The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
The Forum - On Line Opinion's article discussion area



Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Main Articles General

Sign In      Register

The Forum > Article Comments > Policy must build community > Comments

Policy must build community : Comments

By Bronwen Lloyd, published 17/6/2008

The themes of individualism and fear increasingly dominate the lives of many Australians.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. All
Thank you for a very relevant article.

Individualism plays a major part in our seeming inability to address environmental problems too. And it is a problem that hits upper middle class people much more so than blue collar social demography.

When we argue for public transport, it sounds like we are simply arguing for a better technology to get from A to B. In reality, even if pubic transport was more convenient than the private car, many would opt for the car simply because they no longer can handle their 'space' in close proximity to others. They have to have a lot of 'space'.

Technology is thus less of a problem than is social policy.

The further we are separated from community (because we have been wealthy enough to put up barriers and live in isolation) the less tolerant we are of engaging. Our possessions and private space are so important to us we don't know how to share them. We also become less tolerant of different people, because we barely ever rub shoulders with them.

Individualism causes social alienation.

Go to a bank teller line in an uppity suburb and you will wait your turn in almost embarrassed silence. Go to one in a working class area and the person behind or in front will chat about the machine not working, or their health problem and all manner of things.

Those who have become intolerant of others would prefer they shut up, but it is themselves who have the social problem.
Posted by gecko, Tuesday, 17 June 2008 9:23:32 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Individualism has become a habit. We forget how enjoyable pulling together in something like a street cleanup followed by cake and coffee can be. Government should force us [especially teenagers] to be involved in social and environmental projects as a type of national service.
Posted by healthwatcher, Tuesday, 17 June 2008 9:42:19 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
I doubt it would work if we were forced to do it!!

I am unsure if a lot of what you describe is not already happening, I know it is in our local area. From what I have seen it works best when people interact from a genuine desire to do so, rather than fulfilling some imposed quota. I like it best to talk to the neighbour over the back fence because I want to.

It is also interesting that you demand respect for diversity, which presumably does not include respect for individuals who engage in individalism.

Could you please clarify how you will create policy that will make people feel less fear? Like happiness, the feeling is intrinsic to the person, and what makes you fearful may be fine for others. The government is not, nor should it be responsible for how any individual feels about this.

Handing over responsibility to governments for making us feel better is a sure fire recipe for disaster, except in the minds of those who espouse a much greater say in how others decide to live.
Posted by miner, Tuesday, 17 June 2008 12:15:45 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Miner, your comments are valid enough, but the worst thing that governments and political candidates do is to deliberately build up community fear as a political strategy. This is done all too frequently.

Fear is also inculcated in us by a hard core media focus on dramatic bad news. A train mash here, a rape there, a bomb blast there - fairly rare events but we watch every one of them every night on TV news - as if all of these things were every day events in our own lives. The psychological effect is very pervasive.

Fear and isolationism are partly innate to the individual, but much more so they are a product of social mechanisms that are at play in wider society, and government does have many levers to bring abut more healthy conditions in our society.

And it ought to.
Posted by gecko, Tuesday, 17 June 2008 12:47:11 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
“Having enjoyed historically low interest rates,”

Some of us can still remember how Hawke and Keating administered record interest rate levels.

“Reduced workplace security is another concern.”

Not as much a concern as having no job at all, like the recession Keating brought us.

“we are scared because, as individuals, we are beginning to feel more alone: we feel alone because of increasing fear.”

Wrong, I am not scared for those reasons.

The deficiencies and stupidities of big government and meddlesome socialists scare me far more than being responsible for managing my own circumstances.

“self-interest over the good of the community”

I often shake the hands of friends and strangers but I have never shook the hand of "a community". When I can, I will believe the term “good of the community” means something, until then it is just a synonym for socialistic lying.

“Fear is a powerful motivator”
Yes just like envy.

It is also one of those convenient negative things which socisalists like to dwell on to hrlp sell their particular brand of slavery -

where we are all enslaved to the mythical "common good" and no one has any individual worth or rights.

Miner “I doubt it would work if we were forced to do it!!”

Because as a personal choice would rate it, on a list of priorities as falling off the end.

it is an illusion with no real meaning, the stuff written in socialist manifestos and drenched in sentimentality.

