Artist Robert Bosler is Webdiary’s commentator on the significance of Mark Latham. His work includes Time for Labor to play to win, not just play safe, An artist’s blueprint for a Latham win and Why is Latham alarming?

 

What is our world built on? Is it built on science? Is it built on politics? Is it built on religion? What is central to all these aspects of the human condition? What is the one, irrevocable central point upon which we can all agree?

It is that the world is built upon ideas. Nothing began in this world that did not begin first as an idea.

We are born into this physical world, but do we understand it? Understanding our physical world has always been admitted as subjective. Studies of this world begin with an assumption – an idea – and processes are devised towards finding more about it.

This process is akin to throwing a blanket over some of the stars, saying �this is our starting point� and then embarking on the discovery of what that blanket holds. The end result is a declaration saying �This is what our world is like�. From this knowledge we then build the world we live in. But always there is uncertainty because it all began with an assumption, a limited frame of starting points. We have no definitive or absolute certainty about this physical place in which we live. We are, in reality, continually creating our own existence.

A small number of citizens whose ideas are regarded as exceptional, brilliant, and world changing. The bulk of our citizens accept the world as something they cannot change – and yet if only they knew the power of that idea about the world!

Our suburbs are full of people whose idea of the world is “I have limited if not no power in changing the world”, but in fact their idea of it is what has given them, and everyone else, that world in the first place! Imagine if the world were full of citizens with brilliant, world changing ideas! There would be mayhem. The world is balanced and stable to the extent it is because of the stability which exists in the suburban mind.

Our world is a direct reflection of the combined effects of everyone�s ideas. The purpose of education and learning is to unlock constraints and allow people to know more about how they can utilise the the power of their own ideas about how they see the world. We can change the world by changing our ideas about it.

We are all born into the world as travellers on the road of life, down through the ages, none of us with absolute certainty about the road we are on, nor any road for that matter, except certainties we choose ourselves. As citizens of the world we’ve been given a free ticket to create it any way we want.

So what sort of world do we want? We can have it all. If we want, we can have it all.

Do we want, for instance, a world where people are at war? Do we want a world of peace? We can have anything we like, it is just a matter of where we put our resources. The idea of travellers on the road of life killing fellow travellers is repulsive to some, or crazy, stupid, a waste, and terribly sad. To others, the idea of war is exciting and valuable. Who is to say who�s idea is the better? No one can with certainty. But we can say for sure that we have the choice. It�s all about what we want.

We in Australia are uniquely positioned to change the world we live in. There is no other country possessing the distinct qualities we have. Let�s look at our place.

Beneath us is the oldest land in the world.

Why are we given this privilege? What gifts are written into this? Where do we get the answers? It starts with an idea.

The idea we can embrace if we want is that we are given this privilege because Australia is destined to take a place as a leader on the world stage.

We are born onto the oldest soil in the world because we have an inherent privilege to respect and honour our place of specialness and to, from that place, lead the world. No other people can say it. Australians can.

Don’t like the idea? Don’t think it can happen? Then it won’t. If you do like the idea, then it can.

We’re young

All the great civilisations of the world enormous roots embedded back through time. Each of these cultures have produced tremendous gifts to humanity, of arts, sciences, sport, and other treasures. But each of those cultures has, along with their priceless gifts, an anchor holding them back. Just as those tremendous historical roots have brought forth those gifts, so too do they anchor those civilisations to their past. They cannot escape from it.

Australia does not have that bind. Settled Australia is only two hundred years old. This is a blink in the eye and not long enough to form roots of burden. But we can relate to it all and freely create our nation as we want.

Our country is in the unique position of being able to choose from all those other great civilisations any gifts we want. We can take the gifts, embrace them, and use those gifts for our benefit. We can look at it all and choose for ourselves what qualities we want, without the binding or limiting negatives that go along with it.

As a developed nation we have already done so. We have chosen many of those treasures of humanity. Not only have we taken them, we have excelled with them. Our advances in medicine, sport and the arts are already leading the world.

So the idea of working towards a position of world leadership is real. Let�s not confuse world leadership with world domination. There is a dearth of true leadership in the world now, not that it comes along often anyway, so we need to be careful not to misunderstand what leadership really is. Leadership represents a place where citizens of the world are all yearning at some level to go to.

