Poirot

A greater self esteem and respect could assist in reducing drinking rates. However I also think we get married and have children too old now. There is too big a gap of not having too many responsibilities. You always see discouragement for younger people starting a family and I think it should be quite the reverse. By the time people do get married they have had a string of broken relationships that increases emotional baggage and too much time to become entrenched in party or self centred behaviour.

Plus the alcohol abuse could relate to sugar addiction. Apparently too many soft drinks and sugar allows for easier addiction to alcohol as it gives a better result to the sugar addict. Sugar is the most addictive drug on the planet and offers little nutrient value. I live in sugar cane district so hope they do not track me down lol.

On culture we should perhaps face the truth first. Despite all the money we enjoy we have no style or taste. People pay millions on very bland or even ugly buildings then spend hundreds of thousands renovating for a very bland or even ugly result. People dress poorly or the same as someone else. Music is the same, karaoke. Australia film being lamented as a yesterday art. Comedy has been hamstruck from Political Correctness and Indigenous culture locked up in the 18th century as a museum curiosity instead of an evolving inclusive culture.

We are basically too bored to get angry about it though.

Individual,
I couldn't agree more. I have often pointed this out in conversations with others - that the preceding generations create the social conditions wherein the younger members of society find their outlets.
That is why I'm asking what we can offer our children - our society appears to be driven by competition and consumption, and leaves very little room for cooperative endeavours to flourish.
We seem to be missing something of intrinsic value in our idea of a cohesive environment.
Ivan Illich made the observation that traditional society "was more like a set of concentric circles of meaningful structures, while modern man must find meaning in many structures to which he is only marginally related. In the village, language, and architecture and work and religion and family values were consistent with one another, mutually explanatory and reinforcing. To grow into one implied growth into others".
Perhaps we have gone too far to expect the well-defined psychological structure of traditional society - it is a sad indictment of modern consumer society.

You may be asking the impossible here, Poirot.

>>What can we hand down to our children in the name of Australian culture as a definitive template for this and future generations?<<

Sadly, the very notion of "culture" has been dead for many years in this country. And probably never existed in the first place, in any meaningful way.

I am of the opinion that at its simplest level, culture is merely an expression of shared values, that are distinctive enough to be acknowledged by outsiders.

Furthermore, a culture takes some considerable time to take root; it can't be invented, or imposed, or dictated.

Vienna has a recognizable culture. As do Paris, Rome, Prague, Moscow, Berlin and Amsterdam, to name a few off the top of my head.

More recently, it has become possible to identify a culture in New York that is separate and distinct.

Australia, on the other hand, was founded by immigrants, who brought absolutely no culture with them - it just wasn't possible to re-create London, or Athens, or Naples in a land that has no physical or environmental similarities. We may eventually acquire one - as did New York - but not for a few more lifetimes, I suspect.

The way I see it, the semblance of culture that we might intermittently recognize as "Aussie", has no identifiable foundation.

What we do have is simply a form of communal behaviour that vaguely and imprecisely echoes other communities that we attach ourselves to from time to time. The "Aussie Aussie Aussie" chant is a classic example of this tendency.

I'm not entirely sure though what Poirot's subsidiary question - "What can we in Australia offer our youth in the form of a rite of passage into adulthood?" - has to do with culture, but.

Missus,

'There will be a revolution. When I do not know. We just drink ourselves silly in the meantime.'

Another Gem. You crack me up.

Straya is chock full a culcha!

SM,

'Culture is the sum of the values of our society, and the arts are a small window into it.'

More a pin hole camera lens in Australia. Not a bad thing though. The defining essence of Australian culture is to cringe at ourselves.

PO,

'What can we in Australia offer our youth in the form of a rite of passage into adulthood?'

I always like the idea of fighting lions.

ind,

'I KNOW that the attitude of those brain dead young binge drinkers, druggies etc is a direct & inexcusable result of their parents' attitude towards society in general.'

You'd get on well with pontificator. You'll find a hell of a lot of binge drinkers and drug enjoyers have highly strict moralistic teetotalling parents. What does that say?

Missus,

'There is too big a gap of not having too many responsibilities.'

There is a gap, but it's neither too big or small. I'd rather a bunch of 30yo decadent adolescents than a bunch of pious camper van driving empty nesters that's for sure. We live longer these days, and youth is to be enjoyed, not lived in ones 60s in a theme of unauthentic sentimental reminiscence.

Pericles,

'- has to do with culture, but.'
Very droll.

Perhaps not having a definite or definable culture is a preferable state of affairs.

I only say this because it appears that Pericles, whom I greatly admire (most of the time), can recognise it in Vienna, Paris, Rome, Prague, Moscow, Berlin and Amsterdam, where he has obviously either visited or lived at some time.

And yet he chooses to live here, so having one is obviously not necessary. How much more of an endorsement on the bliss of lack of cultural identity can you get?

Pericles,
I think it all depends on how you define culture.

I remember siting in a Rotary meeting where one of it's members asked a 19 yo German exchange student "What's it like coming from a country with a very old culture to a country whose culture is so new?"

I stood up and asked the next question "what's it like coming from a 900 year old culture to a country whose culture is approx 39,100 years older than yours."

The natives of PNG have cultures that go back much further than any of the places you mention by more than the aboriginal culture.

Objectively, I answered the question with a realistic definition that culture is constantly changing and does so uniquely because of it's unique circumstance.

This was very noticeable in Steven's post on 'stolen generation'