HEAT AND PRESSURE

This article is published in the Summer Penthouse AU… [ read it here ]

Liberty is an eccentricity of human order. Our natural inclination is to rebel against anarchy and seek safety under the shelter of rules. We function best when these are backed by threat and rewarded with riches. This is the basic root between religion, politics and philosophy – the careless smear that blurs the three structures of civilisation together. We bend between these, battered by all manner of external force. War. Disaster. Surplus. Exploration. Find me a political system that does not dream of utopia while wrestling with the ever-closing reality of dystopia. One is impossible – the other, probable.

Posted on January 20, 2020February 16, 2020 by ellymelly 0

THE ECHO OF PEACE

We must never become echoes of each other…

Indoctrination enforces unity by crafting a cage of whispers. History has practised this art and found coercion to be censorship’s silk glove – allowing it to touch every part of our lives without leaving fingerprints. Confined to this intangible prison, liberty curls up to die. In time, what is left unsaid becomes unthought until we guard our contrary opinions on behalf of powerful people. That is how social politics works. It is a slow burn that starts with language and ends in unyielding ink.

By ‘powerful people’ I mean those who treat democracy as a formality. Any politician who disregards the ballot box for the sake of ‘what’s best’ is an authoritarian in waiting. This elite moral veneer are often fans of collectivism, better known as the practice of subduing individuals into voting clumps that fit nicely on a spreadsheet. Marxist university lecturers may applaud this as a modern education, but obediently reciting dogma puts civilisation at risk of obliging dangerous ideas. It is a game we have seen up-scaled by an organisation that subverts the sovereignty of nations by selling its membership like overpriced hotel rooms.

I speak of the United Nations, which has completed its transformation into a gilded palace of closed doors, whose members are loosely connected by matching key-cards and a place at the breakfast buffet. Indiscretions are erased with a generous tip and like the sanctuaries of the Middle Ages, even the genocidal can take their drinks at the bar beside terrified victims. Based on Secretary General Guterres’ panicked bleating, this monstrosity faces imminent death via spiralling credit card debt. On the off chance that it survives, we might consider weighing its soul while we have it on the scaffold.

Uniting the world’s nations was always an aspiration rather than a reality. By polishing off Immanuel Kant’s ‘Perpetual Peace’, the underpinning philosophy manages to shine in the marketing print, but in the real world it remains as dead as a display of bones at the Smithsonian. I find it eerie watching the United Nations stalk through these exhibits of failed politics, threatening to elaborate on the mistakes of its predecessor, The League of Nations, which is occupying a nearby glass box.

The problem sits with their shared backbone. There is an untruth wandering around that humanity is in possession of absolutes. Coherent moral purity is a luvvie idealism elevated so far above subliminal culture that it threatens global security. If you pick off the fiction, humans have only one thing in common and that is their desire to disagree. Neither people nor the nations they construct are capable of maintaining unified ideas. Religion, philosophy and politics all attempt to round off our edges but irreconcilable difference remains the principal reason the world divides itself into countries and then extends limbs out into like-minded alliances. The world is at its best when we remain diverse and allow a combination of commerce and power to hold steady the ground that gapes between.

Anyone who attempts to unify this collection of opposed forces will finish with either a victor presiding over violence – or shattered pieces of civilisation, further apart than when they started. The energy required to forcibly hold unwilling nations together is directly proportional to how much cleaning up will be required at the end. After all, it was only an environment of post-traumatic shock from global war that coerced nations into delusions of utopia, our leaders having forgotten that you should never make hasty decisions after an argument.

Collapse is inevitable. The instability lies within the countries themselves. Democratic power is a tepid endorsement and no one enjoys watching it usurped behind closed doors. Western countries like Australia operate on the premise that citizens have power over the laws that govern them. This expectation forms the foundation of parliament. Politicians are the elected tools by which these laws are decided and the courts – the chisels setting them in stone. If laws become unjust, citizens elect new politicians to edit or destroy them. This back and forward motion breathes steadily inside the ribcage of a functioning civilisation. We are autonomous, self-correcting and evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

Lord Jonathan Sumption, a former justice of the UK’s Supreme Court, describes the expansion of treaty into sovereignty as, ‘law’s expanding empire’ where international courts have made a habit of replacing our custom and convention with their unwelcome opinion. His argument continues that this new type of law has become invasive rather than protective – that it meddles in social matters and caresses the exposed neck of liberty.

However undesirable, enforcing unpopular law is easier than chasing the coveted notion of ‘world peace’. There are different types of peace – free, forced and indifferent. Tyrannies represent a failure of freedom in favour of perceived calm and are exceedingly difficult to escape. When power is assumed instead of given, the people find themselves super-glued to subservience. Communism, Socialism, Theocracies – these are all types of government that rule in their own interest. Democracies sit on the vulnerable fringes because they afford people the choice to downgrade to slavery at the ballot box.

