Buff!

The papers all carried photos of the bodyguard whisking Gillard away from angry Aboriginals and professional protesters.* Security must have thought all their Christmases had come at once. All those hours spent twiddling their thumbs, pretending to watch out for psychos while Gillard delivered some shit boring speech about economy acceleration and hardworking Australians. This was their moment to shine. All it took was the word ‘threat’ for them to spring into action. It was like the West Wing.

The bodyguard was buff and hot. He shielded her with his body, like they do in movies. You have to be ready to die for the president, to take a bullet for her. Morning breakfast shows played Whitney Houston’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ over the footage of Gillard being saved. She was so vulnerable that she lost her shoe, just like Cinderella. So visibly frightened.** Tony, of course, could take care of himself.

*Those who weren’t proper black are not, according to Andrew Bolt’s definition, Aboriginal – they are assumed to be ‘professional protesters’.

**Even though minutes beforehand she had seemed cool as anything about the protest, even playing the statesman in front of Channel 9 by getting them to save Tony Abbott. It couldn’t possibly have been the security guards’ over-the-top manhandling that disturbed her, or made her perceive the situation as more threatening than it was?

Three tales

Wouldn’t have wasted my time

It was a party with a bunch of my old school friends and related folk. As well as being completely babe-a-licious, many of these girls are sharply sexy dressers. I started comparing myself to them. This cotton flower dress you’re wearing, the one that you thought was sweet…it’s actually dowdy. I wondered what they might be thinking about me. Why is she still wearing that daggy peasant shit? She could do more with* –

But I then had this vision of myself growing old: wrinkles, spots, a stoop. I imagined approaching the end of my life, looking back on this little moment, and realising how unnecessary it was. That those were pretty much my last days of being classed as a young person and supposedly in my physical prime, but I couldn’t just enjoy it – all I could think about was my small imperfections in comparison to others. That if I’d understood then how quickly beauty fades, and death comes round, I wouldn’t have wasted my time.

Not so perfect after all, are you?

We were at this excellent Laksa restaurant. This couple came in; they looked like architects or town planners. Him: a cosmopolitan Tibetan guy with a classy shirt and suit pants and his hair in a pony tail. Her: cool and classy, with little ballet slippers on. They seemed the perfect urbane couple. You could imagine their apartment; minimalist, with really nice silverware and a few classy decorations. A very calm place.

They sat down. I was checking them out. Then realised they weren’t really talking. They were just staring at each other. I don’t know whether they were just naturally subdued like that, or they were having relationship issues. But I was pretty certain they were unhappy. It looked like a very uncomfortable dinner. I then realised that I got some kind of satisfaction out of their dysfunction. I was thinking, ‘Not so perfect after all, are you?’

That’s ironic, isn’t it?

Today on Australia Day, my friend and I both injured ourselves on Metro Trains. We had our bikes and took them up the back to the reserved seats, as there weren’t many elderly and disabled people around. They were those flip seats, the ones you have to press down before you sit on them.

An older man came over, hobbling with a cane, wearing a classy hat, and carrying a Melbourne University diary. We realised that my bike was in the way, so moved it to the other side of the carriage with my friends’ bikes.

He looked a bit frail so I held the seat down for him while he sat down. It was slightly awkward, and I’m not sure whether it was a bit patronising, but the seats are hard to get down. He said something to us like, ‘Worked it out now have you?’ I couldn’t discern his tone.

My friend got up to get some sunscreen from her bag, but I said she could have some of mine. Forgetting that the seats flip up when you get up, she tried to sit down again and landed arse-end on the floor. Not hurt at all, she started laughing.

Then the train moved the older man’s bag forward, and he reached to get it. I went to help him but he told me he was OK. I sat back down on my seat, rushing at my effort not to patronise him.

My seat had flipped up so of course I had exactly the same accident as my friend, except I actually banged my shoulder and hip really hard, so it took me a few minutes to see the funny side. Once I got over my pain, the older guy started chuckling too. ‘That’s ironic, isn’t it?’ he said.

Interesting that those seats are supposed to be for the elderly and disabled and yet us able bodied can’t even use them without hurting ourselves. Maybe we are just extraordinarily clumsy! The seats are actually a bit stiff to push down though, which can’t be easy if you’re frail.

In defence of amateur ignorance

A review of Andrew Abbott’s ‘Varieties of Ignorance’ (Am Soc (2010) 41: 172–189, if that means anything to you)

This is an academic article by Andrew Abbott. His tone is a  bit pompous and like much academic stuff, the prose is slightly turgid, but there’s food for thought there. It came to hand from a friend who is an academic and talks about all the interesting things he’s read, so lately I’ve been pressing him to send me articles, which I nearly always have to make myself read because they’re so stiffly written, but so far it’s always been worth it.

