2012 Ranting and Ravings about Debt, Politicians and Blind Journalists
2012 Rantings on DEBT, Politicians and Journalists with their heads in the sand
(2012 Exhibition Prosperity)
There’s a lot of heart and passion in this work. You don’t have to have kids to get what I am on about here. You just need to have been one, and that includes all of us. There’s enough baggage to carry - emotionally, as we venture into adulthood, let alone badly managed economies, and futures.
How selfish of this and past generations, including many contemporary politicians and their governments in office in the Western World, to think that DEBT is an answer to keeping up appearances. That its ‘only money’, and a Treasurer, a Union boss, a Finance minister or Prime Minister will not really have to pay any of it back - or face court for having misappropriated and mismanaged it!
How absurd. Why not? Why should it be that over 20 million people’s money could be managed so poorly and yet those managers are not held accountable? Talk about a class action waiting to happen!
The endless cycle of promises and spin pounded into our brains day after day - coming from the political megaphones on the hills of power - have become like a high pitched possum pest control having blown out the possums ear drums ... the pitch can’t be heard anymore. Our youth does not understand that these glorious promises spouting from the mouths of certain desperate politicians are fiction. The words are ‘tactic’, not fact. This is a whole new world of ‘fairy tales’. The high pitch just continues, and our kids just take it on board - deaf and blind to the fact - that 'someone' will have to pay. Consequences are dangerously disconnected from actions. Is there a rule missing somewhere here?
In fact – worse than that, not only our kids, but we seem to be so immune to this deceit, through a failing of being directly impacted by this issue (due to the cushioning of entitlement), that we have forgotten a few old fashioned values about debt. Do all those who vote to continue with entitlement policies even ask the question - WHO PAYS?
And the bill piles higher, and we all owe it – and it will matter. It will cause suffering for future generations and the elderly. We will find that we have to go without things we take for granted. Life does not necessarily just keep on improving. Great civilisations have reverted to primitive dark ages before as a result of decadence and ignorance.
The blind eye, the horrific ongoing conscious creation of a culture of entitlement - continues to blow our future to pieces. This is the Alzheimer’s of our culture; the forgetting of our children’s rights to a clear pathway. Is this the real outcome of socialist ideologies? How long can the affluent keep supporting the growing dependants upon welfare? Where will the money come from when they too are reduced to living on welfare. There seems no ability to see into the future for these ideals of ‘big government’.
When we, the motivated, who see this injustice and call it for what it is, are gone, those who employ the many, to realise their dreams, are disenfranchised; those who make the money and therefore pay the taxes, that pay the entitlements, are ruined and uninspired to run at a loss and to be endlessly hurled before Fair Work Australia for daring to employ a student on a Sunday for less than $80 an hour to wash dishes; what then – who will pay for all this? How hopelessly short sighted. It would be our children, but will they bother, will they want to? Will they know how to? Will they be rioting in the streets because they can’t afford bread? Or will our spin doctors have lulled them into believing that the debt is just an abstract thing that will not enter their lounge room, their chat room? And will they be motivated to work hard, to make a good life for themselves, if they have forgotten what its like to be allowed to succeed and run ahead - should they want to put in the effort?
Why did anyone ever bother to invent anything? Be it a cure for infection to a computer? It was a part of a dream of personal advancement beyond the norm. It was not a dream of a 'committee'. Personal advancement is a vital aspect to keep alive. Competition - must stay alive in the heart in order we progress as a society of individuals. Policies that punish personal leaping forward - beyond the pack, destroy this, and its well documented.
I care about this, and so should everyone. A most disturbing phenomenon is sweeping the world, and becoming more grave and like a creeping disease of ignorance – and it is being made worse by the falling asleep of those who would be gatekeepers of the truth, in large areas of the media.
