The sword is pointier than the pen

I’m worried that we so-called left-leaning

(please explain that to me and I am one)

will turn to transcendental aesthetics

instead of grouping into clear strategic

formations to move the political landscape.

It’s distasteful,

I know and goes against exactly what

makes artists and creative thinkers

as they are.

But.

Some sadness and disconsolation causes us to retreat,

head into the sand of art

and the meditative recreations

of music and literature

to lick the wounds

inflicted (by lazy minds)

on good taste, reasonableness, compassion and forward-thinking.

There.

This is my ‘we should probably think about getting together and talking

about our options for how we should

consider ways to

fight them on the beaches’.

I’m satirising myself and serious.

Basic Social Influence

‘Basic social influence is underestimated’ (Cialdini).

It turns out that
descriptive normative phrases—like
‘the majority of your neighbours are…’—
greatly, GREATLY
influence your decision to do something.
The only message that
significantly determines
what we choose to do
is the message
that other people
are doing it.
Surely that has some dramatic relevance
to the constant reporting
on which way
the nation is voting!
So here’s a seed of influence to try to sway the herd:

There are people in your street
with humanity, reason and a civic conscience
who will be voting Green this election.

Report that.

Radio *waves*

From my Australian kitchen

I think

 

the media undermined the work

that was actually done

at the level of negotiation

in the last 3 years

of minority govt

by craving

sexy

stories.

The media fuelled

the crazed ambitions of personality

and ignored

quiet industry—

Piaget’s positive creation

as opposed to inferiority

its converse—

And by not valuing

quiet legislative work

that promoted deep conversation

at the governance level,

being undertaken by those

that were voted in to do

exactly that, to govern.

This is a new era of relationship

(that includes all, how chaotic, right?)

and is too complex for

the now narrow narrative of ‘news’.

 

That’s right; throw back that tequila shot,

Mummy Media,

and step away from our democracy.

I per Form

This I have heard from ‘the media’ all week,
that it’s a race to prove ‘authenticity’
(of two candidates only, mind you).
You had a Prime Minister with authenticity
and you vilified her.
Dear Media: you suck! And your mind is small.

I haven’t finished:
You keep
Retelling your reportage,
Around the reaction and
the environment around
your
own
reports:
It’s a very small
bubble
in which you exist.
You are not as you should be
the conduit
between Untouchable politics,
which, in this era, is supremely
touchable Online, and the public:
I say
you are forgetting
me. I am Connected
To politics and its players
closer to me than you,
in this Environment
who journal the news, you are actors
in a play, cranky
because suddenly
Everyone is allowed and aloud
on stage and there’s too much bloody improvising going on! Stick to the script, the People!
you say.

Sock Puppet Zucchinis

Destroy the Joint posted

About whether we should care

That smart women aren’t having children.

And I made my comment,

Which you can see below

That there may be a question

As ‘for whom’.

And then, I responded

to Zucchinis InPajimis,

Who I contend was a fairly fake facebooker,

With the question of whether

The prosy name Sock Puppet

Was too obvious a name to name themselves.

Then, as you can see below,

Sue Wilson suggested

That I was not being socially very ‘nice’:

Well I deleted my suggestion.

But then I thought about it

And sent a direct message to Sue

(who I assume is a real person)

Actually, Sue,

I’ve had a think about it: you shut me down.

And, frankly, I’m tired of having public conversations

That are peppered with fake fb pages that

Are constructed for the purpose

Of skewing a collective.

There are, indeed, sock puppets that serve

People who are too scared to name themselves

And I intend to nominate them when I think

I’m in the room with one,

And when it is ‘affecting my time in the house’.

Thanks for your social concern

Over the ‘niceties of public discourse’.

Narrative Schmarrative

This is my response to a comment directed at me on a public fb forum

about ‘the fact’ that ‘everything is narrative’

and the implication that I was an idiot for not thinking it so.

 

Narrative is a mechanism that individuals use

to make sense of their world, all that

chaotic external information.

There is no social narrative

until a group of people

start to

tell one,

and for one subset of people

to tell a collective story,

well, that requires collusion.

A cartel agreement.

Social narrative is the well-worn

path you are walking and you

are getting anxious because online

networks and online public spheres

are showing you that the path you walk is not the landscape,

for here you are seeing

just how vast and complex that landscape is.

There are so many more of us here

in the landscape, us

who have been discourage and actively fought off

from walking ‘the narrative’.

So, no, I believe narrative is not ‘our’ naturally occurring state.

[It will be obvious from my stand, however, that I believe conceptual

metaphor to be far more inherent, perhaps natural, than narrative].

What is this?!

This is a SOAPBOX category page.

Imagine, if you will, that you’re taking a stroll through Sydney’s Domain

on your way to the Botanic Gardens or the Art Gallery of NSW

and here I am performing a soapbox oratory.

It’s likely you’ll find me riffing on political topics and issues of citizenry.

This page is not open for public comment

and if you want to respond to anything I say here, by all means,

put a link to it from your own soapbox page.

My platform is basic citizenship, equity and social responsibility.

Mostly, these posts will be the result of some interaction in the online public sphere,

and after some incubation and some time later, I’ve thought of a comeback.

I’m currently interested in habitus as outlined by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu.

[I know! How unAustralian, right?]