Abbott’s field of study is the history of professions. His shtick is that the structure of professions is determined simply by their need for jurisdictional control, rather than by particular traits. In other words, ‘the problems handled by professions – health, disputes, monies*– do not have any symbolic shape.’ The professions culturally constitute the problems they claim to address, and they then create a structure that guarantees legitimacy before the public.

But Abbott’s field of study is only incidental to his real topic: ignorance.  In Abbott’s view there are three types of ignorance: amateur ignorance, professional ignorance, and expert ignorance.

AMATEUR IGNORANCE

Abbott starts by analysing Wikipedia’s article on professions, and the associated discussion page. Both, in his view, are ‘fundamentally ignorant…they are not only ignorant of the state of the art in the scholarly literature, they are also largely unaware of the scholarly literature altogether.’

His comments on the talk page are disdainful, if interested. It ‘resembles nothing so much as a dinner chat in a university dining hall. It is a melange of mixed agendas, unstated moral positions, sharp – even contemptuous – assertions of (usually erroneous) authority, and vastly different levels of actual knowledge, all sustained by a kind of youthful energy and a noble but naïve faith.’

You get the sense Abbott doesn’t have a particularly high opinion of undergraduates.

But what really gets me is when he says: ‘one has the sense that this group of people is more committed to having the debate than finding a conclusion – another hallmark of graduate thinking.’

But the sense that there’s always a conclusion to be found, or that you always have to be looking for one, seems a bit positivistic to me. And some of the best conversations I’ve had have been when we really are just throwing ideas around; not necessarily looking for a ‘conclusion.’ I believe enquiry in itself is of value. That said, I’m sure Abbott’s definition of a ‘conclusion’ is more nuanced than I’m giving him credit for.

Abbott labels the Wikipedians as possessing ‘amateur ignorance’: they know facts about professions, but they are ‘ignorant of modes for evaluating those facts and then on setting them and the literature into an order that will stand against the onslaughts of new facts and literature.’

I can appreciate where Abbott’s coming from. After all, he’s spent his life studying this, given it deep thought and analysis, and then he has to watch people argue round and round about it on the internet. Maybe it’s like a doctor watching people argue about whether sunburn causes skin cancer.

But amateur is really important. People shouldn’t be discouraged from seeking knowledge about stuff just because they don’t have the tools to use an online research database (and no Abbott, it is not that easy to find what you’re looking for). That just favours the privileged; those who have the time and money to study or discover the ‘literature.’ Plus, the truth is highly subjective; why should people not be encouraged to find it out for themselves? Experiential forms of learning are not given enough credit.

Maybe I’m just defensive because being amateur is kind of what I’m good at.

PROFESSIONAL IGNORANCE

Abbott talks about the substantial numbers of academics – and this is quite interesting – the amount of academics that have cited his book on professions unnecessarily or trivially (for example to justify some very general assertion), or wrongly. Some people cited his article for empirical analyses that were not central to it, but were easier to find in his book. I can remember doing that as an academic!

So some academics are citing articles without reading them properly, to give themselves legitimacy (and perhaps flatter academic colleagues)? I wonder what kind of pressures the internet has created for them to pump out work more quickly and rack up their publication tally – and how that’s impacting on the quality of their deep thinking. After all, if we care about anyone’s deep thinking, surely it’s academics.

EXPERT IGNORANCE

This is the one that Abbott dobs himself in for, and to me the most fascinating. It is when you earnestly dive deep into facts, patterns, theories. You emerge with a theory. From that point, it is difficult to think of the other facts, patterns and theories except in light of that conclusion. He also calls it ‘synthetic ignorance’, because it arises from a synthesis that can obscure complexities.

It occurs to me that the process that Abbott describes is even worse when the person’s not even on any genuine sort of truth seeking mission, ie they start with a theory and they look for the facts and patterns to prove it. In political life this is super common, probably quite so in personal life too.

In my view, expert ignorance – ie the creation of some kind of meta-truth which obscures the disorderly, and often inconsistent, texture and colour of situations – is why Abbott’s supposed amateur ignorance is so important. Debating around a subject, going round and round in circles, sometimes that actually helps you understand a situation, without coming to a conclusion.

Abbott acknowledges that ‘synthetic ignorance is in many ways the reverse of amateur ignorance’. So maybe he is talking about two extremes of a pole, and anticipates a happy medium.

He also acknowledge that expert ignorance is the most dangerous, ‘for it makes us unable to see the new…Always, we are only beginning to think.’

That last line is my favourite.

