pc thoughts

Since Jeremy Clarkson put his ample foot in it again last week, I have been thinking about the dilemma of political correctness. It is a dilemma really, not because of its clunking name, nor the aims behind most PC activity (undoubtedly well-intentioned), but because it turns decent people against principles that they would normally have stood up for. Who doesn't think that people should be treated fairly and equally regardless of their race, religion, sex or whatever difference seems to separate us as human beings?

The problem occurs, I think, because of the institutionalization of goodness, niceness, decency or fairness. It just doesn't work. People end up being resentful of being told how to act and think. They don't like being robbed of the virtuousness, or the feeling one gets from acting decently, without prodding instruction or reference to a code of conduct.

In this sense, PC is counterproductive and ends up alienating the very people who actually support its underlying principles. If you take away the opportunity for people to act well because they want to, then you risk undermining the good-will that exists already.

There will always be those who act badly when confronted by difference. I see no reason to be alarmed by that, just so long as the rest of us can get on with acting for the good.

The first pleasant spring day in quite a while. It actually started to feel like a day for discarding jumpers and jackets and donning a t-shirt. Still, getting out of the pool this morning was brisk and there were very few swimmers in evidence.

Then it was back to study for me, while Nadia continued her mammoth recording sessions in the adjacent room. They may go on forever.

I'm nearing the end of my Diploma of Counselling - just two theory units and one practical to go. Then I will be unleashed upon the weary old world, hoping to do some good or, at the very least, no harm.

Tom used the F word this evening, unleashing a stern and uncompromising reprimand from his parents. The things they learn, even at pre-school! Had I used that word when I was just 4, my head would have been swiftly attached to a pike at the entrance to Rose Bay Public. Different times, those.

gilead

A few years ago the choir I sing with, Crowd Around, sang the old spiritual, Balm in Gilead. It's a song that would create the kind of emotional landscape at a Revival Meeting to kick doubters into the believers camp, if only for a week or two. Last night I finally finished the novel Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson.

It's truly a beautiful, reflective book about (and I won't spoil the story) an ageing minister of religion, who, blessed late in life with a young wife and a little boy, writes up a kind of account of things for his son. He knows he hasn't long to live and he wants to speak to him from beyond the grave, as it were. Set in a declining Mid-West town, the novel spans three generations, spilling from the skirmishes of the Civil War over into the next century of major world-wide conflict. These form a backdrop to the meditations of the narrator, John Ames, and the events that occur in and around Gilead.

Just as Balm in Gilead the song might give a shove to the equivocator into journeying across the Jordan, so Gilead the book gave me constant pause for thought, and prayer.

"Grace is not so poor a thing that it cannot present itself in any number of ways" Ames writes. In that nugget, there is much to hope for.

politics japan

Politics in Japan is as interesting, though perhaps more perplexing, as anywhere else. When we lived there, I did my best to take an interest in what was going on, though my main source for a long time was the conservative Yomuiri Shinbun. I also gleaned a little from the nightly NHK news, though it seemed to me that the latter simply reported what it was told to.

I remember in out first working outing in Sanda - very early on - being take to lunch with our boss Stephanie and a Japanese friend of hers, who was prominent in local government. He also has links to, um, other more fringe groups, as well as access to the ruling party, the LDP. I mentioned over lunch that I really liked the election poster of Junichiro Koisumi with his sleeves rolled up. One phone call later and to my considerable surprise, I had said poster in my possession. The exercise of influence can be fascinating.

The Democratic Party is now in government and one Prime Minister has already resigned. The pattern of rotating PM's that followed the retirement of Koisumi has been repeated in the the new Government. Timidity or business as usual appear to be the hallmarks of the present time, and new parties with enterprising names are forming on the back of the political vacuum that is emerging.

And you can't blame them to for trying. Who wouldn't feel the desire to cast a vote for the Stand Up Japan Party, the New Renaissance Party, the Spirit of Japan Party, and the most popular, Your Party? Your place or mine, I wonder?

