Australian Current Affairs Thread (not a Politics Thread) lol

[wendybr]

5 minutes ago, StringerBellend said:

I can’t stand this guy either 

 

 

 

[wendybr]

For Stringer

 

[StringerBellend]

8 minutes ago, wendybr said:

For Stringer

 

I just don’t find his bite size social

media shareable mock outrage funny 

he’s basically Jeremy Clarkson 

 

 

ok he isn’t he feeds off that stuff and also feeds it 

I know what I mean 

 

I shudder to think what his audience would be like 

Edited March 9, 2019 by StringerBellend

[Carns]

21 minutes ago, StringerBellend said:

I shudder to think what his audience would be like 

Smug.

[wendybr]

6 minutes ago, Carns said:

Smug.

Hopefully lefties, who are not too smug to actually listen to what he's saying! 

 

PS I think he's calling out "smug".

[StringerBellend]

1 hour ago, wendybr said:

Hopefully lefties, who are not too smug to actually listen to what he's saying! 

 

PS I think he's calling out "smug".

It will be a bunch of people agreeing with each other 

As for listening to what he saying 

yelling that Trump is a prick is hardly insightful while also doing a line in its political correctness gone mad 

As for his comedy bite sized social media shareable mock anger is ok on twitter but 2 hours of it Christ 

[mack]

17 hours ago, wendybr said:

And sadly, this is true - and is driving intelligent people away from traditional positions held by the Left - and it's making it easy for the Right to lure people away, particularly younger people.

"Those poor people want to improve the lives of everyone who isn't a millionaire or billionaire, this has made it easy for me to become a corporate bootlicker. #AllLivesMatter" If all it takes is a handful of fringe elements that have no real impact on the political process, for someone to completely abandon the ideals of improving the world for the working class at the expensive of the ultra-rich & mega corporations, how much did they really agree with them in the first place?

 

[mack]

Fastest backflip ever?

I can clearly see why people want to be 'lured away' to vote for such amazing wonderful right-wing politicians.

Can you imagine living in the USA, UK or Australia and thinking "Yeah, what this countries needs is more power for the right-wing, more power to Trump & McConnell, Tony Abbott and Peter Dutton or Theresa May and her merry band of idiots who pushed for Brexit with lie after lie and are now incompetently marching toward a no-deal exit from the EU?"

[Zelinsky]

21 hours ago, wendybr said:

That's an interesting post, my friend.

There sort of is a counter revolution going on...well at least, a definite push back.

That's often been the way things go - although I agree we are in dramatically unchartered territory now.

So I agree with much of what you say there...but I really don't understand how JP can be seen as "unable to reflect on" what's happening. If anything, my reading of him is that he is thinking/reflecting on modern issues all the time. Deeply reflecting on them.

To suggest he doesn't understand what's going on around him is odd. To suggest that he is somehow an unknowing pawn is quite wrong imo. He had some very undesirable elements latch onto him for a while - but that was transitory.

How much of his stuff  have you listened to, to base your observations on? 

More than Manny's two minutes on Q&A...plus a few Guardian articles telling readers why he's dangerous?  

 

 

 

PS This is unfamiliar territory for me - arguing with you two...three including Marron!   

Wendy,

There is a difference arguing with someone, and arguing a point. We are doing the latter. 

I am basing my view of JP on what I saw, heard, and noticed watching QandA. I don't think he is dangerous at all. To me he is just someone who wrote another self help book of sorts, that is going to sit there with thousands of other volumes on the same subject, along the line of "think and act yourself happy and well". He's a fad which will be replaced by the next fad sooner or later.

JP has a view, he expresses an opinion. It is seen as an objective truth by many, and that's one of the problems. The question is not "is he right or wrong?" but "where is he coming from?".

He was talking about individuality a lot which is a North American concept that is deeply ingrained in the culture there. That's the soil, the ground he is standing on. Also, he is a psychologist of sorts. Academic psychology in North America, the UK and Australia sees itself as a science among the natural sciences. 100 years ago it copied and adopted the tools and philosophies underpinning physics, chemistry, biology. While these sciences are grappling with the uncertainty that quantum physics has introduced, today's academic psychology is still trotting down the path of Newton and Galilei. As an academic field, it is a dead man walking.