*err monies? See – turgid prose! That said, I’ve seen seen way worse, academia wise.

Thoughts on the Herald Sun: part 1

It feels like a well-planned journey of outrage, lust and fear. You could almost graph out the emotions page-by-page: you’d probably see similar patterns depending on the day of the week. Stories of stabbings, gang murders, politicians stealing specified amounts from ‘Victorians pockets’, tax slugs, power bill slugs (preferably accompanied by pictures of bosoms), bullies, paedophiles, hoons, boat people, foreign buy outs, rogues from the country with too many guns, prostitutes hanging out in (gasp) drab grey T-shirts, old people getting bashed.  Anything that might harm Victorians’ families, kids, or income.

Just when your hatred of humanity threatens to overwhelm you, there’s a reassuringly hot blonde accompanying the ubiquitous tale of our ‘sizzling summer’. And at least one cute animal story (the miniature donkey last week was a highlight – if you think cute dogs are a good chick/man magnet, imagine taking that one down Lygon Street!) Interestingly, the Herald Sun does way more animal cruelty stories than The Age, with a preference for abuse inflicted on pets or native animals.

Readers can enjoy the violence, betrayal and lechery without ever getting their hands dirty, and at the same time, relish their righteous indignance. The Herald Sun quite obviously strives to reassure you that, as its reader, you are the good people, part of a community with shared values: honest, down-to-earth, hardworking, with a sort of varmint/mischievous sense of humour but also the ability to agree on when a joke has gone too far (cancer). Also: intolerant of disorder, impatient with complexity, and fed up with bullshit.

I’m not sure whether I’m a target reader. I rarely pay for the paper, but I do read it online. Stabbings, gang violence, tax slugs, bill slugs don’t concern me. But then, maybe they don’t concern the other readers as much either. Maybe they just read the paper for a bit of gossip and outrage. After all, surely one thing that every salt-of-the-earth Australian is supposed to know is that the media isn’t to be trusted?

With some exceptions (like banning makeup and cool hairdos for Victoria Police – do we want them to feel like psychos or normal people?), I’m not usually outraged at the stories themselves, but the way the paper has covered them. That said, I appreciate the Herald Sun as a cultural artefact in itself, find it fascinating. I probably also enjoy some kind of morbid voyeuristic satiation from their sordid stories. Lately though, some of them have left me with a bit of a sick feeling in my stomach. More to come…

Mental process when other cyclists (and especially men) overtake me

Rush of blood to head, aggressive thoughts.

Whaat… how dare you?! I’m actually quite fast you know. I’m just choosing to go slow. Well maybe I’ll just show you how fast I am!

Faint echo of self-chastising thoughts
why are you being so pathetic? just go at your own pace!  
quickly extinguished by a potent mix of adrenaline and something like testosterone

Then: speed up, but by all means do not show them your panting and sweating.

It must look effortless.

Ant movements

I have this clear memory of being in a lecture at uni and having this vision of the earth zoomed out, with humans moving around in repetitive, pre-determined patterns, a little bit like ant movements. Teeming humans. I understand what it means intuitively, but can’t really articulate it. It’s something about the limits of our understanding and ability to effect change on the world.

I often get that feeling when I have to ingest a lot of factual information about something, or even analyse a concept. Humans trying to understand and critique human systems of thought and behaviour, using brains that are so unavoidably shaped by the same systems of thought and behaviour. Err…it’s a bit bias. We think we’re a lot smarter than we actually are, or can be.

One of the most crude examples was in Year 10 science when we learned about the stupidity hierarchy of animals – small unexciting sea creatures, insects, dogs, apes, humans (in rough and almost certainly inaccurately remembered order). The intelligence level was determined by their similarity to humans. It doesn’t even pretend to be an objective measure.

I read this fantastic essay by Zadie Smith about David Foster Wallace. I like her non-fiction so much better than her fiction. She talks about ‘Forever Ahead’, one of his stories in Brief Interviews. A boy is at an old public pool resolving to try the diving tank for the first time. He is queuing for the ladder, and watching the woman in front of him dive in:

Smith: “The difference is awareness (this is always the difference in Wallace). The boy seems to see clearly what we, all those years ago, felt only faintly. He seems that ‘the pool is a system of movement’, in which experience is systematized (‘There is a rhythm to it. Like breathing. Like a machine’)…”

Smith, quoting an excerpt from DFW’s story: “Listen. It does not seem good, the way she disappears into a time that passes before she sounds. Like a stone down a well. But you think she did not think so. She was part of a rhythm that excludes thinking. And now you have made yourself part of it too. The rhythm seems blind. Like ants. Like a machine.”