What we’d need to do first

We must discover more about this awesome place in which we live and love. Have we really started to fully understand where we live? We have enjoyed it; have we really bitten in to really know it?

Our peoples here are ancient. Yet again we strike world rarity and human gold. We mentioned great historical cultures but do we consider what we have right here? Our own people blitz them all in longevity. Outright, unequivocal, stand alone, world leaders. Our very own people have walked the earth the longest; their culture the most ancient. Let�s imagine for a moment what tremendous forces must have been bearing down on our Aboriginal people through those thousands upon thousands of years. They survived. That alone is a gulp stopper. But they prospered, and their culture sang with the joy of success.

These rare qualities are big things going down. Have we ignored it? Have we harmed it? Do we want to heal it and embrace it? How do we take it further?

May contributors take the ball from here. If you’ve taken this idea for the first time, that Australia is precious, privileged, and unique, and can move forward into a greater place as a leading light on the world stage, and it moves something in you, you are needed right now. Take the ball and go. Do what you feel you must. Australia has the chance of moving forward at this moment in our national history.

The following is one afternoon�s offering of ideas to contribute to the way forward, towards reaching and honouring our destiny.

We will not achieve our destiny if we remain separate from our own people. The world will never respect us if we do not achieve reconciliation. There was never a conciliation in our national history, and we’ve been barking up the wrong tree trying to attempt Reconciliation. There�s been nothing to reconcile. We haven’t yet discovered what our Aboriginal people are all about. We don’t even know who we are dealing with. Let�s abandon the term Reconciliation for the misleading thing it is and start afresh on a whole new exciting path of discovery. Let us seek conciliation.

Our Aboriginal peoples� make up is entirely different from ours. They operate differently, think and feel in different ways, see the world from a different place. Their culture is a magical culture, built on relationship of matters of an internal nature. Settled Australia has matured enough to put aside our own view of life and to begin to discover the philosophical depths of Aboriginal life. Trying to make them like us is nothing short of cruel. But we can merge philosophical benefits from each of our ways and let each culture live enriching one another, crossing and joining where it wants, remaining free and pure where it wants. Of course this will take time, but the end result is brilliance. Let us set our goal at nothing less.

If you were born in another country, and looked upon these great gifts and privileges that only Australia has, wouldn’t you want to see them driving the highest standards possible for their appreciation within that privileged country? What would you think of a country that ignored them? We are brilliant and successful, leading the world already in so many ways, why not set brilliant conciliation and cultural celebration as our national goal?

How do we discover what our Aboriginal people are about? Perhaps a good place to start is to stop, sit down, and listen to them. This listening can happen anywhere, but the nation must hear it. What we learn must resonate through our daily lives. This discovery must be one of excitement and pleasure, so the journey of discovery itself is rewarding.

Maybe settled Australia needs to learn that we see our land as something separate from us. Maybe we need to learn that our Aboriginal people walk through and engage the land as a part of who they are; that they are walking through their own being, as distinct from being a tourist in it. Maybe if we sat down with them, and listened, we could learn how and why they see the world that way. Maybe we will benefit beyond belief in embracing some of these valuable philosophies and using them in practical solutions for all our welfare.

Maybe the joy of national discovery, of listening, of respecting the Aboriginal culture will inspire them, too. Nothing binds a people more joyously than the shared sweat of effort towards a common goal. Of course we can do it. We just have to want to.

Embracing our own people, bringing them into our lives, and going into theirs and enriching ourselves by all of this achieves not only a rich and magical and practically benefited Australia – it sends a powerful message to the world about how it is done. We did not fight, we did not demand, we sat down and listened. We learned.

What message would this send to the world?

Achieving conciliation between Settled Australia and Aboriginal Australia would send bullets of human brightness into the hearts of nations around the world. The international community would warm to us as a nation that got it right.

In embarking on our journey of conciliation we would learn more about what we loosely term the environment. We may come to understand that the environment is not something that happens to us, or that we do to it: that the environment and our own lives are wholesome as one, an organism of life. Imagine feeling that the natural world resonated within your very own being, rather than feeling like you are a tourist in it! How would this feeling change Settled Australian�s ideas and choices in life? How rich would be the feeling that your life is as one with the world around you.

