Slightly Nutty

The Inspired Shopper is now available!

2011-06-19T15:01:00.000-07:00

I’m thrilled to announce that my new book, The Inspired Shopper, is now available! You can get it now on Amazon as a Kindle ebook.

The Inspired Shopper teaches you how to become a precision shopper, quickly and efficiently locating the goods that are right for you – at the right price. It’s the culmination of many years of research and practice as I refined and developed the techniques of Inspired Shopping. At only $5.99, it's a real bargain.

You don’t need a Kindle to buy and read this book. You do need to download a free Kindle app first. It’s very easy and doesn’t cost a cent.

If you buy the book, please consider including a short review for the Amazon website, and tagging the book.

More info about the book is available on the Inspired Shopper website.

A New Direction for Slightly Nutty

2011-06-13T23:47:00.000-07:00

Sorry that this blog has been left fallow for so long - I've finally decided the direction I want to go in blog-wise. I'm more or less amalgamating Slightly Nutty with my other blog, Melbarts, to create an informal arts/politics/culture blog.

The new blog is called Feminist Culture Muncher and really came out of a need to justify my frequent telly watching!

My Inspired Shopper book is not yet ready, but it won't be long now. In the meantime I've reactivated the Inspired Shopper blog.

It feels strange to be 'moving'. In fact, there are many things I would still love to write about on Slightly Nutty - it's just that the other projects take greater priority at this time. And many of the kinds of concerns I've been airing here I will continue to air on the new blog, although I'm not sure how frequent entries will be at the moment - I'm aiming for shorter, more frequent entries than the ones in Slightly Nutty, but we'll see.

Hope to see you all at my new locations!

Changes afoot

2011-06-07T13:54:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the recent silence, and the change in the About me info on the right-hand side. I've been in the final stages of getting my first-ever booky-wook, The Inspired Shopper, ready for publication as a Kindle ebook. (My inspired shopper blog has the same login as this blog, which I now think wasn't such a great idea!)

The book's nearly there. In the meantime I've been cogitating as to a change in direction for Slightly Nutty. I've pretty much decided to amalgamate it with my arts blog, Melbarts, to create a new blog that looks at the arts, telly, and politics in an informal way, with shorter entries than the ones in the existing blogs (don't know whether the idea of shorter entries is possible for me though!)

I'll provide new info on the blog and book as the situation progresses.

If Only the Kids Were All Right!

2011-01-18T15:59:00.000-08:00

Happy new year to my blog readers! I hope that 2011 is full of joy and plain sailing. While I've been on my 'blog break' I've been thinking about the blog and struggling a bit with the fact that, although I find writing about my psyche issues incredibly therapeutic and don't want to stop doing it, it also increases my tendency to self-obsession. Living alone is part of the problem. I get sick of myself sometimes!

Meanwhile, as we move further into 2011, the world seems pottier than ever, with climate-related tragedies increasingly rife (not the least in my state - a quarter of Victoria at one point affected by floods), the GFC still spreading its slow-acting poison, and politicians dumber by the minute. Blogging about political and social issues, rather than getting them out of my system, just increases the amount of steam pouring out of my ears, and I don't want to sound like a rancorous grump (although I am). So I've had a bit of a break to get some perspective and try to make myself understand that I cannot control the world or change it singlehandedly.

I recently saw a movie that has galvanised me into returning to blogland - The Kids Are All Right, the first mainstream US feature film with lesbian mothers as the main characters. A few nights later the classic Brokeback Mountain was on the tele. The full moon was rising, and finally my blog drought was broken - it was time to make some notes about the differences between these two very different fil-ums. So here goes! Unfortunately I've had to include multiple spoilers to make my points.

Released in 2010, The Kids Are All Right is the story of Jules (Julianne Moore) and Nic (Annette Bening), a lesbian couple living in sunny California with their two children, Laser (Josh Hutcherson) and Joni (Mia Wasikowska), conceived by an anonymous donor. Nic wears the pants in the family; she's a busy obstetrician while the unconfident Jules plays homemaker and is hesitantly planning to start a garden landscaping business. The couple are worried about 14-year-old Laser's friendship with Clay, a troublemaker.

Laser and Joni secretly arrange to meet up with their donor dad, Paul (Mark Ruffalo); he turns out to be a hip free spirit who owns an organic food restaurant. Paul enters into the life of the family and sets everything topsy-turvy. When he takes on Jules for a garden landscaping project, they end up having an affair.

Reviewers have raved about the film with some exceptions, and it's been compared, not completely unfavourably, to a sit com. This response is not so surprising; on a surface level The Kids Are All Right is very watchable, the plot chugs along steadily, and there are some amusing moments. Audiences warmed to it; Wikipedia reports that the film was 'released to near universal acclaim' and that it had grossed $29 million by 20 December 2010, in its first five months of release - not bad for a film dealing with a topic that in the US at least is still controversial. The film won a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy, and Annette Bening won a Golden Globe for Best Actress - Musical or Comedy. The opinion below is definitely a minority one, but there has been serious criticism about the way the film handles lesbian motherhood, particularly by lesbian bloggers.

Lesbian desire is something that mainstream films have struggled to represent. Perhaps this is because the structural relation of males and females in traditional misogynistic culture is that men desire, while women are the objects of desire. Where there is no male in a relationship, desire per se is problematic on a structural rather than a plot level.

In straining to represent lesbian desire, a desire that, initially at least, is unmediated by a man, The Kids Are All Right is conceptually confusing: to depict a progressive, twenty-first century relationship it turns to a retro concept of the family, in which one partner is masculine, desiring and active, and the other is feminine, passive and desired. The film deploys both an old-fashioned nuclear family model and a 1950s-style lesbian variant of the heterosexual structure whereby the femme and the butch played out traditional male and female roles. Thus Nic brings home the bacon and has a short, dykey haircut; Jules is conventionally beautiful, long-haired and lacking in confidence.

More disturbingly, Nic is a control freak; in one or two scenes her preternaturally calm dictatorialism borders on the emotionally abusive. It's this aspect of the film that is most disturbing and retrogressive, and that reveals its inability to imagine fully a lesbian desire that is not pathological. I'd go so far as to say that there's something monstrous about Bening's character that the breezy tone of the film cannot contain. She's possessive as well as being pathologically controlling and bordering on the alcoholic (her possessiveness encompasses her children as well as her partner). Only Moore's character is human and likeable, and in the film's schema she is the loved one, the desired woman.

In fact, with her heightened, melodramatic reactions, killer stare and chillingly careful diction, Bening's character brought to mind the eponymous film Monster, a biographical thriller about real-life lesbian serial killer Aileen Wuornos and her lover Tyria Moore. Starring the normally glamourous Charlize Theron as the ungainly Wuornos, the film strained to represent the lesbian relationship sympathetically but all too often ended up depicting a woman driven to murder purely by obsessive lesbian love (the theatrical release poster indicates the film's pathologisation of lesbian desire).

The breezy style of The Kids Are All Right sits extremely oddly with its own underlying pathology. When Nic discovers that Jules has been having an affair with Paul, at a family dinner at Paul's place, she returns to the table, stunned. The banter continues to swirl around her but so traumatised is she that she can't hear it. In seeming sympathy with her, the film momentarily mutes the sound as the camera zooms in on her silently horrified face. But in the one moment when we are supposed to identify and sympathise with her more than ever before, she has never appeared more dangerous and unstable, more extreme. It's as if she has no perception of herself outside her status as head of a family over whom she must maintain control, or perish. I wouldn't have been surprised had she rushed to the knife drawer, grabbed an ice pick and jammed it into Ruffalo's eye.

What's frustrating about this on a social level is that lesbian relationships, though of course hardly immune to dysfunction, are less likely to have one partner more dominant than are heterosexual relationships. Given the paucity of representations of these relationships, wouldn't it have been fairer to show one that was more typical? In fact, Nic's controlling behaviour embodies the worst of both male and female stereotypes, suggesting that having two mums must be psychoanalytically nightmarish; at one point she reminds Joni to send thank-you notes for presents she's received, advising her that it's better to send them before she will be forced to start her letters with an apology.

This inability to conceive of lesbian desire seeps into something as basic as the sex. At no point does the film show the two women properly 'getting it on' apart from kisses: twice when they start to get sexual there are interruptions, and their first attempt, aided by gay male porn, seems halfhearted and lacklustre (this wasn't the fault of the gay male porn; it actually created one of the funnier moments in the film, apart from smacking a bit of self-consciously enlightened social commentary).

In contrast, the sex scenes between Jules and Paul are full of energy, not to mention sexual subversion, as if the film were saying 'phew - now we can actually show how it's really done'. Confusingly, there are two conflicting lesbian stereotypes at play here: the 1970s myth that lesbians just need a good f--k; and the porn-related male fantasy of the sexually adventurous, dominant lesbian.

But of course the affair is possible and necessary because the Moore character is the woman in the lesbian relationship. That's why she can have sex with a man, and why she appears to be having a much better time with him than with her partner: real women, you see, need men. Jules actually exclaims something like 'oh baby' when she rips Ruffalo's underwear off and views his member, as if she's just been dying for a bit of 'real' action.

Part of the problem is the quality of the acting. It's mainly good, but Bening is just too good. For most of the film her character is so off the wall that what functionality and harmony there is in the family at the beginning of the film strains credibility. (Ruffalo should stop being typecast as a rebel; his performance was a bit predictable at times, as if he's a bit bored himself with the rebel persona.)

There's also a disturbing scene in which Jules summarily fires Luis, the Latino gardener she has hired for the gardening project, simply because he's happened to be around while she's been having it off with Paul. She's breathtakingly rude to him in a way that is supposed to be funny yet is merely offensive and appears to be racist.

There has been much discussion around whether this scene, including Luis's obsequious reaction to his firing, is racial stereotyping or a sophisticated attempt by director Lisa Cholodenko to show the supposedly progressive Jules's hypocrisy, and Luis's reaction as a calculated response to a racist environment in which he has little power. There is an attempt to satirise liberal hypocrisy going on here, but it's stifled by the sit com tone. Ultimately the film doesn't give a stuff about Luis's fate; after a rudimentary confession to Nic about her undeserved rudeness to Luis, the film appears to 'forgive' Jules as the necessary cost of milking a few extra laughs.

The other obvious point is that the film's take on the intervention of Paul makes some unpleasantly stereotypical assumptions about lesbian-headed families. It seems that Laser has no male role models in his life, and that's why he's acting out. After forming a friendship with his dad he's able to see what a tosser his friend Clay is, and give him up. Similarly, having Paul in her life gives Joni the confidence she needs to make a move on a male friend she's long been interested in. (That this is unsuccessful is unimportant - the point is she's been willing to try, and in so doing, dare to move into adulthood.) Yet, in the absence of a male co-parent or involved biological father, most lesbian parents, I imagine, would make efforts to include male role models in their children's lives.

In fact, the film's extreme conservatism is the basis for its hackneyed plot line: stranger intervenes in family, brings about important changes, then leaves. Paul is ultimately cast out; 'go and find your own family', Nic admonishes him at the end, and the audience is unequivocally supposed to be on her side at this point. No doubt Cholodenko was trying to be ironic here; the lesbian family as foundational, the heterosexual man as outsider. I don't know any lesbian mothers, but I imagine they would be more tolerant, more open to outsiders than this - does mainstream acceptance require that they fit a conservative template?

Let's contrast this film with the sublime Brokeback Mountain, starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as the star-crossed gay lovers Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist, whose affair while sheep herding in the Wyoming mountains becomes a lifelong love story that must be hidden from their families and is ultimately tragic.

This film just seems more perfect every time I watch it. When I first saw it I thought that, typical of director Ang Lee's style, the film was too clean. But I realise now that Lee's fastidiousness is born out of a huge well of respect and even love for his characters. Every last detail's been taken care of: Ennis's daughter looks like a combination of Ledger and Michelle Williams, his real and screen ex-wife; the actor who plays Ennis as a child in a brief flashback could be Heath Ledger's son; and even Jack Twist's parents are visually believable as his progenitors.

This isn't to say that the verisimilitude is anything but conventional. The film is a lush and tragic love story that from the word go has been marketed as classic Hollywood, the theatrical poster even modelling that of the mega-hit Titanic. The film unashamedly cossets the audience and blankets them in its loveliness, allowing viewers to project their own desires, dreams and losses onto the characters, regardless of sexual proclivity.

Instead of building pseudo-conflict by showing the characters being rude to each other - a trait not confined to The Kids Are All Right but increasingly evident in a particular style of US mainstream movie (Juno, Knocked Up) - Lee shows us, from the opening shots, the innate differences that will lead to conflict further on.

In the opening scene, Jack and Ennis, planning to commence a seasonal sheep herding job, wait outside a sheep owner's office in a dusty flybitten outpost in the American West. Ennis's hands are buried in his pockets, his shoulders hunched, his head bowed. Jack waits against his black ute in a casual stance; as he studies Ennis, confused by by his reticence, he unobtrusively slings out a hip then flings the opposite arm out and rests it on the tray of his ute.

Already we are being told subliminally that Jack 'knows' himself, and that, while he's hardly out, he has come to terms with his desires. His body language makes a stark contrast to the suit of armour that is Ennis's body. Jake Gyllenhaal is just stunning as Jack, and it's sad to see his talent now being squandered in mainstream rom coms; when the by-now secret lovers part after the seasonable job is over, the slightest raising of Gyllenhall's brow as he asks Ennis if they can meet again the following year is enough to convey a poignant mixture of emotional vulnerability and forlorn hope.

While there are emotional outbursts in the film, for much of the time the underlying emotions are conveyed by glances and body language; this both respects the audience's interpretative abilities and evokes the silence surrounding the issue of gayness in the period in which the film is set. And given its level of high melodrama and the sophistication of modern audiences, it's an achievement in itself that Brokeback Mountain never descends into bathos (perhaps the only thing I'd tone down is the force with which Jack and Ennis grapple with each other after their first reunion; the line 'I wish I knew how to quit you' has been fondly lampooned, but this merely indicates the film's ubiquity).

I don't want to go into a discussion about whether or not the characters are gay - clearly they are, and Brokeback Mountain is always a political film, pleading for acceptance and recognition of gay desire and gay relationships by relaying the central love story through an epic form. The fact that both Jack and Ennis have unhappy ends has caused consternation for some gays, who rightfully plead for an occasional happy ending for same-sex lovers. But I'd change hardly a frame of this lovingly crafted film.

Visits to My Psychologist, or The Joys of Tele-Therapy

2010-12-08T15:45:00.000-08:00

I wrote an entry not that long ago on my experience of seeing a psychologist after years of not having therapy. I’m still seeing her.

The way Australia’s universal health care system, Medicare, works, it will cost me only about $15 a session until the end of the year. This is because the out-of-pocket expenses I’ve incurred are now over the maximum amount needed for the Medicare ‘safety net’ to kick in. Until the end of the year, whenever I visit my psychologist or any kind of doctor, Medicare pays 80 per cent of my out-of-pocket expenses.

The safety net starts all over again at the beginning of the calendar year, but the 18 Medicare-subsidised psychology visits allowed per year are allocated from the time in the year they began, which in my case was mid-June. This means that, while it would be natural for me to want to ‘blow’ my last six visits before the end of the year because I would pay next to nothing for them, in reality I have to stretch them out till June next year. I’ve decided to have two more visits this year (I’ll need these to cope with pre-Christmas socialising, if I manage any) and then one visit a month till the end of April, leaving a six-week gap until my 18 subsidised visits start again in June, if I decide I need them.

The system is quite limited, with Medicare still favouring psychiatry over psychology – if there are limits to psychiatric visits per year, they’re much higher, and the psychiatrists charge heaps more than the psychologists. But I’m grateful the system is there at all – psychologists have only been subsidised by Medicare at all for the last four years or so.

The very limitations of Medicare’s support for psychological services also indicate the practical orientation of psychology, suggesting that the powers-that-be don’t see these services in traditional psychotherapy terms. As someone who has enthusiastically embraced the therapeutic relationship, I’m still having trouble with the relatively informal nature of my visits to my psychologist, including the fact that they are at differing times of the day, with differing time intervals in between.

I’m finding it difficult to really let go and complain about my parents to my psyche, especially when it comes to discussing my mum. I have been able to talk about my mother with my psyche in ways that are productive, but all the while I’ve somehow feared that she would think I was complaining about her. This is paranoid, I know, but it’s also indicative of the types of therapists I’ve seen in the past, who, if they had inferred this kind of parallel, would have identified it as part of the therapeutic process. Despite my psyche’s easy confidence, I don’t quite trust her to be robust enough to handle the enormity of my angst towards parental figures!

Because the fact remains, as with my relationship with my mum, I’m more analytical than my psychologist (not more intelligent). And when I whinge about my mum being in her own little world, perhaps in some way I’m also complaining about my psyche’s chats at the beginning and end of the session – she often talks about her family during these chats. I know why she does this – she told me once her small talk is meant to put the client at ease – but part of me wants her to myself for the entire session, even during those minutes when you’re getting seated, or getting ready to go.

Anyway, I wrote this post because I wanted to mention two things my psyche has said that have really penetrated my consciousness and made me understand, almost for the first time, that I have much more power over my mind, and the way it operates, than I’d thought.

Since about the age of seven, my mind has sometimes felt like a frightening, uncontrollable place that gave me pain and suffering in unpredictable ways. Even before the more adult kind of social phobia I’ve detailed in this blog, I was subject to a sense of dark dread that would hit me for the most trivial reasons – accidentally taking some small item home with me from my grandparents’, knowing my parents were going out that night and a babysitter was coming over, and, when I was really young, dreading I would go to hell when I died, or that the communists would take over Australia (no need to allocate blame for where the last two fears came from!).

Everything I thought about, including normal adolescent fears, was mediated by that lonely dark dread of the worst happening, the worst being somehow beyond imagining and not able to be faced and dealt with in any way. This overweening, lonely angst was the precursor to the more specific fear I would later develop – the fear of my phobic symptoms manifesting in uncontrollable ways.

Anyway, my psyche said something interesting to me a couple of months ago. She’d mentioned an episode of a comedy-drama series we’d both been watching, Offspring. The heroine of Offspring is Nina, a young, accomplished obstetrician who is nervy, self-obsessed and awkward. She has a crush on Chris, the sexy paediatrician she works with, and her feelings for him only exacerbate her painful self-consciousness.

The main technique used to depict Nina’s angst is to show her walking along the hospital corridor as we hear her innermost thoughts in voiceover while, in sync with these thoughts, various expressions of fear and embarrassment cross her face. This is both funny and painful to watch, and possibly inexplicable to those who don’t suffer from anxiety (a cousin of mine said she couldn’t warm to the character; one female reviewer complained of the Ally-McBeal-style ditziness of the heroine). In fact, watching these scenes has been at times quite a profound, even therapeutic, experience, with the comic angle helping to demystify the anxiety, and diffuse the sense of the viewer being trapped in Nina’s claustrophobic inner world.

Nina is obsessed with what others think about her, dreads specific events in the future, and, when locked in her own thoughts, is disengaged from the world around her. Yet, most of the time at least, she’s not that transparent. When she encounters a frightening or unexpected situation in the real world, she appears to be distracted and sometimes flustered, but her actual thoughts remain unknowable to others. She’s as opaque as the next person. Seeing this has also been therapeutic for me.

(We interrupt this blog entry for a brief TV review: unfortunately the series subsequently disappointed, as Nina didn't really develop at all; rather than gaining a greater sense of herself, she was just as people-pleasing, insecure and trapped in her thoughts in the last episode as she was at the beginning, and the plotting, so strong initially, gradually deteriorated as the series progressed.)

Anyway, at one session soon after a particularly apt episode, my psyche brought up the topic of Nina, and I gleefully told her I’d been watching the show.

‘Nina is very attached to her thoughts’, my psyche said. ‘Most people have different kinds of thoughts but they don’t pay much attention to them. There are some people, though, who get very attached to frightening thoughts. This is what you do’.

The combination of my psyche saying this, and me having recently watched the process being played out on screen, was quite powerful. Through my understanding of mindfulness I’d already been aware that thoughts were separate from the self, that they were random mental events rather than the basis of my very identity. But this dramatisation of an attachment to fearful thoughts, and my psyche so clearly pointing out that attachment, somehow made me understand in a much more practical way not only that my thoughts are not me, but that my attachment to fearful thoughts is something that I have some control over. If I’m attached to my thoughts, then there is a possibility that I can detach from them, at least partially.

I’m not saying for a minute that this will stop me getting fearful, especially when I’m dreading, for example, an upcoming summer barbecue full of groovy people who I know just well enough for them to invoke terror. What it means is that I have an extra tool in my arsenal when faced with scary thoughts. I had already been able to respond to these thoughts by telling myself: ‘these are just thoughts, they are not the truth’. But now I can add to that, and say: ‘these are just thoughts, and I can see how I cling to them as if they were the truth’. I can see for the first time that there is some security in these thoughts for me, that they represent a kind of ‘home’, and that it doesn’t have to be that way.

Talk about good timing.

As I’m writing this, I’m also wondering if the attachment to thoughts has got something to do with my feelings towards my mum. Do thoughts become a security blanket when there is no one to cling to? Are insecurity and fear a form of security seeking? In being so attached to my thoughts am I somehow refusing to separate from my mother? Am I metaphorically burying my face in her absent shoulder?

That’s not the only example of my psyche saying something relatively straightforward that has really resonated with me. As the copywriting aspect of my business has expanded while the editing aspect has diminished, I am starting to deal with clients over the phone more frequently. This is downright terrifying, and I’m currently facing imaginary scenarios of being in constant, crippling fear of clients calling if the business should seriously take off.

I’m even more fearful of people in the context of work than I am in the rest of life – I have a terror of success, a compulsion to display my fear combined with a deep need to please superiors (in this case, clients) and demonstrate my talents. These contradictory aims make dealing with clients in a functional way challenging to say the least, and I’ve avoided writing about this because it’s such a difficult and seemingly insurmountable area. The anticipatory fear that I sometimes experience in these situations is akin to the feelings of dread that originated in my childhood.

Recently, my psyche said of my ‘scary’ clients: ‘you give them so much power’. In the context she meant I was giving them the power to produce my symptoms, as well as power over how good or bad I felt about myself. I was using them as judges of whether or not I was an okay person.

This isn’t the first time a therapist has pointed out something to this effect. One very insightful psychiatrist once stated that in my fear of making a fool of myself socially, I turned other people into objects whose existence was only relevant in relation to me – that I corralled others for the purposes of giving me negative attention. At the time this certainly chimed, but it was an abstract idea, one I couldn’t really do much with. A problem was identified, but no concrete solution was suggested or implied.

With what I understand now about thinking, I was able to read my present psyche’s remark more usefully than I could have in the past. She was actually saying to me: ‘You give your clients so much power in your thoughts’. In other words, it was the way I was rehearsing encounters with these people in my head, or simply the feeling that I adopted automatically when I thought about them, that was the issue. I was giving them power in and through my cognition, through the exercise of my mental faculties, at specific moments in time. These specific moments occurred every time I conceptualised them, not simply during my actual dealings with them.

In the past I’ve simply assumed they had the power I was attributing to them. After all, they are my clients, the people who hold the purse strings. But are they really the arbiters of my self-worth? In reality, they are simply people who want a service from me. If I sound awkward or frightened on the phone, they have the choice of whether or not to deal with me in the future. Their personal judgments of me, whether positive, negative or somewhere in between, are not really all that relevant. They are not sitting on some pedestal miles above me, dictating how I should feel about myself.

Now, when the usual dread descends, I tell myself that I am giving these people unnecessary power. I’m using them to make myself feel scared. In reality, they are marginal to my life. This thought process doesn’t banish the dread of course, but there is a real reduction – its hold on me weakens. The ‘judges’ start to descend to earth, devolving to their actual status as fallible human beings with their own agendas.

One thing I’ve been doing ever since I started to see my psyche is write down the most salient points she makes, sometimes during the session. I then type them up on my ‘therapy’ file (obsessive? me? never!) This has been a good thing to do, and occasionally I’ll read through the file. Because my thinking constantly seeks to go back to its old habits, and drag me back into the dread – that confusingly comfortable, familiar place of pain, humiliation and discomfort.

The Emotional Trajectory of the Common Cold

2010-11-14T14:39:00.000-08:00

I’ve recently recovered from a slight cold and am fascinated by the emotional trajectory I’ve been on.

The cold hit me on Monday night, with a sudden fit of hayfever-like sneezing when I turned the dusty gas heater on in the loungeroom. I started to feel that hazy exhaustion that creeps up on you slowly until your brain finally registers the fact of malady. I didn’t want a cold because I can never sleep while my nose is running, but that first flooding of the taps was it. After that it was just the kind of cotton woolly, remote feeling that only makes sense when you’re lying in bed propped up by pillows reading a deliciously spooky book with Classic FM playing the top classical 100.

In other words, the first day of the cold was utter bliss. It happened to be a public holiday, adding to the sense of unearthly lull. I had a deadline the next day and did the few hours of work required to keep up. Then I escaped to the haven of Bed, and read for a while, and when my brain was too tired to read, slept, and then read again. Lovely.

The next day I had to do more work. I met the deadline at around 3, and then it was back to bed, again feeling suitably deserving. Naughtily I hadn’t had a shower since Monday – not like me at all, but it was scary how easily not having a shower became normal!

By Thursday I was starting to feel stir-crazy and desperate to get out of the house. I got up early and, determined to stay up, showered, dressed and escaped to the local shopping mall, ostensibly searching for early Christmas presents but really just playing hooky. Unfortunately I was squandering my limited stores of energy and that afternoon after lunch I collapsed in front of the heater, alternating between a futile struggle to keep reading and an exhausted doze. I was starting to be plagued by the usual spectre of Things Not Done, and to get angry about my lack of energy.

A visit to my mother that morning hadn’t helped. I’d dropped over to borrow a handsaw on the way back from the shopping mall. October has been the wettest spring in Victoria for 18 years (thankfully the dams are now more than half-full) and my front yard was a wilderness of feral foliage threatening to engulf me like the forest in Sleeping Beauty. I would take control! I would rise like the Phoenix with renewed strength and hack through the gnarled branches of my wintry hibernation, greeting the emerging summer sun and embracing a fuller life.

Detailing my relationship with my mother would take a book rather than a blog entry, but she has always reflected my own mental and physical health issues (many of which, sadly, she unwittingly passed on to me). I’ve recently realised that, apart from chronic low blood sugar, she has probably been suffering from low-level depression, or dysthymia, for my entire life. (Quite possibly her mother also suffered it.) On this day she was on the couch reading the paper, and now that she has osteoporosis (it is being treated but it’s a long haul) she’s increasingly surrounded by the semi-controlled mess of my hoarder father.

She looked up at me with that undisguised, slightly bitter exhaustion she hides so well from her friends and extended family, but is ‘where she lives’, so to speak. Everything seemed to crystallise in my all too damning assessment: she wanted to move from the house years ago, and downsize as her friends were doing; my father wouldn’t move because of his hoarding, and the strong emotional attachment he retains to his birth family, from whom he’d bought the house when my sisters and I were still young.

My mother got her first fracture a few years ago, running around the too-big house and enormous garden as she desperately cleaned up before a birthday celebration – her birthday. It seemed to me on the day I visited that she was trapped in that house, and was now further entrapped by her condition. And I too was similarly trapped in my large rundown flat, which allowed me to spread myself out but was bringing me down with its overactive garden, and the burden of fatigue caused by rising damp, dust and mould.

In a sense, I was both my mother and my father – staying in the house because the part of me that loved to spread out was now free, but burdened by its size and age. And the rent was going up by $50 a week in January.

It all seemed so hopeless, no doubt through the prism of my lingering cold, and I left with an exaggerated determination to hold victory over my own lack of energy, expressed in the chaos of my front garden. So naturally the afternoon hiatus in front of the heater was upsetting, forced as it might have been.

Things got a bit better on Friday – I did an hour and a half of ruthless sawing, sadly paying little heed to the laws of pruning, choosing branches for disposal I could reach on a footstool. I left the mess where it fell, and the next morning sawed and piled the branches neatly.

I’m only now just getting back to normal. Chaos is at bay in both the back and front yards, although the front already needs one more good bout of the clipper and the handsaw, and one of the branches of the plum tree out the back seems to have shot out by two feet in about ten days – I kid you not. But it pains me that all I have the energy to do is keep things at some level of order rather than imposing my own order, and developing or reshaping the garden. On the other hand, I live on a main road, and the untamed bushes give me valuable privacy, not to mention the shade they offer to the armies of joggers, nannies, young families, dedicated dog walkers and iPod-strewn power walkers that pass by every hour of the day.

All is not lost. I spoke to my psyche recently about the feeling of not being able to separate from my mother, or forgive her for her lack of nurturing. ‘It’s your turn now,’ she said. In the context of the discussion, she meant it was my turn to be in life’s spotlight, to be an adult and enjoy myself. But I also read this remark another way – that it was my turn to take over the role of mothering myself.

Sometime in the future I may also have to look after my mother a bit. I say ‘a bit’ because, given the fragility of our relationship and my low energy levels, an intense level of the caring role on my part would be impossible, and because two of my sisters also live in the area and, if necessary, will be able to share the burden. But now at least I can countenance offering some level of care in the next five or ten years, even if it’s just a regular tidy up of the house or a weekly trip to the shops. Now I can stop expecting that one day in the very near future my mother will finally decide to do ‘her job’ and look after me. She won’t – it’s my turn now.

A Nest in Spring - My Pigeon Encounter

2010-11-04T14:08:00.000-07:00

Recently I wrote about a non-human ‘friend’ I’d made, a blackbird that for about a month was knocking against my bathroom window several times a day. Having anthropomorphised what is apparently a common occurrence (a Google search reveals that during the mating season blackbirds sometimes mistake their reflections in the window for predators, and attack) I felt suitably chastened, and a little miffed when the blackbird abruptly ceased her futile quest, having probably gone off to mate.

The explanation didn’t satisfy me completely though. The blackbird seemed to be trying to get a foothold on the wisteria in order to peer inside – she seemed genuinely curious and would only fly away when she saw me coming. Once or twice I noticed her calmly perched on a high branch of the plum tree outside the window, watching me as I showered. She was fascinated, not merely disturbed, by the world beyond that strange invisible wall she kept knocking into. I wasn’t bird watching – she was human watching.

But I would not be alone for long. Soon after she left, a loving couple moved in next door. Again, they were clearly visible through the bathroom window. They seemed very close, and would sit side by side for hours without a word, torsos touching, enjoying an effortless togetherness. Unlike the blackbird, they were sublimely uninterested in me, although perhaps made uncomfortable by the persistent curiosity.

Then the determined building started. In record time the house was finished and not long after that a new development occurred – the arrival of twins!

Okay, so this new family weren’t human either. They were pigeons and in perfect cooperation and record time they had built a rudimentary nest in the plum tree, only about a foot from the window, that they took turns to sit on, patiently minding two small eggs. The nest is surprisingly small and frail looking. It’s been through a lot in the past few weeks, and, truth be told, is now studded with layers of pigeon pooh, yet it continues to withstand the powerful winds and blinding rain we’ve experienced during what has been a wet and chilly spring. I’ve witnessed one of the adult pigeons perched calmly on it during a windy storm, rocked by the force of the wind but seemingly confident it would withstand the battering.

Seeing the branch swinging and the bird calmly moored there for hours, feathers plumped up against the cruel wind, inevitably made me think about human endeavour (I know, anthropmorphising again!). We all assume that the aim of life is happiness. But perhaps it isn’t. Perhaps at particular stages of our lives it is just to hang in there.

Every time I’d go to the bathroom, except for very early in the morning, one of the pigeons would be sitting on the nest, keeping the eggs warm. You’d think the boredom must have been excruciating, but I’ve come to believe that pigeons either don’t experience boredom, or process it differently (perhaps they also receive some hormonal help).

For a while I had no idea that the male was still involved. I thought the female was heroically going it alone, and that perhaps the male was feeding her. But early one morning I witnessed an exciting event. In an uncanny silence, one pigeon hopped off the nest as the other one waited on a nearby branch. The waiting one climbed onto the nest immediately afterwards and settled in for a long stint.

I’ve seen this a few times now and the sense of cooperation and non-verbal communication is palpable. And at the time it made sense: two distinct personalities had seemed to be in play. One of the pigeons would eye me a bit nervously when I approached the window and shamelessly gawked at it, while the other avoided looking at me altogether, as if hoping I’d disappear.

For about two and a half weeks this pigeon pair took turns to keep their eggs safe and warm. Then one day, tiny moving beaks and long necks stretching up for food were barely discernible over the top of the nest. The chicks had hatched! They were half-formed mutants, skeletal and grotesque in their vulnerability.

The parents did an amazing job hiding the chicks from the world – and me. Not surprisingly, apart from feeding, the aim at this stage was to cover up the chicks and keep them safe and warm – the parent seemed to sit on top of them, and I wondered how it did not inadvertently smother them. The adult pigeon’s ability to spread out and change shape with feather plumping is quite amazing. The phrase ‘taking someone under your wing’ now makes sense to me!

As the chicks grew, the feeding process became more visible. The parent regurgitates food it’s eaten, producing a kind of vomit that it then conveys into the beak of the chick by using its own beak as a feeder. It really gets its beak down the chick’s gullet, and conveys the food using a pumping motion. I watched this many times, feeling fascinated but guilty as I’m sure the parent didn’t like anyone witnessing this act of nurturing. It amazes me that this vigorous process doesn’t damage the chick’s oesophagus! Both seemed constantly famished, pecking at the torso of the parent when the other was being fed but giving up immediately when it was clear the meal was over.

I watched each stage of the chicks’ development with something like delight, and had soon installed a little stool in the bathroom to get a better view of these David Attenborough moments. I continued to feel a bit guilty, worried I was unsettling the parent, but as the chicks grew more sentient I reasoned that they had never known a world without me in it, and indeed they would prove calmer in regards to me than one of the parents.

They grew amazingly quickly, and were noticeably larger every day. Gradually I no longer had to stand on the stool to get a good view of them, and instead of being in the nest they sat on top of it.

As they grew, the parents stayed away more and more frequently, seeming to desert them entirely during the day but always coming back to feed them in the evening (and probably in the morning, before I was up). For as long as possible the parent on duty even managed to fit on top of them in the nest at night. The two siblings seemed increasingly calm in the absence of the parent, as if confident it would return. But they also seemed to know instinctively that it was important to keep still and hide themselves from predators while their protector was gone.

For a few weeks, their main goal in life was to wait – wait for the parent to arrive with the food, wait to grow bigger, wait for that first chance to pound those impatient, unwieldy wings against the wind. They endured the long hours alone with each other surprisingly calmly. Now, when they stood up to be fed, they revealed their bulk - huge when compared with a few weeks earlier and looking like small ducks, with plenty of down, but narrow necks. Together in the nest from the get-go, they somehow continued to fit themselves in and share the increasingly inadequate space, turning when necessary, flapping a wing every now and again, and occasionally gnawing at their own necks, perhaps in hunger or boredom, perhaps shedding down.

New stages continued to occur. One morning when I checked in, one of them had ventured forth from the nest and was perched on a nearby branch. This one was more adventurous and perhaps more developed than its sibling, and it continued to explore further up the tree. I watched enthralled as it made a tiny experimental flight from one branch to the next. The next day, both were perching and moving around on nearby branches.

I was fully expecting to witness the day-shift parent come back to give them a flying lesson. What would happen at this next stage? Would the family stay anchored to the nest at night? Would I witness the young pigeons take a full flight into the air for the first time? Unfortunately, my hopes of seeing further developmental triumphs were disappointed.

