Toxic Tony

Another bizarre turn of phrase from the Prime Minister.  He calls the carbon tax a "toxic tax".

But it is the excessive production of man made carbon, the thing that the tax is trying to reduce, that is toxic.

So it is not a "toxic tax", it is a "toxicity  reduction tax".  Go figure.

Tim Wilson

Watching Tim Wilson on One+One this morning and amazed to hear him say he thinks that plain paper packaging for cigarettes is an insult to all Australians.  He believes that by taking advertising from the product we are denying people choice.  To him we are insulting them by not crediting them with the intelligence to make their own choices about whether to smoke.

This seems ludicrous as by removing advertising, the psychological science of persuading people to choose by emotion and not logic, you would be improving the effectiveness of their choices.

As we all know, the opposite of what Tim Wilson thinks is true, that it is mostly advertising that is an insult to all Australians.  If you take it away you are more likely to respect all Australians.

Tim is from the IPA, a crazy ideological outfit who proselytise for the cult of the pure free market.  The IPA is funded by big corporations. The major thing that comes from pure free markets is wide disparity of incomes between the super wealthy and the (diminishing) middle class, concomitant with the growth of a permanent underclass. These two facts, put side by side, explains enough.

Tim Wilson and his fellow travelers talk of a nanny state.  First, that is funny as it is the wealthy who use nannies to mind their children.  Second, if the state's actions to reduce the incidence of several major morbidities is the behaviour of a nanny, then the behaviour of the advertising industry is a militarist father who dictates all of his children's movements.  They would probably appreciate the intercession of a nanny!

When I was in business and complaining about the cost of advertising I was told by an experienced adviser that "advertising works".  The annual amount spent on advertising and marketing in Australia each year is $15 billion, because...advertising works.  So the whole bullshit "nanny state", "consumer choice" argument is, well, "an insult to all Australians".

Who made this guy Human Rights Commissioner?  Oh, Tony Abbott.

Does that make sense?

I have often enjoyed attending public speeches as an intellectual entertainment.  But in the last couple of decades we have witnessed the rise of the spruikers: self appointed experts with a messianic style.  I started attending these events when I was in a wealth advisory job.  Prospective clients would sometimes tell me they had decided to sign up with one of the latest gurus to arrive in town.  I took to attending the seminars of these erstwhile competitors and found that they were often charlatans out to fleece an unsuspecting public.    

I was then in a position to warn against them.  But I also discovered that from a theatrical point of view they amused me.  I found that attending some of these seminars was better than a film.  And since the business model had become the offering of a free seminar I didn't have to pay.  Since then I have attended 30 to 40 seminars, which counts as a survey.  There is definitely a spruiker modus operandi.  Sometimes I would attend a weekend where several would present consecutively.  When presenting one after the other it becomes apparent that they have all been reading the same manual, right down to the phraseology.  A common one is, "does that make sense?"  Problem is they say it all the time, even when it obviously does make sense.  I am constantly hearing simple lines like, "If you wake up earlier, you have more time to work.  Does that make sense?"

The most interesting ones are the Americans, coming as they do from their great evangelical tradition.  They are the ones more likely to present themselves as guru's, with a certain religiousity or crpto-cultic feel about them.  The target market is mostly uneducated, vulnerable, or simple people who are looking to be saved, in this case economically.

The most interesting American who has been visiting these shores is a certain Dr John Demartini.  To begin with the salutation is not legitimate - he was apparently a chiropractor when he started out.  He looks about late 40's and claims he has been spruiking for 30 years, so even if you accept that chiropractors are doctors he hasn't been one for 30 years.  If fact he can't have been one for more than 5 seconds if you extrapolate from his own resume.  So, not really a doctor and not a doctor at all.

Demartini takes to the stage and does a thing that cult leaders do.  He designs his delivery so that the audience can't really understand it but are given to believe that this is because he is so brilliant that his rapid fire speech is evidence of his fast mental activity.  But of course it isn't.  It is a case of a guy who practices a lot.  He purports to strengthen his case of cleverness by claiming that he has read 30,000 books, the implication being that these are all non-fiction because in the same breath he talks about 269 "ologies", all of which he is well versed in.  Of course to an educated person this is ludicrous.  Knowledge is not a quantity, and I doubt that senior university professors have read that many books.  I am an avid reader of non-fiction and I guess that in 30 years I have read about 700 non-fiction books. I too like my 'ologies' and may have read 2,000 feature articles too, but that would translate into no more than an additional 200 books. In short, he has not read 30,000 books and if he has then he is not so much wise as insane.

