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Re: [ProgSoc] Have you registered to vote yet?



John Elliot wrote:
98. Pleasure and social instinct. -- From his relations with other men, man adds a new species of 'pleasure' to those pleasurable sensations he derives from himself; whereby he significantly enlarges the domain of pleasurable sensations in general. Perhaps he has already inherited much that has its place here from the animals, who plainly feel pleasure when they play with one another, especially the mothers with the young. Then consider sexual relations, through which more or less every female appears interesting to every male with regard to the prospect of pleasure, and the reverse. To feel sensations of pleasure on the basis of human relations on the whole makes men better; joy, pleasure, is enhanced when it is enjoyed together with others, it gives the individual security, makes him good-natured, banishes distrust and envy: for one feels a sense of well-being and sees that others are likewise feeling a sense of well-being. 'Similar expressions of pleasure' awaken the fantasy of empathy, the feeling of being like something else: the same effect is produced by common sufferings, by experiencing bad weather, dangers, enemies in common. It is no doubt upon this that the oldest form of alliance is based: the sense of which is that to act together to ward off and dispose of a threatening displeasure is of utility to each individual. And thus the social instinct grows out of the feeling of pleasure.
I posted the above, as obviously that's what I think about the function 
of smoking. Smoking is 'glue' that binds society together. Smokers cut 
across the socio-economic spectrum. They have diverse cultures, genders, 
sexual preferences, genes, wealth, professions, status, etc. Smoking is 
a ritual wherein participants migrate to common social spaces to cast 
off their roles for a few minutes, and take some time to "be" in their 
life, as a human, with their own human "weakness", and with others. They 
take some time out, they think, and they reflect; they relax and stop 
worrying. Smoking spaces are the social equivalent of the office "water 
cooler". They are where people, "strangers", from diverse walks of life 
come together from time to time to be "equal". That's important, because 
if it weren't for smoking these people *wouldn't* come together and 
share in a spirit of equality. They talk, they're friendly, and they 
spread good will. They share an implicit "bond", and you find the 
teachers share it with the students, the boss shares it with the junior 
employee, the owner shares it with the customer, the rich people share 
it with the poor people, and so on. Smoking is a social equaliser; it 
facilitates and sustains an egalitarian culture.
Smoking is almost exclusively about that. In some ways it's a deeply 
personal activity, but in other ways it's a deeply social activity. The 
fact that it's addictive, or that it *might* (but probably won't) lead 
to serious health sufferance later in life is a tiny price to pay, in 
consideration of the quality of life that it delivers. Quality in the 
intangible ways that can not be measured, and that need to be 
experienced to be understood or appreciated.
Running a "social experiment" to destroy this aspect of culture, or to 
alienate those people who participate in it, is a Really Bad Idea (TM).
As the themes of this thread have been the "2007 federal election", and 
"smoking", let me unify those themes with Yet Another Citation. This 
time from Mark Latham, the former leader of the ALP who lost the 
election to Howard in 2004 (he was that little "bleep" that happened 
there while we were shipping troops off to Iraq).
The excerpt is below, but first I might as well plug the book. The book, 
The Latham Diaries, is a collection of Mark Latham's diary entries as 
kept during his political life. They chart his decent into 
disillusionment with the ALP and the Australian political process. In 
the end Latham spat the dummy, and washed his hands of politics all 
together, publishing this work as a rather controversial "exit 
statement". Australians should read it. Here's what he had to say about 
the state of Australian society in May 2005:
The Sick Society
----------------

It would be a mistake, however, to position these issues solely within the realm of politics. Problems of apathy and disengagement are not restricted to our democracy; they are a defining feature of modern society. If families and communities are falling apart, if people feel alienated and empty in their relationships with others, if the bonds of social trust and support are weak, it is hardly surprising that our political parties are dominated by oligarchies.
Without a strong base of social capital, it is relatively easy for a 
small group of people to control and manipulate the political system -- 
they simply fill the gap left by the paucity of public participation and 
community activism. History tells us this is how hierarchies of power 
are established and sustained. The weakness of our democracy is a 
function of the sickness of society.
Traditionally, Left-of-Centre parties have tried to achieve their goals 
for social justice by tackling various forms of economic disadvantage. 