Some time after their sally forth earlier that morning, I discovered them sitting companionably together in the nest, looking diminutive, peaceful and sweet. I gave them my usual greeting (I can’t confess it, it’s too embarrassing).

Then an hour or so later I went by again, and they were gone. Just like that. No sign of them in any part of the tree. No goodbyes, not even a ceremonial escorting of them into the big wide world by the parent. They’d just disappeared.

I was shocked, bereft. The nest looked obsolete, forlorn. I sensed its purpose was complete.

It wasn’t the total end, although close enough. That evening I saw the shapes of young birds – for they’d become birds by this stage – in the spangling evening leaves. I rushed outside. Relief! The two young were sitting next to each other on a branch in easy sight, and Mum or Dad, still large in comparison, was keeping watch from a branch further up. I gazed up at the two young and they gazed down at me serenely – that silly gawking monster again. It was the parent, funnily enough, who took fright and flew away. Since then, I’ve only had one more sighting, when I was just able to discern the parent feeding one of them in a part of the tree near the neighbour’s fence. It appeared for a while that the plum tree was still the ‘home tree’, although a few days later I’m not so sure. But the nest has been well and truly forgotten by everyone except me.

Nature makes life look so simple. Pigeons don’t seem particularly enterprising to me compared with some other bird species, perhaps partly because of their environment, but it strikes me they’re the hippies of the natural world. They do whatever is required to sustain existence, and live peacefully in the moment. They also seem to really enjoy simply hanging out with their kids and partners, and on sunny days they soak up the sun, sometimes with a close friend beside them to enjoy the moment with.

Like other birds they seem able to call on extraordinary reserves of stamina and endurance when required. Seeing the parent and even the chicks getting sodden in the bitter spring storms, yet never complain or give up, made me think of the documentary Travelling Birds – I’ve never forgotten the look of preternatural determination and concentration revealed by the amazing close-ups of migratory birds, their wings beating the air as they travelled hundreds of miles without a rest.

Ah well. The plum tree’s branches are now so extensive it’s threatening to wrap around the house and trap me in there. With its main tenants now gone, and its job of protecting one small family completed, it’s time for some judicious pruning.

The Dilemmas of Therapy

2010-10-06T19:25:00.000-07:00

I’ve been seeing a psychologist for the last few months. This is a kind of miracle – I stopped seeing my last therapist in 2003 – but it’s more low-key than it sounds. Anyway, something that happened last week made me think of the differences between different kinds of mental health professionals, and the way these differences have played out in terms of my own experiences and the various life stages at which I’ve seen therapists.

My therapist is a registered, or counselling, psychologist. This means she’s a full member of the Australian Psychological Society and is entitled to practise as a psychologist, but she doesn’t have a Masters degree in psychology or, I assume, the extent of supervised clinical experience with the mentally ill that a Masters would entail. This is the first time I’ve seen any kind of psychologist for any length of time. Previously, in my early to late thirties, I saw two psychiatrists consecutively over a period of about nine years.

She’s good at what she does, and has a talent for ‘reading’ people, which I think makes up for her presumed relative lack of clinical experience. But I sometimes feel as if I know the ‘rules’ of therapy better than she does; and the arrangement as a whole, with her modus operandi as part of it, is very different from the therapeutic relationships I’ve had in the past.

For example, my psychologist is never on time, and she never apologises for being late. Sometimes the lateness is a piddling few minutes but it’s usually more. Once she was almost fifteen minutes late and appeared at the door of the dollhouse-sized waiting room with nary a ‘sorry’.

As someone chronically deprived of my mother’s attention, this presses all my buttons. What’s most fascinating about it is not that as a patient my reactions to such a situation might be overblown – that would be expected. It’s that these reactions aren’t – can’t be – a key part of the therapeutic relationship. They can’t be examined and their underlying dynamics unearthed.

Such a situation simply wouldn’t have occurred with my previous therapists – for one, if a rare example of extreme lateness had occurred they would have apologised; for another, they would probably have raised for discussion in the consulting room the feelings that such an episode would have aroused in me.

Inevitably the therapeutic relationship, as it applies to my psychologist and me, does have some degree of the type of parent–child dynamic that occurred with the two psychiatrists – I feel needy before I see her, relieved when I can sit opposite in the tiny, untidy room and pour out my fears and triumphs. But this dynamic is underlying rather than dominant, and it’s not being used as part of the therapeutic process.

This is not just because of her perceived lack of qualifications, of course. It’s also partly due to the fact that I don’t, consciously at least, want to put her in that position – how many parent figures can you have throughout your life (an infinite number, it seems, as I still treat people in authority as parent figures); partly that my therapist is either about my age or slightly younger (it’s hard to tell – she’s very good looking, and probably botoxes); partly due to my lowered expectations as a result of my excessive aloneness in the last few years; and partly because of the way the Medicare (national insurance scheme) operates – the rebate is limited for psychological help compared with psychiatry, a maximum of 12 visits a year or 18 if the GP approves, so the sessions are widely spaced (once every two or three weeks) and they’re very practically oriented.

My psychologist and I mainly talk about strategies, tactics and techniques in relation to examples I bring up of problematic episodes that have already occurred or potential scenarios I’d like to venture into. We’ve looked at the past, but mainly in terms of how it affects my perceptions of others and of relationships today.

My therapist was chosen for me by my GP and I listened to my gut feeling in deciding to see her, and then to stick with her. I had to rely on my gut feeling because I was desperate to see someone at the time, and I knew that if I checked on her credentials before my first appointment and she wasn’t sufficiently qualified my head would say all sorts of judgmental things about her.

And my gut feeling was on the money. The fact that she wasn’t a clinical psychologist initially quietly horrified me (‘But I’m sick! I have about five different mental illnesses all blended together in an indivisible whole – how can she possibly help me?’). She does, however, have a human resources background, which was perfect for the issues I was grappling with at the time. She continues to be great at putting my many work issues into perspective.

So the current situation has both advantages and disadvantages. Because of her not being a clinical psychologist, as well as all the other reasons outlined above, I still feel as if I’m essentially on my own.

In some ways this is good for someone like me, who was never parented properly and has spent their lives searching for the perfect parent. In the past I relied on my psyches to be excessively parental, and while I was seeing them, I didn’t ever really take full responsibility for seeking sustainable adult relationships.

This had serious and long-term implications for my emotional development. Neither of my previous psyches fully realised the extent to which I needed to be ordered around when it came to relationships. There was one crucial point in my life when I needed to be told very firmly to have sex with the first realistic contender that came my way, to be set sexual ‘homework’ if you like. But the extent of that need simply wasn’t evident to my therapist at the time, and I didn’t have the maturity or self-awareness to articulate it.

Realising the limitations of my psychologist’s skills (and she is skilled in many ways) puts the responsibility onto me for my own recovery. And I’m hardly a rank beginner. I have a friend with OCD who has been practising exposure for so many years now he’s virtually an expert, and we have regular debriefings about it. I’ve also done plenty of my own reading as well as attended a social phobia group that included CBT and exposure.

Yes, my social phobia is complex and difficult, as it’s combined with a compulsion to display my symptoms to particular people and an underlying terror of making meaningful connections with others. My therapist works with me on exposure, but because of the nature of my problem, I have to tailor the program in conjunction with her. It would be wonderful if my therapist could tailor a program exactly to suit me. But exposure is exposure. I know enough now to tailor my own program with her help – she is my back-up.

And I have another weapon in my armory, a weapon that only I can wield – meditation. I finally have the self-love to use it regularly, and it’s beginning to show subtle but noticeable results.

Those are the advantages of not being able to completely turn my therapist into a parent figure. There is also a major disadvantage.

Because I can’t go through the ‘transference’ (when the patient falls in love with the therapist as an all-powerful parent figure) it means that I don’t feel emotionally ‘held’ during the session. And this means that the scary feelings that come up for me whenever I am in close contact with a person for any period of time can’t be taken out and looked at honestly.

Oh, I suppose they could if I insisted, but it would all be terribly awkward. I like my psyche and she says amazing things at just the right time, but she’s not really ‘mine’ – and to talk about some of the feelings that come up for me in relation to her (as opposed to the outside world – I can talk about that, no problem) would be more than my fragile self-image could cope with.

I think I’m a bit frightened that if I reveal those feelings, she won’t be on my side any more. And that inability feeds on itself – if I can’t articulate those feelings then I may start to display them through my panic symptoms in the consulting room, and that would be extremely embarassing. And my fear is that I’d then be on my own again, just as I was before I started seeing her. This is not a positive therapeutic situation!

My current way of dealing with this problem is to see the sessions themselves as part of my exposure therapy. It’s difficult for me to sit in the same room with just one other person for an hour. The session becomes part of my (self-administered) treatment, with the psychologist as unknowing resource.

Of course, this may not work indefinitely. My symptoms are already clamouring for attention in the consulting room and there may come a time when I can no longer manage them adequately without acknowledging them. I guess that will be a time of reckoning: the time either to seek another therapist or to attempt to turn the therapeutic relationship into something more challenging for both of us.

Hitting Australians When They’re Down: Unemployment Payments and the Demonisation of the Unemployed

2010-09-13T17:10:00.000-07:00

During the 2007 election, Kevin Rudd’s mantra of support for ‘working families’ caused many a journalistic snigger. During the recent election, the two larger parties were rightly derided for their shameless dog whistling in regard to an irrational fear of a few thousand unfortunate boat people.

But to my knowledge no journalist has admitted that the concept of working families is in itself a form of dog whistling. The unmentionable ‘other’ is of course the ‘non-working family’ – as well as, heaven help them, the single unemployed who have failed to fulfil even their reproductive duties. Julia Gillard’s announcement during the campaign that unemployed people would be stripped of their benefits if they did not turn up to employment interviews was a whistle so clear it could have been heard by every toy poodle in Paris.

In the current climate it is politically unwise to mention unemployed people in the mainstream media, the very group that is most in need of the assistance of government, unless it is in the context of turning them into part of the favoured group – the employed (a worthwhile aim, but not one that justifies starvation-level payments). Both of the larger parties are now willing to alternately demonise and disregard this group of Australians in order to appeal to the ignoramuses in the country’s most marginal seats.

Not only does this process create a convenient scapegoat, but it also makes it easier for the parties to ignore the very real suffering caused by the grossly inadequate welfare payments that unemployed people receive, confident that Australians like you and I won’t be clamouring for change. If the unemployed are inherently shifty, if they are markedly less deserving than aged pensioners and those with disabilities, and if they cannot be trusted to have a good reason for not attending an employment interview, they should be grateful for what they get.

The rhetoric of the deserving and undeserving poor is not simply a matter of semantics; it has huge ramifications for the kind and level of support that people down on their luck receive. After the 2009 bushfires in Victoria, the country watched astounded as an avalanche of community goodwill and generosity blanketed the survivors, many of whom had lost most of their belongings. Donations of goods quickly arrived by the truckload and some people even offered cars and caravans to the victims. The Victorian Bushfire Appeal eventually raised an astonishing $379 million.

Yet later that year the federal government had no difficulty selling the fact that the 2009 budget included a $32.50 increase to disability and age pensions while the Newstart (unemployment) Allowance, already significantly lower than the pension, remained unchanged (in July 2010 it was a miserly $231 a week for a single adult). Perhaps governments fear the goodheartedness of their citizens as much as they fear unpopularity; a fully informed citizenry might clamour for a tax system that funded adequate unemployment benefits, leaving less money for electoral bribes to the pampered middle class.

This situation is all the more offensive given that unemployment is an accepted part of, and even considered vital to, the running of modern growth-based economies. Zero unemployment is said to lead to wages growth, which may lead to inflation, and high inflation is a politician’s worst nightmare. Governments are therefore busy scapegoating a group whose disadvantaged status it is arguably in their interests to maintain. (Outrageous growth in executive salaries, however, is assumed to have no effect on inflation.)

Poor people weren’t always the scapegoats of politicians. Remember Bob Hawke’s impassioned declaration in 1987 that no Australian child would live in poverty by 1990? At the time he was laughed at for having such a lofty and unachievable goal. But compare the urgency of his rhetoric, and the apparent electoral importance of the issue at the time, with the silence on poor children, as opposed to average families, today.

So what’s the situation for those receiving Newstart Allowance in Australia? Here are some disturbing facts:

• About 600,000 Australians receive the Newstart Allowance. More than half of them have been receiving it for over a year.

• The Newstart payment for a single adult was only $33 a day in July 2010. This is almost $120 a week lower than the Disability Support Pension, and less than half the minimum wage.

• In July 2010, a family with two children headed by an unemployed sole parent had to make do on only $460 per week.

• While Newstart has not increased in real terms for almost two decades, in the last ten years electricity costs have nearly doubled (91 per cent), while housing and health costs combined have risen by about 60 per cent.

• The national unemployment rate for 15 to 19-year-olds was almost 17 per cent in June 2010.

• Providers of job services for long-term unemployed people receive an average of only $500 per person to assist them to return to work, less than most other wealthy nations.

In the absence of visibility, unemployed people endure a hardship that the rest of Australia, apart from the welfare sector, largely ignores. Many will be forced to accept food parcels, clothing and emergency payments from charitable organisations. Large numbers will shiver in cold houses or risk getting the electricity disconnected because they can’t afford to pay heating bills. Unemployed single parents will watch helplessly as their children are marginalised through their inability to provide for their educational needs. The threat of homelessness will loom when the rent goes up or a long-term landlord decides to sell. The costs of petrol and public transport, especially for those living in remote areas, may be prohibitive.

In its 2010 election statement, Australia’s peak welfare body, the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS), asserted that blaming unemployed people for their predicament was ‘both cruel and pointless’. It called for wholesale reform of the welfare payment system to reflect the cost of living, and for the single adult rate of Newstart to be immediately increased by $45 a week.

Yet from the moment of her ascension to the prime ministership, Gillard’s rhetoric has in effect been moving in the opposite direction, suggesting that first and foremost it is the business, even the duty, of government to reward those who are lucky enough to have work – those good, solid, irreproachable folk who ‘set their alarms early’. In her acceptance speech she affirmed that ‘I believe in a government that rewards those who work the hardest’.

During this speech Gillard acknowledged the role of the entire workforce in bringing Australia through the GFC relatively unscathed – ‘the working people, employers, employees, the trade unions, the small and big businesses, the employer associations who all made this possible’. Yet she failed to commiserate with those whose lives were thrown into chaos due to the rise in unemployment at the height of the GFC.

It’s true that during the GFC many employers, fearing a skills shortage, reduced their employees’ hours rather than sacking them, and good on those who did; it’s also true that the official unemployment rate, which is always far lower than the actual rate, rose to 5.8 per cent, an increase of 1.6 per cent, between May 2008 and August 2009. For Gillard, employers and employees who weathered the storm were worthy of congratulations, but not any former workers that employers had dumped to maintain the viability of their businesses.

This kind of rhetoric signals an astonishing reversal of the self-definition of a Labor government, which has traditionally associated itself with advocating for the disadvantaged. It also ignores one of the most important roles of the tax system: to redistribute the nation’s wealth in order to improve equity.

Objective 3 (a) of the ALP constitution states that the party stands for ‘the abolition of poverty, and the achievement of greater equality in the distribution of income, wealth and opportunity’. Point 23 in Chapter 7 of Labor’s national platform makes a direct reference to unemployment benefits, revealing that the ALP’s aim is, in fact, that they be sufficient to live on. It states that Labor is ‘committed to ensuring that pensions and allowances support a decent standard of living and full participation in Australian society’.

In addition, through the tax system governments of all stripes are required to redistribute resources to make society more equitable. That’s not some socialist goal; it is reiterated in the Henry tax review, which unequivocally states that ‘Australia’s tax and transfer system needs to raise and redistribute revenue efficiently, equitably (my italics) and in a fiscally sustainable manner …’

Sadly, the present low level of Newstart payments is counter to both Labor objectives and the fundamental role of taxation. They fail to take into account the most basic realities of the cost of living – housing, for instance.

According to housing advocacy group National Shelter, rents are rising at a rate three times that of the Consumer Price Index (CPI). In the March quarter 2010, the median rental for a newly let one-bedroom flat in Sydney was $385 – almost $100 more than the single adult rate of Newstart and the maximum weekly Rent Assistance payment ($56.70) combined! In addition, the miserly Newstart Allowance ensures that the costs associated with searching for work – transport, decent clothing, access to computers and so on – are prohibitive.

To make matters worse, the gap between unemployment payments and pensions will continue to widen if the system isn’t overhauled. This is because increases in the former are calculated using the CPI, while pensions increase in line with wages, which are historically higher than the CPI. In addition, Newstart recipients face significantly harsher income tests than do those receiving the DSP, and lengthy waiting periods if they have substantial savings.

If Gillard’s rhetoric uses silence and innuendo to suggest an undeserving poor, the Howard government deployed a metaphorical pick-axe in its wrecking of the public image of unemployed people. Following its 1996 election victory the Coalition began demonising unemployed people with particular zeal; they were lazy dole bludgers who were lucky to get anything.

The government introduced Work for the Dole and the concept of mutual obligation, tightened access to benefits and reduced levels of payment in some instances. Tony Abbott coined the term ‘job snobs’ and reportedly claimed that the welfare state encouraged welfare dependency, while Mal Brough falsely stated that one in six unemployed people were ‘cruisers’ and ‘dole bludgers’ who were exploiting ‘the generosity of the Australian taxpayer to fund their lifestyle choice’.

At the same time, the Howard government reduced the ability of the welfare sector to challenge these negative images by effectively muzzling it. It defunded some advocacy groups, required welfare organisations to provide advance warning of any public criticisms of the government, and threatened to introduce legislation that would take tax breaks away from non-government organisations that advocated changes to legislation, if this advocacy was ‘more than ancillary or incidental to their core purpose’.

The rhetoric of the undeserving poor helped to justify Howard’s refusal to increase Newstart (and pension) payments despite the economic boom, as well as his shameless finessing of middle-class electoral bribery and tax rorts for the wealthy to stay in power (what the Welfare Rights Unit labels ‘upside-down welfare’).

Howard changed the tenor of federal budgets, turning them into Christmas-style handouts for voters who were encouraged to care only about how they would benefit financially. He increased funding for wealthy private schools, introduced a rebate for private health insurance and created a First Home Owners Grant. In 2006, Coalition treasurer Peter Costello announced profligate superannuation concessions that blatantly favoured the wealthy and created a tax rort for older high-income earners.

The Labor government has continued to produce regressive policies and encourage the ‘gimme gimme’ attitude of voters. Its proposed ‘cash for clunkers’ (Cleaner Car Rebate) scheme – which may now be on the scrapheap – is a relatively minor example. The scheme would throw $2000 at those who could already afford to buy a brand new car, and would no doubt be enthusiastically taken up by comfortably-off parents whose university-attending children were currently driving bombs.

More disturbingly, the government foregoes billions of dollars in tax revenue each year by giving generous tax breaks, such as negative gearing, to property investors. (This policy has also contributed to steep increases in the price of property, and therefore helped to fuel rent increases that have worsened hardship for the poor.) Moreover, despite the recommendations of the Henry review, the Labor government has maintained the superannuation concessions for the wealthy, concessions that are costing the country billions. Removing these property investment and superannuation tax breaks would release funds for fairer Newstart payments, so that the poorest Australians could afford the basics.

The mainstream media has been doing little to champion the rights of unemployed people. This year the voice of the social welfare lobby was conspicuously absent from post-budget ABC radio news bulletins, while Lateline did its bit to keep social justice out of the post-budget discussion.

On the program that followed the budget speech of 11 May 2010, the only non-government perspective was given by the dry-as-dust Chris Richardson from Access Economics (Richardson is, in any case, a former Treasury staffer). Predictably he called for the government to cut spending, failing to distinguish between worthwhile and wasteful spending; interviewer Leigh Sales made no attempt to challenge either the social or economic basis for this assessment.

In fact, while the ABC is obsessed with balance, in the area of social justice it makes no attempt to give equal time. Journalists are required to be fluent in the rhetoric and jargon of neoliberalism, so why aren’t they equally familiar with the concepts of social justice, equity and inequality?

On the contrary, seasoned interviewers such as Fran Kelly and Kerry O’Brien repeatedly fail to call politicians to account on the regressive aspects of their budget and election giveaways. Nor do they raise the contradiction inherent in politicians repeatedly saying they can’t afford to fund adequate income support and services for disadvantaged people while blithely handing out tax cuts to those who don’t need them. In the fourth estate, the idea of a nation that supports the ‘fair go’ seems to have been abandoned.

This lack of oversight has enabled the government to make life increasingly difficult for disadvantaged people, the unemployed among them. Initially applied to Indigenous welfare recipients in the Northern Territory, welfare quarantining for non-Indigenous welfare recipients was to be rolled out in the NT from July this year, despite evidence that it doesn’t work. It will apply to long-term unemployed people, some young people on benefits, those deemed to be at risk of financial crisis or domestic abuse and people referred by child protection authorities. At the end of 2011 the scheme will be assessed with the possibility that it could be rolled out nationally.

This scheme costs a whacking $4400 per person on average, money that would be much better spent on family intervention programs – such as those run by Uniting Care, which cost less and are proven to work – as well as treatment for addictions, financial counselling services, greater job search assistance and an increase in allowances. ACOSS has labelled the scheme ‘a top-down, one-size-fits-all, bureaucratic solution to complex social problems’ that is ‘poorly targeted and expensive’ and will ‘inflict shame and indignity on income support recipients’.

In an eloquent example of bipartisanship between the two larger parties, prior to the election Tony Abbott declared that he approved of the scheme and suggested that he would implement it if the Coalition won government.

If governments can get away with such an ineffectual and even harmful policy with little public protest, there is a strong risk that unemployed people will be unfairly targeted in other ways when the economic good times are gone.

The UK offers a sobering example of what can happen when the concept of the undeserving poor takes hold. According to journalist Johann Hari, the people most able to shoulder the burden of David Cameron’s obsession with reducing debt – the wealthy – aren’t being asked to do so.

Instead, in another example of the twisted logic of upside-down welfare, the poor are being hit; the unemployed, for example, will lose £6.50 from the £65 they receive a week. Hari quotes a chilling off-the-record remark made to The Times by a government minister: ‘the undeserving poor are undeserving’. He goes on to show that cutting government spending is not only bad for poor people, but also disastrous for the economy – that is, it will simply create more poor people.

So how to counter both the demonisation of and the silence around unemployment? How to build sufficient momentum in the community to pressure the government to raise unemployment payments to reflect the cost of living?

The human brain thrives on narrative. Australians need to hear the voices and stories of unemployed people themselves, and to begin to understand what their lives are like. Just as Howard knew that it was vital to prevent the media from humanising the Tampa boat people, both the government and the Coalition no doubt realise that if unemployed people were to tell their stories they would receive a measure of sympathy from the community.

The voices of unemployed people can be heard in a report the Brotherhood of St Laurence produced in March this year, Making Work Pay and Making Income Support Work. The report found that the social security and tax systems created significant barriers for people trying to return to work and combining part-time work with welfare payments. It called for ‘a wide-ranging overhaul of income support, housing and employment services’ to ease the transition. But in doing so it also exploded the popular myth that the unemployed are somehow different from, and less motivated than, the rest of us. Conversely, it found that:

… given their personal circumstances, income support recipients are shown to make sensible decisions regarding engagement with paid work … in stark contrast with the stereotypes of welfare recipients as ‘dependent on welfare’ or incapable of making ‘responsible’ decisions …

Indeed, the report concluded that ‘even the most disadvantaged participants held positive attitudes to paid work’. It laudably includes quotes from unemployed people themselves – people like Ian, who says: ‘I want to be cut off the [Newstart] payment as quick as possible … to get back to work, even if it’s just a bit over Newstart, I’d rather do that’.

The welfare sector needs to continue its fight to get the issue of unemployment payments into the mainstream media, and to tell the stories behind the statistics. In turn, journalists need to understand that the experiences of disadvantaged people are vital to presenting a complete picture of this country, and to bringing back the concept of the ‘fair go’; but they also need to realise that news stories that don’t demonise the poor or oversimplify their circumstances make for stronger, more accurate and more hard-hitting journalism.

The policies of both the Coalition and Labor need to incorporate basic fairness for unemployed people through income support payments that enable them to retain dignity and a lifestyle not ravaged by desperate want. The Greens haven’t specified a particular level of increase for Newstart payments in their policy platform, but say they want to ‘simplify the system of targeted pensions and allowances into a universal guaranteed adequate income scheme’. Now that they have obtained the balance of power in the Senate, it’s vital that they push to bring unemployment payments into line with pensions. They should also maintain their opposition to welfare quarantining.

Unemployment can happen to anyone who is an employee, and a fairer, more cohesive society benefits every single one of us. Our new minority government needs to foster in this wealthy country a generosity of spirit and an understanding of the right of every Australian to a standard of living that preserves dignity, enables participation and provides the basis for creating a better future.

My new non-human companions

2010-09-05T16:18:00.001-07:00

A birdie

For about the last three weeks, almost every day, a plain brown bird, probably a female common blackbird, has been tapping on my bathroom window intermittently throughout the day, fluttering away when I rush to intercept her. I’ve christened her Mabel.

There’s a wisteria against the back wall of the house, and I thought for a while Mabel was trying to pull off wisteria stems to build a nest. But now I don’t think so. I’ve learned to creep up to the bathroom door and peer at it in the mirror on the right-hand wall, which is at right angles to the wall with the window, and when I do this I can see Mabel knocking on the glass with her beak.

The insistence of this task suggests that she’s worked out that the glass is a genuine substance, not mere air as those unfortunate birds who knock into windows think it is, and has decided that if she knocks for long enough and hard enough she can penetrate it.

No matter how quiet I am, Mabel knows when I creep up, and she stops her tapping and stares at my image in the mirror with trepidation. When I creep quietly through the door to look at her square on, she flaps away.

I glimpse before she flutters away a look of curiosity and interest on her face. She seems fascinated by the sheltered foreign world behind the glass, even eager to enter it – perhaps it seems like an incredibly safe and obvious place to build a nest? On one morning recently she’d brought what was probably her mate along, a much darker blackbird, to observe her efforts.

Why this one bird? Why is she so fascinated by the glass? Why don’t other birds of the same species act this way? Is Mabel dumber than her peers or more intelligent? If more intelligent, could she breed a series of superbirds that might become more intelligent still?

But if she seeks the strange new world she glimpses in the shadows behind the glass, why doesn’t she fear it, knowing that a huge human lurks behind it?

She’s tapping much less often now, down from her maximum of perhaps four or five tries a day, but she still hasn’t given up. On one morning she started early, while I was still in bed, and I even thought I heard her a few nights ago, but peering through the darkened window to see if she was still there was futile.

My writerly brain is always trying to find a symbolic or spiritual meaning when there is none. Does Mabel’s urgent tapping mirror my own attempts to rejoin the human race? Is that also a futile task? Or is she a spirit in human form trying to convey some vital message from the other side?

More importantly, how do I explain the scratches on the window to my landlords?

A computer

I’ve just bought a new computer and the whole thing cost me a lot more than I was expecting to pay – almost a thousand dollars more, if you count the $240 I spent for the nice computer man to come and set it up for me. This decision felt incredibly indulgent at the time – the technician who fixed my computer last time quoted only $70 to install the new software and copy the files over, but he would only do it at his shopfront.

Given the things that went wrong with the set-up (my old printer incompatible with Windows 7; the surge protection power board activating the safety switch for the circuit, causing the electricity on the circuit to turn off) I’m just relieved I chose the more expensive route. I thought I was pandering to my chronic fear of things not going right but it turned out to be a necessity; simply having these problems occurring with someone there to comment on and diagnose them was important. I bought a new cheapo surge protection board, and I’m adjusting to my dad’s old desk jet printer, while he’s been promised my seven-year-old HP laser printer as he’s on an earlier version of Windows.

It infuriated me that my old printer was still going strong but was being forced into unnecessary obsolescence – HP have created some Windows-compatible drivers for some of their older models, but not this one, and I was told that the older the model the less likely they are to do so in future if they haven’t already. I mean no offence to users of desk jets, my dad included, but it feels like going back in time after a laser printer! I’ll buy a new laser printer at some stage, but HP has lost my vote for good.

This is the first time I’ve bought a new computer in five-and-a-half years and I’m noticing a similar situation to the one that occurred last time. I’ve tried to avoid unnecessary bells and whistles (no blueray DVD player for me) but I have the same sense I did last time of a whole lot of new features on the standard programs, many of which might be helpful but that I’ll probably never get around to finding out about, as if an ideal technological life (that I’d paid for) were passing me by.

I’ve also been keeping Norton busy with some glitches while using its anti-virus program with Explorer, and was in danger of becoming a nuisance caller. Luckily I’ve cleverly worked out that I can easily test if the anti-virus program is to blame just by turning it off temporarily. And simply observing as the Norton techies temporarily take over my computer and do their swift and magic checks with their invisible hands has been both weird and instructive. Through sheer necessity they seem to know far more about the glitches that Explorer can cause than Microsoft ever will.

Australian media fiddles while Pakistan drowns

2010-08-31T15:02:00.000-07:00

Australia is still awaiting the final results of our recent federal elections, which resulted in a hung parliament, the first time this has happened since the Second World War.

We were on the eve of the election campaign when news of the devastating floods in Pakistan gripped the world. The inability of the Australian media to sufficiently highlight the horror of the floods, huger than the 2004 tsunami and the Haitian earthquake combined, was appalling. I’m no news junkie but wherever I watched or listened, rarely if ever did a story about the floods headline a news bulletin, although it usually featured somewhere.

The numbers were difficult to comprehend: initially 14 million said to be displaced, with that number now at 20 million, almost the population of Australia.

This disaster is the future writ large, the massive effects of global warming evident in our lifetimes. It’s not just a matter of short-term relief: the entire infrastructure of the country will have to be rebuilt. Given the unprecedented scale of the tragedy, a national fundraising campaign should have been ubiquitous on all Australian media from day one, but this wasn’t the case.

Instead, an increasingly irrelevant media bored a population pissed off with the governing ALP for knifing a first-term PM and disgusted with the inability of the major parties to produce policies aimed at anyone but the most ignorant swinging voters. The result has been a hung parliament with independents demanding parliamentary and other reforms.

It was both heartening and sickening when, the election safely over, the ABC finally got around to holding a radiothon for Pakistani flood victims in conjunction with UNICEF's fundraising appeal – how many more lives could have been saved if they’d held it right from the start?

The response was overwhelming. UNICEF was hoping for $1 million, but in seeming record time $3 million had been raised. It appeared that Australians had been unsure of how to respond to the disaster and were just waiting for some guidance. Better late than never, but this enormous tragedy hasn’t magically disappeared – sustained and relentless media attention is still needed.

Tiny steps up the mountain: exposure and social phobia recovery

2010-08-25T14:48:00.000-07:00

As once the winged energy of delight
carried you over childhood's dark abysses,
now beyond your own life build the great
arch of unimagined bridges.

Wonders happen if we can succeed
in passing through the harshest danger;
but only in a bright and purely granted
achievement can we realize the wonder.

To work with Things in the indescribable
relationship is not too hard for us;
the pattern grows more intricate and subtle,
and being swept along is not enough.

Take your practiced powers and stretch them out
until they span the chasm between two
contradictions ... For the god
wants to know himself in you.

—‘As once the winged energy of delight’ by Theodore Rilke

I stumbled upon this poem by Rilke and was struck by how apt a description of exposure therapy it was, particularly the last two lines of the first verse and the first three lines of the last verse.

As a severe social phobe with obsessional and self-defeating tendencies(!) I feel as if I am really exploring exposure for the first time in my life. But as I begin my tentative explorations, I also begin to see just how difficult the tasks – for there are many – are. There is so much work ahead.

I’m agnostic about my chances of recovery, each foot planted in an opposing camp, that of success and failure respectively. For about six years, I more or less gave up on my anxiety. It just felt too hard. Now that I’m beginning the work, now that I feel I have some of the equipment I need, I see that I was at least partly right. I see that the path is so steep, so strewn with embedded rocks and stubborn tussocks of grass, that I won’t ever reach the summit.

Yet while I’m by no means convinced that I will ultimately succeed, all progress will constitute success. Certainly I have no plans to get a job in the ‘real world’, or join a class. These achievements are for the moment impossible and may remain so. I have to see what I‘m doing as very small or I’ll get ahead of myself, try to travel too fast, and stumble. If I raise my expectations too high, I’ll achieve nothing. My work must be rooted in and held down by the realities and intricacies of the present moment.

What I am trying to do is make myself more comfortable with feelings. I want to be able to tolerate frightening emotions and thoughts in the presence of others. Paradoxically, this includes a great measure of discomfort.

A deep-seated, powerful enemy holds me back. It thunders down on me if I get too uppity, too relaxed, stray too deeply into the social world. It works through my social phobia symptoms but those benign clinical terms cannot describe its force. In a funny way it must love me; fearing my total annihilation, it is ruthless in its misguided attempts to keep me safe.

There are two voices running through my head intermittently. One of them gently reminds me that I have run out of time and that my greatest battles are already lost. For years I took this voice to be the unalloyed truth, but now I’m not so sure. The other one screeches against such a passive attitude and orders me sternly to stay on track. Like a scolding parent, it drags my thoughts back into line when they veer off into fearful or childish fantasies, and when my self-talk gets too self-indulgent. This voice, in the best tradition of Monty Python, is ‘cruel but fair’.

Battling silly thoughts yet giving into panic. Letting myself breathe yet accepting the fact that I may not be able to. Acknowledging childish impulses but refusing to mistake them for reality. None of this will create miracles. There are huge darknesses, gaping ellipses of selfhood, gutterings of uncertainty and terror. There are unpredictable hormonal spikes and the plummet of low blood sugar, which feels like the carpet of common sense being swept from under my feet. It may not cause the thinking that leads to my panic, yet it is the faithful handmaiden of that panic.

The greatest contradiction: to fight my anxiety I must give up fighting. But this doesn’t mean an instant cure; in some situations I can beg myself into a rag-doll limpidity of submission and still feel breathlessness well up. A lack of physical defences can cause me to feel more unsafe than ever.

Sometimes I experience what holds on to me as simply a form of extreme shyness. This surprises me, because I have a stereotype of shy people as being very quiet. I can be loud and exuberant and at times even overbearing and dogmatic (who’d have thought?) with those I know well. But the extreme self-consciousness I feel in front of those who intimidate me (people my own age or thereabouts; those of a high status or intelligence level; those who happen to be particularly good looking and attractive) can frighten me so much I begin to disappear.

In these situations I feel like a bird picking its way uncertainly around a patch of suburban lawn, alert to the tiniest pulses of the universe. Every intimidating thought, every minute surge of blood into a vessel, a daring remark that could lead into dangerous conversational waters, whether one too many people in the room happen to be looking in my direction: anything can spark off a kind of emptying of the Red Sea of my interconnectedness. I draw the room and the separate worlds of others into myself and force them to focus their entire attention on me.

Once, at my sister’s place for afternoon tea, some family friends dropped in unexpectedly. We sat awkwardly round a circular dining table in the formal front room. I was already feeling hemmed in when my mother gave me what appeared to be a ‘significant’ look across the table. I left soon afterwards. Furious, I later asked her why she’d thrown me that sudden stare.

‘I thought how beautiful you were looking’, she said. It was some years ago now, but even as I write this, not wanting to sound boastful, I don’t entirely believe her. Instead I believe she was worried for me, and that her look was a badly timed attempt to see how I was coping.

Social phobia may be the result of having no reassuring parent figure to return to in the earliest years of life. A shy baby cradled in its mother’s arms will brave an unknown horde of new faces for a few frightening seconds and then bury its head in mother’s familiar shoulder as it smiles bashfully. An introverted child playing with friends will suddenly experience a surge of existential aloneness, and will run back to mum or dad to cling onto legs and arms until the equanimity of the world is restored.

