Dear Simon,

Happy to hear of your good fortune with your partner.

Feel for you and your cattle, must be hard to see good animals suffer in this drought. Hope that good brothers hear and act to help ease the struggle through this period of unfavourable nature...I for one am not in the farming field and would not have a clue to assist on what would help on a day to day basis...

My comments were not intended to offend but focus on an area where we men of Australia are beginning to recognize this major deficiency in our lives. As one said to me that 'women just cannot fulfill our needs as men', he responded to our need for love of goodbrothers in our daily lives challenges, lot of us feel/made isolated in this area...one needs to take some time to reflect on this to truly understand what it means...

I agree with the article in that we men need our society of goodmen that helps us move from being boys to street smart men in action...

Sam

Every now and then I read something here on OLO that gives my view of the world a bit of a shake-up. In fact, that’s what I come here for – new and challenging angles on my world. This is one of those pieces.

It’s a very engaging idea: informal is associated with lack of responsibility, a formal view of ourselves and our country is accompanied by a sense of compassion and care for the world around us.

But perhaps this disregards the purposefulness in informality. It’s simply not possible to have the “How’s Karen?” kind of relationship with all one’s male acquaintances. “How’s the wife?” is indicative of an informal vernacular that keeps the particular relationship on track.

The richness of language (the fact that there are many different ways to say essentially the same thing) reveals a need to talk about things occasionally without being overly serious, so that we can simply keep going.

I guess the challenge is not to get rid of informality (“go Aussie go”), but to use it knowledgably. We need to be aware that when we name something with a diminutive we are actually making light of it, making serious things easier to think about. The answer is not to remove the informality, but to train ourselves to understand what we are doing when we use it.

Nevertheless thanks for this piece – it’s prompted me to think about how our language practices relate to our view of ourselves, both individually and as a nation.

Two days ago The Age published Mr. J.Howard’s speech on his vision of Australia-2020.

What really was to me interesting is PM’s mentioning of necessarily asserting the individual’s possibilities to “socially develop” on a very ground of employment opportunities.

Quite obvious practice of using males as originals for in-masse-reproduced adult-shop-dildos only, by growing the generations of feminized metrosexuals, predominantly unemployed, musicians, waiters and family service-oriented lackeys, while condemning de facto masculinity and healthy natural competitiveness on merits of personal skills and knowledge as a modernized “work choice” assumes no wage increases upon all term of employment at all, is a very realistic approach of conservationists-monarchists on a path to (check local media, please) a sure “part of Asia” on “Planet India” to the best.

You raise a lot of interesting issues Greg. For a while I wondered if what you were talking about was as much a “Western” (excuse the shorthand) phenomenon as a specifically Australian one. In most of these countries there is no clear demarcation between adolescence and manhood, which is the role of the elaborate initiation ceremony in for example traditional Aboriginal society, so I began looking for ways we do do things differently from other “Western” nations.

One comparison I would make with the United States, which supports your argument, is the immature way we engage in political debate – both in Parliament itself and in the media (and also very often in On Line Opinion) Yes the USA has its “Shock Jocks” – many of them far worse than ours – but something like the McNeil Lehrer News Hour (SBS 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm Tuesday to Saturday) shows how there are people in the USA with quite opposing views who can sit down and discuss the issues so that after the interview one knows a lot more about the issue and is better able to make up one’s own mind. On the other hand in Australia Kerry O’Brien seems more interested in making every politician look stupid (yes I AM exaggerating, but only a little),

Ian Keese
Glenbrook NSW

Infantilism of the Australian-grown is, as mentioned in some above mentioned posts already, a logical outcome from colonial reality of political entity kept intensionally in a degenerative state of semi-colonial existence.

Interesting article Greg. Thanks.