In addition to being a doomed failure of concept, the United Nations and its accompaniment of treaties represent a perversion of peace. It is a faux democracy of nations, more than half of whom practice despotism at home, attempting to control the squabbles of sparrows with vague threats of sanction. This is an ignorance of reality. Powerful countries always have the means to wage war and small countries always fear annihilation. Real power comes from a nation’s threat of violence while unshakable alliances are built on the personal relationships of their people, not treaties destined for the shredder.

Countries inevitably outgrow the reach of global diplomacy and anyone cuffed to a chair at the United Nations is forced to watch potential conflict brew while having genuine fears vetoed by rising powers. Australia is caught in the mess, unable to form meaningful alliances while also the focus of petty geopolitical vengeance. Despite what leaders preach, there is nothing noble about surrendering your country to the whim of its neighbours. Certainly nothing virtuous.

If we want to survive the century with our identity intact, we should peck at the locks and make a break for freedom before this overpriced globalist theatre collapses under the weight of its echoes. There are no refunds on offer and our friends are outside hailing cabs.

As for peace, you won’t find it here.

This is the last article for 2019. If you like my work, consider shouting me a coffee over on Ko-Fi.

Posted on December 16, 2019 by ellymelly 0

PREDATORY VIRTUE

It is an accusation often made that I live in Triassic Park. In the spirit of fairness towards my critics, I have dredged up some circumstantial evidence to support their claim.

As it turns out, my world presents as a construct of dangerous creatures that prey on anything stupid enough to ignore the curfew of nightfall. Spiders with weight sufficient to tweet have spanned my laptop in violation of natural law. Their brethren net our driveway with four metre webs, hanging at their centres like Christmas decorations. More than once I’ve wrestled bats mid-flight using my shirt as protection only to find myself staring down a diamond python moments later who I’ve discovered, rather inconveniently, to be in possession of the front door. Barefoot, shirtless and carrying a slightly dented laptop, I’ve come to accept that this is what the hierarchy of life looks like on a farm – midnight negotiations over disputed territory, resolved via long stares.

The business environment in Australia is much the same. There is a pool of prey near the kitchen, omnivores clustered in the wake of a shonky aircon and managerial apex predators left to circulate the boardroom depths. Open plan offices make it possible to watch social carnage play out over the corpse of a coffee machine usually followed by the micro-aggressions of a poorly drafted email. These feeding frenzies die away as each co-worker resolves their part and recedes to the safety of a desk, licking wounds or parading their victory with a wry post-it note. In amongst this deafening violence, the human menagerie manages to produce an extraordinary amount of high-quality work.

At least, they used to. In 2019 everyone’s too busy worrying about the colour of their fins and the shape of each other’s scales to notice profit margins sinking into the silt. The exposed bones of mysteriously lost peers are mistaken for bleached outcrops of coral prompting someone in marketing to glue themselves to the nearest flat surface.

The removal of conflict has ushered in the slaughter of creativity. Humans solve problems via robust debate commonly known as ‘arguing’. We’re excellent at it and the whole process of shouting profanities in service of success is healthy for the business world. Platitudes, empty smiles and ‘Yes-Persons’ get our fledgling ideas absolutely nowhere. Let’s face reality: if the office burns down in the time it takes to fill out a risk assessment, the procedure has probably failed its primary function.

Not so long ago, business was going swimmingly, riding the glittery tail of 90s optimism. Then it collided with Generation Snowflake… Hatched in the impenetrable reeds of university, they entered the office environment and immediately baulked as their inexperienced arses were sent to the back of the evolutionary queue. Instead of learning something in the shallows they reverted to toddler antics, kicking up sand until their parents sued businesses into dismantling office culture.

Rather than entrenching these kids in the filing cabinet for eight months of penance, the fragile roe were allowed to turn offices into wastelands of Woke. Now here we are, years later, with an ocean full of chlorine. These clear waters have revealed the metallic innards of our sardine can where vacant-eyed snacks are reflected printing out the nearest rainforest. You never see the senior management – their problematic knowledge is locked away so as not to frighten the fingerlings. Experienced staff members that used to make poor music choices on the shared sound system during beer-Friday remain silent behind their desks where they allow mistakes to spiral into disasters because a confrontation of ideas is worse than a solution that hurts feelings. It’s a diverse, box-ticking mess.

The sequel to this psychological horror is predictable. If you’re thinking of piranhas and the murk of an Amazonian river – you’re following my drift. Meanwhile, staff trapped inside the goldfish bowl of 14th Century social regulation are left to snap at each other. Rules that allowed Snowflakes to climb disproportionate to their skill now invariably impale Woke-lings on the exposed hooks left behind.

Don’t panic; the tide is turning. The generation rumbling beneath the Snowflakes are displaying signs of upheaval. Enduring a decade of insufferable peers has undone all the hard work of Marxist mentors. Soon, the politically correct veneer will find itself bookended by two generations who have no time for intersectional triggers.

I shall leave you now, sitting in the fading light. While I map out plans for an evening of arachnid murdering, perhaps it’s time for Australia’s boardrooms to batten down the hatches and crack out a bottle of gin. It’s going to be a long night of painful hashtags and faux offense before the fishing improves.

Posted on November 28, 2019 by ellymelly 1