Demartini motivates people to discover their "highest value" and design a life around that.  Basically you should do what you love.  But he gets off the topic and talks about curing depression and "dissolving grief" in minutes.  This does sound like the chiropractor coming out: they think that by cracking your back they can heal all your medical conditions.  I am not an expert but I would have thought that grieving the loss of a loved one for an appropriate period of time is healthy.  But why a career motivator starts talking about grief is curious.  I think that this is where he moves into the religious by toying with people's psychology, and tries to capture the audience, to acquire disciples.  During this phase of his seminar he actually started crying at the sadness that he said he felt for his failure to save the world from grief.  It was an impressive performance and certainly convinced those around me.  To confirm my belief that this guy is primarily a showman, during his seminar he often closes his eyes and holds his hands in the air like a preacher, like he is divining the spirits, and then utters a point of wisdom.

I once went to a satirical show called "Funk Development Program" where the "Guru" taught us how to get an invitation to the party that is going on "deep down inside of all of us".  I think I have the same experience when I go to see "Dr" Demartini.  To me he is a funny guy, but unfortunately many people pay $2,500 for his "Break Through Experience" workshop.  I do not have any figures on how many of these actually get any realizable benefits but I did read a survey from an American university once that reported that the lives of most of the followers of these self styled guru's do not change as a result of the seminars and books and workshops that they pay so dearly for. I do know one person who paid up twice and attended two Demartini workshops.  Three years later and nothing appears to have changed in his life.

Demartini claims that you will have a "break through" experience on the day of his workshop, "even if we have to continue until midnight".  First I don't believe in boot camp epiphanies.  If you haven't "broken through"  by 6pm I doubt you will have done so by midnight. You've only going to grow tired and be less likely to think straight.  What is he gonna do, speak in tongues and place his hands on your head?  It is well known changing lives is a process that takes months and years.  People would be better off seeing a psychologist or a life coach each week over a year or two.  This way they would be more likely to get results.

In the end I see these guys as an entertainment, a genre of performance art.  They do admonish you to do what you love and they also quote some actual wise people, so if you get something out of it all to the good, but don't bother paying for the workshop, its not worth it.

Genesis

Before the beginning there was nothing.  Then something appeared, first infinitesimal, a billionth the size of a pin head.  It was extremely hot and highly volatile.  In seconds it exploded into a vast universe.

This was the description given by cosmologists recently, of the beginning of the universe.  When asked how something came from nothing they say they think it might be possible.  Stephen Hawking says that the universe is made up of matter and anti-matter in equal proportions, and together they equal zero, the implication being that if they equal nothing then they can come from nothing.

But how the spontaneous explosion occurs, even though it creates matter and anti-matter in equal measure, is not known.

Then there is a new theory afloat that nothing has something in it.  If this is true should it be called nothing?  It may well be a pre-material dark energy, but that still sounds like something to me.

Another theory is that ours is just one universe of many, that there is a multiverse, and that the ether from which these explode has the required conditions for big bangs to spontaneously occur.

Before the beginning, 14 thousand million years ago, there was nothing.  Or was there, and which beginning, and what type of nothing?

For recently evolved humans, this is all too remote, too irrelevant, too arcane for their organic and emotional life on earth. However for them it is important that there is a higher power.  Whilst some get this by marveling at nature, and by being a part of a complex and engaging human society, others prefer to think in terms of a supernatural God.  This is simpler and easier.  In the end, most humans are just not comfortable thinking about a scientific Genesis.  They would prefer this: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth", where God is all that is unknown and all that is mysterious and encompasses everything.  Through this belief they get their higher power, albeit an earth centered one.