There is a fast and furious decline in the quality of the press. MANY areas of the press have lost their way, and are no longer able to report objectively on anything, behaving more like paparazzi, propaganda machines for favoured governments, and gossip speculators with weirdly immature blind spots, with narcissistic egos permeating our news and current affairs channels, with an odd and unintelligent left lean. And those few in the media who do dare to challenge this status quo are 'named and shamed'!! as if deviants, bigots, racists, misogynists, you name it, they will have to wear it! Freedom of speech is not ‘under threat', its being bludgeoned to death in full daylight! This isn’t even about a person’s right to speak freely, its about what we deserve. We deserve objectivity in reporting. If you want gossip, buy Who, or Women’s Weekly. I do not wish to see or hear this nonsense via our public broadcasters. It is hard to understand how a far too large body of the media cannot see what they are doing. Something has gone wrong in their training, perhaps the Journalism schools, the university courses have accidentally removed the 101 of journalism, in an unintentional well meaning experiment, like the removal of the fundamentals of spelling from our school curriculums. here is a piece of fundamental DNA missing. Its just gone! Most of these journalists don’t even seem to be feeling guilty for foregoing their own principles of objectivity! Like the absence of an awareness of 'who pays", they don’t seem to have a consciousness of what it is. This is very worrying. Its as if they don’t know how to 'think', properly.
The chief discipline, the obvious, was so obvious it was obliterated!. Perhaps it was seen as boring - like spelling lessons. That directive was and still is - to present the news objectively, to investigate impartially and thoroughly and report back to the public on all sides. Journalists and their publishers are meant to be investigative impartial professionals who perform a vital connection and function between the spin and the public’s ability to understand and weigh up fact against ideas. Through this process good journalists can be a form of guardian of the people, guardians of the truth, with the power to hold politicians in honesty headlocks, to keep them in fear of 'being found out', should they stray too far from their duties of serving the public with integrity. What went wrong? It is not the role of journalists to amplify and embed the spin and ignorance the public is being drowned with, and so to partake in the further corruption of entire political parties in comfortable little gatherings of like minded comrades in press galleries, clubs and on self flagellating chat shows loaded with sympathetic fairy story makers posing as journalists.
It is this anger, and much more that drives part of the body of this work. I have not explored the problem of the ‘media’, as much as I will in due course. I have tried to focus on the big machine at the top, and the effects on our children’s future. As an artist I refuse to sit here and paint lovely pictures for you to enjoy and decorate your walls. And I know it will take a courageous buyer to put some of my works on their walls. However, I am at the stage in my life where my job is beyond just pleasing. I have other things on my mind, and you will be seeing that in work to come. Its about time we saw a bit more contribution from our artists in regards to what’s going wrong with our world, and artists have the power of the brush to do so. We can whirl up all sorts of interesting ways of demonstrating a point. I scan the art magazines for evidence of some sort of life, some sort of rage, some sort of disturbance, other than some inner indulgence as one passes through these things... They seem to have fallen into the same weird coma that so many journalists have. So come on, where are all the artists, who see further, long distance? Stop dancing around the minutia. Stop sulking in your minority world, be grateful you have not been thrown off a plank on the end of a pirate ship by some impatient dictatorial pirate - and get over your misunderstanding and get out here and give us a hand with your talents to create a bit of our own spin!
For now, I deliver this – a look at a build up of nonsense, a failing of too many, in the press and media to call that for what it is, apart from a small number of brave journalists and presenters in Australia and America who put their jobs on the line daily – and who I adore and take inspiration from, as they try to keep the light in the roof so the possums don’t 'wreck the joint', and it is not Mr Jones who is wrecking the joint . It seems the possum siren no longer works - so we will rip the bloody roof off and see how that goes shall we?
So to all those journalists who dream of being at the head of a really great career busting story, and making a significant mark on the world, just remember this - while you are being manipulated by the powers that be, you will never get your breakthrough. Rip off the wires from the puppet masters, who think that the truth is optional, not compulsory and get back to real work. If you think truth is ‘subjective’, due to too much navel gazing, and philosophy, (I did plenty of that and it gets you nowhere) - that’s all very well, but how about you set yourself a challenge...? See if you can find the purpose of presenting all sides of a subjective truth, instead of just one opinion, the one you are most comfortable with? This will make you great.
Helen Norton 9/11/12
Inspiring assortment of quotes used to drive the work
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