It is the usual socialist swill, the prattling twaddle and idealistic rubbish spouted by those who lack self reliance and character and believe their sense of "feeling alone" is experienced by everyone else and we all lack what they lack.

I guess I will not bother to engage with gecko, from his post he will understand what I mean.

The most likely way of turning the middle classes into working class is to leave the economy in the hands of socialists to stuff it up.

It remains a fact, the “working class” always aspire to “middle class” affluence but without expecting to work for it.
Posted by Col Rouge, Tuesday, 17 June 2008 1:43:53 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Bronwen

Today's society in Australia is characterised by fearfulness but you are way off on a silly politically correct blame game when you are pointing at individuals. The fearfulness today has very little to do with income, debt levels, working conditions, working hours and has absolutely nothing to do with individualism.

I'm an individual. I am afraid of no-one. I am not afraid of otherness ... in fact I embrace it. I'm not fearful for my youngsters for I've taught them to be individuals. I am not afraid of responsibility. I am bold and revel in challenges, and most others find that and many of my challengers frightening. I accept responsibility for my actions and their consequences.

Here is a list of things you could do to reverse the fearfulness that is enveloping our society.

Launch a campaign that seeks to change the population's acceptance that society is and should be a 'safe' place.

Launch a campaign to limit the instigation of legal claims by individuals who's own stupidity contributed to the incidents that form the basis of their claims and to list and limit all damages in any compensation payments.

Launch a campaign to limit claims for stress, or other humanity engineered or fostered causes, in the workplace.

Launch a campaign to scrap all the Government sponsered programs designed to protect people and make Australia 'safe'.

Launch a campaign that reverses much of the stupid state based legislation that seeks to make everything 'safe'.

Launch a campaign to scrap many of the provisions of Workplace Health and Safety legislation.

Launch a campaign to teach parents that overprotecting and molly-coddling their precious ones merely to keep them safe teaches them to be fearful of the world, fosters aloneness, and the avoidance others and otherness.

ie launch or support any campaign that fosters personal responsibility and the utter rejection of the blame game.

After you've done those things talk to me about diversity, individualism and ... errr .... manliness.
Posted by keith, Tuesday, 17 June 2008 4:31:59 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Exactly! Top Essay Bronwen Lloyd and one that needs repeating in a climate of "shrinking communities".

It is as though Australia has lost the most critical asset of all, within community... the value of 'human capital' and how to respect or better take care of it, at ground levels.

From Cooktown, I ran an Candoo NGO for some five years - based on Good Government Policies. Given not many understood the value of an NGO, I persisted regardless…

I used the media to call for change in a inter-regional rural area, resistant, with a cultural power base that used its politics… as a means to marginalise community issues that could otherwise focus on open transparency, encourage broader understanding by building capacity and greater social cohesiveness.

The problem is that government staff and Council’s middle management more than often lack faith and or commitment to basic connectivity.

I have found many work at arms length of ‘community engagement policies’ and ridicule (as if a silo culture) those who could advocate or help develop community policies.

We need a bridge built between community and services. Government and community needs to share knowledge and exchange community policies.

Unless you have a committement from within Local Council, staff within in Primary Health, among the Police and local School, to work to integrate local community policies, you are accused of working ahead of them, sounding too much like “the” government… and you can become inadvertently isolated, at odds with these paid public-servant workers.

Unfortunately, this problem evolves in funding rounds as a fundamental flaw within the ‘partnership’ developmental framework.

The framework errs to the populous culture (whose in and whose considered controversial) and does not focus on addressing support to the causal elements of community breakdown (especially civic politics) that could otherwise help glue issues to direct positive outcomes at absolute ground levels.

State and Federal staff need more attentiveness here.

Our community is not the only community divided… shrinking… having a fraction of the population processing the resources… including a social capital based on spatial populous, a form of co-dependence.

http://www.miacat.com/
.
Posted by miacat, Tuesday, 17 June 2008 6:01:50 PM
Find out more about this user Visit this user's webpage Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
It's not just cultural, although there were some very pertinent observations above. Surely half the reason we're becoming so isolationist is the physical design of our built environment?