It is only a few who have the capacity to cope with a genesis thousands of millions of years ago that has everything coming from a mathematical nothing, or a further multiverse extending back to who knows when.  But if they do prove it, what then?  Sitting here in the library I wondered how I would feel if this was the new paradigm.  I look around at my fellow humans and I think, "You are all just cosmic phenomena".  My heart goes out to them, I feel a new empathy for our creaturehood.

I want to forget about genesis and just get on with my animal life here on earth.  The Universe is too big for us.  I am tired of our insane penchant for conquest.  There is always some nut who will be happy to set off into the abyss not knowing if they will ever return.  As individuals we know we are small, that the world is bigger than us.  Perhaps that is all we are ever going to know, ever need to know.

Not whining, Complaining

Niki Savva’s article in The Australian (Commentary 12, 8/11/12) is a scraping of the bottom of the barrel in an attempt to concoct a story.  You would have to be a talented spinner to turn an Obama election victory in the US into an attack on Julia Gillard, and spin she does.

Obama wins…(leap to) Niki Savva relates the story of Obama’s response to the comments of his paster, Jeremiah Wright…4 years ago!....as a dignified performance, and then compares his response to that difficulty…and his handling of his being a half black, half white man, to Julia Gillard’s response to Tony Abbott’s misogyny (of the “prejudiced against women” variety: Oxford & Macquarie Dictionaries).

Note the extraordinary leaps and odd segues:  Obama wins the election…Obama is a good guy…(leap & odd segue)) he gives a dignified response to a problem he had 4 years ago…(big leap & odd segue) Julia Gillard’s response to Tony Abbott’s misogyny was not dignified, according to Savva.  

How about this: once upon a time there was a good man, any man will do, but let’s make him topical, so we’ll choose Obama.  We will talk about how good he is so that when we then say somebody else is bad it will ring true.  A good spinner plays on the natural polarity of humans: black and white, good and evil.

So there is this good man, yadda yadda yadda, now look at this bad woman!  

Obama was dignified in response to attacks on his race, so who is this Julia Gillard to complain about attacks on her sex?  She should learn “that it’s about winning not whining”.  This is ridiculous on two levels.  First, Julia Gillard IS a winner.  She has won an election, gazumped (run circles around) Tony Abbott in negotiating a minority government, run that government for two years in the face of unrelenting attacks from the opposition and News Limited.  Suffered with dignity years of misogyny from shock jocks like Alan Jones, and has survived this and through great leadership and astounding performance has managed to turn the polls around to be within a winning shot of a Labor third term.  Dear Niki Savva, the woman is a winner.

And after suffering with dignity for two years she eventually turns on Abbott and calls him out.  It is a magnificent performance and the whole world applauds.  And Savva writes this miserly hateful response.

Next bullshit comment in the article: “Nothing stopped Gillard getting where she always wanted to be, not her sex, not even a prime minister yet to complete his first term”(my italics).  This is the sort of claptrap that writers at The Australian sneak into their sentences.  It is a blatant lie because under our great system of government prime minister’s do not own a set term as prime minister.  There is no “his first term”.  By describing it this way the intention is to give the impression that something improper occurred, when in truth something very proper occurred: it is good that parties can change the leader when they realise that they have got a dud.    Good for the party, good for the country.  All of these “stabbing in the back” metaphors are turning a serious discussion of our political economy into crime fiction, film noir.  This is grossly irresponsible.  Kevin Rudd and Kevin Rudd alone was the author of his demotion.  Who becomes a prime minister, with all the power and advantage that that position holds, and then loses it so spectacularly?   

“Nothing stopped Gillard getting where she always wanted to be, not her sex…”.   Gender may not stop some women, Niki, but what if it has stopped many others?  How is it right for Martin Luther King to complain about prejudice inherent in racism, but not Julia Gillard to complain about the prejudice in sexism?  Was Dr King whining too?  Should he have shut up?

Of course this is all just concocted to attack Julia Gillard, it has no logic or consistency whatsoever.

The last 500 words in her article are just a rant, a sneering smear attack on everything that labor does or says.  Every tiny irrelevant comment, every decision, every position, every person in the party.  It is a roaring hatefest, a glimpse into the heart of darkness at The Australian.  You’ve got to read it to believe it.