Class Trip

Something in the political wind is making me real itchy.  

I've been watching general sentiment sweeping the international political landscape and particularly, I've been watching Michael Moore and the Madison Movement.

For anyone that is not familiar with this, you might want to visit www.michaelmoore.com and read up. Right now in Wisconsin, there are hundreds of thousands of people protesting against what is happening in America, to their economy, to job conditions, to education and to the very notion of what it means to be living in a democracy.

The fight is to prevent the continuation of what they see as the Corporate States of America. There is a lot of anger at the Corporatocracy and in particular, 400 people that MM has identified as being so obscenely wealthy that they possess amongst them more money than the rest of all Americans combined.

It's probably a fact. And it's a deplorable one. Marx said (and I believe) that capitalism will eventually eat itself and this will happen when and only when people wake up to the fact they are being exploited. We've been sold freedom in the form of consumerism and sold globalism on the basis that our need to consume will be propped up by developing nations all too willing to produce.

It's just not sustainable. I know this and yet, still with the itching because class politics gives me damn hives.

MM may point the finger at the Uber 400 and damn straight yet where does the moral outrage at the wealthy end? 


In the USA, the UK, Europe, here in Australia and across much of the West there is so much anger and when there is this much anger, it is easy for those in power to divert us against ourselves.

For those that have nothing, everyone that has something more is fair game and so the very poorest are turned against the have somethings, the have somethings are fired up against the havemores, the havemores are pissed about the havealots and the havealots feel, like everyone else that precedes them, that they earned what they have and don't want to be lumped in with the Ubers.

I came from nothing. I was a public school kid. I was a single mum. I had jobs and lost jobs and was self employed. I struggled. Now I have a nice house, a nice car. My kids go to good schools. I pay high tax rates, private health insurance. I cover my own so that the Government can cover those who can't. But with so much anger, who cares about where folks started if all that matters is how much they have now?

There. I've said it. I'm worried that my status amongst the borgeois champagne drinking, McMansion living suburb dwellers is under threat because of the winds of anger that continue to prevail following the GFC.

Feeling those winds shifting toward a change they don't like, the pollies are dragging out the oldest trick in the book and even MM is part of this machinery whether he realises it or not - because we all need to watch the birdie instead of focusing on the role of Governments in creating the GFC in the first place. And the birdie they want us to watch is 'those rich people'. 

"Those rich people" whose kids go to private schools, or that live in big houses or drive nice cars.

It is apparently All Our Fault. Everything. Job losses. Cutbacks. Petrol prices. Food pricing. You name it.

This morning I heard a NSW Labor representative on ABC 702 Sydney, saying that NO state funding should go to private schools.

Once upon a time I used to agree. Now I can't help but ask myself why the Labour Govt in NSW thinks that the State does not have a responsibility to and vested interest in the education of EVERY school kid based simply on their economic class? Will my kids not be jobseekers, will they not be future tax payers? Do children that go to private schools where their parents pay fees not create classroom space in the public system for other kids?

If you earn above a certain amount you are told it's your civic duty to pay for yourself in order to relieve the state of costs, so that money can be fairly distributed amongst those that have less. You are told this is the same reason why you should pay more tax than anyone else. So you cover health care and dentists, you pay for private schools and everywhere you turn there is another user pays argument being made. You're afforded little protection in the employment system and less if you work for yourself.

And yet when the pollies want a soft target to divert attention away from what the issues really are, let's go poke the $100,000 bear. This seems to be the magic number above which you earn some kind of scorn from 'real Australians' - including Julia Gillard who, during her maiden press speech, described who she barracks for amongst the 'real' Australians. As a white collar worker and a writer, I apparently do not count amongst them.  

The seeds of indignation are sown, waiting to be reaped by those that would ensure our attentions are so focused on envying our neighbours that we'll forget about focusing on them.

Yet where are the frameworks for something new? 

With what will we replace a broken model of democracy? How can we incorporate the social ideals that we need to house a new set of global priorities? How can we express the desire to work along side others in relative equality without abdicating our preferences for advancement based on individual merits?

Over five years ago, I worked on a concept with my old boss around the notion that Cold War language  constrains our thinking about what is possible in terms of our social, political and economic structures and must be replaced. The fact is the communism, socialism and yes, even democracy have little currency any more, because all systems have been shown to be desperately flawed. We wanted to develop a language that would form the basis of ideals more in step with Gen Y and harking back to some of the Brown Rice and Free Love spirit of the 70's.

Our new lexicon was Socialitics, Environomics and Communeconomy.

Loosely, Socialitics expressed the idea that was so brilliant embodied by the Live8 concerts, where the expressed public will of people from multiple nations acting in accord and unison, directly guides the creation of policy, wherein that policy will impacts the lives of those in many nations.

Environomics - this was not a word that even existed based on our searches at the time.  Environomics provides for progress and development wherein the ability to show a positive outcome for the environment as the first, guiding and constant principle must be upheld.

Communeconomy - Wherein it is not an evil to strive toward individual achievement or financial gain, but wherein the incentives are in place to share of resources, ideas, tools and skills freely to others on the basis that should they successfully commercialise, market, increase the trade on or otherwise gain additional value from what was given to them freely, then they will return a proportion of the gain back to the person or entity that assisted them. This is a common practice amongst the open source technology community and I believe it has many applications in business and life.

So I have the heart of a political radical. I feel pretty certain that everything must stop being the way it is and it is time for things to be different.

But here I am - scratching scratching scratching.

While we need a revolution and there is surely that whisper in the wind, the fact is that those most likely to revolt with the most fervour are those that feel they have nothing and have been cheated by 'the system'. To them, every one that has achieved what they have not is part of that system and before you know it, there are a lot of heads in chopping blocks that did nothing wrong, except for having some modicum of success at all.

May balanced heads prevail here and abroad until we can find a new language and new frameworks to share that will unite, advance and progress our consciousness entirely, beyond the dollar, beyond possessing and having and into a shared will toward creating and belonging.