The Inspector-General of Misconception

by Frank Moorhouse

‘To win the gold; have a good time …’ she told us.

  We suspect many ‘game plans’ are like that. The only game plan we know is ‘Expect the unexpected’ (and how do you do that?!) and ‘Take advantage of windows of opportunity’.

  We would be interested in the social and educational backgrounds of the competitors – family lives in a caravan or lives in a mansion in Toorak; trains in their private pool or trains in the town creek; what are their academic records (or do questions such as these infringe some dopey Australian egalitarian code?)

  We probably do not need ball-by-ball game description; that is, telling us literally what it is our eye is seeing, ‘a swing and a miss’, ‘he runs with the ball’ and so on. I suspect the tradition comes from radio where the listener needed some help.

  Could the sports come to the arts for help? Might be worth a try.

  It is rats’ alley and a valley of bones here today at the pool.

  Oh, Samantha Riley, ‘shall I compare thy smile to a summers’ day’?

  The game’s afoot:

  Follow your spirit; and, upon this charge,

  Cry ‘Go for my country! Australia and meat pies!’

  For when the One Great Scorer comes

  To write against your name,

  He marks – not that you won or lost—

  But how you played the game.

  We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage:

  … and tell old tales, and laugh

  At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues

  Talk of court news: and we’ll talk with them too,

  Who loses, and who wins; who’s in, who’s out …

  When all the world is old, lad,

  And all the trees are brown;

  And all the sport is stale, lad,

  … Creep home, and take your place there,

  The spent and maimed among:

  God grant you find one face there,

  You loved when all was young.

  A Suggestion: We would make the radical suggestion that television uses scriptwriters drawn from among imaginative writers.

  At least seventy-five per cent of the commentary could be loosely pre-scripted. These loose scripts could be evolved from watching past games, talking with sports specialists and working at venues in the atmosphere of the Games; by research; by language enrichment; and by imaginative foreshadowing.

  It couldn’t be duller than what we are getting.

  Use of the medium of television

  There is a ‘WR split box’ which appears on the screen during the coverage of events. It tells Our Olympic Games Spectator nothing. We can work out that WR stands for World Record but what is ‘a split’? Other strange codes and numbers come and go.

  The screen clocks show time-expired but not time-remaining which is useless for Our Games Spectator who does not know how long the ‘quarter’ or ‘half’ of the particular sport is. Nor how many innings there are, say, in baseball.

  The Games are a perfect example of where advertising has to be used judiciously; instead, it is used rapaciously and disruptively.

  It is a lurid warning about advertising and serious broadcasting.

  The Olympic Games coverage is a perfect example of where the ABC as the public service broadcaster should have natural, unchallenged rights to coverage.

  RULES AND PITFALLS: THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE

  We feel that we should lay down some rules about the intellectual life in Australia before it is all too late.

  We need to look at some feuds and discords which ride around the paddock of Australian intellectual life, often like fly-demented horses.

  So let us then put on our gumboots and thrash about in this muddy paddock and try to catch them.

  First, some working definitions.

  An intellectual is someone who tries to be aware of the processes and limitations of their own thinking. ‘An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself,’ said the French writer, Albert Camus.

  The intellectual engages in inquiry.

  Those who work in the production and distribution of knowledge we call the intelligentsia along with those who seek to influence public opinion by public activity.

  Politics and intellectuals

  Dramatisation of one’s position by, say, street demonstrations or political campaigning is not intellectual activity; it is not ‘inquiry’, as such. It is perhaps ‘displaying’ or pitching one’s ideas. Or polemics.

  These have a place in the grand scheme of things. We suppose. Although we were always a very uncomfortable demonstrator.

  John Maze used to have a demonstration banner saying ‘Yes’. A banner for all occasions. And at a pinch it could be interpreted as saying ‘Yes to life’.

  Politics may eventually lend itself to inquiry (say in the quiet of a university when retired prime ministers critically review the policies created while they were in power).

  Politics then is another activity, and worthwhile, even if it may be related in some ways to intellectual activity at odd contemplative moments.

  It can, sadly, also become anti-intellectual when it prevents people speaking, by censorship, by picketing and disrupting the intellectual activities of opponents. And by dismantling or handicapping those institutions perceived to be the source of contrary ideas or ‘wrong thinking’. And by sponsoring attitudes and behaviour which silence the opposition or interfere with the expression of their position.

  Those who observe politics, the uncommitted voters, may gain some intellectual value from the clash of political views even while those involved in the clash are not themselves involved in intellectual activity.

  That is, the observer can be intellectual but rarely the participant (at the time).

  That is why one doesn’t bother ‘arguing’ or ‘debating’ with one’s political opponents except as part of a public event which is, in fact, a display of positions.

  The expert and the compulsion to speak

  An expert is a professional specialist, someone who devotes their working life to the study of a subject, and is of high standing among others who do likewise. But an expert, while crucial to intellectual life, is not necessarily or always an intellectual.

