There is something very frightening happening in workplaces today, especially the public sector, where people are put under such pressure they are willing to behave very badly towards others in the name of efficiency. A lot is driven by envy and competition instilled in us by popular culture or an overzealous protestant work ethic, or a great desire not to be "working class". Do you think the "professions" were created to make a whole group of intelligent people separate themselves from the "working class" as the working class is very much needed to keep the society ticking over but for some reason are not seen to merit a decent and respected life? It is true; which party is actually representing the "working class". It is scary when you think how conditions were 100 years ago and how so many attitudes now seem happy to go back there. Where has this snobbery come from in "egalitarian" Australia?

As a former ALP media adviser, I have to say, please don't help.

Here's why from French post modernist theorist Gilles Deleuze:

"In the first place, singularities-events correspond to heterogeneous series which are organised into a system which is neither stable or unstable, but rather 'metastable', endoweed with a potential energy wherein the differences between series are distributed ... In the second place, singularities possess a process of auto-unification, always mobile and displaced...

It's hard to get up in front of automobile industry employees who might lose their jobs before Christmas and give them this type of stuff.

There are no insights here. I thought post modernisms time, like the IRA, had come - and gone. I mean no disrespect, and I'm certainly not crowing for Pearson, Windscuttle, et al but it's time to move on.

I hope that I'll learn more from part two. I'm sorry to say that I found part one hard to make good sense of: too much anger, too much confidence, too many words. And too much denunciation, Luke Slattery a 'conservative'? Come on!

Any chance someone could actually translate this article? It's not written for lay people. It's written for the egos of the writers, no more. And accordingly means nothing at all.

It's a typical example of overeducated and under achieving students. Trying to use all the words they don't really understand to BS the audience. We've seen this constantly and it is now known as "Weasel Words". Attempted intellectual rubbish.

It's a tactic used constantly by people who don't really know the topic and are scared stiff someone will know more than them. You see these people in workplaces everywhere, paranoid and afraid of all. Unable to teach and help others they protect their ignorance by using their own language.

Any reasonable writer knows you must write to your audience, not yourself. Learn boys, learn.

'Attempted intellectual rubbish.'

Much like the majority of post-modernism itself. Although I would advise not to 'rubbish' something that you have already admitted is over your head.

As for the topic, I've always been bewildered by the politicising of post-modernism. It's quite obvious it has nothing to do with the left or right, although both sides have weilded it as a weapon against the other.

The right most often criticises it (or what they consider to be it, at least), despite using its influence, and the influence of relativism, to justify such positions as Bush's on creationism being taught alongside evolution.

But anyway. Its all BS innit.

Excellent point Betty, and one that shouldn't be lost on postmodernists. Lyotard anyone?

Basically, if you think workers are getting a bum deal more and more, but CEOs and other corporate heavyweights are drowning in wealth at everyone else's expense, you'd agree with what Lucy and Mickler have to say.

If you agree that Australia was once aboriginal and isn't any more, and that aborigines got a bum deal (to put it mildly), you'd agree with the article.

If you think that political parties have stopped talking about whose interests they really stand for and turned instead into big self-promotion agencies, you'd agree with the article.

If you think that real democracy happens when the people know exactly what's going on, no spin and no fibs, you'd also agree.

And if you think that the idea that people who agree with all of the above are automatically communists is a load of tosh, you'd agree with the whole point of the article.

It's a shame that people with such sensible things to say couldn't have been a bit more democratic with their language.