Adulthood involves no such havens. If the parent cannot offer the needed reassurance, perhaps the child never moves through this stage but remains stuck in it. The need to hide may remain, but can no longer be acted out. As the child enters the unknown world of adolescence with all its frightening new sensations, he or she might create certain internal defences as a substitute. In my case, these became my symptoms, warding people off and creating the safety I craved. Yet it has been a lonely safety.

There was one small thing I did recently that I was proud of. Dropping into my local supermarket, I homed in on the Oral Health section and searched for my usual pack of bargain basement toothbrushes. A very scary man was hovering in the aisle in the same area. Scary because tall, statuesque, brown skinned and attractive.

Normally I would have been unable to focus on my quest in the presence of such beauty, and would have cut it short in despair. This time I continued to search as he stood one or two feet to my right, torso jutting forward as he conducted his own interrogation of the shelves. These minor exposures are exactly what I need to seek out instead of instinctively avoiding them. They are tiny steps forward that can lead me, if not to the top of the mountain, at least to a place that has a better view.

Time and time again

2010-08-03T23:36:00.000-07:00

Human beings are hardwired to regret. One of the most pernicious regrets is that of lost time.

Do the following statements sound familiar? We learn from our mistakes. Even suffering brings growth. If we take a wrong direction it provides valuable feedback that can enable us to make a better decision the next time. Similarly, if we are too frightened to act in case we make a mistake, then that defeats one of the main purposes of life, which is to learn.

All of these things are true. However, it’s also true that some mistakes come at a great cost, and that some decisions have serious adverse consequences. We don’t always get a second chance. These are hard truths that I believe some new age spiritualities do not take account of.

One of my earliest heroes was the melancholy Leo Sayer, surely the forerunner of today’s emo. ‘I’ve wasted, wasted, so much time / walking on the wire’, he wailed on one of his early and greatest hit songs, ‘The show must go on’.

For me, the hardest thing to put up with in my present life is that, from my own reckoning, I ‘waste’ huge swathes of time, especially compared with my idealised image of what someone with my degree of intelligence ‘should’ be doing. Inevitably I link this wasted time with the present structure of my life, which is the result of mistakes made years ago, when I was literally a different person from the one I am now.

I’ve long forgiven the wasted time of my late teens and twenties, when I didn’t know any better. But in my early and mid-thirties, when I’d started to recover from an eating disorder and gain some sense of engagement with reality, I continued to make some decisions that I knew at the time were unnecessarily timorous. The mistakes I made then led to wasted time that to some extent continues into the present.

This doesn’t mean that I never have valuable experiences. It does mean, however, that I miss out on many important aspects of life and I don’t work nearly as much as I’d like to.

Most of the time I can live with regret about the past – it’s gone, and I know I can’t change it. It’s the continued wasting of the present, the seeming unavoidability of that waste, that’s difficult. And this also relates to the realities of ageing and living alone. I can learn from my mistakes, but the fact is – to be perfectly blunt – at 47, it feels as if I’m literally running out of time.

There are three fronts on which the time appears to be washed under the bridge by forces I can’t control: not working enough because of fear of others, and therefore not being able to shovel money away for a more secure and fun lifestyle (own house, holidays, old age, more music, theatre, expensive clothes, money for good causes); through depression and anxiety not ‘improving’ myself enough ‘culturally’, with appropriately highbrow music, film, and literature; and through having my literary creativity curtailed by the ‘failure’ to achieve an emotionally and socially fulfilled life (the blog has helped a bit with the creativity).

I envy people who write successful books out of the horrors of mental and physical illness or addiction because it seems to me that they have somehow recuperated the ‘lost’ time, made meaning of it and created something new from it. Not only do they help themselves by writing their story down and shaping it into narrative, but they help many others by sharing their story and offering hope. They may also gain financially from sharing their suffering in a way that chimes with others.

I fully understand that I am clinging onto an idealised version of myself. If I had a family I would probably be overly busy, but much of that busyness would involve mundane tasks. I’ve always had a morbid fear of being a female parent, and being given the role of self-sacrificing ‘mother’ instead of equal partner in the parenting enterprise – I look at my sisters, all of them mothers, and simply don’t know if I am better or worse off than they. But fathers also get lost in the mundane – I think of the hours my brother-in-law spends ferrying his kids to footy and basketball.

Yet even amidst the ennui and chronic exhaustion, as a parent I would be able to tell myself that I was achieving a valuable long-term goal – the continuation of the species and the nurturing of tomorrow’s taxpayers and, hopefully, stewards of planet Earth. And my brother-in-law probably uses at least some of that driving (and game watching) time to bond with his children.

As well, the wound of loneliness sometimes requires the antidote of bad television rather than the intellectually stimulating read that some busy parents, including mothers, might crave. At times, such parents might envy the likes of me, free of the never-ending drudgery and pleas for attention. But they might find me curled up in a ball bewailing my fate as I watch Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares rather than poring over the Collected Works of Charles Dickens as Beethoven’s Ninth thunders in the background.

Obsessed with time management

My fear of wasting time also relates to the mistaken belief that not doing something productive is somehow sinful. I certainly didn’t pick that up from my Catholic upbringing. Instead, this fear stems from the time when I was completing my Masters thesis in the late 1990s. I was on a scholarship, studying full time, and surrounded by successful people who gave papers at conferences, tutored, learned French to improve their understanding of theory, and attended reading groups.

At the time, to my way of thinking the pursuit of knowledge easily trumped consumerism, materialism and any sort of interest in popular culture, and from my lofty, poverty-stricken heights I looked down scornfully on anyone who did not value intellectual endeavour, seeing them as sadly deluded. I spent hours in the library brushing up on theory, much of which has now long since vanished from my mind.

But the sense of directedness I saw in the high achievers was pervasive. I remember one day glancing behind me at the library queue and noticing my supervisor further behind me in the line, waiting to have a book checked out. She poked her head around to scan the queue and, with a quick jerk of her body, abruptly left. I still remember what that momentary action indicated to me: the instantaneous weighing up of the time she would lose in the queue compared with the convenience of having access to the book. This suggested someone whose life had no spare seconds, who was so full of purpose and responsibilities that time management meant the difference between ongoing achievement and mere striving.

So in the couple of years following my Masters I would use every minute of spare time ‘productively’, by, say, reading small cards on which I’d drawn kanji (Chinese characters used in Japanese) while waiting forlornly at a city bus stop on a biting cold winter’s afternoon.

And before I started editing, and during the times when the work dried up and I was coaxing survey responses from reluctant telephone interviewees, I’d surreptitiously go over Japanese sentences while waiting for respondents to pick up the phone. Eventually the supervisors noticed and, despite my high success rate in obtaining telephone interviews, ordered me to stop. This caused me unseen angst; I couldn’t just relax and let the time be spent simply making enough money to live on. I was obsessed with ‘improving each shining hour’.

At its height, this fear of wasting time would have extended to, say, the idea of socialising with people who I didn’t have much in common with (ie my relatives!). But one gift of my social phobia, and the exploration I’ve done in trying to understand it, is that I now see those everyday interactions as being vitally important.

There are two reasons for this: they're good for mental health generally, because as humans we need to interact with others and feel safer when we’re with others, and particularly our ‘pack’; and because they provide me with valuable exposure practice for my social phobia.

So to some extent regret about wasted time is something I live with. Slowly I’ve begun to realise that the moment, even in its occasional awfulness, even when not filled with mental exercise, has its own integrity.

I could learn kanji till I was blue in the face but it would be useless, a waste of time, unless I was attending a Japanese class or had a reason for learning it such as a planned visit to Japan. Neither of these situations applied, so the keeping up with my Japanese study became, in the end, a waste of time rather than a good use of it.

The concept of mindfulness helped me understand this. Mindfulness involves becoming an observer of the self – one’s thoughts, perceptions, feelings and current actions – in order to move into the present in a more profound way. When I divide my attention too much (writing my diary while watching tele, for instance) I’m subtly diminishing my experience of time, indeed of life. While trying to save time, I may actually be wasting it.

I love good thrillers and I need to spend some time vegging out on weekends. But I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to decent thrillers at my local video store. So last weekend I ended up on a Saturday afternoon watching one of the worst klunkers ever made, Cold Creek Manor with Denis Quaid and Sharon Stone.

There literally wasn’t a scary moment in it; it could have been parody if it hadn’t been so dull and lacking in humour. It made me wonder about the technical aspects of thrillers – why some work and some fail spectacularly. But perhaps the most important thing for me to do was to actually pay attention to the film, observe and follow the creaky plot, and try and work out why it failed, rather than just having it on as background to my random thoughts.

Another reason why unstructured time is vital is that it refreshes the mind and enables creativity. Late one afternoon I took my seven-year-old niece to the park, supervising as she mucked around on the play equipment. For quite a long time she half-lounged on a swing, moving slowly back and forth as she gazed into space. This natural ability to enjoy mental downtime is too often mistaken for laziness. But it's the space in which new ideas and creative breakthroughs hatch themselves.

A book on worry that I read recently goes further than advocating basic mindfulness. In The Worry Cure, Robert R Leahy provides useful advice for incessant worriers who are busy dreading what the future might bring. One of his suggestions is that once you’ve brought yourself back to the present moment using mindfulness, you can add value to the moment, make it count.

I love this idea because it extends the concept of mindfulness so effectively. You bring yourself into the present, become aware of your body, breathing and perceptions; then you do something to improve the present, even if it’s just subtly. This could be something insignificant, like savouring a cup of tea, putting some music on (Beethoven’s Ninth?) or taking the kids for an ice cream.

Using intuition is also important to me in combatting my fear of wasting time. In the past I was constantly using my will to forge ahead; now I use intuition to decide whether something’s worth spending energy on. Anything that feels right can't really be a waste of time.

Being busy for the sake of it can actually cause harm. Former prime minister Kevin Rudd’s political demise provides a cautionary tale. Rudd seems to have been unable to stop work, to delegate, and he also caused great harm to his staff because he unapologetically worked them to the bone, no doubt causing havoc with their family lives.

‘A staff working year is probably like a dog year, that is it's probably worth seven years in normal life’, he was quoted as saying in The Daily Telegraph of 15 April 2010. That report also stated that he had lost 28 staff, presumably since coming to office in late 2007.

The coup that ousted Rudd in favour of Julia Gillard occurred for many and complex reasons, but the refusal to delegate seems to have been one of them. I sympathise with Rudd and wish fervently that the party had given him an ultimatum months ago rather than cruelly dealing the death blow – but I can’t help seeing in his fate a grim warning about the effects of overwork!

Social anxiety and the challenges of exposure therapy

2010-07-26T17:17:00.000-07:00

It struck me as I jumped into the shower this morning, in the split second as I registered that the cold was not unbearable anymore, that the problem with winter is not winter but summer.

I wrote a piece about minor mishaps a while ago. One of my points was that if a crisis remains unresolved for a while it may cease to be a crisis as one adjusts to it. Winter is the same. As long as you have somewhere to live that offers reasonable levels of warmth in some rooms, eventually your body adjusts to the cold.

And just as you’ve become accustomed to it and have your bedtime routine worked out (in my case a hottie and four doonas, as well as copious layers of pyjamas), the Earth stretches as if from a long sleep and starts to exude warmth. The blossoms unfurl, the camellias drop liltingly to the ground in their prodigal abundance. Everything wakes up, and you have to adjust again.

This is not some idle complaint. It makes me think of exposure, now a central plank of short-term talking therapies for anxiety disorders and phobias. Exposure relies on the concept of increasingly difficult forays into feared experiences. These forays are graded so there is always a carefully calibrated level of discomfort, while the difficulty of the task increases. The theory is that the sufferer learns to tolerate an ever-greater degree of risk and is therefore able to deal with an increasing number of feared situations.

Exposure is an incredibly useful concept. I’ve never practised it in conjunction with a therapist, but I have a friend who is an exponent of it (he even wrote a book about it), and I practise it in very small ways.

But the challenging thing about exposure is that it is aligned to life yet also pitted against it. Creating a list of progressively more difficult tasks is a way of creating order, but the chaos of life is constantly intruding. And, depending on your disorder, it may not always be possible to retain control over the level of exposure.

Work is an area of life where I gain valuable exposure only to sometimes lose momentum. Because my work stops and starts, I don’t often get into a pattern of work. This is bad, because once the work starts again I not only have to adjust to the discipline but I also need to refamiliarise myself with processes and even skills.

As well, I have to ‘expose’ myself to a lower standard of self-care and housecleaning, which leads to an increase in anxiety levels.

I believe that I’d be able to gradually increase the level of work I was able to take on if I could control the flow of it – but that’s not the way the real world operates.

Social anxiety is another area where the exposure levels are difficult to control. According to psychologist Dr R. Reid Wilson, this is because the unpredictable nature of social life is such that it’s impossible to grade one’s exposures; and because their lifestyle may require the sufferer to carry out social tasks that go beyond their current level of comfort. 'When you have social anxiety, events that are high up on your list of threatening situations may take place before you have mastered your lower level tasks’, he says.

Dr Wilson’s excellent website is the first time I’ve come across a therapist who identified the unique difficulties of social anxiety in this way.

Another difficulty with conquering social anxiety he identifies is that the sufferer must focus on so many anxiety management skills at once, sometimes while performing a complex task like public speaking.

One way to get around the unpredictable nature of social exposure, according to Dr Wilson, is to simulate the scary situation using friends and family. For example, you could practise public speaking in front of a group of friends, conduct a role play on bumping unexpectedly into someone in the street, or ask someone to look over your shoulder while you practise writing.

Life, the universe and exposure

The chaos of life may pose a challenge to exposure therapy more generally. Unexpected stresses or adverse events in one area of life may temporarily lower our ability to challenge ourselves in the areas we need to work on. Sometimes I need to withdraw and regroup because of some unforeseen blow.

This is not to argue against exposure but to demonstrate how important it is for the individual to be in control of their therapy. This is the view of Bronwyn Fox, a recovered sufferer of panic disorder who has written books on the issue and now counsels sufferers.

The important thing is to get in touch with your gut feeling and obey it. I have learned this lesson painfully and slowly, sometimes suffering from too much exposure and sometimes not enough. In my experience both are harmful.

If I’d known about exposure earlier, there are definitely aspects of my social and working life I would have fought harder to retain, rather than simply letting them go because they were too hard. But not knowing about exposure also led me to throw myself into situations that were too difficult, which meant I got overexposed and therefore more phobic very quickly. In both cases I wasn’t managing my anxiety well because I didn’t have the knowledge or tools.

I’m not saying that everyone can expose themselves and eventually rid themselves of their anxiety. In my case I think there are some things that are just too hard and will be for a while, and perhaps forever. However, I do want to create some sort of graded exposure program.

Exposing myself

Recently I visited an arts event alone. I’ve done this heaps of times but it was in a venue that I was unfamiliar with. I’m an expert at subtle avoidance – I’ve been practising it my whole adult life – and I noted that two very effective avoidance strategies were in play: getting there late, and sitting in the back row.

The getting there late was partly my unconscious mind at work. I just missed the tram! How convenient!

Next time I will resolve to sit in a row that is somehow more ‘threatening’ (this could mean, for example, a row where the people look interesting, or towards the front, or both) and getting there before the event starts. I might have to tackle one of these tasks at a time. Even being in a room with others and experiencing my reactions can be difficult for me sometimes. The important thing for me is to stay with myself somehow, to practise mindfulness without buying into my fears.

And soon it will be time to get exposed to a completely separate dilemma – the extreme heat of a Melbourne summer.

Scuttling social justice – Julia Gillard and the 2010 federal election

2010-07-19T20:21:00.000-07:00

Australia is going to the polls in a month’s time. Julia Gillard, the Australian Labor Party prime minister, looks set to win. But, in playing so clearly to middle Australia, she is using her considerable political talent to further drag the ALP away from some of its primary responsibilities: the upholding of human rights and support for the disadvantaged.

For the benefit of overseas readers, Gillard, then the deputy prime minister, shocked Australia when, following weeks of Kevin Rudd suffering in the opinion polls, she deposed him in an unforeseen overnight 'coup' on June 23–24; knowing he no longer had the numbers, Rudd stepped down rather than face a leadership ballot.

It may be that the coup wasn’t quite as sinister as it must have appeared to international observers, despite the involvement of faceless union officials and the fact that Gillard got multinational mining companies onside by ending a terrible imbroglio over mining tax soon after taking power. Rudd appears to have been stuck in a compulsive, controlling, workaholic state that he was unable to shed – some have hinted at mental health issues, and it was impossible not to anticipate the advent of some sort of personal crisis.

The event was notable regardless, being the first time in Australian history that a first-term serving prime minister had been deposed. And, as most people know, Gillard became Australia’s first female prime minister.

An election was due anyway, but Gillard was always going to call it early because she wanted to rule as chosen prime minister, rather than being seen as a pretender. Now a snap election has been called for the 21 August.

There are a few things I’ve been dying to write about Gillard ever since her surprise ascension.

Like some others, I hoped that she was more radical than she appeared, and that with Rudd out of the way she would take some simple progressive steps such as allowing gay marriage (Rudd’s a god-botherer and has always opposed this; Gillard is an unmarried atheist with no kids).

It was difficult not to assume, or at least hope, that Gillard would be a little more radical simply because she was a woman. Having slogged her way to the top in a male-dominated party, surely she would have empathy for the marginalised, and go into bat for them once she got into power? My hopes were ill-founded – Gillard soon stated unequivocally that she had no plans to legalise gay marriage.

This should have been no surprise – Gillard as education minister and minister for workplace relations was disturbingly reactionary. Despite her frequent eloquent pronouncements on her commitment to education, she seems to have done absolutely nothing to reduce the glaring inequities of Australia’s education system, a two-tier system that blatantly favours private schools and suffers from hopelessly complicated federal–state funding arrangements.

Gillard specialised in gimmicky, hugely expensive policies that caught the attention of the media as they were designed to do, before at least partly crashing and burning on their ineptitude and lack of groundwork; but she did absolutely zilch to reduce the system’s glaring inequities.

The building and computers-in-schools programs that characterised her tenure were open to the most obscenely wealthy private school, despite the fact that public education has been severely underfunded for years in Australia, resulting in rundown schools and inadequate teacher numbers and support services. The aim of the building program was partly to stimulate the economy, but, writing in The Age, Kenneth Davidson said that ‘Funding directed to maintenance upgrades according to the greatest needs would have had the same economic stimulus impact dollar for dollar and a far bigger pay-off in terms of equity and efficiency’.

Moreover, the public schools were disadvantaged in their access to the building program because they had much less choice compared with the private schools about exactly what was to be built, and no ability to negotiate the cost, resulting in ‘inflated costs and dubious projects’.

With regard to the computer program, private schools benefited while some government schools couldn’t afford to pay for the infrastructure that extra computers would entail.

Moreover, in her determination to impose a national test (NAPLAN) on skills such as literacy and numeracy and a website that would allow parents to compare the relative performance of schools, Gillard fought with the overworked teachers she should have been supporting – teachers who feared that the website would lead to the creation of divisive league tables, and that the expertise of teachers working with students with specific needs would be overlooked.

Also, Gillard had been part of the ‘gang of four’ that replaced Cabinet government under Rudd. The Cabinet still sat of course, but apart from Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner, Treasurer Wayne Swan and Gillard, they were mainly asked to tick the boxes.

This anti-democratic tendency, a recipe for poor government, was part of the reason why MPs were willing to vote Rudd out; but I didn’t realise until after the ‘coup’ that it was Gillard, as part of the ‘gang of four’, who had urged that controversial emissions trading legislation be deferred until 2013 – a decision identified with Rudd at the time, and that had signficantly contributed to his poor showing in the opinion polls.

Perhaps the most shocking development since Gillard’s win has been her willingness to use the issue of asylum seekers as a political football. This was evident in the speech she gave on the issue on 6 July, when she signalled the possibility of a regional processing centre for refugees to be established in Timor L’este (using, incidentally, the inappropriate title ‘East Timor’).

But it’s become even more blatant now the election’s been called. In fact, ‘stronger borders’ is one of the key catchphrases on the ALP’s first television election advertisement featuring Gillard. Even before her asylum seekers speech, she was talking about ‘good migrants’ like her parents, with the strong suggestion that there was another sort of migrant that people were right to abhor.

This is simply astounding. I won’t go through the history of the issue, but since the Tampa incident in 2001, which saw the introduction of the notorious Pacific Solution whereby asylum seekers were removed to the island of Nauru for their claims to be processed, these vulnerable people have suffered to keep Australia’s politicians in power. And now the ALP, already accused of trying to please everybody on the issue, are indulging in shameless dog whistling, much more so than they did under Rudd.

Some progressives claimed that Gillard’s asylum seekers speech was nuanced and not as politically insidious as the selective media quoting would have it appear. It’s true that in some ways Gillard was trying to have it both ways – stating that those wanting greater border protection should not be labelled racist, any more than those concerned about children in detention should be labelled bleeding hearts. Responding to earlier criticism by refugee advocate and respected lawyer Julian Burnside, QC, she said:

… in the context of our migration program, the number of asylum seekers arriving by boat to Australia is very, very minor.

It is less than 1.5 per cent of permanent migrants each year; and indeed it would take about 20 years to fill the MCG with asylum seekers at present rates of arrival. This is a point well made.

On the second point [Burnside] is very, very wrong. It is wrong to label people who have concerns about unauthorised arrivals as ‘rednecks’.

Of course, there are racists in every country but expressing a desire for a clear and firm policy to deal with a very difficult problem does not make you a racist.

Elsewhere in the speech she affirms as an organising principle of asylum seeker policy ‘That people like my own parents who have worked hard all their lives can’t abide the idea that others might get an inside track to special privileges’.

This rhetoric is erroneous. It strongly suggests that the opinions of those fearful of the boats are every bit as well-informed and worthwhile as those who are steeped in the issue and have serious legal and moral concerns about government actions. And it completely ignores the fact that the role of a leader is to educate and lead rather than to pander to the whims of the least educated and politically aware; and to set an example and produce a vision that can make the nation more cohesive, not less.

Those criticising Gillard for aiming her narrow policies straight at the seats most under threat in Sydney’s west are fully justified. She should be explaining to the electorate the push factors that bring the boats here, and eliciting Australia’s collective compassion – the kind that erupted so forcefully after the January 2009 Victorian bushfires.

More generally, Gillard is encouraging voters to see this election as being all about themselves and their needs, rather than promising to look after Australia’s most disadvantaged, surely one of the major remits of any labour party worthy of the moniker? She has said that voters will choose the policies most useful to them and their families, encouraging the continuation of the solipsism that thrived under Howard.

Gillard has great charm and verve, and, it’s indisputable that since Labor’s coming to power in 2007 the conviction, authority and intelligence she has managed to project in speeches and interviews has only increased, despite the rubbish that so often spouts from her mouth.

But let’s be clear: there was nothing progressive about Rudd’s Labor party, and there’s nothing progressive about Gillard’s. Below are just a few examples of straightforward social justice actions Rudd and now Gillard have failed to take, apart from not allowing gay marriage. Not all of these would have involved the magic millions or billions that both these politicians love to announce; but they would have produced greater social justice for Australia’s most needy as well as improving environmental outcomes.

* No carbon tax

* No mandatory staff–resident ratios in aged care homes (such ratios exist in hospitals and child care centres), leading to a shocking lack of skilled nursing care and other staff for frail, ill aged people. This is despite a 2009 Four Corners report in which the Minister for Ageing, Justine Elliot, promised that the government would consider the issue as part of its review of aged care funding. In May this year the NSW Nursing Association had to call for such mandatory ratios – all the government had offered in the 2010 budget was ‘$500,000 to conduct a research study on staffing levels, skills mix and resident care needs in Australian residential aged care facilities’.

* No rescinding of the regressive changes to education funding made by Howard. These gave more money to wealthy private schools at the expense of government schools.

* No real increase to unemployment benefit (Newstart allowance), which has long given up even attempting to adequately cover the excessive costs of market rents. Because increases are measured against inflation and not male wages as the pension is, the dole will continue to decrease in value against the pension. The May 2010 budget refused a request by the Australian Council of Social Service for an increase of $42 a week for the Newstart allowance; this request was ignored. But in refusing the increase the government was also ignoring its own Henry report on taxation, which stated that ‘a single person relying on an unemployment allowance is well below the OECD benchmark for poverty’.

* No attempt to ditch the 30 per cent government rebate on private health care. Instead the government tried to make the 30 per cent rebate means tested (the rebate results in all taxpayers subsidising, for example, dental care for the wealthier while there is no national dental scheme for the poor, whether or not they pay tax. The bid to means test the rebate failed anyway because of a hostile Senate, partly the result of a preferences deal Labor had done with the conservative Family First).

* No change to the shocking lack of residential and respite places as well as educational services for children with severe disabilities.

* No change to outrageous tax breaks for property owners, with the result that tax-paying renters subsidise the wealthy. Negative gearing, which enables property investors to claim losses on their investments as a tax deduction, has encouraged property investment, thus helping to lift the cost of housing out of the reach of first home buyers. Home owners who live in their homes are exempt from capital gains tax.

* Not withdrawing our troops from Afghanistan. Despite the bravery and skill of our troops, Australia’s involvement in this war serves the sole purpose of maintaining the relationship with the US, which is supporting the very same corrupt, greedy warlords whose mass murdering, raping and pillaging contributed to the rise of the Taliban.

Despite this dereliction of duty, the government boasts about the tax cuts it has managed to budget for, while promising to bring the budget back into surplus within three years – on the backs of Australia’s most needy and marginalised, truly the forgotten ones in this election.

‘Richmond’s not in his room!’ – Why I love the IT Crowd

2010-07-06T22:11:00.000-07:00

I have spent too many hours of my life splayed out on the loungeroom floor watching reruns of a sitcom that has grabbed and colonised my heart, soul and mind. It’s called The IT Crowd and its controlled ridiculousness is keeping me semi-sane during what is proving to be a rather grim winter. This British comedy is written by the unfairly talented Graham Linehan, cowriter of Black Books.

Moss, Roy and Jen constitute the IT department of the chaotic but phenomenally successful Reynholm industries (that the company’s raison d’etre is never specified is a running joke of the show; one fan has set up a spoof company website). Stuck in the basement of the Reynholm tower, they’re cut off from the other workers in their airy offices who enjoy stunning views of London.

Moss and Roy are hapless nerds while Jen, their ‘relationship manager’, sees herself as their bridge to the normal world but too often is marginalised herself by association.

Then one day Jen spies a red door in the basement, and, as in Bluebeard’s castle, is only more determined to discover what’s behind it when Roy and Moss warn her that all hell will break lose if she does. After the initial terror of encountering Richmond, an unearthly Goth, she settles down for a chat with this sweet-tempered former high-flyer who has been banished to the server room because of his infatuation with the extreme metal band Cradle of Filth.

‘Richmond’s out of his room, he’s not in his room, he’s supposed to be in his room, why isn’t he in his room?’ laments Moss, his love of routine and predictability thwarted, the British pronunciation of ‘room’, less drawn out and therefore more formal sounding than the Australian version, adding weight to his objection.

Moss, despite Graham Linehan’s denials, is clearly meant to be an Aspergers person. Not only does he thrive on routine but he’s technically proficient to the point of genius, socially clumsy, and entirely oblivious to nuance and Machiavellian craftiness; he even walks and holds his head in a way that is awkwardly wooden.

However, given that Moss’s most salient and attractive quality is his childlike need for certainty, it’s highly unlikely that the character represents an accurate portrayal of an Aspergers person. Yet it’s his childlike aspects that contribute most to his appeal, and perhaps they defuse the kind of criticism you might expect such a portrayal to evoke in the Aspergers community – I couldn’t find any criticisms of the character on the web, although that doesn’t mean they’re not out there.

Another reason for the seeming lack of criticism could be that while we often laugh at Moss’s unintentional funniness, we also chortle at his deliberate jokes, delivered in a self-consciously signature style that fans find adorable.

And generally speaking, Moss suffers far less than the other characters; he’s naturally cheerful, wins out against bullies (as in the first episode in the third series) and is canny enough to take advantage of amorous and financial opportunities (returning the attentions of a glamorous female psychiatrist in the first series; unintentionally stealing money from thieves in the third).

Like many women and probably men, I’m in love with Moss. This is partly because the actor who plays him, Richard Ayoade, is a very attractive man, with large brown eyes, a snub nose, finely sculpted cheekbones and a cherubic mouth; because Moss’s social incapacities make him so vulnerable that he arouses maternal instincts; because his character, and the actor who plays him, are both extremely funny (and sometimes their personalities seem to blend together, as if Ayoade and Moss were in league with each other); and because the childlike aspects of his nature promise a temporary, atavistic return to childhood.

Yet I couldn’t find much on the web about Ayoade himself, except for a frustratingly short beginning of an interview that seemed to suggest that he himself might suffer from Aspergers (he mentions a difficulty in maintaining eye contact with the interviewer while speaking) but in fact appears to show him in a very understated role in a satire.

Ayoade seems to lack his own website, despite what is clearly a huge fan base out there. The Channel 4 website for the show has clips and episodes that are frustratingly off-limits to Australians (I can understand the downloadable episodes being off-limits, but why the clips, including an interview with the actress who plays Jen?).

Despite Moss’s vulnerabilities he succeeds in life (if not romantically), partly because Jen and Roy both protect him from himself; he needs them to smooth the social waters, just as his esoteric knowledge is vital to the company but also occasionally useful to Jen and Roy.

Soon after Jen joins the IT department Roy and Moss are about to complain to the CEO, Denholm Reynholm, that Jen has no understanding of IT and they don’t want her as their manager. But as the three sit opposite Denholm while he barks to his inferiors on the phone, his conversation makes clear that he will ruthlessly sack any team who can’t ‘work as a team’ (gloriously sending up company-speak).

Knowing that all three of them will be sacked if the complaint goes ahead, Roy and Jen have to drag Moss away, assuring Denholm they had only come to the office to install voice activation on his computer. Moss can’t understand why he and Roy aren’t going through with the complaint; he just hasn’t been able to transfer the meaning of Reynholm’s phone conversation to his own situation. But later, in the second series, Moss demonstrates the usefulness of his peculiar genius; he’s able to tell by smelling it that the creepy new boss of Reynholm Industries, Douglas Reynholm (Denholm's son), has put Rohypnol in Jen’s tea.

Prisoners of gender

Aspergers is associated with maleness, but Moss isn’t the only one burdened because he’s male; all three main characters are ‘prisoners of gender’. They are extreme in their habitation of gender roles and they all suffer for it.

Roy is a standard nerd who tries hard to succeed romantically (a cause for much of the comedy) but always fails. The harder he tries the more ludicrous he appears; in one episode in the first series, with carefully pomaded hair and an oversized retro jacket, he attempts to proposition a girl while oblivious to the fact that a dollop of shit or chocolate (it’s deliberately never made quite clear which) is sitting in the centre of his forehead.

Jen is female in a way that is ludicrously stereotypical. When suffering from the monthly arrival of ‘Aunt Irma’ the cure lies in a girls’ night in, with Roy and Moss playing at being her faux girlfriends, all three dressed in terry towelling robes and watching predictable old chick flicks like Beaches and Steel Magnolias.

This should be offensive but largely isn’t because Jen’s workmates are equally stuck in their extreme masculinity. In fact, there’s only one moment when I was truly offended by the show’s portrayal of her.

It’s in the episode in which Jen becomes obsessed with a pair of red high-heeled shoes that are three sizes too small for her. While in this state of obsession she becomes incoherent. When asked for an idea about combating stress by the hyperactive Denholm, she responds ‘What? Shoes …’. But, back in the basement, while she’s mumbling about the shoes, when Roy calls her a ‘crazy bitch’ in an affectionate, condescending tone as he walks her into her office, it’s too much for this feminist to stomach. And the stereotype of women being obsessed with shoes is overwrought.

Return to childhood

Yet the whole show is overwrought, regularly venturing into surreal territory, making it difficult to be offended by the stereotyping. It’s basically a child’s world where the everyday and the magical are seamless parts of a whole, and where reality is often viewed as a series of extremes.

It’s a world of play, the unknown and the novel, girded by the iron certainties that children cling to because they are still so ignorant of its machinations, but also bounded by the terror that lurks when Roy and Moss enter social situations they aren’t equipped to deal with, and when Jen enters emotional situations in relationships that always seem to end badly.

This is why Moss is so vital to the show and why he is in some ways its central character; he’s a child who hasn’t grown up. His literal view of the world, his inability to understand nuance and sarcasm, in some ways reflect the child’s brain. Watching the show is an invitation to re-enter childhood.

And this is why Richmond is also an attractive character. Gentle and softly spoken, if a trifle melancholy, he adds to the fantastical nature of the show. Yet there is something very traditionally British about him; the way he speaks to Jen at his first appearance, not to mention his 19th-century costuming, has something of the period hero, as if Mr Rochester had blended with Bertha Mason to create not the madwoman in the attic but the sane gentleman in the basement; even his name has a 19th-century flavour.

As a social phobe I can’t help identifying with Richmond, stuck in the IT server room, not even the basement proper but a room off it, a secret room with a forbidding red door. Once out of his room, Richmond is ‘allowed’ to flutter freely around the basement in the first and second series but he never makes it back upstairs, although in the first series Jen tries valiantly to persuade Denholm to have him back.

A continuing obsession

I regret that this little world that Graham Linehan has created lives only in his head and those of his fans. I can’t bear that these characters do not actually exist, especially Moss and Richmond, although on some level I believe that they do. I'm hungry for information about the actors who portray them because that is a way of refusing to believe they aren’t real; the last thing I want is to see them in other shows playing different characters.

And for good or ill, I’ve watched each episode of the first and second series so many times on DVD that I now have the funniest sections on standby in my head; I’m liable to start smiling to myself for no reason as I ‘play’ one back, which has both advantages and disadvantages. (The third series has aired on the ABC and Australian fans now await the fourth, which is currently being aired in Britain on Channel 4.)

I don't have the DVD of the third series, but recently I realised I could watch repeats of whole episodes on Youtube. Yet watching the show on my PC doesn’t do it for me at all; it’s not just the poor quality of the footage but the fact that I don’t associate sitting at my desk with leisure. I love the whole DVD experience of sinking against cushions and losing myself in three indulgent hours of comedy paradise.

However, having now seen the first and second series in full, I think the content of the third series, which I originally watched on telly, isn’t quite as good, and it’s not just the Youtube factor that’s making me feel that way. The show’s becoming more like Seinfeld by the minute; Seinfeld is not surprisingly one of Linehan’s inspirations, and worth imitating, but the particular magic of character-based dialogue needs to be preserved.

Just one tiny example: when Jen and Richmond have their first conversation, Richmond says of Roy and Moss ‘I don’t know their names’. In the context this line is simply brilliant, illustrating how cut off Richmond is from the world and yet how self-chosen is his exile; Roy and Moss are no more than functionaries who form part of the background of the catastrophe he finds himself in. Why this is so funny is difficult to pin down, but it has a lot to do with the rarefied worldview of this underrated and now sadly lost character – somewhere between the second and third series he ‘got scurvy’ and was never seen again.

Dealing with Birthday Depression: An Update

2010-05-24T20:04:00.001-07:00

Almost a year ago I wrote a blog entry on birthday depression. This entry has easily had the most hits and comments of all of my posts, suggesting that birthday depression is a huge issue for many and that it’s not sufficiently acknowledged in the wider world.

If you’ve found this blog by googling ‘birthday’ or ‘pre-birthday depression’, please read this earlier entry first. It’s about feelings of depression that can emerge both before a birthday and on the actual day. These feelings can be powerful and debilitating.