  Sadly, those of intellectual inclination are not intellectual all the time.

  The media comes to the expert and says, ‘You are the expert, you must be able to tell us the answers.’

  The expert thinks, ‘Yes, I am the expert. I must have the answer.’

  And then feels compelled to ‘give an answer’.

  This is plainly the case with academic specialists.

  The most devastating example in recent years was when Oxford historian Hugh Trevor Roper ‘authenticated’ the Hitler Diaries which turned out to be faked.

  He claimed afterwards that he had insufficient time to make a final answer. Yet he felt compelled to have an answer.

  (This observation comes from Richard Jenkyns, a fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford).

  Specialists are also forever tempted beyond their expertise.

  Generational superiority

  There was a program run on the ABC called Timeframe.

  We use this only as one example in a widespread disorder.

  Timeframe was publicised as a 15-part series on Australian social history.

  The first episode had the intellectually embarrassing tone of, ‘Ho ho; what dumbos everyone was back in the 1950s’. The 1950s has been receiving much ridicule in recent years.

  It is used as shorthand for the Silly Old Australians of That Generation.

  And oh-how-out-there we are now.

  We have established a Friends of the Fifties Society to put this aright.

  So we see Australia’s relationship to the British Crown in the 1950s presented in Timeframe as ludicrous.

  A reviewer in the Sydney Morning Herald expresses this generational arrogance (and fallacy) when reviewing Timeframe.

  She says, ‘In three decades … Australians had moved from a child-like naiv
ety to a greater self-awareness.’

  Her comments also reflect the position of the program.

  But this program, and the reviewer, grant no political sophistication to the position about royalty held by people at that time.

  This misses very serious points.

  First, there were then, as there are now, a multiplicity of positions about royalty and the UK relationship.

  Second, the UK relationship was ‘functional’ for Australia for a long time; that is, in our interests, and also emotional because most of the people of Australia had living blood ties with the UK.

  Many saw themselves, quite correctly, as having dual allegiance.

  Much of the republican huffing and puffing (and conversely, some simple-minded pro-monarchists) seems ignorant of the ever-changing relationship between the UK and Australia. That is, we have been disengaging from the UK and headed towards a republic since 1842.

  In 1842, New South Wales and Tasmanian got their first elected legislatures and South Australia was promised self-government when its population reached 50,000.

  Every decade from then on saw disengagement in the relationship regardless of the coloration of the party in power.

  Political emotion in Australia, such as street crowds in the past gathering to see the Queen, or more recently, to see the then President Clinton, has always been fairly astute and enjoyable (and harmless) and has expressed and celebrated serious political feelings.

  The behaviour of those who took to the streets to welcome the Clinton visit expressed a serious political reality. And this was before he became the most famous sexual politician in history.

  And anyhow, who wouldn’t pack the streets to see a beautiful young queen. Many do during the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

  Left/Right/Left

  Let’s drop the use of the Left/Right categorisation as a way of dismissing a policy proposal. Or worse, as a factor in making decisions about people’s careers and appointments.

  The sanctimonious pseudo Left/Right loyalties do nothing but close down argument and bedevil the conversation of the intelligentsia (while not meaning anything to the average voter).

  It is the single most damaging vice in the conversation of the Australian intelligentsia. It still makes analytical conversation on political matters virtually impossible and it is utterly out of step with reality.

  Only the intelligentsia want to hold to the division – usually as a substitute for strong personal identity and nostalgia for the old socialism/capitalism debate.

  Left can only apply to those working for or desiring radical economic and political transformation of the society.

  Sure there are still Leftists around, but they are not in the mainstream debate at present.

  Gee whiz or soft rock truths

  These are those misapplied ‘truths’ from science and philosophy which are flitting around intellectual life at present.

  They are in the category of the truth from physics which shows that rocks are ‘soft’. That is, when pressure of even a human hand is applied to a rock, it imperceptibly ‘squashes’.

  But the rock is not soft when you kick it.

  Another example is the fashionable saying that when a butterfly flaps its wings in an Amazon forest, it changes the climate here in Australia. This is supposed to give us an appreciation of the delicate balance of the universe. One of the things we have learned is that the universe is far from delicate.

  Or the idea that every seven years, every cell in our body is renewed and that something follows from this in understanding our personality.

  Or that we all now have a molecule of Hitler in the makeup of our bodies. We don’t know what this is supposed to tell us. That we all have the capacity now to be Hitlers?

  Or that there are no ‘systems’; that underneath all matter is a nonstructure of chaos. This is supposed to either give us a moral holiday or lead us to a ‘deeper’ non-rational, mystical understanding of the nature of things.

  However, above whatever is happening at the molecular level, many ‘systems’ and arrangements and fixed patterns do operate (at least for long enough to matter to us tomorrow).

  Or that there are no ‘trends’ just expanding and contracting systems (Stephen Jay Gould in his book Life’s Grandeur).