We work in town, drive home to a suburban McMansion, drive into our double garage, get out of the car, and get inside to watch TV and sleep. Rinse and repeat 5 days a week — moving between 2 boxes in a little private car.

Where do we actually engage with the local community on a daily basis?

Now we COULD design eco-cities that are 'more European than European' that eliminate the need for a car because everything you need is right outside your door. Sydney's CBD could easily be retrofitted into an Eco-city with high density high diversity living... it's already part of the way there, and the 2030 vision for Sydney is heading in the right direction. We should massively accelerate that, out into the suburbs as well. Build a few train, tram, and trolley bus lines... and then let suburbia slowly rezone and rebuild New Urbanism back onto the transit lines. It would wean us off oil, solve global warming and create community more naturally than any mandated programs. When you can work rest and play from home, and do most of your shopping, coffee, recreation, church, and local parties in the community hall... it builds loyalty and life into the region. Why we don't hear more about this I do not know. Maybe the "Australian dream" has been so packaged to the McMansion that we'll not be able to shake the suburban nightmare until it's too late.

See my page for more.

http://eclipsenow.blogspot.com/2007/06/relocalize.html
Posted by Eclipse Now, Tuesday, 17 June 2008 9:32:10 PM
Find out more about this user Visit this user's webpage Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Eclipse Now,

I have worked with a lot of foreign scientists and engineers over the years and have noticed that, while they may initially live under higher density conditions, the ones who intend to stay almost all move into a detached house at the first opportunity. This applies to both Europeans ands Asians, whose families have probably lived under high density conditions for generations. As someone who has lived in a big city flat, it is easy to understand why they feel this way. It is great to be spared noise, smells, pollution, being cut off from nature, and knowing all about your neighbours' arguments, sex lives, and tastes in music (or the lack thereof). I would submit that the lifestyle you applaud primarily exists because people are not given a choice, although I don't dispute that some people are willing to give up space and privacy for other advantages.

If we really can't afford to let people keep a decent distance from their neighbours and even have a vegetable patch if they want it, perhaps we have too many people.

There are obvious cultural and educational benefits from having some diversity, but the enormous scale of it today is another issue. The research of Robert D. Putnam, the author of "Bowling Alone", suggests that it reduces social capital and social trust, not only towards members of other ethnic and religious groups, but towards one's "own" people as well.
Posted by Divergence, Wednesday, 18 June 2008 12:41:09 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
"If we really can't afford to let people keep a decent distance from their neighbours and even have a vegetable patch if they want it, perhaps we have too many people."

Now there's the main point! Rather than pave over, plough up, and pollute the entire planet by increasing population until we have wall to wall suburbia, how about trying to create some more 'demographic transition' in the 3rd and developing worlds, and reduce immigration to already over-crowded, over-consuming first world nations?
Posted by Eclipse Now, Wednesday, 18 June 2008 1:33:26 PM
Find out more about this user Visit this user's webpage Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Thank you Bronwen Lloyd for an insightful, considered and humane article. It's people with ideas like yours who contribute to building the community and society many of us value. Despite the cynicism of some of the response comments, I remain hopeful.

cheers
Posted by anna52, Thursday, 19 June 2008 10:15:53 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
LAUNCH a camPAIN for this , launch a campain for that the same elies attending all these free ,launches?

SO we have the media getting all the cash as usual [the selfsame media that beat up this isolate and conquer strategy]

I watched the media campain of fear unwind [from the aids scare to the bird flue ,to the negative murder/horror show /lawyer fear programing , cops shows , court cases , and dumbed down reporting as sport-stars became the info taintment, give up smoking take the blue pill.

i watched as govt shut down sociaty in the late nineties [when public funds dried up along with education[as well as public liability insurance shot up 300 percent, i watched the people withdraw to their pay television sets to be programed with ever more fear and murder cops shows and sports.

i watched the towers fall down, instead of being at the social club talking with humans i was allowed to watch the spin twins.

I watched the work for the dole contracts unfold , i watched so many cam-pains on the media [seen the overpriced adverts the spin machine put out [stop smoking, have a fourex, here comes big brother,

Its deliberated govt policy designed to make us into work drones who pay taxes that then get given by the millions to the big buisness lobby] so we have the solution...