Those commenting on the entry were wonderfully honest about their experiences and helped me clarify some of my thoughts about this issue. A year later, I felt compelled to write an update to expand on my ideas about this feeling and describe the emotional landscape on my birthday a year after writing the first entry. Thanks to all the commenters – the brief summing up below has benefited from your shared experiences.

There are many things going on when a birthday comes round. The need to plan a celebration of some kind; the desire to have a good day; the need to feel significant and to be acknowledged by loved ones; grief at dreams that haven’t come true; childhood memories of either happy or unhappy birthdays (not necessarily conscious); general dissatisfaction with life. For those who have children, things are even more complicated because they want to model happiness for their kids.

The gap between the expectations of feeling good and the circumstances of the birthday itself, as well as underlying feelings of grief, low self-esteem and so on, just makes things worse, and there is a temptation to tell yourself off for feeling bad.

It’s also hard, in my experience, to actually get a handle on what birthday depression actually consists of. For me it has often felt heavy and dark because it was inaccessible, as if a well of grief were closed up somewhere in my psyche so that I could not experience it directly.

Some suggestions

Because depression is a catch-all term that can mean different things, I’m reluctant to give advice about it. The positive feedback I’ve had about the last entry was because it didn’t try to help people avoid the depression, but just described the feeling from my perspective. So I’ve decided instead to simply include some suggestions for coping. Please bear in the mind that not all of the following may apply to you – as the 12-steppers say, take what you like and leave the rest.

Don’t fight birthday and pre-birthday depression. Expect it, treat yourself gently when it comes, and be aware that it does pass.
Keep bringing yourself back to the present, being aware of your body in space, your breathing and the things around you. If you feel like crying, do.
If you’re up to it, plan some treats for yourself, buying yourself little presents and giving yourself favourite experiences.
If you’re planning celebrations and you’re feeling very down or think you might be down on the day, try to make them on a scale that you feel comfortable with. You can always see friends separately rather than together, for example, and spread the birthday meetings over a few days or a week.
Depending on family obligations, if you're feeling really anti-social, don't feel you have to spend the day with others. If you do spend time alone, consider doing something you enjoy or treating yourself in some way.
Know that grieving and sadness have their own timetable, and can’t be rushed.
If you are feeling significant distress, share it with someone else who you can count on to be understanding, or get help.
Notice any small ‘gifts’ that come your way from the world. This doesn’t mean being endlessly positive or trying to make yourself feel grateful. It’s just that through the sadness I experience I can still sometimes see the bits of the birthday that are good, even if these are small or unexpected, while still being bogged down in the general heaviness. (Sometimes the sadness can make these things stand out more.)

If anyone wants to comment on the reasons for birthday depression or suggestions for dealing with it, that’d be great.

My experiences of birthday depression a year later

I didn’t really get full-on birthday depression this year, which was surprising because I fully expected to. Instead I got angry in the week before my birthday, while on the day before, and the day itself, I could feel a low-level negativity and annoyance, like a bad taste in my mouth that wouldn’t go away.

Depression is a catch-all word for a huge range of emotions and conditions. I’m not sure why I didn’t get significantly depressed, but I’m wondering whether the depression that swamped me last year, and to a lesser extent in previous years, was really a kind of grief. Perhaps I have been grieving for a lost life and now the grieving, while strictly it won’t ever end completely, is at a much lower level.

The anger before my birthday expressed my continuing dissatisfaction with my life today. This tends to wax and wane, but while the energy of anger can be freeing, it did get a bit self-destructive and over-the-top before it simmered down.

I did notice a couple of things about my birthday this year that clearly contributed to the negative feelings. I’ll detail them below, but I suspect that the nature of birthday depression is that it’s very individualised, focusing on whatever circumstances are present for the sufferer.

Why I felt down this year – the main suspects

One thing I noticed is how much time it takes to organise a birthday. (And this is someone who doesn’t have to organise a huge party or any large gathering, and has flexible working hours!) I do have to buy my main present (from my parents) and arrange family get-togethers, but this year at least there were virtually no food or cleaning preparations. Yet the birthday still took significant time and energy to plan. I think this is one reason for the negative feelings: my birthday sucks up time and energy when I'd rather be ignoring it altogether!

This in turn brings up feelings of doubt and anxiety about whether I'm deserving of this kind of time and attention, and whether other family members believe that I am.

And this question relates to something else I noticed about this year's birthday – that family members stuck to their usual roles rather than trying to be nice.

Too often in the past I’ve used this blog as a flogging post for unsuspecting family members so I won’t do that here (well, perhaps only a tiny bit). Although I’d deliberately lowered my expectations this year, I still hoped that a couple of ‘recalcitrant’ family members in particular would make a ‘special effort’. Instead, the usual sabotaging non-verbal messages prevailed. And while I wasn’t exactly depressed about this, it fed the sense that I wouldn’t be sad when the birthday was over.

And of course there was the age thing – turning 47. This is complex to explain. It’s not so much about looking older, although I’ve feared that in the past, and no doubt will again – it’s about the knowledge that although I haven’t lived much of my life, or barely begun to realise my potential, mother nature and the ageing process are not going to make an exception for me.

The ‘end’ is drawing closer, inexorably – the numbers don’t lie. And yet I’m just beginning to understand the nature of the health issues, mental and physical, that are holding me back. Plus, even though my understanding is growing, these factors are still significantly restricting my life. What I’m getting at is that age itself is a ‘health issue’, and I fear that I’ll never sort the other issues out before age takes over everything!

Anyway, my birthday is over for another year and there is a huge sense of relief in returning to ‘normality’, or my version of it, once more. (Plus, I did get some wonderful cards and gifts that will result in a low-level spending spree at an anonymous but obscenely large shopping mall in a south-eastern suburb of Melbourne.) I wish everyone well who is going through this.

Progress report: diet, dogs and trying to meditate

2010-05-13T17:30:00.001-07:00

I’ve been meaning to write something about the changes I’ve noticed since going on an incredibly strict food intolerance diet, and thought I'd combine a progress report with a couple of other ‘developments’.

I’m on a strict version of the Failsafe diet, which rules out all food additives as well as two groups of chemicals that occur naturally in foods: salicylates and amines. My diet is also gluten-free, dairy-free, yeast-free, fruit-free, and sugar-free (the first four of these additional restrictions are necessary for some Failsafers, but not all).

I’d been on a diet that had these four restrictions as their basis for many years (though with plenty of ‘lapses’) but never tried to avoid salicylates and amines (in no way am I suggesting that others should follow this diet, especially the extreme version I’m on!).

Researchers have found that not only does the Failsafe diet improve the symptoms of ADHD but it also improves behaviour and mood including depression. Food intolerance has also been linked with a number of other mental disorders.

So, even though an outbreak of hives drove me to this extreme rather than my mental ups and downs, I was curious as to what effect the diet would have on my overall mental and cognitive state now that I’ve been on it a couple of months.

So what changes have I noticed? My memory is definitely better. I’m retaining more of what I read. My thinking is sharper. My mood is also better, except on overcast days. I still get sad a lot, but it passes. I generally feel more positive.

I’m less angry. I noticed this when catching up with a friend recently. She’s a lovely person but a bit chaotic, and sometimes I’d get annoyed when she complained about her life. Last time I met up with her I was amazed at how calm I felt.

My concentration isn’t all that much better, though, mainly because my mind is less tired and quite ‘busy’. In fact, if anything I feel more concerned about particular activities that feel vitally important (for example, writing comments on political opinion sites!).

This feeling is quite compulsive – it’s been there for years in anything related to work or effort; but I think I’m just noticing it more because my thinking’s clearer, and it’s strengthened the sense that I may have a form of OCD, albeit not focused on things like germs and counting. The obsessiveness is also centred on what’s wrong with my body and mind – yet I’ve been less focused on my bodily imperfections lately, though winter could be the cause of this rather than the Failsafe diet.

I still have social phobia. However, there has been a small decrease in my physical anxiety.

The Failsafe diet dismisses sugar as a contributor to children’s behavioural and mood problems. Instead, it links hypoglycemic symptoms with salicylate intolerance. Failsafe also dismisses the scientifically controversial phenomenon of leaky gut, which some believe can cause and worsen food intolerances and an overgrowth of Candida, a type of yeast.

I still have low blood sugar, although I have to admit it seems to be less severe. I don’t know whether or not I have leaky gut but I still feel more tired, vaguer and quite depressed on overcast days, and I still get PMT during which my hypoglycemia is significantly worse. And, sad to say, I still have rosacea – being on an amazingly restricted diet hasn’t stopped me having red, rashy cheeks.

All the changes I’ve experienced are subtle – I don’t feel transformed, just a bit stronger, and I wouldn’t have the confidence to make a major change like applying for an in-house job.

My family and other animals

Sorry about the hackneyed heading, but it was just too relevant not to use! I have ongoing ‘difficulties’ with my family of origin, and these have deepened in recent years because two of my sisters acquired dogs and I wasn’t happy with the treatment of these unfortunate canines. I’m still not, but I wanted to report some progress on that front (I’ve changed everyone’s names).

There are two dogs in this saga. Jordan is a lively, mischievous, ginger-coloured, mostly-cocker-spaniel owned by my older sister, Andrea, and her husband Richard. There’s been ongoing disagreement between me and Andrea and Richard over the treatment of Jordan, who I used to walk regularly.

Sarah is a quiet, chocolate-brown, rather resigned retriever–wolfhound(?) cross who nevertheless transforms into superdog when someone throws a ball in her direction. She’s owned by one of my younger sisters, Therese, and her husband, Tony.

A particular incident around Easter sparked the latest dog fight. Sarah was left alone in Therese’s backyard for the four-day break, with my father visiting and feeding (and playing with her briefly) twice a day. On one of those days she came to my parents’ backyard for most of the day (they live down the road from Therese) and I walked her, and along with my parents gave her some attention.

Sarah is a challenging dog. Loving and calm around children, she hates most other dogs, and anyone who walks her must carry a bottle of water to spray into her face if she becomes aggressive towards a passing dog.

I had never seen this side of her and, thinking it couldn’t really be that bad, didn’t bother with the water on the Easter walk I took her on. But then we passed two dogs and a cat, luckily safely behind the neighbour’s front fence. Sarah suddenly lunged towards them, barking furiously while I pulled desperately at the leash to maintain control – she’s very strong and whimpered angrily when I finally managed to restrain her.

Clearly Sarah suffers from a lack of socialisation – this had soon become apparent after my sister found her through a rehousing service (she was already at least five years old). She had also become quite overweight since I’d seen her last, and was constantly panting even when lying down. All this, combined with my sister leaving her in the backyard over Easter, gave me a sense of despair about her situation that left me wanting to distance myself from Therese.

Since the arrangements to stop walking Jordan ended just after Christmas my relationship with Andrea and Richard hadn’t really improved much (this is beginning to sound like Days of our Lives crossed with Animal Rescue).

Anyway, last weekend I finally caught up with the family, after not seeing some of them for almost two months, at Therese’s place for a Mothers Day gathering. And there were some tiny but significant miracles.

The first one was that after delivering the family to Therese’s place, Richard went back to his place and brought Jordan back with him. Smelling Sarah even before he got to the front door, Jordan skidded frantically through the house to the backyard. He spent the afternoon there with Sarah and occasionally some of the children, trying to steal Sarah’s ball (by some quirk of fate, Sarah actually doesn’t mind Jordan, although she got a bit aggro at one point when he grabbed the ball).

The second miracle was that Sarah herself was looking much better than when I’d seen her last – leaner and healthier. This was because my oldest niece, who’s 16, had been taking her along with her on her runs, and Sarah apparently is too distracted when she’s running to bother about other dogs.

Jordan hadn’t forgotten me. As soon as I went outside he dashed towards me and, as I stroked his head and scratched his chin, stayed by me with a look of relief on his face. Our reunion, after almost five months, was much less gruelling than I’d rather melodramatically anticipated, but I still felt a level of guilt at having abandoned him.

It was good to see him as his same old self, and he was happy and active. Also, I knew that since I’d stopped walking him, Andrea had been taking more responsibility for him. I know he doesn’t get walked enough, and she doesn’t like the whole social scene at the park and so avoids taking him there, as she’s told me. But he seems better integrated into the family. He also spends a fair bit of time inside, I’m told.

Sure, I wasn’t happy as it began to get dark and the two canine pals forlornly stood sentry at the back door, soulful eyes watching the fun inside, cold and lonely and wanting to be part of their human packs, with me going outside to pat and soothe every now and then. But I’m happy about the progress that’s been made, and I just hope it can continue.

Good morning, meditation

I also wanted to report on my recent experience of trying to meditate. When I look back over my adult life, it could be viewed as one long failed attempt to meditate. It seems that when I do start meditating regularly, every time something out of the ordinary happens – I get a cold, or a really difficult job comes up, or a major event looms – I give up meditating. I’m talking about 5 or 10 minutes a day here, not anything heroic like half an hour.

But in all my attempts I’ve come to realise some important things.

There is absolutely no point in me waiting to meditate till 6 pm, which I’ve tried to do in the last year or so. It’s not that I can’t find the time then; my brain just isn’t in the right state for it.

The only thing that works for me is to meditate just after I get up in the morning and before I leave the bedroom. As I’m a morning person this is the best time for my brain; I’m definitely at my freshest, even if I haven’t slept that well. But the other reason is that, because I know if I don’t meditate immediately I won’t be doing it later in the day, it’s much harder to put it off and make excuses. I also know that it’s good for me to start the day that way before I compulsively go to my office and turn my computer on.

Another thing I’ve realised is I don’t have to wait for meditation benefits. I get them right away. Yes they’re subtle, but meditation is like daily medicine.

And the best thing? All the times I’ve stopped and started mean that when I start to meditate again, my brain already has some skill that it’s retained from the last time. So all the stopping and starting hasn’t been a total waste of time.

So far, I’ve managed to meditate first thing in my bedroom, for 10 minutes at a time, for five days in a row. I know that sooner or later there’ll be some crisis that may threaten this, but now at least I can’t fool myself and say ‘I’ll do it later in the day’. It’s first thing or not at all.

(BTW, the picture above isn’t of Sarah, but it was too appropriate to resist.)

A simple but totally unproven exercise for getting to sleep

2010-05-09T17:10:00.000-07:00

(I was very bored with the layout of my blog, so chose another template and mucked around a bit with colours – any feedback welcome, including feedback on readability. I’ve also rearranged the links and added subject headings. Lastly, though you would never know it, I got rid of quite a few labels, but the list is still too long.)

I developed this sleep exercise about a year ago, based on some reading I’d done on the brain. I decided to include the exercise in my blog because I’ve been having sleeping problems for the last few months and hadn’t been doing the exercise for a while. I tried it again recently and it seemed to work. I thought it was worth putting in the blog, but I’m warning you it sounds very silly, and is probably based on childhood memories of sci-fi films.

I would be very interested to know if it does work for anyone else (and if it doesn’t), or if readers make their own adaptations.

The exercise

Do this exercise slowly.

You can do it more than once at a time.

Picture the frontal cortex of the brain being turned off (picture the frontal area of the brain, along the forehead, being plunged into darkness as ‘electric lights’ are switched off).

Picture the visual cortex being turned on (picture the centre of the lower back of the head lighting up as if an electric light is going on).

Imagine you are a director giving instructions to an operator sitting at an operating panel that includes buttons. Picture the operator carrying out the following instructions as you give them.

Produce 200 mg GABA ( as you ‘give the orders’, picture the operator punching the amount in, the substance, and then an ‘Enter’ button).

Produce 200 mg melatonin (as above).

Produce 200 mg tryptophan (as above).

Now order the operator to ‘Activate the sleep process’. Picture the operator slowly moving a large lever, like a gear stick, in a downwards motion.

Now, gently focus on any images your brain is producing rather than words. Let the images turn into dreams.

Please note the following:

This exercise has no scientific validity – it’s only been tested on me.

I don’t have problems getting to sleep, but waking up too early in the morning and being unable to get back to sleep. I therefore use this exercise in the early hours (4 am to 6 am), and it doesn’t plunge me into deep sleep but light dreaming.

Part of the reason it does work for me may be habit – ie my brain now sees this exercise as a signal to move into sleep mode.

It does seem to relax me a bit, perhaps because it occupies the mind.

If I’m really alert it won’t work – sometimes it acts like a test as to whether it’s worth trying to sleep or just giving up and getting up.

The exercise is based on my very limited and probably completely inaccurate knowledge of the human brain. The frontal cortex is the seat of active thinking, and the visual cortex is active during sleep.

The exercise refers to sleep-inducing substances that the body produces, and I am in no way recommending that people buy these as supplements.

The ‘amounts’ of these substances are totally arbitrary.

Everyone’s different – if trying this exercise produces distress, stop.

I know this exercise is daggy. But it works for me, and I thought it might at least inspire others to make up their own exercises.

The Age newspaper loves Greens policies, but hates the Greens

2010-05-05T22:15:00.000-07:00

This blog entry is a letter that I sent to the Age newspaper this morning, objecting to the newspaper's coverage of the Greens on the previous Saturday. For overseas readers: the Melbourne Age has always been a progressive newspaper but struggles to maintain its role under the current management of its owners, Fairfax Media.

Last year the ALP government failed to get its legislation for an emissions trading scheme (ETS) through the upper house. The scheme was never popular with progressives but was even worse after amendments made following negotiations with the main conservative opposition (the government refused the Greens suggestion of a carbon tax).

With an election due around November this year, the ALP has shelved any reintroduction of the ETS until 2013. Two columnists in Saturday's Age managed to have a go at the Greens for opposing the legislation in the Senate.

I’m writing a general letter of objection to the coverage of the Greens and their policies on global warming in the Age of Saturday 1 May 2010, but also directed at the two columnists concerned, Tony Wright and Ross Gittins. Tony Wright’s column appeared in the Insight section of the paper and Ross Gittins’s appeared in the Business Day section (the business commentators seem to be Fairfax rather than Age journalists – this in no way lets the Age off the hook). For the record, I’m not a Greens member but I support and vote for the Greens.

It’s fascinating that the only direct endorsement of the Greens’ carbon tax proposal is not only buried in the business section of that edition, in Paddy Manning’s column, but seems to have produced a flurry of opposing opinion by other columnists (a spurious attempt at ABC-style ‘balance’?). Manning’s endorsement is also months after the fact – I’m not objecting to the views of this columnist, but to the Age’s willingness to publish a point of view that supports evidence-based policy only when that support is given far too late to matter.

In contrast, the coverage of the Greens in the columns by Gittins and Wright would have conspiracy theorists who fear anti-Greens censorship tearing up their Age subscriptions. It seems that the Age wants to have it both ways: present itself as a progressive paper by criticising government and opposition policies; then trashing, or more usually ignoring, the one party that offers a clear alternative. The ethos seems to be: ensure business as usual while enabling readers to feel vindicated in their anger about the complete inability of the large parties to pursue policies that are genuinely in the national interest.

The media is part of this deterioration in our democratic process. One of the problems is that journalists such as Wright and Gittins have taken on, to some extent, the twisted mindset of politicians. According to this mindset, there are two realities: what’s actually going on in the world; and the need to create an impression of government activity and relevance through spin. This second, alternative reality, born of the Canberra hothouse, is considered by the politicians to be far more important than actual reality, and is one of the major reasons the Labor government has failed to move effectively on just about every issue it has tried to tackle.

Unfortunately, some journalists also come to view this alternative reality as far more important than the real world. It is certainly much more beguiling, because it’s far easier to commentate a never-ending football match than to take a strong stand on matters such as democracy, human rights and social justice.

Take Wright’s column. He starts off in the real world, by giving an impassioned description of a recent Catalyst program that highlighted the effects of global warming on Antarctica’s ice sheet. He then turns his attention to government and opposition behaviour towards climate change, bemoaning the fact that ‘hardly anyone seemed to give a stuff’.

It would be logical for Wright to support the policies of the party that has done far more than either of the larger ones to both alert Australians to the true extent of the dangers of global warming, and to offer policies and targets that actually square up with the science and set us on the road to a renewable energy industry. But in his upside-down version of reality, the version he’s absorbed from the political spin-merchants, the leader of this party, Bob Brown, is an irrelevant ideologue. And the only one left with real integrity is the man who, at the time when the government’s climate change policy was being negotiated, made what was already a dog of an emissions trading scheme even worse – Malcolm Turnbull:

Bob Brown’s Greens … well, they just kept being the Greens, complaining that the government hadn’t taken their proposals seriously, which is another way of saying that they had played themselves out of the equation.

About the only politician of simple integrity still standing was Malcolm Turnbull.

This is outrageous. In implying that Bob Brown lacks integrity, Wright is denouncing one of the few politicians in the federal parliament who actually has any. (Brown’s opposition to unfair increases to parliamentary salaries is just one example.)

In contrast, Turnbull’s principles in relation to the ETS, principles which Wright lauds to the skies, were based on ensuring that the coal industry continued to flourish in Australia till kingdom come.

It’s disappointing for a reader to feel she is more cluey than the paper’s national affairs editor. The ETS (both pre- and post-Coalition versions) was a dog because:

• it offered compensation to polluters, doing the opposite of what an ETS should do, which is to encourage alternative energy, not to enable ‘business as usual’. The Age itself has reported that most of the compensation specified in the ETS legislation was unnecessary

• it locked in, for the long term, both this compensation and a low emissions reduction target, with the distinct possibility that if the government increased the pathetic 5 per cent target, it would be liable for a commensurate increase in compensation to the polluting industries

• the 5 per cent was a furphy anyway, because much of the reduction would have been obtained from investment in overseas carbon sinks

• the 5 per cent was an absolute target, discouraging citizens from making their own changes – for example, if I had switched my electricity supply to green energy, that would have increased my electricity provider’s ability to pollute elsewhere

• no one understood it!

Eminent climate scientists agreed that the ETS would be useless, as the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Wright knows that the Greens were never merely naysayers, but offered a positive alternative, a carbon tax that might have squeaked through the Senate with the support of at least one of the two renegade Liberals and Nick Xenophon. Wasn’t the carbon tax option preferable to what’s happened now, with any action on carbon emissions being shelved till 2013?

This style of commentary illustrates the dangers of political commentators having the main say on climate change in the mainstream media. If the Age is to be relevant it needs to have a qualified science writer weighing up the parties’ climate change policies, not glorified football commentators like Wright.

Let’s now turn to Gittins. He makes an astounding claim in his column, yet doesn’t even attempt to back it up:

But why did the Greens pretend that 5 per cent was nothing when they must have known it wasn’t true? Because it didn’t suit the line they were running. It proves that the ever-virtuous Greens as [sic] just as capable of lying with statistics as the mainstream parties are.

Gittins produces no evidence to ‘prove’ that the Greens are ‘lying with statistics’ – he simply makes the assertion.

In considering the 5 per cent target too low, the Greens were merely listening to the climate scientists. The 5 per cent target has absolutely no relevance to climate science.

Similarly, Gittins seems to think that judging emissions reductions using per capita (head of population) measures would be a good thing. This is simply ludicrous because it would make targets meaningless as far as the actual climate is concerned. (In fact, the pollies would love it if they could use such standards to measure reductions in emissions, especially given Australia’s increasing population, and a couple have tried to do this.)

Again, it’s all about politics, not reality. Tony and Ross, isn’t ‘the greatest moral, environmental, economic and scientific challenge of our time’ worth more than a 5 per cent emissions reduction (on 2000 levels, by the way) and a bag of gold to the big polluters?

A newspaper in which the ‘ever virtuous’ Greens are treated with contempt because they’re more truthful, and the coal-friendly, Machiavellian Turnbull magically becomes ‘the only politician of simple integrity still standing’ may be terminally endangering its reputation as a progressive force.

It’s a shame, because the Age could be building strong customer loyalty based on an unswerving progressive vision, and on a genuine interest in engaging with its readers, rather like the UK’s Guardian. Instead, it seems almost entirely concerned with the advertising revenue it receives from the large parties. Many readers have already migrated online to sites like Crikey and New Matilda in response to the Age’s inability to respond adequately to the slow dismantling of democracy that Howard began and that Rudd has continued to engineer.

The home front

2010-05-01T14:58:00.000-07:00

Last week was a time of a gigantic ‘autumn clean’ that left this blogger so exhausted she has not had to provide the usual excuses for her normally excessive telly-watching.

The clean-up was occasioned by a triple whammy: an annual property inspection by the property manager (usually presaging some kind of rental hike), a visit by a painter to give a quote on the ceilings (fear of the owners prettying the place up in order to sell it, and no, he wasn’t planning a postmodern version of the Sistine Chapel) and most serious of all, the owners themselves, asking politely (it’s their legal right of course) if they could come and have a sticky beak.

It was on for one and all. Well, not entirely. I didn’t clean the windows, and I didn’t dust the tiny horizontal surfaces that abound in this impossibly high-maintenance ‘villa’ (why have only one ledge on the skirting boards when you can have three!).

I damp-dusted everything else though, and rubbed grime off a series of cupboard walls and doors. But the most debilitating job was the garden. With a back and front yard, as well as a driveway, it’s a lot of work to keep it looking reasonably neat. The whole place is really too much for one person, and especially this person, who doesn’t have a lot of energy to spare at the best of times.

( I would be remiss here if I didn’t acknowledge that my dad actually provided mowing services gratis and even returned the next day to dispose of an unfortunate dead rat on the driveway that had somehow escaped both our notice – not a good look if left there for the owners to discover.)

The way I cope with the maintenance requirements of this place is to have a list of jobs that I work my way through but am always behind on. Thus, I am never living in total disarray and yet never basking in the sweet order that my obsessive personality adores.

Except for the last few days, of course. As I dragged myself around in deep physical exhaustion I was able to enjoy the sense of being ‘looked after’ – by me! Of course the house will slowly descend into its normal interim state of semi-dirty tidiness, but until then I’m enjoying the fresh aura of clean.

Even if I had the energy I don’t think I have the will to keep this level of maintenance up, but now I understand why people pay to have these services performed. I’ve also come to the conclusion that the results of zealous domestic work – this sense of being looked after and the visual effects of cleanness – are a compensation for living in unrenovated housing, and of course a way of exercising control over the space.

My mother was obsessive about housework. There was no question that it came first. I internalised this very early, and received her unalloyed approval only when I tried to help her in her endless quest against mess; how welcome were her happiness and attention on the rare occasions I felt motivated to ‘clean the kitchen’ after the evening dishes, removing the conglomeration of administration and junk that endlessly migrated to the kitchen table and benches.

Much of that mess would have been my father’s. He’s a hoarder, and I am only now beginning to appreciate the scale of the battle she has fought with his encroaching, largely paper-based chaos for decades. She’s been physically somewhat debilitated in the last few years, and it breaks my heart in a way that is no doubt excessive to see that his watercolour painting, small political battles and admin tasks now encroach on the dining room and sunroom of their house (his ‘study’ is so chock-full of boxes and papers that he can’t do anything in there besides use the computer).

In my twenties I was able to tolerate short-term messiness, as long as it was created by me and not an overly busy housemate. However, prolonged and extreme untidiness, I now realise, has always spelled chaos to me. I had a friend in primary school, T, whose parents were literary. The two front rooms were relatively tidy, but T’s parents were cheerfully oblivious to the accretions of long-term mess that beset the rest of the place. I once galvanised T and one of her younger brothers to join me in a clean-up of her bedroom; the strongest memory I have of this episode is determinedly sweeping marble after marble from under one of the beds.

Seven years ago I flooded my flat and ended up moving back to live with my parents for over a year, much to the chagrin of my mother. During this time her approach to housework became evident; I remember her once literally sweeping around my feet as I stood in the jarrah-floored sunroom. It seemed to me at the time that she would have loved to sweep me away.

Post-visit relief

After all that elbow grease, the house inspection went almost impossibly smoothly. The owners are an elderly woman and her husband, and the flat has been in the family for decades – the wife’s father bought the three adjoining flats new, and left one to each of his children. I knew all this already, but found out from the wife that the development, one of a small minority of art deco styled buildings in the area, was built in 1937.

I was very curious about who the first-ever tenants were, as I imagined them as some proto-yuppie couple moving into what would then have been a stylish ultra-modern apartment (the kitchen has a wonderful fold-out ironing board, complete with what appears to be original floral ironing board cover, that would have been cutting edge circa 1937). But the owner had no idea who they were, as she would have been only around six when the place was first tenanted.

Anyway, I’d only ever met the husband before, not the wife. The property manager turned up breathless at my door as the couple came up behind her, the wife helped along by her husband, the pair having inexplicably caught the tram. ‘She’s blind, you know’, said the property manager. As well as immediately obliterating my fantasy of this all-powerful landlord and inciting my compassion, the irony could not escape me – much of my cleaning had probably been unnecessary.

However, the husband and the PM both went away to have a good look through. It became clear that the only appropriate thing to do was to sit the owner down in the loungeroom and chat to her – she wasn’t interested in accompanying her husband on the inspection, and she was tired after the tram ride. She was frail and very cluey, with a guttural voice and a strong Australian accent.

I felt for her, because her blindness, seemingly acquired in later life, clearly annoyed her. As they were leaving her husband grabbed her arm and moved in the direction of the large spare room over the hallway. ‘There’s a front bedroom over here’, he said jovially. ‘Come on, I’ll show it to you.’

‘What’s the point?’ she responded angrily. ‘I can’t see anything!’

I have now got over my pathological fear of the landlords, and the whole episode did not suggest imminent sale to me, or a rental hike out of the ordinary. Also, the tattered ceilings are to be plastered and painted if an insurance claim goes through. So I think it’s safe to judge the visit a success!

Reluctant lover of Big Love

2010-04-25T20:36:00.000-07:00

I wrote this blog entry while the third series of Big Love was still playing in Australia, and then got caught up with writing about diet and food intolerance, so it’s a bit out of date. But I couldn’t stand to hang onto for another year so have decided to give it an airing now.

I have a big but in some ways reluctant love for the HBO television series Big Love.

This long-running drama series centres on polygamist Bill Henrickson and his three wives, Barb, Nicki and Margene. The family live in three neighbouring houses in a suburb in Salt Lake City, Utah, with their numerous offspring.

Bill and his wives are renegade fundamentalist Mormons who have adopted polygamy because they believe that producing as many children as possible will increase their favour with their ‘heavenly father’ in the afterlife.

With a fifth series in the pipeline and seemingly as popular as ever, the show details the never-ending dramas as Bill tries to financially care for his large family while hiding his polygamy from the world. There are also the tensions cooked up at Juniper Creek, the rural compound housing an oppressive Mormon sect that Bill and Nicki grew up in and are still entangled with. Dynamics among the three wives, the criminality of Roman, the patriarch of Juniper Creek, and the endless obstacles to Bill’s business ambitions are complicating factors.

I watch the show for the drama, but find myself wanting the family to ‘make it’ and stay together because they obviously gain strength from the deep bonds they’ve developed (in plural marriages, it seems, the women are married to each other as well, but as sisters rather than lovers, which of course begs its own questions).

The show is honest in its portrayal of human dilemmas, including sexual dilemmas, while also being, in its own way, conservative. Each of the personal conflicts ultimately gets resolved, although they may continue for several episodes and even from one series to the next (although I can only speak for what I’ve seen so far, and I’ve just reached the end of the third series, whereas the fourth has recently been screened in the US, and seems to herald some changes). But the resolution always occurs because the character concerned decides for themselves that they are going to ‘behave’. They make a choice based on their feelings of love and of belonging to the family group.

And that’s why the show is ultimately a fantasy – the characters must always make this conservative decision for the series to continue. In real life such intelligent, complex characters might well end up separating and living their lives on new and broader canvases. Or, as many women in polygamous marriages must do, they might simply continue with the status quo even if they were basically unhappy. The relationship conflicts in Big Love give a nod to realism (even if the interiors are usually preternaturally clean and ordered, and even if Margene looks impossibly fresh-faced despite having three toddlers to look after) but the never-endingly peaceable resolutions don’t (again, this may have changed in the fourth series).

Not only that, but the show goes to great pains to portray Bill’s plural marriage as one that is relatively enlightened. We know that not all polygamous marriages are as equitable as Bill’s, and deeply inequitable and often criminally abusive marriages take place on the Juniper Creek compound, sometimes between elderly men and teenage girls. Some of the wives on the compound are portrayed as living restricted lives of deep unhappiness.

In contrast, the individuals in Bill’s plural marriage are always free to leave if they choose – the only catch is that staying involves accepting the ‘principle’, which means having as many children as possible. That’s part of the show’s cleverness – the members of this marriage are portrayed as ordinary people in a very challenging situation. This impression is reinforced by the back story, in which Bill and Barb, the first wife, originally had a conventional marriage before deciding to embark on polygamy in order to live the principle and keep reproducing. Also, it’s constantly emphasised that Bill is in love with each of his three wives.

The makers of this series have been ludicrously clever in their ability to pitch it to a range of audiences. Mormons are a tiny minority in the USA, making up only 1.7 per cent of the total population, and probably mostly object to the show; but Big Love is likely to appeal to a wide swathe of non-Mormons who are religious in some way. According to Wikipedia, in 2008, 76 per cent of Americans identified as Christian; Protestants made up 51.6 per cent of the population, that is, they were a majority of the country’s population. Meanwhile, 3.9 per cent were part of non-Christian religious communities; this figure included Muslims and Jews.

The members of Bill’s marriage make huge sacrifices to maintain their complex arrangement. I’d imagine that many conservative Christians, and perhaps even Muslims and Orthodox Jews, might enjoy watching the show to receive affirmation for the sacrifices they themselves make for their religion, such as abstaining from alcohol, not using contraception, or marrying young to avoid having sex before marriage.

But the show’s target market is wider than that. Women who watch this show may think ‘There but for the grace of God go I’. But some men may watch it because they like the fantasy of having three wives. That relates to what I think could be another reason for the show’s attractiveness. Given the in-between status of this family, sitting somewhere between the oppressive world of Juniper Creek and the uncomprehending secular world from which they must hide their illegal arrangement, their situation has glaring similarities with much more progressive forms of polyamory. Surely this would be part of the subliminal appeal of the series?

Genuine polyamory has to hide in the USA just as polygamy does. An interesting documentary shown on Australian television last year featured an arrangement between a man and two women living together, all of whom were in love with each other – in other words, there were three sexual relationships going on. One of the women was a lawyer and she had to hide the nature of her relationship in her workplace, just as do the characters in Big Love.

But the interdependence that characterises the adult family members (when they’re not warring with each other) also reminds me of the first share house I lived in, a communal arrangement in which we ate and shopped together, and had a food kitty and a cleaning roster.

Communal share houses can have polyamorous undertones (mine certainly did) but don’t rely on polyamory as a structure for the relationships of the members. They offer a different version of adulthood from the one that involves breaking away from one’s family of origin by living in an adult sexual relationship. Share houses allow a form of adult cooperation that helps young people to separate from the family, but also enables a great sense of autonomy and freedom for those not yet ready to form lasting ties (of course, share houses may also involve established couples, and the arrangement may give rise to new relationships). And yes, share houses are, like polyamory, difficult to get right.

I think there’s something similar between this kind of arrangement and the way the family in Big Love are housed: the family live in three adjoining houses but are always in and out of each other’s homes.

The share house model is very much evident in the way the show is marketed. The youngest wife, Margene, has a blog in which she talks frankly (ie bitches) about the goings-on in the family. (The comments from viewers that appear on this blog suggest that some at least have trouble distinguishing fiction from real life).

