The Looking Glass

Looking at it dispassionately, racism makes sense if one comes from a historically white country like The United Kingdom or any other European nation, having immigration forced onto them they have every right to be aggrieved.

As do the Indigenous inhabitants of the country called Australia.

It’s all very nice imagining that we are all this brotherhood of man or persons but the reality is that we are different.

The analogy I would use is that gazelles would not immigrate to an area of a pride of lions furnished with a list of demands, welcomed to the pride and expect not to get eaten, so what makes human beings different?

You see racism in the countries mentioned has a logical root.

For better or worse you cannot dictate what others may think in that scenario and the only way to staunch the wound is to have a referendum, throw it back to the will of the people and then move on.

In Australia however the tragedy is that the whites far outnumber the original Indigenous inhabitants and nations and created, from just two hundred plus years an apartheid mythology of delusion.

Deluded to the fact that the Indigenous people and nations have been here for over sixty thousand years and are still here.

Deluded to the fact that Australia’s wealth is plundered for just over two hundred years from the Indigenous peoples land sea and resources.

One of my recollections from a brief foray into tertiary education was this,

a fellow student when asked if white Australia should recompense the Indigenous people and nations for past abuses by white Australia he said something like why?, we had nothing to do with it!, I was so taken aback words failed me.

This from a otherwise supposedly intelligent student who from everything that he was and wore came from a subjugation and exploitation of Indigenous peoples,nations and resources.

Australia is a result of the white Australian exploitation of the Indigenous peoples,nations and resources and white Australian racism is not rooted in reality, rather a fiction that they actually fervently believe is real.

Probably why there are so many white ex South Africans moving here.

For want of a better word, a follower, having never had one before a validation of sorts, a release as if the cares of the day had suddenly fallen from about him like a dark heavy cloak to the floor. Another human being from halfway around the globe, a far off land with different customs,traditions and languages.

Life where he was was quite a simple one, if prosaic and mind numbing,interspersed by the tranquilizing effect of a mood before happiness.

The television didn’t reach him only the Australian Broadcasting Corporations channel twenty four news service was of interest, which he watched for hours on end in between cups of sweetened coffee,food and cigarettes on the balcony.

Sure he had the Chromecast dongle on his gifted flat screened television and could Youtube to his hearts content but it just seemed pointless, it reminded him of a Michael Leunig cartoon where a father and his child were watching the sunrise on television while next to them the sun was rising outside the window.

It was like that with the news on channel twenty four where it almost seemed that all of it was coming from some parallel universe, it actually meant nothing to him except the cuts to welfare, essentially meaningless a rather poor reflection of life.

He recalled the memory of people on the bus, almost all of them looking at their smart phones, he had one but preferred to look out the window at the streets,buildings and people going by, even the clouds,sun or a jet plane passing overhead.

Maybe they were watching the sun rise.

Wraith like boredom, the bane of my life but it’s how you deal with it that is important.

A tactic is to accept that you are bored as frustration only worsens the affliction and expends too much energy.

With all this interest around paleo diets it would be illuminating if we could go into the mind of paleolithic peoples and see what they thought when they weren’t hunting or eating seeds,nuts,edible foliage and meat.

I’d imagine they had traditions, rituals and pursuits to pass the time.

They got bored too.

I hazard to say that the inability to deal with and accept boredom is an impediment that is more apparent in these ‘modern’ times especially in the young.

My opinion is that we are not meant to be continually aroused the majority of our waking times for I feel that the subconscious imputation is to continually seek sensation.

This sensation seeking addiction or reward loop can I think manifest in a short attention span, probably why reading books is falling by the wayside.

Then to insidiously indoctrinate the rest of us social media is now pushing stories and ‘politically correct’ views into the mainstream media so basically the news is what netizens deem interesting and acceptable.

Conformity of opinion courtesy of the online world…

I’m glad I got bored today and accepted it, these words may mean nothing to you but they are part of my little victory for the day…yay!

It’s a Sunday morning here in Brisbane, Australia, I’ve just had my coffee, breakfast, cigarettes and read the paper.

The day ahead will be predictable, like all the others before it.

Better predictable than unbound chaos, predictability is a good place , foundation to think and grow even if the boredom can overcome you at the most inopportune of times.

It’s funny , there are billions of opinions on social media and the internet and here I am thinking anyone will be interested enough to read this.

I guess everything has become emotive and divisive click bait , people are so caught up in the emotion of an issue that it clouds up their logic.

-And the turtle meanders on, having been lapped by the hare a dozen times or so…

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.

— Oscar Wilde.