems running concurrently though... and yet they all share a common back-bone. If there needs to be a fundamental shift it needs to happen on all fronts at once... and it needs to be well-thought and sustainable, so as not to tip the scales in the other direction.

Viva la revolution!

So yeah, lets start with jervis bay!

[littlejenmc]

I hear you bro...

Maybe the answer is to only talk to like-minded, disillusioned individuals like ourselves... But then the situation would never get any better...

Ah, I don't know! *hugs*