  There are enough statistical ‘trends’ to be useful in everyday life even if they are part of an expanding system which may or may not be about to contract.

  Or the philosophical truth that through the act of observation, the observer always changes that which is observed. The glance of a mouse changes the universe. Yes, maybe, but in most cases, not enough to matter. Some mice are very, very good at observing without changing that which they observe at least, for what our father would call ‘all practical purposes’.

  Or that logically, there are no provable facts: everything is therefore a form of fiction. We have separated fact from fiction for centuries because we find it helps make life manageable. Who would you like to operate on your body, someone who had studied physiology or a surrealist painter such as Salvador Dali?

  That all personalities are slow burning fires: everything is in constant change and flux. Yes, but not fast enough for it to matter tomorrow. Or in some cases, not fast enough for our liking.

  There are two very fashionable primitive beliefs which people love to say.

  They are that for every advance in technology, the technology strikes back negating the advance or advantages of the technology.

  And that medical treatments and drugs always have unintended repercussions which cancel out their benefits. That antibiotics breed monster bacteria who are immune and put us at ever-increasing risk.

  The truth is that antibiotics have worked miracles for decades now and, with some exceptions, will continue to do so – in all probability. And those which cease to be effective will, in all probability, be replaced.

  Both these fashionable truths are primitivist thinking. They draw on the primitive believe that there is inexorable fate dooming us to eternal suffering and all our intelligence cannot escape it.

  Another dopey idea which resurfaces frequently is that it is sane to be paranoid. Paranoia is a clinically definable delusional state and is disruptive of mental life and behaviour. To be sceptical, to be suspicious in some circumstances, and to know when to be sceptical and when to be suspicious may be a sane posture but it is not paranoia.

  They imply that there is no point in trying to do anything long-term or rationally constructive when all these forces are arrayed against the human effort. Let’s get pissed.

  As everyday humans, we cannot perceive these philosophical or scientific truths nor do we live with these kinds of truths.

  As with Gould’s idea of there being no ‘progress’, these proclamations are not functional truths.

  There can be progressive patterns in any short-term set of factors, even the short term of a lifetime, which are useful to perceive and which can for a time be the basis of public or personal policy.

  For example, fewer people die of common ailments now than one hundred years ago because of improved sewer systems and water supply and immunisation.

  This may or may not continue, but for an important period of time for many millions of people, it mattered.

  We cannot live by imperceptible change.

  We live by short-term truths, useful collective hypotheses, functional imprecision, general statements which include important exceptions, suppositions accepted as working truths, acted upon, while held in doubt.

  The above fashionable and intriguing ‘truths’ may be conversationally amusing but they are of little use.

  We have to live with more mundane truths.

  As the American philosopher C.I. Lewis said, ‘There is no a priori reason for thinking that, when we discover the truth, it will prove interesting.’

  THE URGE TO CENSOR

  We at the Inspectorate had to rub our eyes with befuddlement.

  Befuddlement is not a state of mind with w
hich we here at the Inspectorate are overly familiar.

  It was as if we had been in a deep after-lunch sleep and had awoken – not some time in the future, but back in our more tumultuous past. Back in the seventies, no less.

  It was not an agreeable sensation: we are not up to returning to the seventies.

  But until 1972 Australia, along with Ireland, was the most censored Western country.

  This disagreeable sense of déjà vu was caused by growing evidence of a resurgence of the dreaded Urge to Censor.

  The internet panic, the re-establishment of federal and state censorship, racial vilification acts – all show us that the bitch is on heat again.

  The Urge is always propelled by ‘new’ concerns and is often a reflex of social panic.

  What is ‘new’ about the demands for censorship?

  The Canadian censorship law of 1992, which was the result of extremist feminist lobbying and does not represent most feminist thinking, is new.

  To put it simply, the Canadian law would censor material which, it is argued, would lead to the harming of women and would classify such material as a form of sexual discrimination.

  The harm was seen as essentially psychological in that it was argued that such material had a negative impact on an individual woman’s self-worth.

  But those of the pro-censorship feminist position also posit that some material leads to direct violence against women and when this material can be identified it should be banned. (There is a strong body of feminist argument against censorship; see the fine work, Bad Girls by Catharine Lumby, Allen and Unwin.)

  However, the Canadian legislation went ahead regardless of the absence of an established relationship between published material and dangerous behaviour. A relationship which never can be established (see below).

  ‘Psychological damage’ is a slippery concept, anyhow.

  The so-called ‘correlation studies’ were nicely dismissed by Jay Garfield in Quadrant. ‘Nothing in the correlation studies eliminates the overwhelmingly plausible tertium quid hypothesis [a third thing, indefinite and undefined, related in some way to two definite or known things, but distinct from both]: given that two phenomena are correlated, it may be that they are each effects of a common cause and … The fact that virtually all the paedophiles in the Chicago police study were raised as Christians does not implicate Christianity as a cause of paedophilia.’