Belief

Good things today:

1. Aus­tralia grants asylum to Chinese defector, dip­lo­mat Chen Yonglin

2. G8 for­give debt, make token noises about cli­mate change and AIDS

I spend a fair bit of time com­plain­ing and cri­tiquing and ana­lys­ing. I don’t often talk about what I do believe in.

I’m intrigued by my reac­tion to some­thing Blair said about “defend­ing our way of life”. I do believe in liberty. I do value a whole lot of things about “our” cul­ture (I guess mean­ing West­ern cul­ture, because this is most def­in­itely not a dis­cus­sion about national bor­ders or patrot­ism). I was think­ing this morn­ing that I value being able to go down to my local café as a single woman and have brunch on my own with a news­pa­per, pay for it with money I earnt by myself work­ing using my brain and return in com­fort to my home where I live on my own. I didn’t have to ask a man’s per­mis­sion to do any of that. I didn’t have to get someone to chap­er­one me for fear of my life as a lone woman walk­ing in the streets. 

I value being able to write this and not fear I will be locked up – yet (that fear is one that has been grow­ing in me in Aus­tralia as our “secur­ity” pro­vi­sions slowly erode these freedoms I value). So… and this is inter­est­ing… ter­ror­ism *is* suc­ceed­ing in erod­ing our “way of life”. It’s not about the number of people killed in indi­vidual incid­ents. It’s about cre­at­ing a cul­ture of fear and about polit­ical reac­tions to that fear that change this soci­ety into some­thing else, into a cul­ture of sus­pi­cion where dis­sent is not cel­eb­rated but rather is whispered in dark corners.

I don’t believe in rep­res­ent­at­ive demo­cracy. I des­pair over what so many do with the freedoms they are gran­ted in the West: the free­dom to spend a for­tune on plastic sur­gery and women’s magazines, and fancy cars and worse. But that’s not just the West: that’s the rich every­where. Look at the Saudis.

I do believe in col­lab­or­at­ive, par­ti­cip­at­ory demo­cracy (a.k.a anarcho-syn­dic­al­ism), and at the same time I am inspired by the rhet­oric of 19th cen­tury French revolu­tion­ary lib­er­als some­times – liberté, égal­ité, fra­tern­ité! – but I can’t help but feel that Amer­ica and Europe and so many others foun­ded on these 19th cen­tury ideals have com­pletely lost the plot, so when they mobil­ise some of these con­cepts and I feel that weird sense of pride swell­ing in me that I guess is some bas­tard cousin to pat­ri­ot­ism, I feel dis­gus­ted with myself for fall­ing for it. 

And yet… and yet… hon­esty, integ­rity, liberty, respect, col­lectiv­ity, human rights. These are things I value. Are they worth *fight­ing* for? What would I do to “defend” my way of life?