Taking up Rod's contribution, and playing with it...see
reworded "Imagine" song at end of this wordy warble.
PERMISSION GRANTED TO IMAGINE
A read of Eric Wolf's "Europe and the peoples without history"
(was that the title?) - especially the chapters on devastation
of Africa by slavery - is sufficient to pose the question
"What makes this possible?"
Unlike Wolf i don't accept that a Marxist analysis answers
that question.
I keep being returned, in my own thinking, to the fundamental
role played by the image of life people have. For Marxists,
this is merely an element of the superstructure and therefore
of secondary importance to the workings of an economic
infrastructure.
I find the answers they derive by this approach leave too much
of real importance unaccounted for. And that without getting a
handle on these residuals, we fail to grasp the objective
situation in a way which would (maybe) move us in a direction
of turning those dreadful forces off.
Hence - at this stage of my own investigations i find that the
image of which one part of life has of itself is an extremely
useful device to grapple with complex systems which, in their
entirety, defy conceptualisation.
My own mix of semiotics and fractal imaging, combined with a
play of imagination, frees me from the going-nowhere-ness of
20th century social science.
SOME QUESTIONS
What image of life arrived in Australia in 1788? What image of
life it is reasonable to say (on the basis of what we know
today) was already here prior to 1788? How do these two relate
or fail to relate?
What are the ongoing consequences - especially in regard to
solving some of lifes problems here? Does the present system
of governance have the potential to solve those problems?
Is 'Canberra' a ritual centre for the continued production of
an image of life which is ill fitting for Australian
realities?
Is that crucial ritual document, the Constitution, fashioned
according to specifications of an image of life which will
ensure that the whole of life will be able to live fully or
does it contain (in its unconscious messages) a life design
which is destructive of life outside of a subset of those who
hold a very partial image of life (and, ultimately,
destructive of them as well)?
These are questions of vital importance.
ENGLISH TRIBE LOST ITS HEAD
My concerns are with the Australian situation and with the
vectors which came together in European life to produce the,
gee, i dunno, the words fail me, appalling process of
colonisation. Of understanding how it was possible for
'reasonable' people - decent people even, within their own
terms of reference - to be a position to treat First Peoples
in such a way.
I see British consciousness as being unearthed. They are the
tribe which lost its head, when the severed the link between
the body of society and lifes transcendental dimensions.
Cutting the head off the king elevated English Gentlemen (by
1688) into the position of law makers, in lieu of a law which
derived from very different sources and travelled across
generations.
So unconstrained, they fashioned the law to suit themselves.
No wonder life was a mess a hundred years later in 1788.
ENGLAND IN CONTEXT
The English experiment in life is, admittedly, part of a wider
and longer process which reaches back to the 'spread' to Indo-
European ways into the lives of others, and before that a
European 'neolithic' stage which made the 'spread' of Indo-
European possible.
Looking at things from this perspective, the moment at which
one group of people renounce a belief in transubstantiation is
a crucial disappearing or vanishing point of a long tradition
which reaches back into the common ground between the West and
First Peoples.
The contrast provided by Quiros and Governor Phillip
highlights the two sides of this vanishing point. Both images,
no doubt, surrounded by chaos as you rightly demonstrate. But
striking figures for all that, as fractal images of a more
complex system.
OPENING UP THE IMAGINATION
Is there a problem with imagining what would have happened if
Europeans arrived in Australia and regarded it as the land of
the Holy Spirit? How would such arrivals relate to the
original peoples and their countries?
How very different this would be to the arrival of an
expedition which didn't care where it was going, provided it
solved England's problems with overcrowded jails.
I have found that Christians generally (maybe they are non-
Catholic, i dunno) have a sort of blockage when it comes to
considerations of a Holy Spirit. They seem to lock onto the
figure of Christ and ignore that other less tangible part of
the image.
Is it possible to seek something of a Holy Spirit in the
Dreamings which pervade the Australian countryside? Are there
people who can make this leap? I don't know much about Rainbow
Theology, but my guess is that it heads off in this direction.
I doubt if many of those who have had an Anglo-Australian
State school education will be very well placed to ever
stumble upon this possibility, nor those whose daily diet is
provided by the mainstream media.
The only higher messages which they have been prepared for is
as consumers of advertising messages - commerce in the trade
of fetish objects expropriated from others is the formula at
work in this system of semiotic production. Lifes higher
messages are stripped from such products.
HARD TO SEE SYSTEM WHEN IT PROVIDES THE FRAMEWORK
The workings of the Anglo-Australian system(s) strive to
present themselves as 'natural'. It is fine for leading
cricketers to be endorsing Nike every time they go to bat.
What's wrong with that?
It is extremely difficult for people within this system of
signification to see the system and to realise that there are
other ways.
One method of seeing the relentless workings of this imported
system of signification (apart from what our dreams tell us
regularly) is to exercise our imaginations. This is a
completely valid means of opening up a space for the messages
of this country to come into your life.
We do not need official permission - in this former penal
colony of the mind - to do so. The cell doors of our minds
have been unlocked for some time, they just require us to give
them a nudge from the inside. I guess that is the shift from a
'modern' to a 'post-modern' perspective.
Anglo-Australia has been constructed like an enormous prison
farm - the Constitution is that of a conceptual prison, as are
the institutions it imposes on our lives. Isn't that right,
Guv?
Permission to imagine has been granted by a higher authority.
Life itself. We never conceded the loss of this right, even
though some have tried to remove our thinking and our feeling
parts.
YOU MIGHT SAY I AM A DREAMER
Now, about this preamble and constitution business. How does
that song you suggested go again? Music by John Lennon.
C Cmaj7 F ...
(Solo voice)
Imagine sacred country,
Its easy if you try
Respectfully relating
to sea and earth and sky
Imagine all the peoples
one loving family, a-haa
(Come in Songlines choir...)
Imagine living countries...
It isn't hard to do
(and etc)
Bruce
27 February 1999
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