Today, however, the biggest problems in society, the things that cause 
hardship and distress for people, tend to be relationship-based -- 
social issues, not economic. The paradox is stunning: we live in a 
nation with record levels of financial growth and prosperity, yet also 
with record levels of discontent and public angst. The evidence is all 
around us, in:
 - the extraordinary loss of peace of mind in society, evident in 
record rates of stress, depression and mental illness
 - the breakdown in basic relationships of family and community, 
generating new problems of loneliness and isolation in Australia. The 
traditional voluntary and mutual associations of community life have all 
but disappeared, replaced by home fortresses and gated housing estates
 - the appalling incidence of crimes against family and loved ones: 
sexual assault, domestic violence and the sickness of child abuse
 - the spillover of these problems onto the next generation of young 
Australians, in the form of street crime, drug and alcohol abuse and 
youth suicide
A striking aspect of this phenomenon has been the way in which it has 
affected all parts of society, regardless of their economic standing. 
Poor communities, after several generations of long-term unemployment 
and financial disadvantage in Australia, now fact the further challenge 
of social disintegration, a loss of self-esteem and solidarity. Thirty 
years ago, these communities were financially poor but socially rich. 
Today they face poverty on both fronts.
While the middle class in Australia has experienced the assets and 
wealth of an unprecedented economic boom, its social balance sheet has 
moved in the opposite direction. The treadmill of work and the endless 
accumulation of material goods have not necessarily made people happier. 
In many cases, they have denied them the time and pleasures of family 
life, replacing strong and loving social relationships with feelings of 
stress and alienation.
This is the savage trade-off of middle-class life: generating financial 
wealth but at a significant cost to social capital. Thus social 
exclusion needs to be understood as more than just financial poverty; it 
also involves the poverty of society, the exclusion of many affluent 
Australians from strong and trusting personal relationships.
These changes represent a huge shift in the structure of society. The 
market economy has expanded, while community life has been down-sized. 
Today, when Australians see a social problem, they are more likely to 
pursue a market-based answer than a community solution. This has led to 
the commercialisation of public services and the grotesque expansion of 
market forces into social relationships.
Community-based sport, for instance, has been replaced by the coldness 
of commercial ownership and professionalism. So, too, the institution of 
marriage has been subject to the economic discipline of pre-nuptial 
agreements. People are contracting out to the private sector the 
maintenance and care of their home: their gardening, cooking and pet 
care. Matters that were once determined by mutual agreement and 
cooperation between people are now treated as routine financial 
transactions. The highly visible hand of the market reaches into most 
parts of life.
While market forces can achieve certain goals, such as increased 
economic incentive and growth, they are not a good way of running 
society. They treat people as rule followers, rather than rule makers. 
Everything is given a commercial value, and the value of life's 
intangibles, such as personal feelings, morality and cooperation, is 
downgraded. The importance of civil society is lost, the opportunities 
we need as citizens to freely determine our obligations and trust in 
each other.
Unlike other forms of capital, social capital is a learned habit. It 
exists in the experiences and relationships between people. If people 
cannot exercise their trust in each other, they are likely to lose it. 
This appears to be the unhappy state of Western society in the first 
decade of the twenty-first century. The relationship between 
international markets and local communities has become imbalanced. For 
too many citizens, global capital has become a substitute for social 
capital.
Unfortunately, Australia has been at the forefront of these changes. Two 
centuries ago, we started out as a convict society, held together by the 
common bonds of mateship. There was, literally, honour among thieves. 
Within their social and mateship groups, Australians developed the habit 
of treating other people as equals, irrespective of their economic 
status. The economic revolution of the 1980s and 1990s, however, has 
reshaped these values forever. Consumerism and economic competition have 
moved to the centre of our national ethos and identity.
Instead of chopping down tall poppies, our popular culture and media 
outlets now direct their angst towards the disadvantaged: a belief that 
the unemployed, newly arrived migrants, indigenous Australians and 
public housing tenants are undeserving of government support. Envy in 
Australia, perversely enough, now travels down the social ladder, not 
upwards, a phenomenon I've dubbed 'downward envy'.
Australia's egalitarian traditions have been supplanted by the bitter 
whingeing of talkback radio and commercial television. Far from treating 
other people as equals, the mass media have become a mechanism for 
prying into their lives and denigrating them. As a nation, questions of 
status and self-esteem are not determined by the accumulation of 
material goods, not the maintenance of mateship.
As a parliamentarian, I made speeches and wrote books about the decline 
of social capital in Australia. As Labor Leader, I tried to put this 
issue at the centre of our national agenda, with new policies of 
community development and public participation. Ultimately, however, 
people voted on economic issues, and many of the social issues I raise, 
such as in my attempt to make the quality of our society a mainstream 
political concern. Perhaps I was a poor advocate for these issues or the 
wrong person to be raising them; there are elements of truth in both 
propositions. But I believe that other considerations that extend will 
beyond the party politics of 2004 are also important.
In my experience with and study of the new middle class, people have 
particular ways of dealing with social capital. While they would like to 
find a solution to a range of problems in their community, their faith 
in our system of governance is so weak that they have no expectation 
that this is possible. It is inconceivable to them that various forms of 
political and civic action might make a difference. They become 
resigned, therefore, to a weak set of social relationships.
In these circumstances, people tend to withdraw further from civil 
society and pursue other forms of personal recognition and self-esteem. 
The politics of 'me', the individual, replaces the politics of 'we', the 
community. People try to escape relationship-based problems by turning 
inwards, pursuing temporary and artificial forms of personal gratification.
In this respect, advanced capitalism has provided two powerful forms of 
escapism for the middle class. The first is the emergence of a consumer 
society. All the messages in our public culture push people towards 
materialism: commercial advertising, the glorification of wealth, 
keeping up with the Joneses. The middle-class response to an unhappy 
life is further consumption, the temporary escapism of material goods.
Such is the treadmill effect in modern society: long working hours, less 
time for social relationships, short-term comfort from consumerism, and 
the need to work harder to finance this habit, which results in a 
further decline in social capital. Like most treadmills, people don't 
know how to get off. They feel the artificial excitement of acquiring 
something new, but when the feeling wears off, the problem has not gone 
away. In most cases, the sense of alienation from society has worsened.
The so-called sea-change phenomenon is a sign that some people are 
trying to put social relation at the forefront of their lives. But 
realistically, this is a privilege that applies only to a small 
proportion of society. Most Australians remain locked in the gulag of 
consumerism. And so the apparent paradox grows: the more middle 
Australia consumes and breaks retail records, the more problems people 
seem to encounter in other parts of their lives.
The second form of escapism is through the media. As people struggle 
with their relationships in society, they often peer into other people's 
lives, seeking solace in someone else's reality. This has generated a 
cult of celebrity that now dominates much of our public culture, through 
commercial television, talkback radio, tabloid newspapers and the 
Internet. People's thirst for celebrity seems insatiable: witness the 
power and popularity of reality television. Anyone can have his or her 
fifteen minutes of fame, while everyone else watches.
The media houses feed this habit because it sustains their profits. They 
try to legitimise it through 'the public's right to know'. In practice, 
they could not survive financially without fostering society's 
voyeurism. This is what gives the media their mass: everyone knowing 
what other people are doing, even if it has nothing to do with them.
This obsession has given people a peculiar standard of social worth: to 
be important, to have a high level of self-esteem, you need to be on 
television, to be recognised in public. When civil society was strong, 
there was no such thing as a celebrity. People were recognised for their 
contribution to community life, not their face on television screens.
Media escapism of this kind exacerbates the social capital problem. Like 
materialism, it is a temporary and artificial process. Past experience 
tells us that people are more likely to forge relationships of trust and 
cooperation through personal contact and community involvement. Yet a 
high proportion of the things we respond to in our daily lives are 
impersonal: media images we shall never feel or experience first-hand. 
This has weakened the natural bonds and interaction of society. Research 
in the United States, for instance, has shown a close correlation 
between increased television consumption and the post-war decline in 
social capital.
Escapism is the new religion of middle Australia. This is the sorry 
state of advanced capitalism: the ruling culture encourages people to 
reach for four-wheel drives, double-storey homes, reality television and 
gossip magazines to find meaning and satisfaction in their lives. All of 
which offer false hope. Marx was wrong in predicting the alienation of 
labour from the economy as the catalyst of social discontent. It is the 
alienation of the individual from community life that is the cause of so 
many social problems.
As a Member of Parliament, one of my mistakes was to promote the 
importance of aspirational politics. I wanted working people to enjoy a 
better standard of living, but had assumed that as they climbed the 
economic ladder, they would still care about the community in which they 
lived, and take heed of the interests of others, especially the poor and 
disadvantaged. This was my misjudgement of modern society. Instead, as 
people have moved into middle-class affluence, they have left their old, 
working-class neighbourhoods behind and embraced the new values of 
consumerism.
Social capital in Australia is so weak and shallow that it does not 
extend across neighbourhood boundaries. I used to talk about the suburb 
where I grew up, and people thought I was strange for doing so. We have 
become a society obsessed with the places to which the economic caravan 
can take us, not the places it has left behind. Economic mobility has 
had a damaging impact on the habits of compassion and cooperation. As a 
society we are poorly equipped to meet the challenges of globalisation: 
building strong communities that are prepared to reach out and trust in 
strangers -- people, values and information from across the globe.
The crisis in social capital is also a crisis for social democracy. If 
people do not practise mutual trust and cooperation in their lives, they 
are not likely to support the redistributive functions of government. If 
they have no interest or experience in helping their neighbours, why 
would they want the public sector to help people they have never met? 
Indeed, the dominant electoral mood is a desire to take resources away 
from other people and communities, as evidenced by the rise of downward 
envy in Australia.
I have agonised over these issues and tried to find ways of making the 
social democratic project sustainable. After a decade of research and 
analysis, my conclusions are bleak. The task of social reformers is 
extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible. Not only must they rebuild 
the trust and cohesiveness of civil society, they also need to motivate 
people about the value and possibilities of organised politics. If and 
when these formidable tasks are completed, they then need to win 
majority public support for a sweeping program of social justice.
The pillars of conservatism in our society have a much easier task: 
supporting the status quo and scaring people about the uncertainties of 
political change. They have no interest in generating public enthusiasm 
in politics and the reform process. This is what binds the ruling class 
together: the shared interests of the conservative parties, the 
commercial media and other parts of the business establishment in 
preserving the existing social order and concentration of power in their 
hands.
Indeed, if the media were to promote solutions to society's problems, 
they would have very few stories left to report. A happy society full of 
good news does not sell newspapers or secure ratings. So, too, the media 
have a commercial interest in the denigration of politics, presenting it 
as just another form of conflict and scandal in society to feed the 
public's voyeurism. Like all big businesses, their interests lie in 
preserving the status quo and the ruling institutions and culture that 
sustain their profitability.
Is today's Labor Party, build around its own hierarchy of conservatism 
and machine politics, going to challenge and overcome this system? Not 
that I can see. Even if it were hungry to take on the ruling elite 
rather than be part of it, I doubt that the Party would embrace the 
appropriate reform program of grassroots policies to rebuild social 
cooperation and mutuality. Labor politicians come into Parliament to 
take control, to pull the levers of public administration. They support 
a top-down process of governance, based on an expectation that 
politicians and political machines can direct and control social 
outcomes. They are not familiar or comfortable with the methodology of 
social capital.
Community-building sits outside the conventional methods of party 
politics. Whereas public policy relies on a sense of order and 
predictability, the work of civil society is spontaneous and disorderly. 
Whereas governments try to have a direct and tangible impact on their 
citizens, the creation of mutual trust relies on processes that are 
diffuse and intangible. There is no point in passing a Social Capital 
Bill and expecting it to make people community-minded.
Trust occurs as a by-product of the relationship between people. It is 
not like a well-ordered machine, whereby policy-makers can pull the 
levers and mandate a particular result. The best they can hope for is to 
influence the social environment in which trust is created. They need to 
see themselves as facilitators of social capital, rather than 
controllers of social outcomes.
This is best achieved by transferring influence and resources to 
communities, devolving as many decisions and public services as 
possible. Real power comes from giving power away. But this is not how 
the parliamentary system works, especially a machine political party. 
Powerbrokers try to capture and control the authority of government, not 
give it away. They believe in the centralisation of power, not its 
dispersal. The square peg of Labor politics does not fit into the round 
hole of social capital.


























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