These echoes of the share house no doubt help to explain why the show also appeals to a lefty feminist like me. But I think it may be the very lack of political correctness that is the clincher. I enjoy the drama of the continuing conflicts, but can ultimately blame the Mormon lifestyle for causing the conflicts in the first place, thereby avoiding the need to feel guilty about the show’s political unsoundness. I get to have my self-righteous cake and eat it too.

Cold House Blues

2010-04-15T16:28:00.000-07:00

The weather has been on the turn in Melbourne. Summer promised to last forever, but we’ve been plunged into overcast days and freezing nights. As soon as autumn arrives, my home resembles an Antarctic station where the heating has broken down.

Although it’s double brick, which means you have a few days grace before any violent temperature change registers, once it does you’re at its mercy.

This house has everything set up for shivering, in particular large-ish rooms, glass-and-timber double doors in the loungeroom, high ceilings and not a scrap of insulation.

Sometimes it’s actually warmer outside the house than in.

The one consolation is the gas heater in the lounge. It’s fairly ancient, but it does do an initial heat-up of the loungeroom pretty well, even though I know that once July strikes it just won’t win the battle against the cold, no matter how loud and determined its rattle becomes.

I had to really persuade myself to turn the loungeroom heater on this early in autumn. The weather bureau was promising a few 25-degree days towards the end of the week, so it seemed indulgent.

As soon as the heater goes on, the wet clothes come in. During the winter my loungeroom loses its ambience and becomes a de facto clothes dryer. I have a large selection of clothes airers of various sizes that become a fixture in the lounge.

I have a large electric heater for my office, but I’m just not ready to turn that on yet; here, my green instincts line up perfectly with my stinginess and my relative poverty. The heater is a 2400 watt-er, and it also heats the space up well, but in April? I’ll shiver for another couple of weeks, thanks very much.

But heaters on or off, the whole house is cold, and the cold is an alien presence, an enemy that is forever chasing me. The only way to beat the cold is to literally run away from it. I must keep moving, keep thinking about what I’m doing, what I’m planning to do next, refuse to give in to it.

This is the part of winter I find most challenging – I have to summon up a new sense of discipline and a proactive approach while my body just wants to hibernate. Don’t stay too long in the shower; don’t lounge on the floor in front of the heater when there are things you need to do; don’t tackle the dishes too late in the evening because the kitchen will be freezing; move the clothes around to ensure they’re drying. Keep your plan for the day in mind.

This sounds so simple, but yesterday, when cold and looming clouds descended suddenly (it’s warmed up a bit today) I was at a loss. Work was scarce, I felt low and really needed to get out of the house. But I couldn’t bring myself to. The weather felt oppressive, and I felt trapped and unprepared for it.

Recently I found myself thinking about buying myself one of those wearable blankets, for telly watching at least. They may not be exactly flattering but at least they’re comfortable. I looked at a website selling these (I’m not going to provide the link – they don’t need me to help their advertising!) and they are similar in shape to a monk’s robe, giving the wearer a sage-like appearance, while the video ad would have you believe that keeping warm by simply wearing several layers of clothes was never an option – which is pretty much what I’m doing.

One glance at those things suggests that they’d be dead easy to make, even with an existing blanket – in fact one made from a wool blanket would probably be warmer. I’ve also seen TV advertisements for quilted pyjamas, a bit like wearable doonas.

But I don’t think a wearable blanket or doona would work for me anyway as it’s simply another layer – they’d have to have an inbuilt electric blanket to get my temperature beyond the icy. What I’d really like is one of those electrical heated throw rugs – now you’re talking!

During my search on the net I did find something that offered low-tech artificial warmth that’s wearable – a scarf with a neck section and hand pockets that are filled with rice and flax seed. You heat the scarf in a microwave and wear it around the house. Sounds very comforting but I think you’d also need something for the legs.

But I am one of those people who feel the cold to an extraordinary degree. I sometimes go to the house of a friend to watch a DVD on his big plasma screen. The trouble is he’s just the opposite of me when it comes to temperature, and would often cheerfully strip off to his undies, given half a chance, in a temperature that to me is merely temperate.

We now have the drill under control for all but the warmest nights – he leaves out a mohair rug and a cotton blanket, both of which I drape around me as I settle down to enjoy the movie. I also bring a shawl to drape around my shoulders, and – yes, I’m going to admit it – thick woollen socks! Well, at least it stops us bickering about turning on the gas heater.

Still, while I might complain, I do sleep better in winter, partly because the light does not break through yonder window until much later, so my overzealous pineal gland calms down a bit.

(Note – after a lovely sunny interlude the weather got cold again and I felt compelled to add to this little entry.)

Sins of Omission and Sins of Commission: My Not-So-Beautiful Flingette

2010-04-08T16:31:00.001-07:00

I look forward to Easter because it’s like Christmas without the angst. The weather’s normally mild in Melbourne, the streets blessedly bare and silent, there are films in cinemas waiting to be seen. If I’m working I enjoy the break; if not, I suspend the feelings of guilt and envy that crop up during these times. I haven’t eaten chocolate for so long now that I’m almost oblivious to the foil-wrapped ubiquity of the Easter Bunny’s offerings. It doesn’t matter to me that everyone else is enjoying a chocolate feast (she says with not a tad of defensiveness).

As this Easter approached I was on the tailend of a rare flingette, with the Gentleman I wrote about months ago. We ‘bumped into each other’ on the naughty website again, and this time there would be no mucking around with the niceties. It was a strange experience, and a bit sad. I don’t regret it; but, as usual, this kind of limited encounter makes me acutely aware of what I don’t have, and what so many others do – a real relationship.

It was intense in its own way, but, ever slow on the uptake, it took me ages to realise that he – the co-flinger – was even more emotionally cut off than I was. I still have no idea what he thought of me – I didn’t receive one compliment from him, but then again, I don’t think I gave him one. We both held off any kind of self-disclosure, and approached the fling as if it was a series of one-night stands. Which in effect it was.

In fact, what I’ve come to realise is that he showed me something a bit disconcerting about myself.

At first his lack of questions about my life, and his lack of demand that we meet socially beforehand, simply seemed too convenient and lucky for words. (It was also a huge relief that he didn’t want to stay the night – I don’t sleep well alone, but with someone else in the bed the night’s a total write-off.)

I didn’t have to tell him about my food allergies, the circumstances of me working from home – he fitted in with my limitations, he fitted around me. It seemed a god-given gift to be able to just have the fling without him wanting to get under my skin, so to speak.

He was easier with this kind of arrangement than anyone I’ve ever known. As if that was the only way things ever were. As if this was how everyone conducted their sexual lives, impersonally, just getting on with it, and a polite chat afterwards to show that you had digested your food before getting up from the table.

But after the second meeting I realised that he hadn’t ever kissed me, not even a peck. I knew there must be a particular reason for that, that it wasn’t accidental. I asked him why on the third and last occasion, and he laughed in an embarrassed way, as if to say, ‘I knew this would come up sooner or later.’ He then confessed that he actually enjoyed the idea of the whole thing being totally anonymous. Not kissing me was a way to keep that fantasy alive, at least partially.

He had outplayed me. Asking for emotional space, for a level of the impersonal, I had received everything I’d wanted – and more.

But this revealed something about me, too – if he was a player, so was I. If I was uncomfortable with this level of emotional distance, then why had I picked him up on a website designed to facilitate just that? I'd never thought about myself as a player before, as someone who had sex for recreation. I’ve embarked on all my encounters with a search for love being part of the hidden agenda, even if the person concerned had no chance of fulfilling that particular brief. Of course I did the same thing with him, even against probability, but that’s certainly not how I acted.

It’s not that I have anything against sex as recreation; it’s just that experience tells me it’s impossible. Sex is an energy exchange, no matter how impersonally it’s carried out.

But I don’t think what I did was wrong either. I needed to do it, and even though I’m sad about not being in a relationship, I’m a lot less resentful and angry about it. Any kind of sexual oasis can have benefits that last far longer than the actual experience. I did have a good time, after all.

Yet his lack of self-consciousness amazes me even now. I can still picture him sitting cross-legged on the bed as I undress. It’s our second ‘encounter’.

‘It’s always awkward the second time’, I say. ‘The first time you’ve got nothing to lose, and later on you’ve gotten to know someone, but this interim period’s difficult.’

He looks mildly wondering, mildly curious, as if that kind of awkwardness is totally foreign to him.

‘So how do you get over it?’ he asks.

‘You don’t. You just have to live through it.’

Of course it couldn’t have continued to be casual indefinitely and after that particular, second episode, I was wondering if it could be something more, something long-term-ish, even if perennially low-key. But there were a few niggling issues (the not-kissing being one of them), and the crunch came at the following meeting.

We were sitting companionably on the couch afterwards, he was munching on shortbread and we were having quite a cosy chat about politics – intense political discussions were one of the things we had in common. Until ...

He was telling me about how BP had had backed a coup in Azerbaijan that overthrew the democratically elected government. I made a stock remark about BP probably being one of the companies funding the stream of climate denialism that’s now flooding the internet, not to mention the mainstream media.

He stared at me.

‘Oh no’, I said, smiling. ‘Are you …? Do you …?’

‘When scientists are disagreeing on a major issue, it’s time to step back and look at it objectively.’

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. He was, of all things, a Denier. To put it more politely, a climate sceptic.

Polite and urbane as we were both trying to be, we discussed it for a while longer, as I yawned exhaustedly. Secretly, though, I had, I hate to say, more or less dismissed him.

I know that that’s hopelessly judgemental, and judgementalism is one of my major faults. What I was judging was his seeming inability to judge his own sources of information. It’s not that he wasn’t reading up and investigating and finding out for himself – clearly he was. It’s just that, if he’d come to the conclusion that human-made climate change was a crock, he was clearly going to dodgy sources to get his information. It was this lack of discrimination about the quality of sources that made me question his – well, his ability to discriminate.

In my defence, I also sensed a determination to hold onto his views similar in strength to mine. There was no way I was going to argue him out of this position, even if I did have decades of peer-reviewed climate science on my side. My scientific knowledge is as tiny as the problem of climate change is grave.

I couldn’t help thinking it was the sort of dilemma that the comedy show Seinfeld would have dealt with if it had continued into the noughties. Picture Elaine entering Jerry’s apartment for the umpteenth time, looking decidedly dejected as he holds the door open for her.

‘How did your big date go?’ he asks in his offhand way.

‘It’s over.’

‘Over? But you’ve only just met him!’

‘He was a climate change sceptic.’

Despite this outcome, I still enjoyed Easter. It is after all the season of the blob, the festival of doing nothing, a time for the worship of sloth. In fact, Good Friday is the day of the year that it’s easier for me to slack off than any other day. It’s almost impossible to be productive on that day, but for me it seems downright sinful.

The air is so still. Everything’s come to a halt. The busy street I live on is quiet. Luckily I had prepared myself for this urge to languor. The evening before I’d been trawling around neighbouring suburbs at the Holy Thursday equivalent of peak hour (much less frenetic than usual) looking forlornly for a video store. The tiny corner one I usually go to, a five-minute drive from my place, had mysteriously closed, with a sad For Sale sign on the door. I hate that kind of change – when some tiny piece of your life disappears and you have to figure out how to replace it.

Blankness was calling, the world was closing in on itself, and I was going to need distraction. I finally figured out there was a video store even closer to me in the other direction, and when I finally made it there the place was buzzing with the uncultured young.

And what a depressing little place it was. Video stores are always a bit that way with their dirty white shelves and cheap nylon carpet and relentless fluoros. This place was particularly soul-destroying on an Easter Thursday because it had the most limited selection I’ve ever seen – a slew of cheap-and-nasty action movies and unfunny-looking rom coms that clearly never made it to the big screen, in Australia at least, their blarey, cartoonish visuals screaming out their lack of real content.

I managed to grab a couple of thrillers, my favourite genre, and after watching one on Friday afternoon I wept through the mushy but emotionally grown-up Young Victoria. How lucky Victoria was to find a lover she was nuts about, who also happened to be incredibly geopolitically convenient (he was the nephew of King Leopold of Belgium). Where was my Albert, or even my Albertina? Either would do.

Heroes and villains: food intolerance, hypoglycemia, candida and the Failsafe diet – Part 3 of 3

2010-04-01T15:16:00.000-07:00

Please note: the following shouldn’t be taken as medical advice. It’s simply what I’ve gleaned, and in other cases am guessing because of a lack of accessible information concerning health issues I’m currently facing. If anyone has any relevant information that they think would be useful, please send it to me.

In my last entry I described the Failsafe diet, which was developed for children with physical and behavioural problems caused by intolerances to human-made and natural food chemicals. While I’m a great fan of the diet and Sue Dengate’s website, with my own long history of hypoglycemia I was disturbed that the possible role of sugar in contributing to behavioural problems was being dismissed out of hand. I was also concerned that a controversial medical diagnosis, the so-called ‘leaky gut’ and its associations with yeast overgrowth, was also being dismissed.

With cane sugar (sucrose) no longer a culprit for most Failsafers, what seems like an unhealthy degree of tolerance for sugary foods has developed in the food companies that have sprung up to respond to the needs of children with allergies and food intolerances, as well as more specifically Failsafers and their families. So, as well as using my own experience as an argument for the existence of hypoglycemia, I decided to look at what else was ‘wrong’ with sugar, even if it wasn’t the main culprit in conditions like ADD.

Is sugar good for anybody, especially kids?

Sucrose does occur naturally in fruits along with fructose, but table sugar isn’t really a natural food. Although it comes from sugar cane or sugar beet, it’s extremely concentrated and processed. Our bodies were built to ingest sugars in the form of complex carbohydrates, such as those occurring in fruit and vegetables.

In the small amount of research I did on sugar, I discovered a few interesting things. The main one was that processed sugars rather than fat are now said to be the cause of obesity; the latter has increased in the US during a period when carbohydrate consumption has been going up and the consumption of fat has been going down. Thus, low-fat diets are not necessarily the answer. Sugar has also been shown to be a physically addictive substance that has chemical effects on the brain.

In addition, processed sugar, and, importantly, other forms of concentrated sweetness, have been linked with coronary heart disease; dietary sugar and salt have been linked with the development of cataracts; and one study has found that a diet with a high amount of sugars and carbohydrate ‘may increase the risk of pancreatic cancer in women who already have an underlying degree of insulin resistance’.

But, rather than be a total killjoy and recommend that everyone give up sugar, it does seem, from my very limited knowledge, that there’s some truth to what Dengate says about it: both children and adults are better eating sugar as a dessert than in the form of fizzy soft drinks.

I’d go further and say that homemade desserts and sweet foods are the best way of eating it, and that junk food containing cane sugar or fructose should be avoided.

Fructose, a different form of concentrated sugar made from fruit, seems to be particularly problematic in processed food, even for those without a genetic intolerance. It seems that much of the junk food that is causing obesity in America is sweetened not with sucrose but with corn syrup, a highly processed form of fructose that is cheaper to produce than sucrose, much sweeter and even more harmful; some scientists believe that the body processes it differently from cane sugar and that it’s more likely to cause obesity. ‘Crystallised fructose’ is, apparently, just as bad.

In fact, ‘sugar-sweetened beverages’, which commonly include corn syrup (ie fructose), have been linked with ‘an increased risk of gout, hypertension, and diabetes’, although it’s not clear whether the fructose is directly causing these conditions.

I do think that kids who are benefiting from the Failsafe diet but still aren’t totally well should be taken off all forms of concentrated sugar for a few weeks to see if they improve further. And, partly because of its addictive qualities, I think all kids should only have sugar in their diet in a very restricted way. (In my family, of course, that ain’t going to happen in a million centuries!) As I’ve said, this isn’t medical advice, but just my opinion.

The food intolerance industry

There are a number of websites offering allergy-friendly foods for beleaguered parents; in fact there seems to be a whole industry encouraging children with food allergies and intolerances to eat as normatively as possible. Unfortunately some of the products on offer seem remarkably close to standard junk food.

This website offers coconut ice, chocolate pudding mix and ‘blackberry crunch’ complete with tapioca flour and cane sugar. Meanwhile, this website offers allergy-friendly two-minute noodles. Admittedly these foods are for children with relatively limited allergies and food intolerances, but the Failsafers still get colourless lollies, carob sticks with cane sugar and ‘maggots’ made from puffed brown rice, cane sugar and canola oil. What happened to Failsafers only eating unprocessed food? And why do these companies encourage sick kids to eat heaps of sugar?

The unsavoury fact is that all processing changes the composition of food. As a hypoglycemic (for the moment, anyway!) I react to plain rice crackers made from brown rice without a trace of sugar.

I’m being very cynical here, but it’s obviously easier for the food industry to deal with low-amine and low-salicylate foods (the Failsafe diet) than it is for them to deal with a hypoglycemia or candida diet. In the latter diet especially, you really do have to eat mainly whole foods. But on a diet low in natural food chemicals you can eat plenty of sugar, thus boosting the food industry’s profits.

Of course, all children need treats, and it’s easy for me to pontificate – I’ve observed my sisters using food treats to bribe their kids to be good, and I can’t say that if I was in the same situation I would never do that. Any parent struggling with trying to get an ill child to eat a restricted diet probably welcomes these foods, and I’d assume they’d be a godsend for special occasions.

But common sense tells me that if a kid is reacting to many food chemicals, then unprocessed food with a minimum of concentrated sweetness would be the way to go, at least until the child’s system had had a chance to start healing.

Links between hypoglycemia and food intolerance – a shaky hypothesis based partly on my experience

Let’s assume that hypoglycemia can exist as a separate issue, at least in adults with food intolerances, although perhaps not in the majority of cases. What is the relationship between the two? Where does the whole thing begin?

It was very difficult to find useful information on the web regarding this question. This website by a parent of child with reactive hypoglycemia provides lots of worthwhile information and is keen to promote hypoglycemia as a distinct health issue, but makes no reference that I could find to food intolerance. The Australian-based Hypoglycemia Association does acknowledge food allergies and intolerances, but its information is fairly out of date.

The adrenal connection

Because of my own issues I’m most interested in adrenal fatigue and leaky gut as causes of hypoglycemia. It was extremely difficult to find worthwhile info on the web that linked food intolerance and allergy with adrenal fatigue and leaky gut. I’m convinced there are connections, and some websites seemed to acknowledge that there are, but they weren’t all that authoritative.

When your adrenals are fatigued, you don’t produce enough cortisol. Cortisol is a hormone that has balancing effects on blood sugar, which is why adrenal fatigue can be linked with hypoglycemia. But it’s also involved in helping the body deal with allergies, regulating ‘immune response’ and ‘anti-inflammatory actions’.

This suggests that if you’re under stress for a long time you may be more susceptible to allergies. Some people are genetically unable to cope with food proteins such as gluten and/or casein (a protein in milk). However, food intolerances can also develop.

In leaky gut syndrome the lining of the intestine supposedly becomes damaged, making it possible for tiny pieces of undigested food, toxins, parasites and waste to penetrate the lining, causing the immune system to respond by creating antibodies. This then results in symptoms of food intolerance.

This website says that, according to Dr Sherry Rogers MD, ‘The leaky gut can cause food allergy, and food allergy can cause the leaky gut’. In the case of gluten, ‘gluten sensitivity inflames the gut to the degree that the body will make antibodies to intestinal bacteria and chemical additives in food’. [This is confusing: possibly Rogers is talking about food intolerance when she says ‘the leaky gut can cause food allergy’.]

This medical doctor concurs, claiming that adrenals themselves can be affected by food allergies.

One interpretation of this is: you start off with a fixed allergy with a genetic component (say to gluten or casein) and, perhaps by consuming the allergen, end up with a leaky gut, which then results in all sorts of food intolerances you didn’t have before (eg to food chemicals such as amines and salicylates).

Perhaps at the same time you may be stressing out your adrenals as they struggle to deal with the gluten or other allergen you’re ingesting. And then the adrenals will be less able to cope with the food intolerances you’re developing (if it’s not actually directly contributing to their development). You may also develop reactive hypoglycemia. Perhaps you’ve also got some exterior stresses as well, which are putting even more pressure on your adrenals.

This scientific article suggests that pollen allergy can induce anxiety (which would then presumably have an unwelcome effect on the adrenal system).

This source, not a very scientific one admittedly, seems to suggest that the exterior stress can actually cause a leaky gut via the adrenals, without the further complication of a genetic allergy:

When we are under physical, emotional, or environmental stress it triggers cortisol, a stress hormone to be released. Cortisol raises blood sugar which feeds bad gut bacteria, yeast and other pathogens causing an overgrowth. When the intestinal flora gets out of balance it causes symptoms of gas, bloating, constipation, diarrhoea, and indigestion.

And this scientific article suggests that children are susceptible to stress just as adults are. It finds that environmental stresses in children can contribute to their developing allergies, but that the children who do so may have a particular allergy-inducing response to stress in the first place. (Again I’m not absolutely sure whether the author is talking about genuine allergies here or food intolerances, which seem to be much more variable.)

One possible reading of the Failsafe diet is that once you give up food chemicals, this takes the pressure off the adrenals and they can perform properly, therefore eliminating hypoglycemia.

But if the leaky gut theory were correct, surely you would need to eliminate concentrated sugar for a while (and perhaps fermented foods?) to allow the lining of the intestine to recover.

Children and sugar

The study, cited in my last entry, that seemed to prove that cane sugar played no role in behavioural problems was done on children. Perhaps, for most children, taking pressure off the adrenals by removing intolerances is enough. Yet excessive sugar, inadequate nutrition and use of antibiotics are all considered to be contributing factors in leaky gut. Children’s immune systems also have to deal with the effects of pollution, dust, pollens, pesticides etc. Perhaps a few children do develop a ‘leaky gut’, and need a rest from sugar until the condition resolves.

I grew up with an undiagnosed lactose (or casein) intolerance and a possible undiagnosed gluten intolerance. This could have contributed to a leaky gut. Once you feed sugar into a leaky gut you may be contributing to a yeast overgrowth and causing hypoglycemia.

Perhaps the leaky gut led to the sensitivities to amines and salicylates that I seem to have developed. And maybe that was one reason why I never got better on the candida diet: I was ignoring the amine/salicylate problem.

I’ve finally snagged an appointment with an allergist, and will ask them if it’s possible to take a test for adrenal function – if not, they may be able to refer me to someone. But in the meantime I’ve researched some ways I can support my adrenals. They’re incredibly simple really:

Exercise
Daily meditation
Vitamin C
Vitamin B
Magnesium

Other options are supplements of cortisol and a hormone called DHEA, both of which have been used experimentally to treat adrenal fatigue. But I reluctantly let go of the idea of taking them as they seemed to be unsafe.

I’m not blaming Dengate. I’m incredibly grateful for her website, which has allowed me to get rid of my hives, given me extra clarity about my food issues and encouraged me to go to a conventional allergist for the first time in my life.

It just annoys me that the issue of hypoglycemia is being blindsided, by the food intolerance ‘industry’ as a whole, when there is already so much ignorance about it. There needs to be more research about the links between adrenal fatigue, food intolerance, reactive hypoglycemia, and food addiction; or the research that has been done needs to be explained so that it’s understandable to the average person.

So, as so often occurs in my blog entries, I’m left with a series of questions rather than answers:

What role does fructose intolerance pay in reactive hypoglycemia? Does the role vary depending on whether the fructose intolerance is hereditary?

What role does leaky gut play in reactive hypoglycemia?

Can food intolerance co-exist with a reactive hypoglycemia problem?

Is there a connection between fructose intolerance and leaky gut?

To what extent is food addiction a symptom of hypoglycemia?

If food intolerance can mimic hypoglycemia rather than causing it, as Dengate suggests, can that mimicking itself cause sugar addiction?

Are processed foods inherently more physically addictive than non-processed foods, targetting the reward centres in the brain? Can concentrated sweetness have this effect too, regardless of the chemical make-up of the sweetness (eg Diet Coke)?

What connections are there between the development of food intolerance and the overeating of processed foods?

And when will Blogger enable users to easily insert bullet points? Surely it can't be that hard? (Sorry, may be slightly off topic!)

And, for good measure, here are some useful links on food intolerance and related issues:

SalicylateSensitivity.com

Plant Poisons and Rotten Stuff Community

Environmental Illness Resource

(but this website doesn’t seem to have any info on Failsafe and amine/salicylate intolerance)

Heroes and villains: food intolerance, hypoglycemia, candida and the Failsafe diet – Part 2 of 3

2010-03-22T21:47:00.000-07:00

In my last entry I gave a rundown of my food intolerance problem. In this entry I’ll talk about the Failsafe diet, designed primarily for children with food allergies and sensitivities, and the unexpected discovery about hypoglycemia that my search for information about food intolerance on the internet led to. (This entry is way too long anyway so I’ve steered clear of discussing the role of food in causing or worsening psychiatric problems, a highly relevant issue given the usual flavour of my blog.)

It’s very common now for conditions that affect children such as autism, ADD and asthma to be attributed to food intolerance and allergies. That much I expected. What I wasn’t expecting was the extent to which reactions to refined sugar have been discredited as a contributing factor in these conditions. The hypoglycemic and anti-candida diets are out, and the Failsafe diet is in.

The Failsafe diet is based on the finding that many children suffer from intolerances to particular chemicals in food. These chemicals may be artificial or natural and include additives, in particular food colourings, flavourings, and flavour enhancers, as well as chemicals that occur naturally in foods, such as amines and salicylates (these aren’t the only natural chemicals that can cause grief, but they seem to be the most common).

The diet also acknowledges that children and adults may suffer a range of allergies along with their food intolerances, such as allergies to soy, egg, gluten, dairy, and peanuts. (The difference between food allergy and food intolerance is explained here).

The Failsafe diet avoids all harmful food chemicals. To say it’s a welcome development is an understatement. It was actually devised in Australia, at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney, as a more up-to-date version of the US-devised Feingold diet, and has great scientific credibility.

The website of Sue Dengate, an advocate for the Failsafe diet who has researched and authored books on food intolerance and the diet, seems to have by far the most comprehensive information on Failsafe on the web.

The website has a wealth of useful free information about the diet. It is full of testimonies by relieved parents whose previously ill, inattentive, insomniac and appallingly behaved children (often it’s a case of more than one problem) are now themselves again.

However, the website includes an assertion that could be controversial if the problem it refers to were better known. It appears to dispute the existence of ideopathic reactive hypoglycemia as a cause of behavioural problems in children (ideopathic is a fancy word doctors use when they haven’t a clue what causes something).

What is hypoglycemia?

Symptoms of reactive hypoglycemia include irritability, headaches, and mental confusion, and it’s also been linked with panic attacks, depression and anxiety.

It's a condition whose actual process doesn’t seem to be entirely clear, or perhaps it has differing causes. The amount of glucose in the blood becomes low for everybody several hours after eating. Hypoglycemia is related to the hormones adrenaline and cortisol, which the body produces at this time to prevent the blood sugar becoming dangerously low.

Hypoglycemics may produce too little cortisol, which is associated with underactive adrenal glands. Apparently, the symptoms of shakiness, poor memory and so on are a reaction to the adrenaline that is produced as a back up. Poorly functioning adrenals have been associated with food sensitivities. But the central question is: what is the ultimate culprit – the adrenals or the food sensitivities?

Stress has been shown to be a major cause of hypoglycemia. This also suggests that it's relates to adrenal functioning, as long-term stress puts pressure on the adrenals.

Earlier descriptions of hypoglycemia focused on the pancreas and claimed that in hypoglycemics it produced too much insulin as a response to the glucose in the blood, shifting the glucose into the cells and causing a sudden drop in blood sugar. It’s been said that the level of sugar in the blood is not necessarily the problem, but the speed at which the level gets lower.

However, I deliberately haven’t called this condition ‘low blood sugar’ ( a common term) because it wasn’t clear to me after a very basic internet research that the blood sugar of hypoglycemics becomes lower than that of non-hypoglycemics; certainly the blood glucose test has been discredited as a diagnostic tool.

Reactive hypoglycemia should not be confused with hypoglycemic reactions from diabetes, or hypoglycemia caused by serious conditions such as Graves disease and pancreatitis.

Early diets to combat hypoglycemia focused on removing concentrated sugar from the diet and emphasised complex carbohydrates (eg using brown instead of white rice). Following a brief ascension as a fad diagnosis, this condition is all too often routinely ignored by doctors. It seems that research is being done on it, particularly in the case of children, but in my experience that research hasn’t trickled down to GPs.

It’s unfortunate that a condition linked to food intolerance in some way is in fact the province not of allergists but of endocrinologists. The failure to find a cure for another condition that straddles more than one specialty – rosacea – indicates the neglect that can occur when more than one branch of medicine is involved.

What is candida?

More recently, hypoglycemia has been linked with candidiasis, the overgrowth of candida, a fungus, in the digestive system. While yeast overgrowth in areas such as the genitals (thrush) is recognised and treatable, the existence of candida overgrowth in the digestive system as a condition has remained controversial.

Also scientifically unproven are the supposedly associated symptoms of this overgrowth, such as fatigue, and the anti-candida diet to combat these symptoms. Like the hypoglycemia diet, the anti-candida diet removes sugar and emphasises whole foods but it goes much further, also excluding all foods that might contain mould, including fermented foods and drinks (eg conventional bread, beer) as well as aged foods such as cheese and processed meats. The theory is that you literally starve the yeast overgrowth in the gut. Like the Failsafe and hypoglycemic diets, the anti-candida diet acknowledges that some sufferers might also have allergies and intolerances, for example to gluten and dairy.

Candidiasis is linked to so-called leaky gut syndrome, in which damage to the bowel lining is seen as both a cause and effect of hypoglycemia and ever-worsening food intolerance. Wikipedia puts the status of this diagnosis beautifully:

While many practitioners maintain that leaky gut syndrome is a bona fide medical condition, the area of ‘gut problems’ lies between conventional and alternative medicine, and includes other diagnoses such as small bowel bacterial overgrowth syndrome or small intestine bacterial overgrowth (SIBO), and yeast syndrome or systemic candidiasis, and remains controversial and scientifically unsettled.

Disputing the role of sugar

Dengate (and perhaps the developers of the Failsafe diet) disputes both low blood sugar and candida as causes of unexplained symptoms. The website makes the unequivocal assertion that ‘Contrary to popular belief, sugar does not cause children's behaviour problems’.

It goes on to say:

When mothers swear their children are ‘sugar addicts’ whose behaviour is affected by sugar, they are generally surprised on going failsafe to find that their children are actually reacting to salicylates. Sugar craving can be a salicylate-induced reaction.

Similarly, feeling tired, weak and shaky can be a delayed reaction to food chemicals such as salicylates, rather than hypoglycemia.

This is a breathtaking claim. Dengate seems to be saying that food intolerances only mimic hypoglycemic symptoms rather than causing them.

Yet hypoglycemia itself is certainly a distinct phenomenon, even if it is caused or worsened by food intolerance.

Indeed, the website itself admits this elsewhere, seeming to suggest that sugar can play some role in behaviour if ingested on an empty stomach:

It is best to eat sugar as part of a balanced meal (e.g. in a dessert) rather than in drinks or treats on an empty stomach when it can affect blood sugar levels.

Even if we admit that it may not be blood sugar levels that are the problem but the body’s reaction to low blood sugar, why do some people exhibit these symptoms and not others? All this suggests to me the possibility that some children react to their food intolerances with hypoglycemic symptoms and some don’t (ie they have other symptoms). If that’s the case, surely those children with hypoglycemic symptoms should be taken off sugar for a while because it might put extra stress on an already oversensitised system, even if the sugar wasn’t the original culprit?

And does this mean that that if I continue on my low-salicylate, low-amine diet, eventually my system will right itself? (At this point in my diet it’s impossible to say whether I am ‘losing’ what Dengate believes is faux hypoglycemia, but at the moment I would not experiment with cane sugar in, as they say, a ‘pink fit’.)

The claim that sugar is not the villain it has been assumed to be does seem to be borne out by some evidence.

According to the website, a study that successively fed children three different types of sweeteners without their knowledge – sucrose (cane sugar), aspartame (an artifical sweetener) and and saccharin (as a placebo) – found that regardless of the type of sweetener, the children’s behaviour was unchanged.

The study took place over a nine-week period in which the children were fed a diet that changed each week, with the sweetener used in the food being changed every three weeks. Half the children in the study were chosen because they were believed by their parents to have problems with sugar.

However, the emotional language used to describe this study (‘definitive multimillion dollar study’) belies the reality. It used only 48 children, and no children were fed no sweetener at all. The anti-candida diet, unproven as it is, says that all forms of refined sugar exacerbate candida, including sorbitol.

What would have happened if the researchers had withdrawn concentrated sweetness completely from the diets of a control group? Perhaps nothing, but such an addition would have enhanced the efficacy of the study.

One reason why the website supports cane sugar may be that the Failsafe diet warns against artificial sweeteners, which have not been proven safe; in fact some of these sweeteners seem to act like poisons.

And to be fair, the website emphasises that the Failsafe diet should consist of unprocessed foods. Dengate has researched food additives and Australian labelling laws, and it seems that few processed foods are actually safe.

The website also provides information about a form of intolerance affecting some Failsafers: fructose malabsorption. Fructose is a natural sugar derived from fruit, and it’s now added to processed foods instead of cane sugar, for example in the form of corn syrup. Fructose malabsorption can occur alone or in conjunction with other food intolerances.

Too much fructose can affect the most hardy, but it causes all sorts of digestive problems for the intolerant. Fructose occurs in some vegetables as well as fruit, and the solution is to eat only fruits and vegetables with low fructose, and no processed foods containing fructose.

Finally, if Dengate is correct, it’s feasible that some people with food intolerances would show some improvement if they followed the anti-candida diet even if that diet were a crock, because it removes all processed foods. It does allow fresh fruit, however.

My experience

Reactive hypoglycemia is said to have many possible causes. One of these is adrenal exhaustion. My hypoglycemia became worse after I had a ‘breakdown’ (an unfashionable word now) at the age of 21, when my adrenals would have been under an enormous amount of stress. Quite possibly intolerance to amines and salicylates and reactive hypoglycemia exacerbated each other.

When I look back at my food history, giving up most cane sugar at the age of 21 or so had a marked effect, although at the time I was ignorant, like most people, about amines and salicylates. During the period of withdrawing from concentrated sugar I could hardly get out of bed. Sugar acted for me like a drug; but whether everyone giving up sugar would have had a similar reaction, or only people with reactive hypoglycemia, is something I can’t be sure about. However, for reasons unclear at the time I never completely ‘stabilised’, that is, felt normally clear-headed and energetic. And I haven’t since. So Dengate’s assertion is, to say the least, interesting to me.

However, before the diagnosis and before I drastically reduced cane sugar in my diet (I didn’t fully succeed in giving it up for at least three years), I do remember experiencing these occasional, awful feelings of a kind of cognitive emptiness, a sense of vacancy, and I’ve never felt that degree of vagueness and disorientation since giving up cane sugar. My sugar problem still seems a separate issue to me, even if it is at least partially caused by food sensitivities.

To complicate things further, I went to Europe at the age of 23 for five months, developed a full-blown eating disorder and shivered in freezing, mouldy rooms. This period saw a worsening of both my sugar and food sensitivities, and I’ve always associated it with the development or worsening of some kind of candida problem, or at least a sensitivity to mould.

So, despite my interest in Dengate’s assertion, my completely uneducated guess would be that a proportion, perhaps only a tiny proportion, of children with food intolerance might also have hypoglycemia or candidiasis as a separate problem; and if even these were related to food sensitivities, giving up all kinds of concentrated sugar mightn’t be a bad idea for these children, at least for a while until their systems had time to recover from their food intolerances.

There’s a common sense element here: some of the symptoms of ADD, such as vagueness and poor concentration, are also classic hypoglycemic symptoms. If the Failsafe diet doesn’t completely cure the problem, mightn’t it be worth finding out if the child has a separate sugar or candida problem? (You would need a few weeks to check this because the body becomes physically addicted to sugar, and there would be a period of withdrawal.)