There’s a lot more to Smith’s essay than fear of automatism. But I’ll leave you to read it, and the short story too.

Moments like finding that essay remind me how much I love reading. You think that there’s almost nothing that nobody else has thought about, but there’s almost always someone whose much further along in their thinking than you. It’s hit and miss finding them though.

I don’t know if there’s any intrinsic value to working these conundrums out yourself; it may be a bit overrated.

Hot or not? The Casino fire torches

Got a shock at Southbank on Monday night when the Casino’s fire torches flared up, roaring and blasting heat onto my face. It was already a stinking hot night and from what I understand, Melbourne was under a total fire ban. The Casino must have had a permit, as the New Year’s fireworks did. The torches are an odd symbol in a state beset by bushfires and trying to cut down on its carbon emissions. Apparently they’ve been around for over a decade. What do you think? Hot or not?

I’m not sure why the torches offended me. Maybe because they seem to represent what I hate about the casino: its aggressive promise of glitz, glamour and excitement, and the deliberately contrived atmosphere: safe, sterile and airless; designed to get your head into a space where problem gambling addictions can breed uninterrupted by pesky thoughts about how you’ve just spent beyond your means, or that your family’s worrying about you, or that you’re not, in truth, having that much fun.

Obviously not all Casino experiences are like that, and some people actually enjoy themselves.

Suburbia bashing and righteousness

A friend pointed out, in a potentially confronting but affectionate reality check, that I’m the prototype of the inner city dweller who looks down on the suburban way of life. You know, that snobby latte sipper who’s said to rain on the parade of everyday Australian suburbanites whenever powerful interests groups want to build a freeway on behalf of said suburbanites?

My friend’s comment was probably justified by a car trip in which me and another friend pulled the shit out of the Glenwaverly to Keysborough stretch of Springvale Road: a tavern advertising Manpower’s imminent visit, homogenous brick houses, ridiculous numbers of chain takeway joints, caravan sale depots, and the Lighthouse Christian church (nothing wrong with religion, just the name – so cheesy).

Anyway, I ended up sheepishly admitting that I suffered from under an unexamined and patronising delusion: life in the city is better than in the suburbs, and if people in the suburbs think they’re happy, then they’re living under some kind of false consciousness. Based on the assumption that everyone likes everything I like, and if they don’t, they should.

Things that I like:

• walking around and seeing different types of landscapes, like crowded strip shop areas with lots of local shops and different types of buildings or houses
• green spaces and rivers
• sharing space with others on public transport (so I can people watch and read my book)
• the physicality and street-life observations of riding a bike
• not having to drive a car, which makes me feel like an automaton

Assumption:

• No outer suburbs have the characteristics listed above.

(but what about, for example, Eltham and Sunbury? I could probably tell you others, if I didn’t know so little about the suburbs that I so joyfully write off).

Logical conclusion to my patronising assumptions: if inner city living was more affordable, most people would move from the suburbs; that if public transport was more accessible, comfortable and convenient, most people would catch public transport.

Reality: I’m not sure. Some aspects of ‘liveability’ and ‘amenity’* are no doubt universal – not having to travel too far to work, or having a park to walk around in. Maybe some of the other things I like are too. If there’s any research out there about it, I’d love to see it. I just don’t have time to find it…

But I’m sure some people don’t want to live right next to other people; they want to have a big backyard for their kids to play in, to build that verandah. Some people actually like driving. Maybe they like the privacy. I hate the privacy. I feel like we have too much privacy. The lack of social interaction and diverse external stimuli is bland and uninspiring.

I’m starting to hate cars, but in a mundanely righteous sort of way. I don’t like their noise, and because I’m often riding my bike, I really see them as a danger. Sometimes I judge car drivers, if they have an easily available option to walk or catch public transport and choose to drive instead.

I’m going to try to stop doing this, because it’s completely stupid. One of my criteria for judgement is environmental, but I do all sorts of things that I know are un-environmental, like sometimes going on two overseas trips a year. I really only ride my bike because it’s easy and I like doing it better. But that’s why people drive their cars too.

A few other things:

Turns out there’s a whole Wikipedia entry on suburbia bashing, ‘a negative discourse about Australia suburbia that is relatively prominent in Australia’.

My friends started the Suburbanauts, a blog about exploring life in the Melbourne’s suburbs, specifically, shopping strips (i.e. not malls, but little shop clusters). They are the kind of people who have lots of interesting ideas but don’t share them with enough people.

*Ironically both words purport to describe a state which most people want, yet are bureaucratic or academic jargon to people who are not bureaucrats or academics. Could this be a problem with government and policy more generally when they seek to ‘engage’ the ‘stakeholders’?