Even slight policy changes that embraced this sense of wholesomeness in legislative matters of the environment shift the balance more towards our sustainability as a life form. Even slight changes alter attitudes and awareness, which lead in turn to the celebration of protecting our environment in all we do. Environmental respect becomes a sexy subject. The world must learn how to better manage our living with the natural world. We have the world�s teachers, the culture of philosophical success in achieving that, right here in our Australian Aborigine.

We would need a change of government if any of the above is to occur. We would need a government that has faith in our strengths, faith in our ability to freely embrace others, and faith in the value of ideas and the value of conciliation.

We would need a government that not only understood the need for trust, but understood that trust is an integral part of anyone�s desire to grow, and of the natural creative process – the process at the heart of everything we do. It would need to be a government that actually dealt in trust, if it could not go the distance to nurture it.

Strangely, a government that dealt in trust would, in the end, have less of an impact on our lives because it would recede into the background as we got on with the stuff of life that we each want to get stuck into.

Government criticism brings the government to the fore, daily, in everything we do, and is terribly distracting from what could be a smoother path of prosperity. Diminishing this criticism by having a government dealing more in trust – by trusting trust – shifts the focus of the national mind onto areas of government action that will provide greater national prosperity. It�s a win win situation for everyone. Even to get back to the days of some allaying of trust by a government would help, but this total ruination of it is not on. If only a government were brave enough to trust even more in trust. But then again, we have to demand it, we have to want it. Have we spoken loudly enough?

It is a matter of our self respect as much as anything. Do we continue to bend over and take it? Let us speak up, and clearly make it known what we want.

To arrive at our destiny, we need a government that did not govern to govern, but one that governed to lead. To lead is to grow, and growth requires faith and trust, and allows for failures along the way, knowing that admitting to failures is an important part of growth. We need a government of vision. We need a government brave enough to listen.

We need a government that understood that in growing there will be dissenting voices, and that these voices are precious and valuable to the process of growth, and that they must be listened to and embraced. To attempt to banish those voices is to turn from our destiny. No one can be denied.

We do not know for sure if we have any or all of these requirements in a Latham Government. We do know for sure we don’t have even one of them with Howard.

Perhaps also we need to answer questions of national self image. Questions of an Australian sovereign state, and our national flag, remain unanswered and unattended. Could it be that by walking the path of conciliation with and learning from our Aboriginal people we will arrive at a place where we do all want to celebrate our unique, natural, national identity? Are we shying away from standing alone on a world stage heralding our own identity because deep down we don’t feel we deserve it? Could it be that joyously moving towards discovery and conciliation with our peoples will give us this national self esteem?

Perhaps we also need to re-engage our international neighbourhood, presenting ourselves more as a nation of goodwill. A nation of goodwill is more accurately what the true Australia is.

Are these big issues to attend to? Yes. What does it take to achieve them? Only that we want to.

It is a great and privileged nation, ours. We have an unrelenting demand to lead in many things we choose internationally to do, and we have this fabulously laid back take it all on style. Somehow we have combined these national traits in a way that is not contradictory, but complementary.

An Australian leader would be bloody dangerous if he or she had the unrelenting need to lead. Perhaps it is time to realise the Australian psyche is sophisticated. Part of the nature of the Australian sophistication is that we don’t see ourselves that way. The makeup of our psyche precludes this, which protects us from arrogance.

Still don’t think Australia can achieve this position as a world leader, or should?

Is a true world leader an economic feastfest lusting after, and with a track record of, using a grotesquely disproportionate degree of all the world�s resources so that the world�s natural resources will be ruined beyond repair in fifty years? Do you think the vast rest of the world wants and respects this?

What are your ideas about what the world really wants as a leading light for the long years ahead?

If your idea of a true world leader is a nation built on the world�s oldest land, having found peace with itself, having faced the fears of discovering its own identity and celebrated that achievement, having learned from its own – the world�s oldest – people, there is only one place in the world that can do it.

Australia.

The privilege and the opportunity has been given to us. Do we want to honour the privileges and take the opportunity?

If we do, we know already, by even just making that choice in our minds and empowered by our willing hearts, that we can make it happen. Our first big opportunity to stand for this choice is just months away. Take the moment now, if you feel it, to speak up on your idea for how you want your world to be.