But in this case, computer definitely says no. Dengate again: ‘It is counterproductive to try to combine failsafe eating with a candida diet’. Elsewhere on the site, she asserts that a thrush problem ‘does not mean you need to eliminate sugar and yeast. The so-called candida diet is not scientifically proven’.

That puts me between a rock and a hard place. At the moment my diet is extremely strict, and I’m now doing what the website warns against, which is combining Failsafe with anti-candida (this is making finding a suitable calcium supplement, um, interesting). But I’ve done nothing to remove salicylates from non-food products. The website warns:

As perfumed toiletries, cosmetics, airfresheners, scent sprayers and household cleaners mostly used by women have become increasingly pervasive and over-fragranced, they can push you over your salicylate limit.

I can’t help wondering if removing non-dietary sources of salicylates would help my hypoglycemia.

What worries me is that ideopathic hypoglycemia is already ignored by so much of the medical profession – the Failsafe diet will just make this worse.

Whew! In my final entry on this topic I’ll ask whether sugar is good for anybody, take a horrified look at the allergy food industry and present a very shaky, unscientific hypo-hypothesis about the links between reactive hypoglycemia and food intolerance.

Heroes and villains: food intolerance, hypoglycemia, candida and the Failsafe diet – Part 1 of 3

2010-03-13T13:50:00.000-08:00

The following, first in a series of four blog entries, goes into a fair bit of detail about my food consumption and intolerances, and therefore may be boring for all but the most allergy-ridden. I’m on a restricted diet, and once I had mentioned particular foods I wasn’t eating, it seemed necessary to mention all the foods in my diet, otherwise it wouldn’t be clear what I was giving up.

Usually the sudden appearance of itchy welts on the legs, stomach and arms would be a matter of some concern. For me, with my body image issues, it was a disaster of mammoth proportions. After taking a few days to stare in horror at the welts – some of which were admittedly quite creepy, starting off red then turning into bruises – I finally faced the fact I’d been avoiding for the past five years: I was probably intolerant of a number of food chemicals.

My dietary life at the moment appears to be grimmer than ever before. Not only can’t I eat dairy, gluten, yeast and anything sweet, but I’m also probably sensitive to amines and salicylates, two natural chemicals that occur in many, many, foods (ironically, these chemicals add flavour to the food!). My immune system has turned against me, and I’m in extreme dietary blandsville. Also lost to me is the simple pleasure of eating a meal out with friends.

Why did I come to this grim conclusion?

There really weren’t any other culprits to blame. I’d been more or less avoiding gluten, lactose, yeast and alcohol for over a decade, and been religiously off sugar for about two decades as a result of reactive hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), a condition in which the pancreas can’t deal with concentrated sugar.

Hypoglycemia has been linked with the overgrowth of candida, a natural fungus, in the digestive system. I’ve therefore spent at least the last decade on a half-hearted anti-candida diet, which entails avoidance of any foods that could produce yeast in the gut. However, I couldn’t give up real coffee, which was disastrous for my blood sugar.

I finally managed to give coffee up completely in 2002, but the anti-candida diet’s remained a tad half-hearted, mainly because, in order for me to stay sane, it included tofu, tinned fish, shelled nuts and store-bought hummus. To this day, I can’t tell you if the diet’s half-hearted because it never made me better and I got discouraged; or whether its half-heartedness was why I never got better. Perhaps a bit of both.

At one point I did attack my presumed candida with a course of an anti-fungal drug, Nystatin, and I took vitamin supplements for years, but I never embarked on that full-on assault with probiotics and massive doses of garlic that you’re supposed to. I still feel vague and out of sorts on cold, cloudy days, and I’m reactive to any hint of carbohydrate, even the complex carbohydrates that occur in grains and vegetables, both of which suggest some kind of lingering yeast problem.

Apart from the exceptions outlined above, I had already made some additional food sacrifices. I got rosacea five years ago, and that’s when I stopped eating the flavoursome foods I loved – most of the time, anyway. Most herbs and spices were out, as well as garlic, onion, red meat, treats like tinned tomatoes, and eventually even fresh fish. But there were also perfectly harmless-seeming vegetables that inexplicably gave me a red face, like zucchini. However, I still ate these forbidden foods occasionally when I was willing to put up with redness. Coffee and alcohol are common causes of rosacea, but I was already off those.

My rosacea and candida food lapses (practitioners sometimes call these ‘dietary indiscretions’) had been getting worse in recent months. I’d started eating roasted cashews a few times a week, as well as tomatoes. I was also eating out once a month or so, picking the safer options at vegetarian and Asian restaurants. Store-bought hummus was becoming a weekly treat, and once in a blue moon I would eat a whole 250 g block of cheddar cheese for lunch. When I look back, my diet was becoming steadily higher in amines, natural chemicals that tend to be in aged and preserved foods.

I could ignore occasional red cheeks, but not these horror hives. So when they sprang up, almost two months ago now, I was forced to research foods that were low in amines and salicylates, and sure enough, the treats I’d been allowing myself were full of them. So I gave up anything that wasn’t low in amines and salicylates. And the hives have mostly gone, suggesting that the food chemicals were to blame.

Interestingly, though, the rosacea hasn’t gone, so the picture is probably even more complex. I still believe that there is a connection between rosacea and food chemicals, however, because I inadvertently gave up some salicylates when I first got rosacea and stopped eating herbs and spices, and I’ve got no doubt my rosacea would be worse if I hadn’t.

At the moment I’m trying to get an appointment at an allergy clinic at the Alfred Hospital (a whole other story – the hospital has so far not even been able to confirm that it received my referral, now faxed to them four times). I need to know for sure whether I am intolerant of these chemicals, and whether or not there’s a way of making me less intolerant, for example an underlying digestive weakness that could be fixed, or even a thyroid problem, said to be a cause of food intolerance.

At the moment the only foods I’m officially eating are chicken, brown rice, tofu, eggs, cold-pressed safflower oil, chickpeas, quinoa (a gluten-free grain), celery, raw cashews and cabbage! (Fruits that are low in amines and salicylates are out because of my blood sugar problem.)

Boring!

Learning to tolerate food intolerance
Food intolerance differs from food allergy in a number of ways. True allergies are the body’s immediate immune response and occur as a reaction to proteins in foods. With food intolerance the digestive system is involved, the intolerance is to particular chemicals in the food, and there is a longer onset between ingesting the food and a reaction appearing. It is harder to diagnose food intolerance for the latter reason, but there may be an advantage too: some say that if you go without the foods containing the offending chemicals for long enough, the body will no longer produce the antibodies against the chemicals, and you will be able to tolerate small amounts of those foods.

Apparently food intolerance produces an addiction to the food and a craving when it is removed from the diet. While withdrawing from amines and salicylates, I not only felt exhausted but craved amines like never before. It’s a very different craving from the desire for sugar or yeast. The yearning seemed to be for the taste of the food rather than the sugar content, which is what amines are all about I guess.

During this period I wanted, more than anything else, rich tangy hummus with falafel. (This probably sounds like a bland craving to have, but to me these foods are tasty treats!). My whole body wanted not concentrated sugar but concentrated flavour. The cravings have now diminished but, like a dysfunctional relationship that still beckons, I’d go back to amines in a second if I thought I could get away with it.

Having said that, I’m thinking more clearly than before I gave up the amines and salicylates – when alone especially, I notice my brain seems to be working better. I know that sounds weird but it’s the only way I can describe it.

And I do wonder whether this sensitivity could have been the main game all along rather than a side issue. In other words, perhaps it’s contributed to my low blood sugar problems, not to mention my lack of energy. On the other hand, low blood sugar could still be the main culprit, because it supposedly leads to too much insulin washing around in the system; insulin is a hormone, and too much of it can supposedly have adverse effects on other bodily processes.

Stop press: I gave in last night and ate some store-bought hummus, and there were a couple of hives on my knee this morning.

In my next post I’ll look at the Failsafe diet, which is low in food chemicals.

Of wolves (and parrots) and men (and women): research and reflections on animal intelligence

2010-03-08T14:11:00.000-08:00

For many years science and common sense were totally at odds when it came to the abilities of non-human animals. In recent years a slew of popular memoirs, not to mention philosophical texts, have testified to the deep bonds that can exist between us and our non-human friends (who hasn’t heard of Marley and Me, now a Hollywood film?).

Science has slowly caught up with the instinctive understanding of many that animals are sophisticated, intelligent beings with complex needs. It has destroyed one by one each treasured illusion about what humans alone are capable of; we’re not the only ones who can make tools, use language or think about the future, for instance. But its findings also pose a threat to our view of ourselves as the pinnacle of creation – if we’re not fundamentally different from other animals, who are we, and where exactly do we fit in the scheme of things?

Lupine philosophy

Research is showing that dogs, the ancestors of wolves, have complex inner lives, experience a range of emotions and possess a moral compass. The implications of this are beautifully explored in The Philosopher and the Wolf, a memoir-cum-philosophy text by Mark Rowlands.

For over a decade Rowlands, once one of those intellectuals who could abuse his body with impunity – he admits to having been drunk while writing his best-selling popular philosophy books, although he seems to have since calmed down – flitted from one philosophy post to another accompanied by his wolf hybrid, Brenin, purchased as a puppy.

Knowing Brenin would trash the place if left at home, Rowlands took his young wolf to his philosophy lectures. Brenin would lie quietly in a corner and snooze, but would sit up and start howling ‘when the lectures became particularly tedious’.

In what is now a well-established and almost cliched tradition, but one he injects with originality, Rowlands reflects on the close ‘brotherly’ relationship he shared with Brenin. He uses it as a basis for philosophising on humans’ attitudes towards and ethics regarding non-human animals; good and evil; and our obsession with finding happiness. There’s some autobiography thrown in but the focus is always on the central relationship. The book is very deliberately written for a general audience but the philosophising is original and although it’s mostly easy to understand, it doesn’t seem to be watered down.

I adored this book. The thing I liked most about it was that it explained to me why I am a bit dog-crazy. Rowlands has a beguiling theory about why so many of us love and need dogs. It apparently harks back to our being a species of ape. At some point in evolution, apes began to live in large and complex social groups. In order to survive in such groups, we developed a Machiavellian streak – the ability to hide our true feelings and motivations from the world, to scheme and dissemble to improve our social standing. Rowlands attacks the idea of the social contract, the theory that we submit to the rule of law to avoid chaos and bloodshed. He asserts that it simply reveals how calculating we apes are; it’s ‘a deliberate sacrifice for an anticipated gain’.

Wolves, in contrast, didn’t take the Machiavellian path, although they are just as dependent on the pack as we are on the clan. And it’s because of this inability to dissemble that we love dogs, the ancestors of wolves – we crave that lost simplicity, we long to escape from our evil ape selves, to be ‘the wolf we once were’ who ‘understands that happiness cannot be found in calculation’.

This makes perfect sense to me on many levels. We can’t be dogs, although we’d like to live in the present and not hold grudges like them. But it’s refreshing to be around that kind of honesty, to be in a world where the appearance matches the reality, and to experience that level of loyalty and affection. The beautiful and classic example of canine honesty is, of course, the dog’s involuntarily wagging tail.

We are frequently humbled by the noble qualities of dogs and other mammals. A few years ago animal researcher Marc Bekoff caused controversy when he claimed that in some respects animal morality might be ‘purer’ than that of humans.

This may be true. But perhaps humans, simply because we live in a world set up for our species, often have many more choices to make, and more freedom, when it comes to morality than do non-human animals. Well-socialised dogs (and wolves) may not have to work at being good in the way that John Ames did in Marilynne Robinson’s novel Gilead, for example.

Could the term ‘bird brain’ be a compliment?

Dogs are not the only ones who amaze, delight and nurture us. Alex was an African Grey parrot who revealed startling abilities during the course of 30 years working with researcher Irene Pepperberg, despite having ‘a brain the size of a walnut’ (Alex and Pepperberg are pictured above).

Pepperberg’s findings radically altered the scientific consensus on the intelligence of birds, and showed that the brains of birds are much more similar in structure to human brains than was previously thought. Her work also helped to challenge the long-held dominance of behaviourism in science, which assumed that animals were basically automatons. Pepperberg tells the story of her relationship with Alex in her touching memoir Alex and Me.

Pepperberg is a gifted scientist. She is a currently an adjunct professor of psychology at Brandeis University in Massachusetts and a lecturer at Harvard. With a PhD in chemistry, she came to animal communication belatedly and, hampered by gender as well as her then-controversial research area, struggled for years in cramped corners of university labs with tiny funding grants. But eventually she and Alex won through, and indeed he had become something of a celebrity before his sudden and unexpected death in 2007 at the age of 38. Pepperberg was still teaching him new skills at the time and remains convinced that he hadn’t yet reached his full potential.

Over his career, Alex learned ‘object labels (words), categories, concepts and numbers’. He could distinguish whether an object was the same as or different from another object in terms of colour, shape or material (‘matter’), a sophisticated cognitive task that was beyond what primates were being tested for at the time.

When presented with a tray showing objects of different shapes and colours, including blocks in more than one colour, he could say, for example, how many green blocks there were. He could also tell whether one object was bigger or smaller than another object. He learned to count, and could distinguish between a higher number and a larger object. He learned parts of words – phonemes – and, when presented with refrigerator letters in different colours, could tell what colour a particular sound was, and which sound was a particular colour.

Pepperberg is committed to the scientific project and that’s one thing that makes reading the book so worthwhile. It also means that the most stunning examples of Alex’s intelligence didn’t make it to the scientific literature because they sometimes got in the way of the experiment to establish intelligence; although the tests were effective, they were too reductive to limn every aspect of Alex’s abilities. Simply, he sometimes got bored with the experiments and joked around. Here’s a wonderful example, which occurred when Alex had already successfully passed many tests confirming his knowledge of colours, and had answered such questions ‘dozens of times’:

… we would ask him, “What color key?” and he would give every colour in his repertoire, skipping only the correct color …We were pretty certain he wasn’t making mistakes, because it was statistically near to impossible that he could list all but the correct answer. These observations are not science, but they tell you a lot about what was going on in his head …

Earlier, Pepperberg relates that Alex once made up a new word combination. He had just been given a piece of apple for the first time and been told the name of it. But he stubbornly refused to repeat the word apple, calling it ‘banerry’ instead because it reminded him of banana and looked like a large cherry. When Pepperberg didn’t at first get what he was trying to do, he patronisingly spelt it out to her in the way she carefully pronounced new words to him: ‘he said, very slowly and deliberately, “Ban-err-eee”’.

Let’s be clear, Alex didn’t merely copy phrases – he held conversations. However, Pepperberg wasn’t going to buy into what was then a controversy over whether animals were actually speaking, ie using language as humans do; she called her area of study animal communication. But her accounts of some of the conversations are incredible. This doesn’t mean that Alex necessarily knew the meaning of every word he used, but he understood the effect of the phrases.

One example is his use of ‘I’m sorry’. He frequently yelled it out when he’d been uncooperative and the researchers were angry with him. Pepperberg never knew whether he understood it only as a means of defusing others’ anger or whether he was actually sorry – probably the former. In that way he was very like a young child who seeks to restore favour with her parents. And indeed he was shown to have the intelligence of a five-year-old human (astoundingly, he also seems to have had greater numerical ability than chimpanzees).

During their years together, Pepperberg had tried to maintain scientific objectivity and so had not let herself get too close to Alex, but when he died she was engulfed by a powerful grief. She stills continues to work with African Greys, however, and Griffin, a Grey she now works with, also shows considerable ability.

Parrots and apes are not the only animals to possess high levels of intelligence. Dolphins are able to think about the future and crows have been shown to use ‘multiple tools in complex sequences’. These kinds of findings are leading some animal advocates to call for animals such as chimpanzees and dolphins to be given some rights that are equivalent to human rights.

Earth rules, okay?

For my own part I don’t find these testaments to the closeness between human and non-human animals either surprising or comfortable. I still eat free-range chicken because of an extremely limited diet due to allergies. I imagine that if I tended free-range chickens I would bond with them and come to know their separate personalities. It’s the brutality of the human world that is the subject of a book with a very different focus to those described above, John Gray’s Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals.

Straw Dogs is a philosophical slap in the face to humanism. It seems to be advocating an extreme form of Darwinism mixed up with James Lovelock’s revolutionary concept of the earth as Gaia, a living, self-correcting organism.

Gray believes that humans have overrun the Earth and are set for ruin; that our lifestyle won’t destroy the Earth, but instead will ultimately lead to a vastly reduced human presence.

Gray mows down a number of cherished philosophical assumptions. For example, he disagrees with Richard Dawkins's belief that humans will ever be able to control science and technology and use them only for progress. Instead he insists that they will continue to be used to wage war and cause widespread destruction, death and suffering.

Mark Rowlands, the wolf-owning philosopher, believes that humans show true goodness only when we act morally towards ‘those who have no power’ (including animals), because only in that situation do we act without thinking of what we’ll get in return. Gray, in contrast, insists that we must accept the fact that humanity is essentially evil and self-serving, and that good will never prevail. For Gray, Humans are not just evil but foolish; they are in love with abstract thinking and always trying to seek a purpose in life. The only goal in life, he believes, should be ‘to see’.

It’s a curious argument, and indeed I found much to disagree with. What I was most impressed with, though, was Gray’s ability to dismiss human delusions about our superiority to nature, particularly in relation to animals. He’s very positive about hunter–gatherer societies, not because he romanticises them – they are capable of causing the extinction of particular species, for example – but because they do not populate to the extent that settler societies do, and they live more harmoniously with nature through sheer necessity.

Gray believes that the development of farming has caused all the current environmental problems we face, and he insists that we would have been better off if we’d never done it. Anyone reading Kate Grenville’s novel The Secret River might agree: the main character, William Thornhill, an English settler in colonial New South Wales, decides that, unlike in Western society, Indigenous people live so well in their own environment that they are all ‘gentry’.

Gray’s daring thesis is despoiled and cheapened by his failure to even mention feminism – not once. If that theory doesn’t represent genuine social progress, what does? Sure, it’s progress for only a tiny percentage of the world’s population, but if its ideas were to spread, that would affect for the good the population explosion that is one of Gray’s central concerns (he talks about this in a disturbingly abstract way, as if it has nothing to do with actual female bodies that often have no choice but to reproduce).

This glaring omission doesn’t destroy his argument, although the inclusion of feminism would have added nuances and complexities that are missing. Nor does Gray bother with the research that shows that doing good (even if it’s done in a world in which evil prevails) leads to greater contentment. It’s as if Gray is ever so slightly succumbing to the modern requirement that opinion-makers be shocking and controversial, even when that means ignoring the inconvenient grey areas (no pun intended).

But what makes this book worth reading is its provocative challenge to humans’ assumption that we are the centre of the universe. Darwin’s daring theory of evolution remains as vulnerable to dangerously retrograde interpretations as any religion – look at eugenics – but it also provides the basis for a much greater respect for the natural world, and this is where the main strengths of Gray’s argument lie.

While these three books differ greatly from one another, they all come to the conclusion that, in Pepperberg’s words: ‘We are not superior to all other beings in nature. The idea of humans’ separateness from nature is no longer tenable.’

The downside of anger

2010-02-23T13:32:00.000-08:00

I’ve recently been forced to confront just how uptight I am all the time. This often translates into anger, but there’s always an anxious edge to it.

Recently I met a friend at a popular gallery in Melbourne’s green, hilly outer east. I got there almost exactly at the allotted time. In recent years, mainly because I hate the tension of driving along glancing at the clock every other second and feeling ridiculously guilty, I’ve become highly organised when meeting up with someone, ensuring I leave the house at a time that enables me to arrive at my destination neither early nor late.

Trouble is, my friends are often late. And increasingly I’m feeling an irrational amount of anger when this happens.

The friend I was meeting with at the gallery, D, isn’t always late; in fact, I can remember being a bit late when I met up with her a few months ago. Further back, I’ve been easily 10 or 15 minutes late and she’s always taken it calmly.

In this case, I realise it’s because of a growing neediness on my part. All my friends lead either busier or more emotionally fulfilling lives than I do (sometimes both). In the case of D, she often complains of being lonely and wanting a better social life as well as a partner, but her job as a primary teacher is hugely complex and involving. So I don’t see that much of her, and when she’s late I automatically take it as a sign of her low regard for me (I’ve just realised this, so perhaps I won’t react that way in future).

Ten minutes late, I know, is nothing. In fact it didn’t even inconvenience me; I didn’t even have to wait for her. I just paid, and went into the gallery, looking out for her at the entrance once in a while. No problem.

But I still – even though I tried not to – had a miffed edge to my voice when I greeted her. I apologised later on. But I can’t afford to alienate my friends; I don’t have that many! Why are my expectations of others so high when I frequently can’t live up to my expectations of myself?

D isn’t actually late all the time, but I have another friend, J, who is routinely late. Ten minutes after the agreed time is really pretty good for him. But he rides a bike and so I make allowances for him. I also think I understand his lateness – like me in the past, I reckon he is overly optimistic about the time it will take him to do whatever he has to do before leaving the house. I made these kind of miscalculations myself for years.

Given how reliable J is in his lateness, the simple thing to do would be to plan to turn up ten minutes past the time we’ve arranged. I tried to do this once and it didn’t work; there was so little traffic on the road and I still got there on time despite my best efforts. He was a good ten minutes late as usual, and I sat there reading the paper yet again (I’ve learned to take a newspaper along so at least I’ve got something to do).

I swear the episode at the gallery with D was meant to force me to a point of self-awareness about my anger. For another, small trigger occurred a couple of hours later when we queued for the cafe at the gallery premises. Recently renovated, it’s a stark modernist design in black, with sleek glass walls so you can see all the goings-on inside, and a paved outdoor area surrounded by a low wall. Lone cafes at recreational destinations are notorious for being poorly managed and ripping off their customers, and this one was a shining example. A good excuse for my underlying anger to come out and put on its own little show.

We joined the tiny queue, a patient young couple slouching resignedly in front of us. Glancing through the window, an empty table, and a few minutes later another two, became evident. The young waitress, who had kind, smiling eyes and was wearing a long butchers apron, patiently explained that the tables were being cleaned and they’d be ready any minute.

I moaned and groaned to D, admitting that I was becoming like the men in the TV show Grumpy Old Men (without the slightest bit of rancour, she agreed with me). The couple in front of us were stoically silent.

After the couple had been let in and more and more tables seemed to become empty while we continued to queue, I asked the waitress if we could go inside, and then I asked her if we could sit at the table before it was clean. Luckily for my sanity she agreed both times.

Despite my irrational response, it’s doubtless that these kinds of places are organised with the convenience of the staff in mind rather than the customers. D and I agreed that in the favourite inner city precincts we’re used to, as soon as you set foot in a place they rush you to a table, spirit a wettex out of thin air as they say brightly ‘are you eating today or just drinks?’, wipe down the table with slick efficiency and then before you can say Jack Sprat, park a bottle of tap water and two glasses in front of you.

Finally we were seated, table cleaned and orders taken, and the waiter managed to be overly generous with my mineral water (they’d run out of small bottles so he poured me two generous serves from a large one) and stingy with D’s cappuccino (served in a cup that was conspicuously smaller than a standard tea cup). But I’d confided to D that my anger – my inability not to take the world’s unending imperfections to heart – seemed to be getting worse and I wanted to do something about it.

Apart from my neediness, I think part of the source of my anger is a deep-seated anxiety, a sense that if I don’t get to do what I want when I want the world will collapse into chaos. Often as I’m preparing for some social event I’ll notice that my shoulders are hunched. It’s as if I’m unconsciously preparing for World War Three instead of meeting up with a few people. My brain’s on alert, expecting some social catastrophe to develop if I don’t steel myself.

At these times I consciously relax my shoulders and start telling myself that there’s no need to be tense. This helps a bit, but it’s a very strong habit. While social anxiety is different from the anxiety I felt waiting for a seat in the cafe (perhaps it would be hours before we got in ...) they’re both about wanting to maintain control of an outcome – a futile goal.

I think that lack of control is why I also have a problem with mobile phones. I hate it when my friends’ phones ring while I’m socialising with them (I get particularly angry when this happens while they’re at my place).

But I’ve devised a new strategy to deal with this – I hope it’s not passive aggressive, but the jury’s still out. From now on if a friend’s mobile rings I immediately busy myself doing something, whether it’s checking my own phone messages, reading the paper, or writing a list of some kind. If they’re visiting at my place and their phone rings, I can leave the room while they’re talking and clear dishes, or even hop on the computer if it’s already on and check my email. If I’ve run out of things to do, one option is to simply go to the loo and take a few deep breaths.

Anyway, whatever the causes of my anger, I don’t want to be that reactive. It doesn’t change the world issues that concern me so much, it doesn’t change my own situation and it doesn’t change the habits of my friends. It just makes me tense and unhappy. I need to learn to step out of my anger and back into the moment, however challenging and imperfect it is.

A peaceful period?

2010-02-16T13:19:00.000-08:00

the warts have gone (after months of basically digging them out of my heel with nothing but a small blade and a jar of salicylic acid)

the hives have gone (okay so I had to give up yet another food – tinned tuna)

the dermatitis has gone (thanks to nasty cortisone cream which is definitely not recommended, but where the dermatitis was it doesn’t matter!)

the neighbours with the constantly howling dog have gone (she had a good life but cried whenever they left her alone in the house – now my neighbours are spookily quiet, for the first time in decades)

the real estate sales manager who wanted to look through and value the flat has gone (he might come back but it’s only 15 per cent likely)

my walking-sister’s-dog-in-the-park arrangement has gone (this is sad for many reasons but also signals an end to the ongoing conflict with, and need to see on a regular basis, one of my difficult sisters)

the rats have gone (not completely but I haven’t seen or heard one in weeks, and there’s nothing for them to eat at my place anyway)

the cockroaches have not gone (and I can’t bring myself to kill them these days, I’ve become an involuntary Buddhist)

Barnaby Joyce has not gone (and sadly will be on the political scene for some time)

climate change has not gone (but I have with much difficulty resigned myself to its implications)

I seem to be moving into a peaceful period – but I’m almost too scared to write that. If this is just a lull in my ongoing struggle with the world, not to mention my own body, then so be it! I’ll enjoy it while it lasts. Bottoms up! (Quaffs some mineral water and daringly eats some raw cashews.)

In the land of Minor Mishaps

2010-02-11T16:27:00.001-08:00

Recently I entered the land of the Minor Mishap. Those experiencing Minor Mishaps belong for a short time to a very unexclusive club.

A Minor Mishap doesn’t involve serious illness or death, and is not annoying enough to be soul destroying, but it usually requires that SOMETHING BE DONE. It demands to be given priority.

When you’re in the throes of a Minor Mishap you’re in a slightly different space from everyone else, floating a few inches above them. When you are speaking to anyone about the problem your voice carries urgency, purpose and a touch of desperation. You are driven by an overwhelming need to restore the world to exactly what it was once was. You no longer want a partner or more money or world peace. You just want what you had before – your version of normalcy, which, since it has been snatched from you, has suddenly become incredibly precious and sacred.

Minor Mishaps often involve parting with money that one would rather spend on fun and frivolity. Action is important, sometimes just for the sake of keeping the momentum going, even if it achieves next to nothing.

Minor Mishaps that can’t be fixed right away gradually stop being mishaps and become absorbed into normal life – in this case, the experience of ‘normal life’ changes to incorporate the Minor Mishap. I rent a crumbling semi-detached flat, so house-based Minor Mishaps in the form of needed repairs are incredibly frequent. If it’s not an electricity power point needing replacing it’s the hot water system in the roof calling it a day or the guttering on the garage detaching from the bricks and hanging down in a very undignified way.

But basically after I’ve reported the needed repair someone else has to sort it out. This doesn’t always happen straight away and if it drags on the Minor Mishap loses that urgent quality, and I stop noticing it.

A computer-based Minor Mishap is arguably worse than many others because sometimes, although you know something must be done, you don’t know exactly what. You’re like a detective hunting out the clues. You can call on experts but there’s no guarantee they will know either.

The Mishap strikes

One day last week at about 7 am, I turned on my right arm, I mean my computer. The green light went on but, apart from that, nothing happened. It was no longer a computer but a worthless box of tin. Or so it seemed.

I had reason to be devastated. A similar incident had occurred when I first moved into the place I’m in now, five and a half years ago. Back then, when I first set my computer up and switched it on, a flame briefly leered from the top back section where the fan is, and my computer died in a puff of smoke. I still have the disk drive, but such was the damage that it wasn’t apparent whether or not the files were retrievable – a specialised company charging a megafortune would have billed me for even investigating the drive to see if they could retrieve the files, and I wasn’t going to risk it. So when this second computer malfunction happened, I assumed at first that computer Armageddon had occurred for a second time.

Because I knew the nearest library had plenty of computers for public use and I had a file to send to a client (luckily saved onto a USB key), I planned to go there tout suite. But the library didn’t open till 10. In the meantime, I went to mum and dad’s, where my technologically challenged father, currently using a hard drive so ancient it is a priceless antique, has had a slightly newer hard drive sitting in his ‘study’ (storeroom) for a year waiting to be connected. My brother-in-law got it free from his work when they were upgrading. None of us had a clue what state it was in.

(As a bonus, I saw my recently born nephew Billy, as my sister from the country was staying with my parents. Last time I saw Billy he was too new to make eye contact: this time the bald-headed angel looked straight at me with friendly curiosity before his face crumpled as if he was about to burst into wails.)

I lugged Dad’s heavy hard drive to my place and set it up, hoping I could use it to send my work file. The screen came to life in a blaze of incomprehensible text. In my Windows-primed brain, I had simply assumed that I would see the familiar aqua screen with the reassuring software logos on it, good old Explorer and Word. Nothing of the sort. It was speaking to me in computer language I didn’t understand. At least I now knew that the problem with my own computer had nothing to do with the monitor, seemingly nothing to do with the external electricals, and was almost certainly in the hard drive.

In pouring rain, feeling alone and sorry for myself, I managed to get to the library and send the work file with a great deal of fuss and panic; so scrambled was my brain I had to make two trips because I’d left the email address at home.

Luckily my dad knew a computer man in a cheap part of town who’d sold him a monitor and also did repairs. It turned out to be one of those reassuring small shopfronts with disembowelled computers and equipment strewn all over table tops and the floor, a bit like body parts in an operating theatre. The very nice man, Mark, told me it was a simple electrical part in the hard drive that had died and he could fix it in ten minutes for only $75 – he actually showed me my computer firing up using his own electrical equipment: my files were safe! Normalcy, sweet normalcy, beckoned.

But then. When I took the hard drive home after Mark had fixed it, it did exactly the same thing as before. I rang Mark back, carefully presenting the scenario as an incomprehensible problem and not his fault. He told me to bring it back and he would test it again.

He tested the drive twice while I watched, using his own monitor, and it fired up beautifully. He was genuinely bamboozled. The plot had thickened.

Luckily, waiting to be served in the shop was a tall, solidly built man wearing an old blue singlet and shorts, with greying hair skirting his shoulders and the intense but calm gaze of the computer literate – the sort of man that you just know loves both computer games and a beer. He could hardly ignore the desperation in my voice as I spoke to Mark and to the concerned woman who I think was Mark’s wife. I can’t remember who said it first, but either he or Mark said something like ‘Have you got surge protection?’ The penny dropped. I did have surge protection – a power board that would presumably cut out in a storm surge. For some reason, it must have decided the power from my computer was a threat, and shut off the electricity to it while allowing power to the other components.

‘Just get a normal power board’, the blue-singleted man said. ‘You don’t even need surge protection unless you live out of town or in the hills.’

I thanked them all profusely and took my now rather scratched hard drive home again. This time I didn’t actually believe it would fire up – and it did. I’m now typing on it, but I’ve noted something else about a Minor Mishap – when normalcy returns, it takes a while to actually feel normal. My whole world had swayed and threatened to collapse. Without my computer, I now realise, I don’t feel quite whole – and I’m still recovering from the shock. Sad but true.

(I’m fine about spending the $75 – the part Mark replaced was five years old and usually dies after two, and he kindly removed all the dust from the insides as well – and there was a lot.)

Throughout my semi-ordeal my friend Simon was a calm voice on the other end of the phone – I rang him at least four times. He kept directing me to find out what the problem was rather than assuming I had entered the computer stone age. I think he has missed his vocation – with his sane, logical approach he should definitely go into counselling (he can practise on me any time!).

The other thing I learned from this experience, as I contemplated the possible need to get a new computer, is that I am a hopeless Windows junkie. No matter how alluringly the Apple shop beckons, with its blue-T-shirted, smiling dudes coolly offering me their insanely customer-focused tuition and support options, their impeccable and reasonably priced back-up software, and no matter how the pearly surfaces of the iMacs gleam as they power silently and wirelessly through their beautifully constructed programs, I cannot change, not yet anyway. I am yours, Windows. Another unavoidable if regrettable truth.

'God, the universe and everything': Part 3

2010-02-07T13:05:00.000-08:00

In my last entry I looked at the reasons why I disagree with Richard Dawkins’ dismissal of the existence of some version of a non-scripture-based God that can co-exist alongside Darwinian evolution. In this entry I’ll talk further about my experiences, and detail my problems with Dawkins’ critique of the spiritual marketplace.

Introduction

Years ago, long after they had originally parted company, religion and science were able to exist quite comfortably side by side. Each more or less kept out of each other’s realm. Then Creationism began advancing like a cancerous growth, attacking science on its own territory. Scientists rightly felt that they could no longer simply defend their territory, but had to attack the very heart of the enemy, its truthfulness. Hence, Dawkins led the charge with his masterpiece of reasoned argument, The God Delusion.

Yet there were people who, while in favour of science, acknowledged a layer of experience that seemed to supplement the known material world. These people were willing to live with uncertainty about what that extra layer consisted of, given the limited scientific knowledge we currently have about how the material world actually works. Many of them retained from their religious upbringings the idea of a higher intelligence that was a force for good in the world, but, sometimes through studies of Eastern religions and practices, were able to experience this force rather than merely believe in it intellectually. When scientists began attacking the values of these people, and telling them their precious layer of experience was purely a product of their imaginations, they had gone too far, way beyond their authority and expertise.

Such scientists also failed to acknowledge that the demand by feminists and civil rights activists that doctors take account of human rights, agency and subjectivity had improved the practice of medicine, while their own protocols had also benefited from this demand.

Experiences of the spiritual in a 12-step program

One way in which I’ve experienced some kind of spiritual force at work is through membership of a 12-step program.

Most people will have heard of 12-step programs. They seek to help members beat various addictions by using the 12 steps originally created by Alcoholics Anonymous. Members supposedly gain freedom from addiction by undertaking various tasks and practices as they work through the steps.

Although 12-step programs aren’t religious, they are usually spiritual, as the second step indicates: ‘Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity’. The process of letting go control to harness a Higher Power is seen as a necessity for beating the addiction; the belief that willpower alone is not enough is an important aspect of this process. (Atheists can also benefit, as there is no restriction regarding what one’s Higher Power actually consists of – some believe it is a kind of higher self. And an atheist might view the letting go process as acceding to, say, the healing abilities of one’s unconscious mind.)

I was in a 12-step program for about six years. I don’t believe these programs are perfect, nor that they’re suitable for everybody – there are many aspects of my former program I’m now critical of, and perhaps I’ll detail them in a future blog entry. But for those who can ‘take what they want and leave the rest’ (as the programs themselves advise) they do provide a structure for developing a spirituality that is neither captive to the materialism and positive thinking of some of the new age spiritualities, or dependent on belief in the Bible and the teachings of Jesus.