I sent a PDF to a friend in 2001 that purported to explain, or at least shed light, on the development of Japanese political parties in the 1990's. And truly, by way of a desire for sheer illumination, I reprint it above. Good luck.

life in a new age

A day or two ago I bit the bullet and bought another car. It's a 2003 Suzuki Liana hatchback, made in Japan. It wasn't my first(or second) choice of car, but it came up accidentally and it seems to be a pretty good buy. Low mileage, good condition, one owner. The Liana sedan is famous for being the 'reasonably priced car' driven on the first four seasons of Top Gear, though this may not be a recommendation for it.

Still, it means that I am now mobile and a little freer to go about my day when Nadia has the Premacy. Of course, I include the obligatory shot. Liana in repose.

spring?

Spring has stubbornly refused to come. We have had weeks of cool weather and since October, quite a lot of rain. Looking out of a window on a damp morning sees trees and roof tops floating in a wintry mist, and jeans and jackets are the flavour of the day. Still. October is ordinarily a warm time, but the feel of the moment is of that closed-in June-July period, when the days seem to shorten into each other.

our high-side maple waits,
while the sun drags itself whacked
from the northern summer

let me count the ways

I print out in full the lyrics to an Alanis Morrissette song called '21 things I want in a lover.' For some time now I've been wanting to put myself to the test - do I measure up to Ms Morrissette's exacting criteria on an acceptable lover? I don't always think that the answers are as simple as yes or no, but in pop music, I suppose, subtlety is an optional extra. There are very few caveats. I am therefore allowing half points where criteria might reasonably allow for it, under the circumstances. For example, being up for sex three times a week is easy when you first meet someone, though less easy as time passes beyond the honeymoon glow.

Do you derive joy when someone else succeeds? .5 (usually)
Do you not play dirty when engaged in competition? 1
Do you have a big intellectual capacity? 1.
But know that it alone does not equate wisdom 1.

Do you see everything as an illusion? .5 (not everything is..)
But enjoy it even though you are not of it? 1.
Are you both masculine and feminine 1.
Politically aware, and don't believe in capital punishment? 1 + 1

These are 21 things that I want in a lover
Not necessarily needs but qualities that I prefer

Do you derive joy from diving in and seeing that 1
Loving someone can actually feel like freedom? .5
Are you funny? A la self-deprecating 1 + 1
Like adventure and have many formed opinions 0 + 1

These are 21 things that I want in a lover
Not necessarily needs but qualities that I prefer
I figure I can describe it since I have a choice in the matter
These are 21 things I choose to choose in a lover

I'm in no hurry, I could wait forever
I'm in no rush 'cause I like being solo
No worries and certainly no pressure in the meantime
I'll live like there's no tomorrow

Are you uninhibited in bed more than three times a week .5 + .5 (now come on!)=1
Up for being experimental? .5
Are you athletic? Are you thriving in a job that helps your brother? 1 + 1
Are you not addicted? 1

These are 21 things that I want in a lover
Not necessarily needs but qualities that I prefer
I figure I can describe it since I have a choice of the matter
These are 21 things I choose to choose in a lover

Hmm 17 out of 21. Not too bad. Have a go yourself.

cool october.

My fifty-second October has come around. Before I immerse myself in musings on the self, I feel compelled to mention that I have picked up again on readings and books that address the postmodern condition. Can I talk, therefore, about the self as an authentic, foundational entity? Or must I be a shifting sand of multiple selves?

I find most aspects of postmodern cultural analysis quite interesting. It's very theory laden and has a fond penchant for verbosity and academic discourse that often results in opacity. Deliberately so, I think. It's very hard to pin down, define or argue with, because many theorists in this tradition emphasize (surely privilege - ed.) its shifting, playful, self-referential, decentring nature. It is a curious hotch-potch (surely, multi-valenced plurality - ed) of ideas and extrapolation, some of which are eminently sensible. Others are banal, illogical, trivial, silly and contrary to common human experience. Of course, there is no such thing as the latter, so I am foolish in raising it.

By virtue of being a white, middle class male in a Western democracy I instantly dissolve, deconstruct, today's short text. Actually, it deconstructs itself. My liberal education and former situation within a professional class betrays my bias. My setting of the rational as a standard invites its opposite, the irrational, to set up contradictions internally. And anyway, since none of these words have a real fixed meaning, and might arbitrarily be assigned to anything, then nothing I say can mean anything concrete.

If only any of that were true.