Yet another media blitz to enrich the media that sold out the people
cam-pain launch anyone [its paid from the public purse go on dig into the trough everyone else is ]

The media hard press has done its master'sss sssserving well
Posted by one under god, Sunday, 22 June 2008 4:44:31 PM
Find out more about this user Visit this user's webpage Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Unfettered individualism has failed Australia and every other nation.
The evidence lies as an open book for anyone with eyes to see. From the 1980s deregulation of our currency and finance sector; along with comprehensive privatisations of State and Federal Government assets has occured. We are still being told by the ALP and the Coalition in 2008 that the continued privatisation and excesive levels of immigration so as to remove our national identity are all good for us. Curious indeed.
Writing letters,talking to radio disc jockeys or voting for a different major political party will only encourage the ALP and the Coalition to treat us all as mugs. And we are mugs !

There is a far, far better way. Here is how you can change things:

http://www.dlp.org.au/
Posted by Joanne, Sunday, 22 June 2008 8:55:45 PM
Find out more about this user Visit this user's webpage Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Bronwen;

Diversity is not always the answer. Some of the most connected, caring and strong communities in the world are essentialy mono-cultural. So rather than: "Initiatives to enhance appreciation of diversity, strengthen multiculturalism, reduce fear of difference, and encourage curiosity and open-mindedness, rather than xenophobia"

Why not programs to build linguistic, cultural and societal common ground? why not focus on what we are together rather than what set us apart?

A sense of community is best developed through a mutual sense of belonging... diversity doesn't really help that, i'm afraid.
Posted by ExpatinSingapore, Monday, 23 June 2008 10:46:35 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Multiculturalism and 'diversity' are hate crimes and form part of an ideology to undermine a nation's religius and cultural identity.
Australian citizens should be confident and sure of their own heritage and history so as to reject any form of undermining from well placed ideological seedbeds of hatred and politics of grievance that are outside of normal thinking.
We the Australian people and our children and grandchildren have a right NOT to be subjected to such anti-intellectual brainwashing from such ideologues that are even embedded within our tertiary institutions and government.
Posted by Joanne, Monday, 23 June 2008 1:25:34 PM
Find out more about this user Visit this user's webpage Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Joanne “Unfettered individualism has failed Australia and every other nation... Multiculturalism and 'diversity' are hate crimes”

Unfettered socialism resulted in UK having to be baled out of national financial collapse in 1970s, following the incompetent policies of the Wilson / Callaghan socialists.

The Berlin Wall was constructed to stop people escaping from the Socialist Democratic Republic of East Germany.

“We the Australian people and our children and grandchildren have a right NOT to be subjected to such anti-intellectual brainwashing from such ideologues that are even embedded within our tertiary institutions and government.”

The DLP is a stooge of the Church of Rome

Reminding me, a Jesuit mantra ”Give me a child till the age of 7 and I'll give you a Believer for life."

Lenin said

“Give us the child for 8 years and it will be a Bolshevik forever”

Maybe there is more brainwashing going on than you are prepared to ‘fess up to?

I would suggest “Socialist Community” is something which can only be imposed by the state or some other collective authority, designed to regulate and presumably reign in the benefits which might accrue from the pursuit of individual liberty.

Lenin said the same thing, in a different way (and bluntly more effectively)

“When there is state there can be no freedom, but when there is freedom there will be no state”

I make no apology for placing my faith in personal liberty, individual diversity and limitations to the authority of the state at the expense of Bronwen Lloyds notion of enforced “community”.

It is simple really

‘Life’, free will and ultimately "personal growth" is experienced through the expression and implementation of personal choice personal values, personal self interest and possibly producing personal reward.

Compliance with externally imposed rules, designed to ensure we conform with the social edicts of the state and aspire only to those levels ascribed by the state('glass ceilings') is mere ‘existence’

and I, personally, do not want to merely ‘exist’.

btw Lenin also said “the goal of socialism is communism”

No hiding despotism, regardless of the sentimental goo it is covered in
Posted by Col Rouge, Monday, 23 June 2008 2:11:24 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. All

About Us :: Search :: Discuss :: Feedback :: Legals :: Privacy