Many people in my program developed their spirituality very consciously; a few went on to join Christian churches while others embraced or flirted with Eastern religions. It was common for members who ‘shared’ (spoke to the meeting about their ‘experience strength and hope’ with the program) to relate some of their spiritual experiences.

As I said, my 12-step program was far from perfect. But the meeting I mainly attended was in the inner city, and there were plenty of creative types who, while they took the program seriously, didn’t get religious or overly hung up about it. They were trying to let go of ‘self-will’, which led them not only to a compulsion for the addictive substance but to behaving in ways that were generally harmful. Letting go of self-will meant, for these people, finding a kind of authentic path that was a mixture of their own deepest desires and the will of this Higher Self or Higher Power.

I know it sounds kooky, but for people who really grappled with it, this process seemed to result in an ever-increasing experience of their humanity. I saw men and women who’d never had relationships get married and have kids, I saw the career-focused get promotions, the work of the artistic types flourish, and throughout this the grappling and the letting go continued but the joy also increased. Of course I saw much failure and many setbacks as well (mine included) – I hope I’m not glossing this. And the program says you need to stay in it forever to avoid the addiction, but eventually many people seem to simply grow out of it.

Members of the program seemed to be helped along by some of these spiritual experiences I’ve been talking about, particularly synchronicity. One of them put it this way: ‘There are subtle energies …’ I think I know what she meant.

I wonder if, for some members, being sensitive to the feelings of others and the suffering of the world in general helped to fuel their addiction in the first place. I recently heard a writer on the radio referring to such people as ‘empaths’ – those with a surfeit of empathy with the world and a high degree of sensitivity to others. When you drop the addictive behaviour, you return once more to a sometimes painful openness to the world, and you have to learn to deal with it. You may then start to experience the kinds of uncanny connections that I discussed in the previous post.

I see the difference between spirituality and being religious this way: life is suffering, but it can also hold joy. Learning how to deal with the former and grappling with faults in order to reach more of one’s potential and experience more of the latter are worthwhile human projects. Some version of God and a spiritual ‘layer’ over everything is helpful for some people in this process.

What religion does, in contrast, is acknowledge that life is suffering and promise the seeker some kind of refuge from it. But in doing so, it imposes a whole extra layer of suffering by placing bans on perfectly normal human behaviour, mainly relating to sex and reproduction. It then offers the ‘carrot’ of salvation for bearing this extra burden of suffering. Meanwhile, the person’s original faults and difficulties are still not attended to, or not in a way that’s always helpful or realistic, and they will probably develop additional faults while trying to stick to the bans.

Dawkins debunks the spiritual

When the spiritual aspects of life are mixed up with making money, there is the capacity to mislead, and I can understand Dawkins getting angry about psychics and spiritual practitioners who do so. In his television series The Enemies of Reason, he sets out to mock and dismantle what he sees as outrageous claims of psychic abilities by self-styled mediums and mystics and of healing by alternative health practitioners. He believes that this sector has become popular because people have been dumbed down and have no idea of the important role of science and medicine in maintaining health and technological process. Yet he makes his point in a peculiarly disingenuous way.

Anyone with any interest in this topic would assume that, with the resources of a network at his disposal, Dawkins would go straight to the top, interviewing internationally successful mediums like Alison DuBois and John Edwards and paranormal researchers like Rupert Sheldrake and Gary Schwartz (Dawkins did interview Sheldrake at some point, but, according to the latter, dismissed his evidence without being willing to discuss it).

Instead, Dawkins is shown popping along to a psychic fair and choosing the first person he sees to give him a reading. The male ‘medium’ uses tarot cards to direct his intimations. He proceeds to state a number of propositions about dead relatives of Dawkins, none of which appear to be even remotely accurate.

It would be clear to an amoeba that the guy was giving what’s known as a cold reading – fishing about for information or presenting information so general it could apply to almost anyone. You didn’t have to be psychic or even particularly intelligent to work that out. Later in the program, Dawkins visits a whacky woman who waves her arms in the air and tells him she has healed his damaged DNA.

Of course, the point he’s making is that the selling of such ‘services’ is totally unregulated. And yes, much of it is a sham. Homeopathy is just water. Chinese medicine is a fascinating area worthy of exploration (it’s based on herbal medicine after all) but much of what is taught may not have kept up with medicine’s ever-increasing knowledge of bodily processes, and needs to be much more integrated with this knowledge.

Positive thinking, meanwhile, has been shown to be damaging. (However, more and more personal growth teachers seem to be ditching positive thinking and embracing mindfulness, while mainstream psychology is also embracing mindfulness as a treatment for anxiety, depression and chronic pain – a fascinating convergence of the alternative and mainstream.)

When people are making money out of this realm it’s quite proper to start asking questions. But fully qualified doctors aren’t pilloried because of the existence of quacks. More disturbingly, as a side issue, there seems to be an astonishing lack of regulation when it comes to conventional over-the-counter medicines. Many of them seem to provide the most superficial short term relief with dangerous side effects if taken in the long term; synthetic antihistamines, and nose drops containing cortisone, are just two examples. Yet Dawkins isn’t at all interested in the shortcomings of conventional medicine – shortcomings that are responsible for people seeking out alternatives in the first place.

When it comes to regulating mediums, the answer is simple: establish a registration process that is overseen by a peak body. The registration process would include completion of an accredited course that culminates in an exam. However, I can’t see Dawkins advocating something like this. If phenomena such as mediumship and psychic healing are in all cases a sham, then there is no point in regulating them – thus creating a self-fulfilling prophesy. The genuine seeker can’t win in Dawkins’ universe.

Sadly, in this television program, Dawkins makes the same mistake that he accuses the subjects of the program of making. While complaining about dumbing down, he dumbs down his own message, oversimplifying the issues that surround the spiritual marketplace and public attitudes towards science and the medical profession.

Some problems with Dawkins’ brand of scepticism

Something I find particularly annoying is the intellectual inconsistency of scientists working in this area. For example, scientists are constantly discovering neuroscientific explanations for formally inexplicable phenomena, even the grief-stricken receiving visitations from the dead. In such cases, when scientists think they can explain it as a product of the known universe, in many cases the brain, they will listen to and respect the truthfulness of such anecdotes. However, when they can’t, they will simply ridicule such evidence.

The Third Man phenomenon is a good example of this. A recently published book by John Geiger details this fascinating experience, which is now recognised by scientists. As mountain climbers toil up a slope in freezing storms, as lone sailors stare death in the face in raging seas, or single pilots lose sight of the horizon in the pure white of a snow storm, they often see and feel a calm, wise, loving presence close by them. Sometimes the presence is just there to offer a sense of reassurance, while in other instances it steers the ship or plane in a storm and holds course, sometimes almost miraculously.

This very common experience suggests that a kind of ‘higher self’ actually manifests as a separate entity in situations of extreme danger. The book includes many, largely consistent, examples of this ‘third man’ (the experiencers were usually men) feeling and seeing this loving, guiding presence.

Neuroscientists now believe that this phenomenon is purely a function of the brain, and that it’s a marvellous survival mechanism. If so, that raises the question of the kind of feats of knowledge the brain might be capable of. How does this presence know how to lead these adventurers out of danger? If it’s a hallucination, why is it always so reassuring and kind? I don’t dispute that the Third Man seems to be a kind of brain projection; but it certainly raises questions about the kinds of knowledge and guidance that the human brain has access to. Again, it confounds the dichotomy between the inside and the outside of the self.

In the case of the Third Man Factor, a large number of anecdotes were eventually treated as data by scientists. But what about the kind of anecdote in which the subject senses a loved one is going to be badly injured or die before they hear the bad news, or actually sees an apparition of a person they thought was alive, only to hear a few hours later that they’re dead; or has a disturbing, very emotional dream of the loved one’s death or injury?

This is an incredibly common experience, yet because there’s no way scientists can explain this experience in terms of existing knowledge about how the brain works, they simply dismiss it as coincidence: a certain percentage of people will think about a loved one on any particular day; a certain percentage of those loved ones will happen to die on that day. This response ignores the subjective power, the emotional quality, the sense of presence that characterise these experiences.

This is part of the cause of the problem that Dawkins’ television program, The Enemies of Reason, compounds – if we ridicule everyday experiences of the unknown, then those who experience the world in this way will simply turn away from science because it is not interested in their reality. They will turn to the world of the occult and the new age because this area seems to be willing to countenance a wider definition of what it actually means to be human.

There’s one more thing I need to say about this before the end of the post. Of all the abilities that rationalists like Dawkins dispute, the one that surprises me most is telepathy.

Non-human mammals can communicate using noise but they can’t express ideas in words like humans can, nor do they have the technology to communicate when they’re a long way away from other members of their clan or pack. It seems that some kind of basic telepathy within a clan or pack would be incredibly useful for evolutionary purposes. One of Sheldrake’s areas of research interest is the seeming ability of some domestic cats and dogs to know when their owners are on the phone or about to come home (excluding other factors, such as routine, that might alert them).

It would seem logical, too, that if humans had once had this capacity they would quickly lose touch with it once the written word, and later communications technology, could do the job so much better.

Anyway, these three blog entries have detailed some of my thoughts on a huge topic and I’m quite happy for readers to disagree with anything I’ve said. Most importantly I now have Richard Dawkins out of my system – for the time being!

'God, the universe and everything': part 2

2010-02-01T20:59:00.001-08:00

In my last entry I looked at Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion, a stunningly effective attack on the evils of organised religion. In this post I’ll try to explain why I disagree with Dawkins’s accompanying dismissal of the existence of some version of God.

(I'm a bit worried about revealing my views on spirituality as blatantly as I do in this entry -- I'm concerned that some readers will judge those views as, well, very nutty! So be it. I welcome comments, although I'm having a bit of trouble with comments being only partly legible at the moment, and am trying to sort this out. )

As outlined in my last post, I share many of Dawkins’s concerns about religion, and, given the rise of the Religious Right and creationism, I have a huge amount of sympathy with his fears for the future of Enlightenment thinking.

What I don’t agree with is his complete dismissal of a non-denominational belief in some kind of divine intelligence, or at least a spirituality that can encompass human capabilities that scientists are yet to explain.

The central problem with Dawkins’s stance is that he mishandles the very thing that is most oppressed, enslaved and exploited by religion – humanity’s capacity for spirituality. Dawkins ends up doing exactly the same injustice to spirituality as religion does. (Admittedly, the same accusation can’t be levelled at all atheists.)

In this regard, the devil is in the detail, so to speak.

The God of Dawkins

Part of the problem with Dawkins’s broad approach is that the God he grapples with is always, within human culture, first and foremost a set of conflicting concepts rather than a being. Whether or not you believe in a divine intelligence that’s exterior to the human brain, an invocation of God can enable access to one’s most altruistic, positive aspects; it could also be an incitement to feel hatred and do evil. Even prior to the question of his or her independent existence, the God Dawkins seeks to pin down is a moving target.

Nevertheless, Dawkins makes very clear from the get-go the kind of God he is disputing:

An atheist …is somebody who believes there is nothing beyond the natural, physical world, no supernatural creative intelligence lurking behind the observable universe, no soul that outlasts the body and no miracles – except in the sense of natural phenomena that we don’t yet understand. If there is something that appears to lie beyond the natural world as it is now imperfectly understood, we hope eventually to … embrace it within the natural. (p. 14)

Elsewhere, Dawkins defines the God he is critiquing as ‘a super-human, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us’ (p 31).

Dawkins bases his non-belief in this kind of God on probability theory. He asserts that, although we can’t actually prove that there is no God at this point (and an extremely unlikely proposition shouldn’t have to be proven anyway), we can be almost certain there isn’t.

I don’t argue with Dawkins’s insistence that it’s absurd to have an abstract belief in God without any evidence. But personal experience, for the average person, does itself constitute a kind of evidence.

So it’s tempting for me to pore over the above quotes like a progressive biblical scholar trying to give a challenging scriptural passage the interpretation that favours my view of the world, and try to find an opening for a belief in a layer of spiritual experience that could perhaps encompass some notion of God. That’s not impossible to do: the qualification ‘except in the sense of natural phenomena that we don’t yet understand’ seems to leave the way open for scientists to validate everyday ‘spiritual’ experiences that are yet imperfectly understood.

Further, Dawkins does not dismiss transcendental experience, only what he sees as the false premises it is often based on. He wants readers to discover an awe and excitement in the universe that science is revealing to us. He describes his unending wonder at this universe and nature in general as ‘a quasi-mystical response’ that is ‘common among scientists and rationalists’ (p 11). He believes that humans can feel a transformative wonder simply by observing the accidental beauty of the world.

So perhaps Dawkins is, after all, cautiously open to the idea that humans may possess spiritual capabilities yet to be discovered by science? Perhaps he can validate the aspects of lived experience that materialists so often dismiss? Perhaps we’re simply talking about a different level of materialism?

Unfortunately, Dawkins soon puts the lid on this possibility. Of personal experience as an argument for belief, he’s disappointingly cliched and reductionist. Think you hear an inner guiding voice? Check into the nearest psychiatric facility.

Dawkins sees no difference between a religious delusion (Bush thinking the Old Testament God is telling him to bomb Iraq) and the painstaking task of uncovering and starting to listen to one’s innate inner guidance. (Is a strong inner force pushing you away from a particular job, relationship or trip, despite the urgings of your rational mind or the insistence of a loved one? Better ignore it.) It’s no surprise that ‘spirituality’, ‘non-denominational spirituality’ and ‘near-death experiences’ aren’t included in the book’s substantial index.

These are bleak alternatives indeed: a purely materialistic universe that abhors any aspect of human experience that cannot yet be explained by science; or a rigid, judgemental god who hates the erotic urges of the human body. In both cases, some aspect of the human is being repudiated. Although I disagree with those critics who accuse Dawkins of being religious about atheism, I can’t help seeing a connection between the different ways that both science and religion deny aspects of human experience. In both cases, they are telling us we can’t trust ourselves.

Evidence for God?

Given that there’s so much still to discover about the material world, it seems an odd time to be totally dismissing some version of God, and particular human capabilities often associated with such a belief. How can we, at this early stage of our knowledge, claim that we know enough to dismiss a dimension of the body and the mind that is only termed ‘spiritual’ because we haven’t yet pinpointed how it operates?

New findings in physics continue to upend accepted ideas about how the world works. We now know that energy and matter are interchangeable – scientists can turn energy into matter and the other way round. Furthermore, some kinds of subatomic particles that have once been linked together continue to act as if they are still linked, even when they’re separated; this is one of the mysteries of quantum mechanics. It’s a mainstream scientific fact, but it raises many basic questions about how legitimate it is to assume that, in the absence of technology, communication can only take place between living creatures if they’re in actual physical proximity to each other.

Physics also shows us that the very idea of objectivity is flawed. A number of experiments have demonstrated that particles behave differently depending on how they are being observed. In other words, subjectivity is built into the operations of matter on a quantum level (this is not to denigrate scientific attempts at objectivity).

Since the nineteenth century, parapsychologists have been investigating layers of experience that appear to defy scientific understandings of the material world. These researchers seek to ‘investigate the existence and causes of psychic abilities and life after death using the scientific method'.

What they are investigating are the scientifically inexplicable experiences of hundreds of thousands of people throughout human history. These include telepathy, premonitions, serendipity, apparitions and intuition. These experiences and skills don’t actually require a belief in a supreme being, but they’re often associated with a non-denominational version of God, and placed under the umbrella term ‘spiritual’. The consensus in most scientific circles is that they are either a load of hogwash, or emanate purely from the brain.

I think that the way these experiences are represented in the media is part of the problem. For example, in popular culture telepathy is as an ability of some superheroes. (Ironically, some prominent sceptics mistakenly use telepathy as an explanation for the power of mediums – they find it a more ‘rational’ explanation than communication with the dead.) Meanwhile, the US army has received funding to develop a kind of synthetic telepathy, although it’s quite different in kind from the one I’m talking about.

Unlike popular culture representations, my experiences of the 'uncanny' are always very subtle and always tied up with relationships. For example, I only experience some version of telepathy once in a blue moon, and with someone I’m connected to in some way; it’s not that I’m constantly picking up on other people’s thoughts. Similarly, the only premonitions I've had are very occasional strong images of some emotional or physical state being experienced by someone I’m close to; feeling inexplicably sad before receiving very bad news; or having a strong sense that a particular outcome that a friend was hoping for wasn't going to happen -- all very subjective, of course.

For me these experiences are short flashes; I don’t at all see myself as particularly psychically gifted. This presents a central problem for science: none of my experiences would be remotely testable in a laboratory.

Intuition, similarly, is an inner guiding force that I’d be lost without. It was there all the time, but I’ve had to gradually uncover it and to some extent I’ve learned to trust it. Usually it’s a feeling or intimation within, but seems to come from a deeper place than everyday emotions. I’ve learned through painful experience to follow my intuition – and I would like to think that I’d do so without hesitation if I was about to walk down the ‘wrong’ dark street, catch the ‘wrong’ plane etc.

For most people, the experiences I’ve described are never going to constitute a gift that they can make a living out of. They’re simply a utilisation of part of the brain that was ignored or closed down in the past, often simply through a conventional upbringing and education.

However, scientists like Dawkins ignore the fact that an openness to non-rational aspects of the world is not always voluntary, but may be a byproduct of an adverse event like an addiction or even a near-death experience. When we discover new aspects of ourselves we encounter the world in ways that are sometimes deeply uncomfortable.

When Dawkins tries to tell me that these experiences are bulldust, it’s a bit like him telling me that he can't see, and therefore the belief that I can is simply an illusion; and that he won't rest until I’m walking around with my eyes closed, bumping into things that I would otherwise see coming and be able to avoid.

Certainly science needs to avoid strenuously a belief in ‘common sense’; but that’s quite different from dismissing the lived experiences of millions of people – in fact, common sense might be the unacknowledged basis of the excessive scepticism of some scientists in this area.

Parapsychologists are not the only scientists who swim against the tide. A minority of scientists in a variety of fields have rebelled against a scientific establishment made up of what they call ‘pseudosceptics’ rather than the open-minded sceptic that a true scientist needs to be. These maverick scientists claim that, in debunking any human capability that threatens their worldview, such as telepathy, pseudosceptics fall back on grossly inadequate evidence and faulty logic.

Rupert Sheldrake, for example, has developed a theory of morphogenetic fields and of morphic fields to explain respectively the growth of plants and animals, and mental abilities like telepathy (interestingly, his theory does not rely on, and appears to be uninterested in, a belief in God).

Further evidence – near death experiences

Of course, the weirdness of physics and unexplained psychic experiences aren’t isn’t in themselves evidence of God. However, evidence for the existence of some kind of non-denominational higher intelligence can be found in the extensive field of near-death studies, which is a subject of interest not only to neuroscience but also to sociology, psychology and philosophy as well as theology.

One of the most common experiences in a typical near-death experience (NDE) is an encounter with an energy that seems to radiate infinite love, security and compassion on a scale not experienced in normal life and not easily described. Neuroscientists have been quick to offer brain-related explanations for this experience, in particular the ‘dying brain hypothesis’ developed by Susan Blackmore and others, which suggests that hallucinations occur at the time of death.

However, a huge array of anecdotal evidence, including reports of NDEs resulting from car accidents, suggests that some experiencers are able to witness the events that take place immediately after their supposed deaths. Also, many subjects come away from such experiences profoundly emotionally and spiritually changed and with a more accepting, loving and grateful approach to life – a transformation that would seem beyond the ability of a mere hallucination to produce. Many of those who experience NDEs were not interested in spirituality beforehand; yet some seem to have emerged with healing or psychic abilities they did not have previously.

But a belief in God shouldn’t rely solely on abstract evidence. Either you experience a sense of something larger, something both in and outside of yourself, or you don’t. The evidence above would hardly impress Dawkins, but it merely confirms something I’ve experienced. Like Dawkins I abhor the idea of ‘faith’, because it asks people to suspend their thinking abilities and also leaves them open to manipulation. If you haven’t experienced a sense of a force for good, then there is no reason for you to develop a cognitive belief in such a force.

In my next entry I’ll talk about my experience of this force for good. I’ll also return to Dawkins and a more detailed attempt that he’s made to debunk the spiritual.

'God, the universe and everything': My take on Dawkins, the God Delusion, and 12-step spirituality

2010-01-23T17:43:00.000-08:00

Ever since I started my blog I’ve been champing at the bit to write a partial rebuttal of many of the ideas of Richard Dawkins, biologist, television presenter, writer of (among other books) The God Delusion and passionate crusader for atheism. A recent blog entry at What The Hell is This? (see link on right) has spurred me on, as well as the twin aim of writing something of my experiences in a 12-step program. So here goes.

This is turning out to be by far my longest rant ever, so I’m dividing it up into three blog entries.

Dawkins mounts his challenge

In The God Delusion, Dawkins throws down the gauntlet at the God industry on both sides of the Atlantic. He argues passionately that religion – whether the fundamentalism of the Taliban or moderate versions of traditional religions – threatens our civilisation by causing widespread death and human rights abuses and by attacking the science teachings that have produced so much medical and technological progress. He contends that it’s behind many of the most evil acts and movements in history, and presents atheism as the only rational alternative.

Now, I have much sympathy for aspects of Dawkins’s project and I can understand the sense of urgency, indeed of being embattled, that led to the writing of this self-styled polemic. For example, a little-discussed aspect of The God Delusion is its references to the oppression of atheists and atheism in the USA; in one US town, police who were themselves religious refused to protect from violence peacefully demonstrating atheists, and there are documented cases of atheists being victims of ‘harassment, loss of jobs, shunning by family and even murder’ (p. 45).

Similarly, the rise of creationism and its offshoot, so-called intelligent design, is a social, technological, environmental and economic disaster in the making. As Billy Connolly put it recently on the television show Shrink Rap, Sarah Palin, if voted in as the USA’s vice-president, could have become president and therefore the most powerful person in the world – and she believes that the Earth is 4000 years old. That's scary!

Creationism seems to act a bit like a virus – it’s not just the province of evangelicals but is being spruiked by conservative elements of existing religions like Catholicism. (Although the Catholic position is an increasingly firm support of evolution, it doesn’t appear to be church dogma; Catholics are free to believe in creationism, and there are a number of Catholic groups that advocate it.)

Dawkins doesn’t confine his ire to religious fundamentalism – quite the opposite. He believes that moderate religion paves the way for fundamentalism because it’s based on the central concept of faith; and that this concept is seized on by the fundamentalist mindset and taken to its illogical conclusion in the case of terrorist bombings, or opposition to ‘victimless crimes’ like homosexuality.

Although I have sympathy for this argument, Dawkins seems to suggest that fundamentalists, who go all the way with even the most bizarre scriptural pronouncements, and who in extreme cases are willing to kill for their cause, are intellectually more consistent than religious moderates who would support his pro-science stance. And he's often criticised for this by those very moderates, who are as pro-Darwin as he is.

Religion – creating hell on earth?

In The God Delusion, Dawkins mounts a nuanced argument about the links between human evil and religion. He acknowledges that evil occurs in all societies independently of religion, but provides telling examples of the ways in which religion either worsens existing tensions between separate groups, or fosters the separate identities of otherwise similar groups. It does this through labelling children from an early age (eg ‘Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’) and discouraging marriage between the groups.

The results, whether it's the death of more than 1 million Hindus and Muslims during the partition of India, the murder of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust or the cruel kidnapping of a Jewish child in nineteenth century Italy simply because he’d been baptised as a Catholic by the child’s 14-year-old nanny, are chilling indeed.

One of the reasons for the continuing power of religion, despite such horrors, is the spurious respect with which religious sensibilities are treated. But the tenor of such sensibilities can be nothing short of murderous. It’s evident that particular kinds of religious thinking encourage and justify evil attitudes and acts against outsiders – Catholicism, Islam and Judaism have all spawned terrorists.

In one study quoted in the book, 66 per cent of Jewish children between the ages of 8 and 14 thought that the biblical Joshua and the Israelites had acted righteously when they sacked Jericho and massacred its inhabitants. However, when the children were asked to give their opinion on similar actions carried out by a mythical non-Jewish figure, 75 per cent disapproved.

Elsewhere, Dawkins argues that there’s a remarkable degree of consensus among different racial groups on basic moral precepts, and that this is totally independent of religion. The study described above suggests that, rather than being a moral force, religion can actually destroy this consensus and give tacit permission to morally repugnant actions.

But religious absolutism means that ‘insiders’ – members of a religion, not always voluntarily – are also vulnerable to harsh religious laws that demand severe penalties if breached.

This is particularly so in the case of women. Dawkins shows an admirable recognition of the horrors that patriarchal religion has foisted on women’s bodies, minds and hearts, mainly in the case of fundamentalist versions. These include publicly sanctioned rape (ie forcing marriage on underage girls); forcing them into early childbirth; withholding education from them; severe punishment and death for offences against ‘modesty’; honour killings and mutilations.

I’d also add that a religion (ie Catholicism) that says a young person with a vagina can never aspire to be a priest is committing religious abuse; and the culpability of the Catholic church in helping the spread of AIDS, STDs and unwanted pregnancies by preaching against the use of condoms doesn’t need to be reiterated here.

Religion isn't wholly responsible for the misogyny practised in its name. But patriarchy is self-perpetuating, and religion provides a convenient excuse for barbaric practices that keep women powerless.

For example, society long ago left the churches far behind on the matter of social change. Equality in the workplace is still a long way off in Australia, but at least equal opportunity is on the statute books. Yet it's absolutely fine for the Catholic church to openly discriminate against women, and for the Anglican church to tear itself in two over the issue of female clergy, because these trends supposedly have nothing to do with deep, unacknowledged sexism: they're about sensitive religious beliefs and feelings, which must be respected at all costs.

Like Dawkins, I believe that religious dogma has inherent psychic dangers for both sexes. Religion fosters emotional and intellectual retardation – an authoritative, all-protecting god demands a childlike position and a willingness to obey authority without question (I can still see this operating in my father's sometimes excessive piety).

It can lead to mental suffering and illness associated with excessive guilt, while ‘moral’ positions derived from the Bible can encourage people to judge others harshly. The religious right gives its members permission to project their unwanted qualities and desires onto others, a recipe for hatred of and discrimination against the other – thus, instead of spending their energies assisting the poor, some so-called Christians fight to overturn laws that allow gay people to marry.

Religious abuse of children

What I find most offensive, and I agree with Dawkins wholeheartedly on this, is society’s tolerance of children being forced into a particular religion from birth.

Sexual abuse of both males and females is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s arguable that every child indoctrinated into a religious faith suffers a form of religious abuse, however welcoming and loving the religious community.

For example, supposedly ‘mainstream’, sometimes government-funded Catholic schools in Western countries are telling their pupils that 2,000-odd years ago a virgin gave birth to a baby who was actually the supreme being; that when he grew up, he was cruelly killed to pay for the sins of those very children; and that he miraculously rose from the dead three days later. And the fear that they will burn in hell, alone and far from family and friends, causes very real suffering for minds too young to know the difference between myth and reality.

The extent to which more serious religious abuse of children is tolerated in the USA is nothing short of tragic. This includes some evangelicals leaving extremely ill children untreated and sometimes in great pain for days and weeks while relying on ‘faith healers’, or sending them to camps where they are brainwashed to support far-right religious Republicanism.

Australians shouldn’t feel too complacent: this country has no constitutional separation between church and state, which means that taxpayer dollars are freely spent on funding religious schools; some of these schools teach creationism, and it’s perfectly legal for them to do so.

Meanwhile, in Queensland, bible instruction is now being provided at non-government schools in ways that appear to contravene the Queensland Education Act. As well, the National School Chaplaincy Program provides federal funding for chaplains in government schools – schools that could well be in need of social or welfare workers, not to mention teachers or infrastructure – and funding for this program has been extended by prime minister Kevin Rudd.

The securities of religion

Despite all this, I don’t share Dawkins’s optimistic belief that it’s possible to eradicate religion.

For one thing, some people will always want to be spiritual within a community, to ‘worship’ in a group of fellow ‘believers’. Others will turn to structured religion for security in an increasingly insecure world, or simply because they want an outside authority to direct their lives.

Creating an ‘out’ group, as religion does (even if it’s just the secular world with its many temptations), strengthens bonds within the group. I’ve seen this up close, both in what I’ve heard about the early lives of my Catholic dad’s family of origin, and what I’ve seen of the close relationships of some overseas cousins of mine who follow a fairly fundamentalist version of Catholicism.

In the case of my cousins, their common passion for the dogma and rituals of the church helps to keep the family together. Similarly, in a recent television series that satirically explored his guilt about wanting to marry outside the Jewish community, comedian John Safran demonstrated his love of the Melbourne Jewish community and its often endearing quirkiness, even as he exposed the exclusivity of some of its members; at one point one of his best friends tells Safran that if he married a non-Jew, he’d feel compelled to boycott the wedding!

But there’s something else. Like it or not, religious rituals can provide a way to access a spirituality that is experienced through pathways in the brain. I wonder if, when repeated often enough, rituals can act like signals to the brain that activate these spiritual pathways.

I am guessing here, but that’s why I imagine Muslims find it so important to pray five times a day in designated prayer rooms; the rituals they enact and the words they recite during prayer may amount to a kind of moving meditation. Perhaps, rather than invoking Allah, they are accessing a force inside themselves that is beyond religion. The same applies to any kind of religious worship, although Western religions are generally poor at bringing the body into it. Perhaps this is one reason why evangelicals are popular: believers in these churches are free to dance, sway, and even throw themselves on the ground.

One of my sisters, recently qualified as a primary teacher but never particularly religious, used her background to get a job in a Catholic school. She remarked that the children were calmer, the general atmosphere more peaceful, than in the government schools she’d taught at. This Catholic school wasn’t in a wealthy area and would have included disadvantaged kids. One reason for the calmness might have been the religious prayers and rituals the children spoke and enacted.

For historical reasons I don’t think that in Australia an end to funding for religious schools is electorally possible. Instead, it should be impossible to actually join a religion until you’re 18, just as you can’t vote until then. Religious schools could still exist, but should be permitted to teach their students only the broadly ethical, spiritual aspects of the religion, not the dogma or so-called ‘morality’; nor should they be permitted to put down other religions or spiritualities. Once they turned 18, young adults could be free to join any religion they chose; this would be a perfect time for them to study the dogma and decide for themselves.

So Dawkins is totally justified in his attack on religion, but I'm much less sure about his dismissal of God -- in my next entry I’ll look at why.

Dedicated follower of fashion: bargain hunting, ethical and sustainable fashion, feminism and the retail cycle

2010-01-09T13:10:00.000-08:00

One of my favourite hobbies is hunting for fashion bargains. I love swooping in towards the end of the retail cycle (ie at the sale stage) and finding something that is, say, less than half the price of the original. An example: recently, at Sportsgirl, a baggy grey summer cardigan for $15.95; original price: 49.95. I’ve honed this skill to the point where I ‘know’ which shops to go into and which to avoid, whether I’m wasting my time or not and whether I need to buy something that I’ve tried on (I even wrote a book about this skill, and started an unsuccessful blog; now I’m resigned to using this skill for my own betterment, rather than that of humankind!)

As a former 12-step person, I’m constantly scanning my behaviour to ascertain whether it’s slipping into compulsive buying territory. I’m also aware that my shopping hobby gives me a kick because there are so many less consumer-oriented, more social pastimes that are just too hard. In some ways, too, it’s been a kind of return from exile to an earlier preoccupation: coming from an all-girl family, I grew up adoring clothes, but ditched that interest entirely when I became a radical feminist at the age of 19. For over a decade I lost the ability to dress in a way that suited me, and my shopping adventures have enabled me to gradually recover that. I also don’t spend that much on other forms of entertainment like restaurants and the cinema.

But of course, following fashion in a time of catastrophic global warming seems frivolous to say the least. This is something that I struggle with. I sometimes rationalise that by buying towards the end of the retail cycle I am not really a part of it. But this is not true: when you pay full price for a piece of clothing (which I do only rarely) you’re subsidising the likes of me. The full price of an item takes into account that a certain percentage of stock will not ‘move’ until offered at a discount price. So my bargain-hunting behaviour is definitely factored into the entire retail equation.

Ethics and sustainability
I also struggle with the notion that, because I mainly buy from the cheaper chain stores, I’m subsidising cruelty – the appalling working conditions at some Chinese factories, as well as the sometimes equally dreadful conditions Australian outworkers face.

Plus I’m contributing to the many problems caused by China’s reliance on coal – global warming, poor conditions at coal mines, and dangerous levels of pollution. China burns more coal than any other country, and 80 per cent of its electricity comes from coal-fired power plants. To feed its giant economy, it’s starting new coal-fired power stations at an estimated rate of between one and two a week. As well as illness and deaths caused by carbon pollution, at least six coal miners die on the job in China every single day – the figure used to be higher.

Now, I’m not so sure that buying at the higher end of the market – designer clothes or even upmarket chains like Country Road (a label I buy from very occasionally, and only at sale time) – would make much difference to this. After all, Country Road clothes are also manufactured in China.

However, it does make sense to buy more expensive clothes that last longer, and buy fewer of them. The quality of Country Road clothes, for example, is surprisingly good. They wear so well that you can easily find yourself wearing an item over three fashion seasons.

Buying an item that you will get much more wear out of is surely better for the environment than buying something you only wear three or four times, but it does not resolve the ethical dilemma of workers’ conditions. I’d like to think that workers making clothes of that calibre have to be treated a bit better to keep the quality up, eg needing to complete fewer garments per hour, but I have no idea whether or not that’s the case.

And buying a garment manufactured in Australia doesn’t necessarily let you off the ethical hook. I bought a top recently from a cheap chain store, Supre. The top had a tag on it proudly declaring something along the lines of ‘Made in Australia – bringing jobs back home’. But this doesn’t mean that the workers who made the top weren’t exploited; they could have been piece workers paid at appalling rates. Despite much community activism, the Australian Government has so far failed to end the exploitation of these workers.

An Australian organisation fighting worker exploitation in the garment manufacturing industry is the FairWear campaign.

They’ve introduced a Home worker’s Code of Practice that they lobby manufacturers and retailers to sign. Manufacturers who have signed it are entitled to include a No Sweat Shop label on their clothes. While the list of companies that are signatories is currently disappointingly limited (but significantly includes Bonds, Collette Dinnigan and Maggie T), whether more sign up really depends on pressure from consumers: if they think we don’t care, they will do nothing.

The Code has been signed by many more retailers than manufacturers. These retailers include Big W, K Mart, Country Road, Target, Sussan, David Jones and David Lawrence (Witchery hasn’t signed, and nor has Supre, which I mentioned above). However, the obligations of retailers are far less onerous than those of manufacturers, and they may not even be selling clothes with the No Sweat Shop label. Of the duties of the retailer signatories, The FairWear website says:

If a retailer is provided with evidence that a supplier is not meeting their obligations in relation to the Code or relevant Awards and legislation, the retailer will inform the non-compliant supplier that if the problem is not resolved, all of the supplier’s products will be removed from the retailer’s stores and will not be sold. Such action from Code Signatories has proven to be an effective method in changing the behavior of unethical manufacturers.

FairWear’s website includes a sample letter to send to retailers who haven’t signed the code.

FairWear should be lauded for its work. But why does the federal government allow such a code to be voluntary? It should be law, not something you sign up for because you fear a consumer backlash. And what happens if the garments are sourced from overseas? How much control can the retailer have over the manufacturing process in that instance? And how do we actually know that the retailers are sticking to their promise – who is keeping tabs?

Meanwhile, a group of FairWear supporters have started their own Facebook page, at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=19858516103&ref=ts&v=info.

However, action on this front doesn’t stop the problems of coal-powered electricity, pollution, and global warming.

