"What does it say of a nation - what does it say to a nation - when in a time of austerity, of slashing of essential public services, that $1 billion of Australian taxpayers' money - our money - is being spent annually to persecute, damage and sometimes destroy the lives of people of whom between 80 and 95% are finally proven to be genuine refugees? That is to hurt the most powerless and helpless and deserving of help and kindness. It shames us a nation that claims to be both humane and generous, it belittles us as a people, and none of it will deter the wretched of the earth, forced to choose between despair and hope, from continuing to choose hope" - Richard Flanaganhttp://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bookshow/richard-flanagan-on-the-decline-of-love-and-freedom/3583396#comments
I'm rather taken by the work of Carl Jung. He's the one behind the Myers Briggs Indicator you've probably taken at some point. He coined the idea of the collective consciosness, and of the shadow side of a personality - the place where we repress and suppress those things which we cannot consciously integrate or handle. What lies out on Australia's shadow side - a country founded only a couple of hundred years ago on genocide and displacement of a people? What happens if we cannot bear to think too much about that element of our history? Does it transfer itself into paranoia that what hunted will now be hunted?
So much media space has been taken up in this country in recent years on both sides of the political spectrum fearmongering about the boat people. Terrified we'll be overrun by the boat people, the boat people - the same people who make up just a blip on the radar of people who arrive on our shores every year. Because of a politically-fostered myth that just continues to be perpetuated because of the stain in our psyche and the bloodstained earth, the politicians of our country persist in punishing the most vulnerable who arrive here. How much longer do we put up with it?
They are the 99%
 |
| Valoracion by Alfonso Maggiolo Peirano |
a refugee from Maribyrnong detention Centre was brought into the emergency dept where I happened to be working last week who had swallowed razor blades. Accompanied at all times by three strapping security guards from the detention centre. (Privately run of course)
ReplyDeleteJust painful reading, Sue. Humanity is hurt by this - we demean ourselves with such behaviour. Most of those folks just want a chance to make a life for themselves in a supposedly free society. Just at the moment, I feel ill. Time to evolve, humanity.
ReplyDeleteOh, that's so wrong and so depressing in so many different ways :( I dunno, sometimes I wonder how we can just sit back and let this happen. I think about how in 50 years people will look back now and wonder at those people who would allow this whole thing to go on :(
ReplyDeleteIt is time to evolve, Harry. This is demeaning to all.
ReplyDeleteWhile I don't completely grasp what is going on with the boat people...I hate what we do to the Mexicans here. So much argument about whether or not they should be allowed to work, go to school, use services here, if they are "undocumented". They aren't asylum seekers, but they might as well be. And, everything else aside, they are human.
ReplyDeleteYeah, there's so much fear about "the others" - the enemy, the ones not like us, the ones we have to think twice about to factor them into our conception of human - coming in and ruining our lifestyle. Fuck.
ReplyDeleteThat felt good saying that. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
ReplyDeleteI hate that we are so inclined to judge people. I have this in an ongoing argument with people around me...the question of who, exactly, should be allowed the same rights as I (or you) have, and who gets to decide? To me, it's not a very complicated question, but to so many people it's so multifaceted with "but but but".
ReplyDeleteMe too. I was reading someone yesterday talking about how in a broad sense the net of who is included as "us" is becoming wider and wider. I suppose there is a negative to that with political correctness etc but I've been pondering it ever since. I think on a very broad scale they may perhaps be right.
ReplyDelete(Which may sound like I'm completely contradicting what you were just saying. But while I think there is still so much injustice, it seems that it's becoming much more commonplace to protest against it. But I don't know if I'm making any sense by saying this or not :)
ReplyDeleteI get you. Like you say, the 99%. It's all about becoming more aware, but also being willing to actually DO something about it. I hate, though, that modern society (well, really, all society throughout history has had an "us" vs. "them" thing, but my context is modern) we always have social permission to sort people into hierarchical categories...categories that either don't make any sense, or don't even technically exist (such as race).
ReplyDeleteMy teenage son brought home some test scores today...this is a big college-aptitude test...and he scored in the 92nd percentile. He told me that means that he's smarter than that many kids. Well, notwithstanding that he presents both ethnic and gender privilege (which has a lot to do with that percentile) -- I asked him if he had any idea how many kids who took that test were at a disadvantage because of their non-native understanding of the English language. He said he didn't know. I said, so it doesn't mean that they aren't smart, only that the test was administered in their non-native language.
End ramble.