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The Forum > General Discussion > What sort of legacy will we be leaving for the many generations to come ?

What sort of legacy will we be leaving for the many generations to come ?

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Judging on some of the posts maybe we should be concerned about the present.
But no some comments are not representative of the masses .
We mostly want a better life for our offspring.
We often fear things we need not.
And we do have trouble in our modern world, some times caring at all.
Wars are assured but the wish for peace is too.
We if looking back on a lifetime like mine, tend to concentrate on the bad.
But far more good is there if we look for it.
Posted by Belly, Monday, 21 January 2013 5:24:50 PM
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"The same migrants could have
accomplished a great deal more, if the Australian
authorities had made full use of their skills and knowledge
instead of treating them all as unskilled labour"

The implied discrimination by government is precisely what I am objecting to. It is a re-writing of history. As I said, Australia had little in the way of infrastructure and amenities, such as transport and communication, or even the Arts, prior to WW2. It was still recovering from the huge losses of WW1 and then was sucked very dry by the WW2 commitments.

Australia was an impoverished nation, stumbling to recover. Unlike European countries from whence migrants came, it did not have the infrastructure nor the investment $ to rebuild. The infrastructure and the investment were not there in the first place. To top it off, Australia had massive loans to repay for the honor of liberating Europe.

It is one thing to assert that Australian authorities didn't use the skills of migrants well, but quite another to show how it could have been done. Unless of course one believes that the same government authorities were trying to hold Australia back.

It is a modern expectation that a few public servants back then could do the sort of workforce planning and individual job matching that governments remain incapable of doing even now in stable times and with vastly superior communication and computers

To take an example, culture was in a rudimentary stage of development pre-WW2, the war commitment drained the coffers and wiped out most souls. So there is no surprise that an opera conductor fleeing Europe might not get work in Australia. Australia was barely at subsistence level post WW2. An engineer might be available, but to work on what with what and where does the planning and money spring from?

To close, you are also silent about the awful unemployment numbers of the resident population. Few jobs and heaps of people, many of whom had risked their lives overseas as servicemen.
Posted by onthebeach, Monday, 21 January 2013 5:45:25 PM
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Hi there BELLY and LEXI...

On the obverse there's BELLY, who seems to be of a similar view or opinion to that of my own ? And on the reverse, there's LEXI, always positive even sanguine and up-beat about everything.

LEXI has even provided us with a prescriptive mechanism of what measures are needed to be taken. Initially trying to induce some level of world harmony. As a first approach, commence removing many of the intractable obstacles in the way of solving the World's most gruelling problems.

Do I think you're right LEXI ? Even a bit right perhaps ? If only you were, I for one would be able to stop worrying and enjoy my remaining years in some measure of contentment.

Secure in the knowledge, that mine, and everyone else's children, grandchildren, even great grandchildren, may be able to look forward towards a good life, accomplished with a bit of study and hard work, with hope and an expectation of a superb extended future.

But BELLY ol' mate, somehow it's you who's probably closer to being able to foresee the direction our future is heading. And if you're correct, we'll be seeing more dislocation of our society, more arguements amongst ourselves, economic hardship, impotent governments, corruption within all strata of our federal and state administration(s), a moral decadence and general degeneracy throughout society, and violence, internally and internationally.

It really doesn't augur well, for a bright and sunny future, where all of us can conceivably view our future with a renewed sense of hope.
Posted by o sung wu, Monday, 21 January 2013 6:02:17 PM
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onthebeach>> It was not unusual for children to miss meals and have bread with the thinnest smear of dripping for a meal.<<

OTB, after I read that, I was sure a kids down the coal mine was next. If we are going hardship for hardship, the aboriginals had it immeasurably worse than both you lots, especially back in those days.

Just wondering why you felt the need to lessen Lexi’s family story? It did read like background to me, not a badge of courage.
Posted by sonofgloin, Monday, 21 January 2013 6:13:52 PM
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Oh, Sung Wu,

Couldn't we not stop moaning and mourning, and take some possible steps?

Say we insist on thinking about how we could bring about a movement that would see improved integrity in public life. That could address a number of the dysfunctional aspects of our society.

This being the election year it is an opportunity to do something.

For instance if you are so inclined you could start a personal petition with GetUp. Who knows where that might lead us.

Watching the final episode of Dirty Business, the strand that explores how mining inadvertently bring about land rights for the Aboriginal people, it seems clear to me that an idea however overwhelmed by the status quo could sometimes blossom with the tide of history.

Let's not fall into the trap of A thousand yesterdays and no tomorrow!

cheers

chek
Posted by Chek, Monday, 21 January 2013 6:21:03 PM
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Sonofgloin,
Hard? If so it's the result of what was bequeathed to me by my Grandparents generation, they passed on no traditions, no oral history, no words of wisdom, I don't even have the same accent, they'd "done their part" in the war and the depression and felt entitled to put their feet up...for good. No defense or explanation of the past was needed because they wanted to move on, this is why we've ended up with history books full of lies and distortions, why our boys are emerging from school as craven, drugged out husks who are not capable of masculine function and why our public institutions,unions and political parties are stacked with fops, gangsters and imbeciles.
I had no concept of posterity until a few years ago and I'm afraid that even though I'm now learned on the implications of such matters that the idea hasn't taken root, I'm really incapable of caring.
Ask "the man on the street" the meaning of the word posterity and you'd get a blank stare or an inarticulate and inaccurate definition.
The people of the Victorian era and further back were concerned with their posterity, the continuation of their genetic line, these days the religious notion of "greater good" is always injected into discussions under the false premise of "posterity". We can't have a discussion about the future in anything but general terms and it will inevitably degenerate into talk of "our" responsiblities as citizens in global village, or some such humbug.
As the doyen of the so called Steampunk Reactionaries "Mencius Moldbug" points out "Living in the past is the only honourable thing we can do!"
Posted by Jay Of Melbourne, Monday, 21 January 2013 6:30:49 PM
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