As I said, we are living in a postmodern world. If we see post modernism as a critique of the modern era, it has put all sorts of questions marks behind ideas and "truths" we took for granted. The Earth has been shaking for decades, and we find ourselves smack bang in the middle of the Culture Wars. On the one side of the divide are those who are trying to hold on to some certainty, on the other side are those who try to establish a new one. It seems quite clear to me where JP is.

Psychology, as a field, gets off on function and behavior. That's their bread and butter. It doesn't see itself as a human activity, but a science. If psychology was to use psychology on itself, it would be able to reflect on itself. But the field does not do that. From what I've heard and read so far, neither does JP.

Individuality. Functioning. Behavior. And so we end up with a book which offers 12 "how to" bullet points to come to terms with chaos. 12. Not 10. Not 15. 12. It speaks to a lot of people, which is fair enough. But when yet another psychologist comes up with a list of one-size-fits-all list of bullet points that apparently is universally applicable, then alarm bells should be ringing. It's a view point, nothing else. And a very simplistic one, from my point of view.

It seems to appeal to a lot of people how he argues, which again is fair enough. .He doesn't just argue a point though, he argues with people. If that's what he does when the lectures, or when he sits with people, once again alarm bells should be ringing. But only those who actually experience him at that level would know the answer to that.

I am standing on European soil. Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Gadamer, the French post modern philosophers etc- their thinking has been humming in the background all my life, even though I wasn't aware of it. As a result my thinking is different. It's part of continental European culture, it is in people's bones. North America, UK and Australia are very different in that regard, there are very different undercurrents at work.

To try and answer your question: I don't think he is aware of his blind spots, based on what I saw on QandA. If he was then he'd be arguing his point with more flexibility and less forceful or aggressive. And he'd probably be more relevant as opposed to be popular.

And none of what I just wrote is an objective truth. It is just my opinion. Another opinion: Michael Sandel's book on justice and Jonathan Haidt's "righteous mind" is what I would recommend.

 

 

[wendybr]

👍👍Will reply further later! 😊😊

[Edinburgh]

22 hours ago, Edinburgh said:

A lot of interesting discussion going on here. Pity I understand less than 10% of it.

After btron's post I thought I may have snuck over 10%. After FCB's, I'm closer to 5%.

[Zelinsky]

19 minutes ago, Edinburgh said:

After btron's post I thought I may have snuck over 10%. After FCB's, I'm closer to 5%.

The abridged version: the way we live our lives is applied philosophy. Understand the philosophies that are underpinning Man's existence, and you will understand where he/she is coming from, and perhaps why he/she is thinking the way he/she is, and saying the things he/she says.

[Edinburgh]

Okay .... under 5%

[hawks2767]

16 hours ago, wendybr said:

 

I do know a number of women in their thirties who are extremely dissatisfied in being without a family.

 

 

Can't believe you just stood idly by whilst a forumer shared his tales of woe in not being able to find a girlfriend and you could have killed 2 birds with one stone.

Outrageous.

[Cynth]

Oh man I go away for 5 seconds and somebody starts dissing psychology. Well I’m not going to defend it....I don’t need to. I know what a psychologist can offer and  add to peoples lives. (When done well).

Ain’t nobody got time for existential discussions when they are feeling they can’t get through another day. 

[Edinburgh]

21 minutes ago, Cynth said:

 

Ain’t nobody got time for existential discussions unless they are looking forward to a bout of depression.

Fixed.

[sonar]

A very good read..........

http://johnmenadue.com/stephen-fitzgerald-at-espionage-in-australia-exhibition-at-the-the-whitlam-institute-8-march-2019/

[ManfredSchaefer]

58 minutes ago, sonar said:

A very good read..........

http://johnmenadue.com/stephen-fitzgerald-at-espionage-in-australia-exhibition-at-the-the-whitlam-institute-8-march-2019/

My (casual) employer delivering the goods 

Oh, and if Gough was alive today he'd be calling out so much of the shite that gets a run as public policy and as political discourse in this country. Especially from the guy who once followed him as the member for Werriwa.

