I may be wrong, but , I was pleasantly surprised that a consensus came forth from this last weeks Q&A ( about time )
The consensus I saw was
That "The Voice" was a hurriedly drawn together device that could not work,"
There was a bit of humility in the group too,which makes a change from the strident know all's whom the ABC ring up regularly to provide putdowns and shut ups ( politely of course . we are nice middle class people here) .
How can Ita justify their predictable guest lists ? Talk about a short list that's growing shorter.
What a serious piece of hypocrisy the country is entertaining about "really listening " when the advocates don't have enough wisdom to understand how it works ,
The legacy of our ABC will be ( with Robin Williams and Geraldine Doogue still at the helm for example) a lot of talk but no experience and wisdom to make its wild and wooly speculations stick . Many of us live by NOT listening to its distracted and highly predictable discourses.
These people who think societal change is easy and good , best read Cromwell by Antonia Frazer where she documents the incredible miracle of how Parliaments ,as we know them, began ,
The Labor party will go down in history as the party who wrenched to power of the people of Australia by holding onto its precious gerrymander of the city over the country ( using its own blind love of numbers and their stairway to heaven) .
To stop the careless dreaming read Thomas More and Sitch on deeply etched idiocy of "Utopia"'s ,
And with only a few pages read, such people might realize how easily we could lose this great but expensive time absorbing gift -- eg by imposing a whole lot of more meetings b meetings PAID for by our desperately much poorer children.
In many ways ,this new concept of "a voice" is a regurgitation of an old idea that we abandoned 400 years ago : the one that says "louder and more " as if that works by rote or in history ( the Big man in Africa for eg ) It doesn't work!
.And neither does singling out the reality that aboriginal culture can teach us a lot about environment provide a big enough reason to push English science and other cultural wisdom aside; singular focus stupidity,
The ultimate and productive aim of hearing all voices in order and counterorder is to gain TRUE consensus ( not this forced nonsense now promoted even on ABC) . Making the process longer and giving one group the final say ,is like going back to bless Patriarchy - which none of us want.
The system of democracy that has worked for the West for all those centuries is the system which gives still small voices a go in order . It is based on faith, not that God blesses majorities ,but that God blesses those who truly listen; , in the long order of parliament.
Any fool can see that the very concept of equality is ALSO NOW under threat because , without the fatherhood of God there is no brotherhood of man ( Bob Hawke ) The worshipers of mere technological fix ( Ellul) will throw out what doesn't work---- when will the ABC run a program on our young people and what they believe ? It certainly isn't the stale sentimentality of the post moderns.