Ethics and sustainability – recycling
Buying second hand clothes offers a way out for many consumers concerned with ethics and sustainability. One thing I’ve become very good at in the last few years is throwing clothes out that I don’t wear any more, and taking them to my favourite op shop (I’m quite fussy about this – I think some op shops charge too much, and I don’t support them). I now have culls every three months or so, and it feels good. I also buy a lot of books and household goods from op shops.

But, truth to tell, I don’t buy a lot of clothes from them. I think it’s partly my taste, but also because the clearance prices at Target put some of the price tags at op shops to shame. I think e-bay and the idea of on-selling is at least partly to blame for this. Op shops want to give their low-income customers a bargain, but they don’t want their shops to be free-for-alls for those who will just clear the store and resell the underpriced stock at exorbitant prices. However, I think they sometimes overdo the pricing and many op shop clothes are simply too expensive for what you get.

Buying clothes on e-bay and vintage clothes stores are other well-known alternatives to buying new. Another option is the growing trend of clothes swapping – in Australia, The Clothing Exchange holds regular clothes swapping events.

Ethics and sustainability – new clothes
Sustainable, and in some cases ethically produced, fashion seems to be a growing market, although the GFC may have damaged it somewhat. This article has a great list of fashion labels that produce sustainable clothing that are available in Australia (it’s not always clear whether they’re ethical in terms of working conditions). And a great sustainable clothing range can be found at www.purepod.com.au – again, the website doesn’t mention ethics.

Fashion facism
There’s another, much less urgent but still significant issue that being interested in clothes brings up. If you set aside the fashionable aspect of clothes for a minute, most people need to own a set of clothes suitable for a variety of different weathers and occasions. It concerns me that much of the ‘fashionable’ clothing this year doesn’t even offer the most basic of choices for women in some areas.

Take sundresses. There are two lengths available – above the knee (the mini dress) and down to the feet (the maxi dress). Embarrassingly short, or uncomfortably, impractically long. The embarrassingly short is perfect for young ‘gels’ who are happy to show off their legs (although I don’t imagine all young women feel comfortable doing this), but the ridiculously long version of the sundress is another extreme, and merely brings out the paranoid feminist in me: why, on a 34–45 degree day, would you want to be burdened with a dress that covers your entire body? For years we’ve had a huge variety of sundresses available that skirt the knee – not this year.

Talking about skirts, things are even worse on that front. This year’s miniskirts are in the main ridiculously short compared with last year’s, showing a substantial amount of thigh. Again, that’s fine if you’re an 18-year-old out on the town with your mates. But this silly length includes work skirts: retailers are happy to pressure women into wearing embarrassing, impractical clothes in the work place.

There are many reasons why women may not want to reveal that much leg, apart from feeling vulnerable and having to be careful while sitting down. Some of us have knobbly knees; some of us have prominent veins; some of us have thighs we don’t particularly like. In a youth-obsessed culture we’re told not to reveal our legs if they don’t literally shape up; but at the same time fashion wants to force us to. Liposuction, anyone?

Retailers who pretend to offer genuine choice in fact do the opposite. Country Road recently released an upmarket new label, Trenery, designed for an older demographic and selling in a new set of stores. You’d think that offering skirts and dresses below the knee would be one of its basic objectives. Instead, the catalogue features a tall young woman with long skinny legs wearing – you guessed it – dresses above the knee! There are also lots of very short shorts available for the daring older woman who’s happy to reveal all.

Please don’t even start me on the towering high heels we’re supposed to totter around in. I’m not joking when I say that they should come with a government health warning along the lines of ‘if you wear these shoes for two hours or more you run the risk of significant spinal, ankle and/or foot damage’.

Real choice
But consumers do have choices: the choice not to buy clothing from retailers who couldn’t care less about their supply chains, or fashions that degrade women; and to consider sustainable options. Although I only buy clothes I feel comfortable with, I don’t think I could easily give up my love of fashion altogether. But I can tell retailers and manufacturers what I think of their contempt for workers’ rights, only buy when I need to, investigate sustainable clothing, and refuse to participate in the most misogynistic aspects of fashion.

Farewell to the park?

2010-01-04T14:48:00.000-08:00

It’s been hard to write a blog entry lately because things have been in such a state of flux. A cold flattened me over Christmas, striking me down as a I struggled to finish editing a stubborn report (I always seem to get colds when I have big editing jobs to finish).

The cold was a convenient excuse for not worrying about not having enough social events to go to over Christmas. But it also presented an existential dilemma: I surveyed the coming year, and the perceived failures of the previous one, through a prism of exhaustion, which in turn made me feel helpless. Even present wrapping was tiring.

The cold took two weeks to work its way through my nasal passages, leaving me worrying about the state of my immune system. Thank God for the internet and Google – I’ve decided that the reason I get two colds a year is not because of lowered immunity but simply my plethora of nieces and nephews and our frequent family birthday celebrations (an excuse for seeing less of my family in 2010?).

A particular situation that’s been in my face for the last couple of weeks is still very much unresolved. For the moment I’m no longer walking Jordan, a mainly cocker spaniel who belongs to my elder sister, Andrea, and her husband Richard. I’ve been doing this three times a week for the past two years and it’s come to a temporary halt, with the final outcome still unknown.

Richard and I were bound to clash sooner or later. We’re both equally bloody minded. I in my pursuit of animal (Jordan’s) welfare, and he in his determination to look after Jordan in his own way.

Never would I let Richard and Andrea forget that I thought they weren’t treating Jordan properly. Apart from the occasional walk down the street to the shops, or taking the kids to school (normally a drive) they’d virtually stopped taking him for walks, relying entirely on my thrice-weekly trips to the park.

He badly needed a clip and a bath, and had knots of hair on his bum that needed shaving. I’d even offered at one point to come around and bath him – I didn’t get to do that, but my home clipping job was certainly not the best. (Although you’d never know it, Richard is extremely wealthy and could easily afford professional grooming for Jordan, even if only, say, twice a year.)

The thing that I wouldn’t let up on – that I continued to nag them about – was that they wouldn’t bring Jordan to family gatherings at mum and dad’s. If I am perfectly honest about this, my normally kind dad is inexplicably hostile to dogs. A former secondary teacher, he seems to view them as juvenile delinquents so evil they’re beyond saving.

In contrast, my mum, despite her disabling osteoporosis and concern for the domestic environment, is okay with having Jordan around. And my sister Therese and her husband Tony sometimes bring their ridgeback-cross Sarah (also a neglected dog, but in a different way to Jordan) to family gatherings. But Andrea and Richard can’t be bothered taking him in the car with them, even at those times he’d have a playmate in Sarah to keep him out of mischief.

So every time I’d turn up at mum and dad’s to find Richard and Andrea in the kitchen and Sarah in the backyard slobbering contentedly, knowing that Jordan was stuck behind his wooden fence half a kilometre away, I’d call them on it. ‘Where’s Jordan?’ I’d ask. Each time, they dug their heels in even further. Recently, Richard had been fixing me with a rather malevolent stare he’s perfected and saying in a crisp tone: ‘I’ll look after Jordan. He’s ours. He’s not your problem’.

I’ve clashed with Richard a lot in recent years. It took me many years to realise he wasn’t the brother-in-law from heaven I’d originally thought he was. He’s a charming man with a sly, subtle sense of humour and excellent social skills, and the extended family think he’s great. But he can also be a bully – he’s been dominating Andrea for years – and I heard a story recently about him that shocked me.

On the day of the recent byelection in our electorate, Andrea was working and hadn’t voted in advance, so risked getting a $20 fine. Apparently Richard and Andrea asked one of my younger sisters, Therese, to fraudulently vote on Andrea’s behalf. Therese refused, and Richard tried to make her feel guilty. ‘We’d do the same for you if you asked’, he said. Therese was furious at him for trying to manipulate her into breaking the law, but she didn’t give in.

On Christmas Day, the predictable happened and Jordan wasn’t brought to the celebrations. I made my usual protests and Richard got predictably annoyed. But the next day when I rang to arrange the usual Monday walk, he answered the phone, and said in the same annoyed tone that he’d look after Jordan while he was on holidays.

At that point I think I realised what I was up against, and I stopped fighting. My arrangement with Jordan’s family has been based on the false assumption that I and they share enough common beliefs to maintain the regular contact that is inevitable when you walk someone else’s dog. But we don’t, and my differences with my family don't start with Richard -- they’re as old as the hills, and the basis of the majority of my problems. How did I think I could skate over them so easily?

I considered at that point that perhaps it was time to give up walking Jordan. Truth to tell, I needed some kind of break. In the last two years, seeing the reality of Jordan’s life up close and feeling helpless to improve it had led to periodic depressions characterised by a deep sense of sadness.

And my whole park venture seemed to be coming to a close anyway. Jordan was a skinny, shivery, smell-crazy puppy when I decided to start walking him regularly. This arrangement would be partly for Jordan’s benefit and partly for mine, to help me deal with my social anxiety.

It seemed to be working okay, despite the occasional social disaster. But increasingly there were periods when I’d be convinced that a quiet park meant people were staying away because of me. I know this is distorted thinking – a friend of mine, who has a lot of knowledge about anxious and depressed thought patterns, shouted down the idea and called it totally whacky. But I think my paranoia was based on a deeper truth – that I didn’t really fit in with the wealthy milieu of many of those who frequented the park, despite the fact that they were ‘dog people’, and mostly friendly.

Also, a couple of people who were my anchors and as addicted to the park as I was had had their elderly, statesman-like dogs die in the last year, and although I still saw them sometimes, their visits to the park were much less frequent.

At the moment, the future of my relationship with Jordan is still an open question. Perhaps I’ll be able to come to some arrangement with Andrea and Richard, and perhaps I won’t – time will tell. If I don’t, then it will probably be better if I don’t see Jordan at all, because I won’t want to be reminded of my abandonment of him.

Christmas: a time to stress, get depressed, and then rest!

2009-12-23T17:15:00.000-08:00

A very happy Christmas to my tiny circle of blog readers and fellow bloggers!

My blog is not quite a year old, but I can’t imagine life without it. Sometimes it’s hard for me to blog, but this blog has kept me honest with myself.

Nothing in my life has changed on the outside, and I’m certainly not ‘cured’. But I feel as if I’ve gone through quite a lot of internal changes this year. I think mainly I feel more grounded, less deluded about things, more realistic about my life and its limitations. But I’m also looking after myself better; after months of thinking about it, I finally started meditating.

Unfortunately I haven’t cured myself of my yearly dose of Christmas stress.

I thought I’d be able to avoid it this year. I thought I could sail through the frenzied shopping malls, last-minute work projects to finish and two sisters about to have babies unscathed. I thought I could just pretend it wasn’t happening really, go on as usual.

But it got me in the end.

Actually that’s not true. A million things have been stressing me out, from the tiny (never-ending skin problems) to the gargantuan (climate change), and Christmas has just opened up another front.

Every year, my sisters and I buy presents for all seven nieces and nephews. This means that not only do my sisters have to play Santa to their own kids but they’re happy to keep buying presents for all their kids’ cousins on our side of the family.

This year, with two new arrivals on the way, I unsuccessfully tried to negotiate with my sisters a Kris Kringle for the children’s presents: I suggested we each buy one niece or nephew one good present, spending $40-50. But instead of agreeing to this change, my sisters said they wanted to continue the current system themselves but would let me off the hook completely. ‘Don’t buy them anything – Don’t worry about it’, they said, shaking their heads and taking my delicate equilibrium into account.

I kidded myself by declaring that indeed I wouldn’t. So I didn’t, until a third of the way through this month, and then I got the Christmas guilts and imagined the disapproval I’d receive if I turned up on Christmas Day with gifts only for my parents and the adult Kris Kringle. It would look unforgivably Scroogish. This led to some last-minute searching, but I’m finally done.

Next year I swear I’m buying them all an Oxfam goat. I’ll be more organised and plan it in advance.

A bad thing happened that has not helped my mood. A bird got caught behind my ancient gas heater. The first time I heard it I was in the loungeroom and some birds outside in the front yard had started twittering really loudly all of a sudden. Some of the twittering sounded very close, as if it was inside the house. I wondered momentarily if something had accidentally come down the chimney and got caught. I didn’t want to contemplate such a thought so I dismissed it as an auditory illusion.

The following afternoon as I lifted weights I heard a desperate scrabbling around behind the heater (which wasn’t on). When I heard it I realised immediately that the creature making those desperate movements must have been cheeping the day before, perhaps calling out to his friends and family outside to come and rescue him.

This was deeply distressing to me. One of my worst fears is being buried alive, and to think of an animal trapped, starving, thirsty, in the claustrophobic dark with no understanding of how it entered this state of horror was awful.

I had to go out to an appointment but arranged to meet Dad back at the house that evening. We opened the grill of the heater and had a careful look around with the torch, but saw nothing. The creature did not make a sound, which would at least have helped guide us. It was either too tired, dying or dead – although perhaps by some miracle it had escaped?

It would have been a huge job for a plumber to dismantle the heater and what would they have found at the end of it? Probably, by the next day, a dead bird.

I shed a few tears that night after Dad had left. I dreaded to hear more forlorn, hopeless scrabblings. I turned on the tele and switched the channel to a Spanish movie on SBS. In the scene taking place a female character held a colourful, exotic bird in her hand. She released it and it flew away.

I was foolishly comforted by the thought that one way or the other the little captive would soon be ‘free’. But the thought of it suffering so near to where I was living my life as if all was normal was deeply disturbing.

About this time the twin of Christmas stress – Christmas depression – made its appearance. I felt a sense of deep mourning for all the things that were lacking in my life. To a slightly lesser extent I’m still in the grip of this.

But one thing I’ve realised during this time: all the books I’m reading right now are about sad or evil things. I know that the world is in pretty dire straits and there is a lot to be sad and angry about. But more often next year I’m going to read some lighthearted books as well, just to balance things out. I’m determined to get to know the humour section of my local library.

Anyway, it’s good to know that in a day or two I’ll be able to succumb to total slothfulness and have a good ‘blob’, to rest a bit and gather my resources for the year to come.

I wish peace and joy, as well as rest and celebration, for everyone.

Buying less, caring more: towards a sustainable, non-growth economy

2009-12-15T16:49:00.000-08:00

Woke up early this morning with a blog entry clamouring to leave my brain and get onto the page.

There are two different knotty issues that I’ve been thinking about a bit lately and wanted to place side by side because I think they could illuminate each other. I’m not trying to solve these problems so much as simply start to look at them in tandem. Before I do that I want to warn that I’m just as much a part of the problems as anyone. In fact, it’s my own inconsistencies that lead me to contemplate these issues – the gap between my ideals and how I live my life!

So here goes.

Buddhists tell us that all living creatures want to be happy and enjoy the world. Yet our fast-paced capitalist society treats the earth, as well as human and non-human animals, as resources that need to be productive or at least managed. The effect of this is that we all overlook just how much care and nurturing the earth and its creatures need. In a sense, the whole set-up in many Western cultures requires us to do this if we are to function ‘properly’.

I suppose I’m talking a bit about sustainability here, but with a living creature component.

In his popular blog Rocky and Gawenda, former editor of The Age newspaper Michael Gawenda writes about the effects that his tiny, mischievous dog has had on his life. Since Gawenda’s retirement from full-time journalism Rocky has become his close companion: every morning they rise at dawn and go for a long walk along St Kilda beach.

But Gawenda still has many work obligations, and in an article in The Age a few months ago he wrote of his reluctance to acknowledge the depths of despair that his regular abandonment of Rocky produced in his beloved mutt. He feared that one extended absence had led to an estrangement so great that Rocky would never fully recover the depth of trust and affection he had once displayed towards his master.

In the article, Gawenda reluctantly grappled with just how delicate the emotional make-up of a non-human creature such as Rocky might be, and how much such a creature might require in care and attention.

When we start to be willing to look at a situation like that, the needs of the world can seem too overwhelming. In fact, it is nothing more than an invitation to put living beings before gain – an invitation that the world constantly tries to draw us away from.

Michael Leunig is a Melbourne cartoonist, illustrator and artist turned writer. In his regular pieces for the Age, Leunig contemplates life from the slow lane. Living in the bush, he is alive to its nuances, and documents with great honesty the rhythms of his own emotional life as he relates to an increasingly dysfunctional wider world.

Leunig is far from perfect either: his failure to see the sufferings of women denied agency and power in the world, as well as his inexplicable hostility towards Australia’s embattled intellectuals, not to mention thought itself, are baffling.

In 1995 he produced one of his most controversial cartoons, ‘Thoughts of a baby lying in a child care centre’. A tiny newborn lies in a crib at a child care centre. The child is in despair because it believes that its mother has abandoned it, and it then turns that despair in on itself, deciding that it must be unworthy. Feminists were furious.

No doubt one reason for this cartoon being controversial is that Leunig was pointing out an unpleasant truth: our society does not really want to think about the complexity of the needs of a single child, and instead puts the work ethic and the dollar first.

But what I think made feminists angry was the assumption that only one half of society was responsible for this grave failure to care: women. For one short moment, Leunig was able to contemplate the giant need and great loneliness of a single child; but it was too painful for him. Rather than remain in uncertainty, and invite the ‘negative capability’ that Keats suggests and that he himself claims to be comfortable with, he simply reached for a convenient scapegoat. If he could blame women for the problem, he no longer had to deal with its full implications.

Jeff Kennett was the conservative premier of Victoria from 1992 until 1999. Gung-ho, aggressive and revengeful after many years in opposition, and having inherited a huge debt from the outgoing Labor government, he seemed to take great joy in shutting down hundreds of government schools, carrying out mass sackings of public servants, and privatising the electricity industry (which caused massive job loss).

But since retiring from politics, Kennett has changed. A former chairman of beyondblue, an organisation that publicises depression and assists sufferers, he now regrets his failure to consider the social effects of electricity privatisation. This infamous right wing warrior made the following admission in The Age of 12 December:

It’s very easy to change the natural order of life but it comes with a huge social and economic cost. If I was in office ever again and implementing change as I did in the past … I would make sure that I had a lot of education in place … I would try better to understand the impact of change.

Although many people see the categories of right and left as outdated and meaningless, I don’t agree. It’s been said that what distinguishes them is the left’s willingness to actually consider the effects of political and economic decisions on the ground, for individuals, communities and particular groups, to look at the micro as well as the macro. Through his involvement with beyondblue, Kennett has learned to do this and is a wiser human being as a result.

So – what’s the other issue I wanted to look at? I know this post is getting long, so I’ll try and keep what is an infinitely complex topic outrageously short.

The journal New Scientist had a great collection of articles in its 18 October 2008 issue on why the continued growth model of economic development simply wasn’t possible any more. It’s not a matter of ideology – the earth can’t sustain continued growth any longer because its resources are finite, and they’re fast running out. Rapidly rising population is a large part of the problem.

In his contribution, Tim Jackson looks at the sustainability–growth issue in terms of the need to reduce carbon emissions. He warns that if we factor economic growth (which itself seems to require increasing population) into the equation, ‘the idea that technological ingenuity can save us from climate disaster looks a whole lot more challenging’.

Jackson goes on to calculate how low in carbon emissions our economies would have to be by 2050 if we a) want to stabilise greenhouse levels in the atmosphere at ‘a reasonably safe 450 parts per million’ and b) factor in projected population increases, continued economic growth and the need to eradicate extreme poverty. He demonstrates that to achieve such a stabilisation, ‘the carbon content of economic output must be reduced to just 2 per cent of the best currently achieved anywhere in the European Union’. It would, in other words, necessitate more or less ‘complete decarbonisation of every last dollar’ – a well-nigh impossible task.

But if economic growth is the problem, adopting a different model would represent a change of gargantuan proportions. How is it to be done without causing widespread suffering? In fact, reducing growth in a chaotic fashion already has increased poverty and death – In March 2009 it was estimated that the recent global financial crisis would lead to the deaths of an additional 200,000 to 400 000 children.

Any discussion on changing our economic system to one that doesn’t rely on growth must look at how we can reduce consumption without increasing unemployment and causing widespread hardship.

What would a sustainable society and economy look like? Because goods would be built for the long term, maintenance and repair would become major industries.

There would be major government investment in services that have been sorely neglected for years such as public transport and social housing, as well as huge investment in renewable energy. But let’s not forget that, worthwhile as these investments are, they will still rely on the world’s natural resources to be farmed and dug from the ground (eg iron ore).

The need to care more, which I’ve identified in the previous section of this blog entry, is perhaps one of the solutions. Caring could be a significant form of employment in a sustainable economy. More teachers in classrooms. More childcare workers in creches. More psychologists and psychiatrists and counsellors in psyche units, community health centres, mental health outreach teams and jails. More nursing staff in aged care centres. More doctors in the western suburbs, new suburbs and rural areas.

But a lower consuming society would also leave more time for its citizens to care for each other, which wouldn’t cost anything, but would save a lot of money.

In the long run, this would lead to a reduction in crime and incarceration. Community bonds would strengthen.

Caring for the earth, through environmental employment projects and community vegetable gardens, could also increase.

I’m not an economist and can’t even begin to discuss here what the nuts and bolts of a non-growth economy would be, how it would actually sustain itself, pay its workers and feed its population. My point is that we need to start discussing what such an economy would look like and how we could move towards it. And perhaps the fact that the world demands so much care and attention – so much more than we can currently give it – is one reminder that something needs to change.

Money for nothing: the Climate Pollution Reduction Scheme and the ascent of Abbott

2009-11-30T20:08:00.001-08:00

I’m writing about an emerging form of mental illness that has recently been identified by mental health professionals, and that I think I may be suffering from: politician induced depression, or PID. It’s been found in dictatorships for decades, but in recent years has turned up in increasingly endemic proportions in Western countries like Australia.

The main symptom is a growing despair that is activated every time the sufferer sees or hears a politician speak. Treatment consists of graded exposure to current affairs programs and radio news broadcasts, plus compulsory reading of books such as Alain de Botton’s The Consolations of Philosophy. Membership of the Greens is also recommended but not mandatory. As a final resort, sufferers are urged to run for parliament.

I’m only half joking. Australia these days is a hot place, and our capital cities are no exception. The evidence of climate change is everywhere, but all the pollies care about is keeping the coal industry onside.

I complained recently about a November heatwave in Melbourne – actually there were two mini-heatwaves, and the temperature reached 38.2 on 20 November before the cool change brought some rain.

But that was nothing compared to what the rest of the country was facing. In New South Wales, weather records were broken as some places reached 45 degrees. Meanwhile, South Australia’s equally giant heatwave saw eight consecutive days of over 35 degrees, between Sunday 8 November and Sunday 15 November. During the heatwave, maximum temperatures in parts of South Australia also nudged 45 degrees. On 19 November, Adelaide’s temperature reached 42.8 - the city’s hottest day ever recorded for November.

During these heatwaves catastrophic fire warnings were issued in both states. Dozens of bushfires swept across both South Australia and New South Wales, including Sydney’s northern outskirts; at different times in each state, at least 100 fires were burning.

There were also bushfires in Victoria and even one in Tasmania, which is known for its chilly weather compared with the rest of Australia.

And this was before summer had actually begun.

A climate scientist with the Bureau of Meteorology, Dr Harvey Stern, said that there was a ‘high chance’ that the hot weather that swept New South Wales, South Australia and Victoria was connected to climate change. As well as giving the world a sneak preview of what they can expect from global warming in the next few decades, Australia is currently the highest per capita producer of emissions in the world, so we really need to get our act together.

Climate capers
Meanwhile Australia’s politicians have been fiddling while the country literally burns. The two main party groups, the governing Australian Labor Party and the conservative Coalition (Liberals and the rural-based National Party) have been taking part in what amounts to a faux battle about climate change. The battle has resulted in zero action on climate change but huge media furore over the fall of Coalition leader Malcolm Turnbull (pictured above), yesterday replaced by the right-wing Catholic Tony Abbott.

Because he does not have a majority in the upper house, ALP leader Kevin Rudd had been trying to negotiate with the Coalition a deal that would enable the passing of his Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) before going to the climate summit at Copenhagen. The CPRS is in the form of an emissions trading scheme.

Former Coalition leader Malcolm Turnbull and some members of the Coalition had been in favour of passing the Scheme, complete with amendments the Coalition had negotiated with the ALP, in time for Copenhagen. But a noisy minority of right-wing Coalition members were building up a simmering resentment towards Turnbull.

The fact is, in this sunburnt country, many of these renegades don’t actually believe that human-induced global warming exists, or they seem not to care, and they’ve publicly declared their stance. Basically they were trying to steal the glory from Rudd at Copenhagen, and to respond to Rudd's own move to the right by moving even further to the right than he has.

The anger of these renegades finally resulted in a dramatic change of leadership yesterday to Tony Abbott, who won by the narrowest of margins. This win was unexpected, as Abbott, a former health minister in the Howard Coalition government, is unpopular with voters, particularly women.

Turnbull was hoping to get the amended legislation passed in the Senate before his leadership showdown, but it wasn’t to be. With Abbott as leader, just hours ago the Senate formally rejected the legislation. This means that Rudd won't be able to take his CPRS to Copenhagen as a fait accompli. But it also enables the government, if it so chooses, to dissolve both houses of parliament and call an early election.

The great irony is that the ALP and all parts of the fractured Coalition have actually been on the same side all along – that of doing very little to mitigate climate change, and keeping the big polluters, particularly Australia’s powerful coal industry, happy. It’s difficult to understand how the international community could have been happy about the CPRS Rudd would have have taken to Copenhagen if the Senate had passed it. In fact, a recent article in The Guardian slams Australia’s record and current action on cutting emissions.

In negotiating CPRS amendments with the Coalition (Coal – ition?), and indirectly helping to precipitate their leadership crisis, Rudd made an extremely poor scheme even worse. He also demonstrated he would do anything to avoid negotiating with the Greens.

Disturbingly, the media have been reporting the leadership drama with the focus entirely on the politics rather than the planet. They’ve allowed Turnbull to portray himself as someone willing to sacrifice his prime ministerial aspirations for the principle of taking action on climate change. No-one in the mainstream media so far has directly challenged this breathtaking deception.

Meanwhile, the actions of the renegade Coalition members have enabled Rudd to pretend to the confused electorate that he’s their climate saviour, when the opposite is the case. Rudd might have got somewhere with his CPRS if he’d negotiated with the Greens, who have five members in the Senate, and independent senator Nick Xenophon, who at least believes in climate change (ironically, today in the Senate two disaffected Liberal 'wets' voted with the government on the amended CPRS; if these two Libs and Xenophon had supported a CPRS influenced by the Greens, it could have passed). Rudd chose instead to negotiate with a right-wing party that did nothing to mitigate climate change during its 11 years in office. And in the end it betrayed him, after giving him its word it was negotiating in good faith.

Despite all the spin, and the media focus on the Coalition in the last week or so, Fran Kelly reported on Radio National on 30 November that support for the ALP had dropped slightly, accompanied by a slight boost in support for the Greens. This suggests that at least some voters were unhappy with the further weakening of an already compromised CPRS that the Coalition's amendments would have led to.

Locking us into doing nothing
Even without the Coalition’s amendments, the incredibly complex piece of legislation installing the CPRS -- it will be reintroduced to parliament next year -- will lock Australia into targets so low they are laughable. The official target is 5–25 per cent below 2000 levels by 2020, but the conditions attached to a 25 per cent reduction are so many that this higher target is unlikely to prevail. And Treasury modelling indicates there’ll be no actual reduction in greenhouse emissions until around 2033, because investment in offsets such as overseas carbon sinks will count towards the reduction.

The CPRS also not only offers, but locks in for the future, massive compensation to the big polluters. Importantly, the compensation figures included in the legislation assume that Australia cuts its carbon emissions by only 5 per cent by 2020. This means that in theory a higher rate of compensation to the polluters could kick in if the cuts are steeper than 5 per cent.

According to the Citizens Climate Campaign, Professor Garnaut, the Government’s own advisor on climate change policy, has criticised the CPRS, especially the compensation it offered the biggest polluters.

The deal struck with the Coalition on 24 November, before Turnbull’s defeat, would have watered the legislation down even further. Under the deal the government would have doubled its handouts to the coal industry, providing $1.5 billion over five years. Power generators would have received a further $4 billion in permits to pollute, bringing the total in permits to $7.3 billion. Further, $1.1 billion would have been spent on assisting manufacturing and mining businesses with higher electricity prices because of the CPRS. To top this off, $5.76 billion set aside to compensate consumers for the increased cost of living would have been cut.

Ordinary Australians were already going to be subsidising the big polluters, which would be able to go on with business as usual. However, these amendments would have made their subsidy even higher – $4 billion, rather than the original $2.5 billion, which was bad enough.

The dramatic turnaround in Coalition policy leaves many environmentally aware Australians feeling confused. On the one hand, they're relieved that we are not yet locked into a useless ETS; on the other hand they’re dismayed at both major parties’ refusal to really tackle climate change.

However, they shouldn't get too excited. The Minerals Council of Australia stated today that this was an opportunity to improve the CPRS legislation (read: throw more taxpayer money at the mining industry).

The proposed CPRS was complicated to start with and always had pathetically low targets. But when the global financial crisis struck, and even before it started negotiating with the Coalition, the government had heralded further industry-friendly changes, including moving the starting date from 2010 to 2011.

This cavalier approach to the planet, along with the Coalition’s changing position and the willingness of the media to air the views of climate change denialists in the interests of spurious balance, sent a message to the average Australian that climate change was not as dire a problem as previously thought. A recent poll by the Lowy Institute of International Policy found that Australians were less concerned about climate change than they had been two years earlier. According to the poll, on a list of 10 goals in 2009, climate change had slipped from its 2007 position, when it came equal first.

The Greens in Higgins
On 5 December a by-election will take place in my electorate, the House of Representatives seat of Higgins. The Liberals have a new candidate, Kelly O’Dwyer, to replace the one-time Liberal treasurer Peter Costello. The ALP isn’t fielding a candidate as Higgins is a safe-as-houses Liberal seat, but the Greens are. Their choice of candidate has been controversial though: Dr Clive Hamilton is a progressive economics academic and commentator, and one of Australia’s most committed climate change activists, but he has trouble connecting with the electorate and getting his message across.

Given the current Liberal Party furore it will be interesting to see whether Abbott’s leadership reduces the Liberal vote in Higgins. O’Dwyer claims to believe that humans play some role in climate change, but any policy must preserve our economy.

The Greens are the only party in the federal parliament with emissions targets that recognise the climate science – by 2020 they want a 40 per cut in carbon emissions compared to 1990 levels. Whether Higgins voters recognise the urgency of the situation, and send a message to both the ALP and the Coalition to get their act together, is yet to be seen.

My diagnostic disaster – part three

2009-11-28T13:35:00.000-08:00

The story so far:

In an attempt to save my sanity. I had decided to apply for a part payment of a government allowance. To do this I needed a doctor’s report, and to obtain one I returned to a psychiatrist I had seen eight years earlier. At the time he had diagnosed me with bipolar and unsuccessfully tried to put me on an epilepsy drug. I had left in disgust. Upon returning in the hope of getting a doctor’s report, Dr Field (not his real name) had diagnosed me with ADD.

As I sat in Dr Field’s office trying to absorb the news, he was already back to his old diagnostic tricks. ‘Do you feel stuck in the present?’ he asked. Stuck in the present? I wished I was. I was stuck in the past, stuck in the future – the present was in some ways elusive. But even a preliminary perusal of the literature he’d given me to read on ADD suggested that the picture was far less simple than his question suggested.

‘I want you to go on dexamphetamine’, he said. ‘It’s a stimulant, but it has the opposite effect on people with ADD. It’ll calm you down’.

I was shocked but also stunned at my own naivete. Dr Field loved drugs: why would I think he wouldn’t have found one to treat his latest diagnostic interest?

I tried to explain my reluctance to take a stimulant drug but my efforts were wasted. It was all contrariness and non-compliance as far as he was concerned.

He smiled at me. ‘If you don’t take this drug you won’t get anywhere in life. Are you willing to throw away your entire future?’

In the end we reached an agreement. I would try the drug, and come back and see him again; and he would fill out the report form.

Despite our agreement, I knew I would never take the drug for any length of time; my system was just too sensitive for something so strong. But I was desperate for the report, so decided to try one dose and see how things went. In the unlikely event that the drug didn’t act as a stimulant, I’d take sufficient doses to please Dr Field so he’d fill in the report.

That Saturday, I picked up the prescription. Twelve tablets. How much would this be worth on the black market, I wondered. I joked to myself that perhaps I could go to Fitzroy Street (a street in Melbourne popular with drug dealers) and see if I could sell them.

I took one tablet. Just as I’d thought it would, it made me speedy (did this mean I didn’t have ADD? Who knew?) I rang Simon, a friend who lived close by, and asked him to come over and ‘babysit’ me. We decided to walk through the quaint, gentrified estate near where I live to the haven of Central Park. I was ‘with it’, but very talkative, chatting volubly about some of the meticulously renovated Edwardian houses we passed. Simon later confirmed that I had seemed a bit ‘high’.

I slept very lightly that night, just as if I’d taken a huge dose of caffeine. I wanted my brain back; dexamphetamine and I were fated to part for all time.

By this time I was feeling sheepish and quite manipulative. Why had I gone through this ridiculous farce? What was I trying to prove?

The following week I faced Dr Field once more. If I was manipulative and conniving, I was also honest. ‘I took one tablet’, I told him, ‘and it made me feel very speedy and a bit out of control. So I didn’t take any more. I did try.’

‘Well unfortunately I can’t help you. Counselling without medication won’t work.’

‘But what about the doctor’s report?’ He seemed to have forgotten all about it.

‘The report?’

‘Yes – that’s why I came to see you. I’m hoping to be able to get this government payment. But I’ll only be able to get it if the report’s filled out. We spoke about this last time.’

I handed him the form. He scribbled away as I sat in my chair feeling relieved and gladdened. I had looked after myself, gone through the hoops, done everything I needed to do, and now this surreal episode was drawing to a close.

‘There you go.’ He handed me back the form – like so many doctors he had almost illegible writing.

I stood up as I took it from him, gave him my most charming smile. ‘Thanks Dr Field.’

‘Good luck’, he said.

Once on the tram I eagerly pulled out the report from my bag. My heart sank.

‘Oppositional personality features and paranoid attitudes’, I read, ‘given prescription of dexamphetamine but too scared to take it’, and ‘needs medication and counselling but refuses’ (I would have gladly gone for the counselling without the medication, indeed would have done so eight years earlier).

‘Pleasant person but throwing her life away’, was his passing shot.

The report was useless; as a non-compliant patient I didn’t stand a chance of getting the payment.

The story doesn’t end there. I finally saw sense and went to a local GP I had seen intermittently over the years who headed a large clinic. She knew I had anxiety and had at one point prescribed sleeping tablets. She listened to my request and filled out the doctor’s report for me, and needless to say it read quite differently from Dr Field’s version. After many months and much stress, I finally received the part government payment I’d been seeking.

I can’t see myself as a total victim in this story; it was plain dumb of me to go back to Dr Field, to think I could see him on my own terms rather than his. I didn’t enjoy the feeling of trying to manipulate him into filling out the report. But the experience did make me think about psychiatry and the power it brings with it. I now believe that this power has its own inherent psychic dangers – in order to maintain their registration, psychiatrists should be required to undergo some kind of periodic co-counselling with colleagues to ensure they have not succumbed to, say, narcissistic delusions of grandeur or a tendency to over-pathologise.

Dr Field, in his own funny way, could see the damaged part of me better than some other psyches and for this reason I was attracted to him; but he could not see all of me, me in my complexity and entirety. His considerable talents were stymied by his inability to learn anything from his patients, to listen to their narratives, to open his heart to them as well as his mind.