[sonar]

13 minutes ago, ManfredSchaefer said:

My (casual) employer delivering the goods 

Oh, and if Gough was alive today he'd be calling out so much of the shite that gets a run as public policy and as political discourse in this country. Especially from the guy who once followed him as the member for Werriwa.

.It's amazing what you learn about that period of Aus history. What was fascinating was that at the time the security agencies who are supposed to work for the benefit of the Aus people didn't see fit to tell the duly and democratically elected govt of the day what they were up to.

I have a sense that when/if there is a change of govt at the next Fed election the incoming govt may face the same scenario with the likes of Dutton & co stacking depts with people more sympathetic to a conservative point of view....ie Christian Porter and his recent stacking of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal with Lib mates.

Edited March 11, 2019 by sonar

[ManfredSchaefer]

Just now, sonar said:

.It's amazing what you learn about that period of Aus history. What was fascinating was that at the time the security agencies who are supposed to work for the benefit of the Aus people didn't see fit to tell the duly and democratically elected govt of the day what they were up to.

I have a sense that when/if there is a change of govt at the next Fed election the incoming govt may face thesame scenario with the likes of Dutton & co stacking depts with people more sympathetic to a conservative point of view....ie Christian Porter and his recent stacking of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal with Lib mates.

Think I may have covered this before, but needs to be reiterated anyway. When the roll of Australian PMs is reviewed to find who were the truly great leaders of this nation, Gough will be front and centre in any discussion. As a kid who grew up hearing all manner of vitriol thrown at him from family and the media, it has been a liberating and informative process to come to grips with what he did and tried to do for this country. Okay, he had his flaws and there is no doubt that his governments's downfall was facilitated by some of the rank amateurism demonstrated by members of his cabinet. However his vision of what Australia could have been, should be is one that makes one realise that we have been led by pygmies ever since he was dismissed on 11/11/75.

[marron]

I dunno Manny the Downer Months have got to be up there. 

[hawks2767]

Without going into too much detail, away from the cameras and written speeches, ScoMo is a fish out of water.

He's in real trouble should he have to think for himself, someone of the questions he was asking.....

[Cynth]

1 hour ago, hawks2767 said:

Without going into too much detail, away from the cameras and written speeches, ScoMo is a fish out of water.

He's in real trouble should he have to think for himself, someone of the questions he was asking.....

Oh there’s way more that curious post.....do tell! 

[mack]

Did the iVote today for the NSW Election. The hardest part is deciding who of the Liberals and Fred Nile to put last. The upper house is even worse, but then again there's a dozen parties who aren't pure evil to preference and you can still not preference the likes of Latham, Leijhonhelm and Bernardi.

[Cynth]

1 hour ago, mack said:

Did the iVote today for the NSW Election. The hardest part is deciding who of the Liberals and Fred Nile to put last. The upper house is even worse, but then again there's a dozen parties who aren't pure evil to preference and you can still not preference the likes of Latham, Leijhonhelm and Bernardi.

oh there a lot of bad ones aren’t there?!

[Neverbloom]

not too much cringe in qanda yet

[Neverbloom]

okay the actual building is sexist, first ridiculous comment

EDIT: yippie sarah brought up the imaginary wage gap

[hawks2767]

As if you'd put Fred Nile last, imagine a state where he gets a say.

It'd be hilarious.

 

[StringerBellend]

32 minutes ago, hawks2767 said:

As if you'd put Fred Nile last, imagine a state where he gets a say.

It'd be hilarious.

 

No need to imagine, he had the balance of power, so Libs did a deal to make religious education in schools opt to get their poles and wires sell off through

 

[Paul01]

Conservative backflip on mortgage broker trailing fees

Government flips on royal commission recommendation on mortgage brokers https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/mar/12/government-flips-on-royal-commission-recommendation-on-mortgage-brokers?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard