History

There is a saying that those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. 

That is sometimes turned into a wry joke that those who do, are doomed to watch those who don't repeat history. 

I'm going to add to that: those who attempt to prevent bad history are doomed to additional suffering if they do not succeed.

I've fought against the obvious and inherent evils of neoliberalism since the late 80s and early 90s, against discrimination in all its forms since the mid 70s, and against political colonialism / patriarchy / arrogance since the early 70s. I've had some successes (notably the addition of gender identity to the equal opportunity act in 2000, something I was a bit player in), some things have been neutral, and other things I've failed at - the continuation of LGBTIQ+ abuse in workplaces, largely a result of the amathia of Australian voters, fits into the latter. 

Another area has been the failure to get bureaucrats, diplomats, and all associated with foreign affairs to move beyond chasing the grubby dollar at all costs (including decency) and achieve a tiny modicum of foresight. Thus we had had the clearly moronic view that closer economic ties changes nations to be less authoritarian / despotic, which plagued the reaction of the West when the USSR collapsed. Some of the most amathiac replies I had at that time were along the lines of "a quicker transition to capitalism will fix suffering" - even as people were being evicted, thrown on the unemployment scrap heap, and criminality was running rampant in what had become Russia and the CIS. 

That reply showed that the people making those decisions were clearly privileged - and amathiac.

It also makes them, in my opinion, morally culpable for what the Union of Soviet Socialist Russia has become under Grand Tsar, Thug and Petty KGB Official Putin - and, for that matter, what happened to Hong Kong under engineer Xi's increasingly despotic, brainwashing, and militaristic CCP.

I recently posted about my loss of patience; the invasion of Ukraine is likely to lead to me going back to the bluntness I had in the 80s. I have no-one in the current neoliberal national government with any credibility that I can write to about this; neoliberalism (with its inherent bigotry) has infected and infested the public service so there's no point trying to write to the bureaucrats; and the national ALP has put themselves under a cloud of suspicion over their cluelessness over the damage done to LGBTIQ people by the recent enable religious discrimination bill . . . so its blogging and social media - and direct communication with companies that are making amathiac (in the sense of short-sighted - as all were who promoted the capitalism-is-good lunacy in the 80s) decisions. 

Such amathiac (short-sighted or greedy/materialistic) decisions can occur not only to the climate crisis, but also housing unaffordability (the central problem is the greed and desire to be rich IPOCs of Australian people), the risks of nuclear war (something particularly overlooked by climate crisis advocates, in my experience), and basic human rights (overlooked by many - but NOT all - people with privilege). 

At least I can now use Russia's decline and the invasion of Ukraine as clear examples of the perils of the lack of thinbking and the failure to address emotional flaws.

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Remember: we need to be more human being rather than human doing, and all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering”.

Copyright © Kayleen White 2016-2024     NO AI   I do not consent to any machine learning aka Artificial Intelligence (AI), generative AI, large language model, machine learning, chatbot, or other automated analysis, generative process, or replication program to reproduce, mimic, remix, summarise, or otherwise  replicate any part of this post or other posts on this blog via any means. Typo’s may be inserrted deliberately to demonstrate this is not an AI product.     Otherwise, fair and reasonable use is accepted under Creative Commons 4.0 on an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike basis   https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/