What's an Aussie Anyway?
Or here's another title: why I feel sorry for Jana Pittman.
Those of you who aren't Australian might not know who Jana Pittman is. She's the 400 meters hurdles World Champion, currently being subjected to a good old fashioned Australian tall-poppy syndrome lynching. If you are Australian, and a sports fan, you'll probably know this all too well.
Well anyway, poor Jana, having had many dramas (and earned the nickname 'Jana Drama') thought she'd finally gotten over her difficult relationship with ordinary Australians when she won a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games in front of 80,000 screaming Melbournians and a TV audience of millions. Then she went to a nightclub to show off her gold medal, and this happened.
Well, this is why I don't go to nightclubs, because they're usually full of pricks. But there's something else going on here, something that's puzzled me about my home country for quite some time. Australians like to laud themselves as the most laid back people on Earth, which is possibly true... but the actions of so many Australians towards people like Jana (she sure as hell isn't the first to get this treatment) seem incredibly self-important. As statements go, 'I hate you for no particular reason and want to make you cry' is about as stuck-up, selfish and immature as is possible to get. So what's happening here? Are we Aussies really so inclusive and friendly after all? Or are we really, under the facade of mateship and fair go, just a pack of wankers?
So okay... what makes Australians, including myself, feel so proud to be Australian? Mostly, I think it's a bunch of characteristics that are largely related. Informality, for one. Also at the Commonwealth Games, my basketball girls not only got to snog the Prime Minister, they called him 'Johnny'. Can't get much more informal than that. Which is connected to all the other things -- we don't take ourselves too seriously, we think nationalism is kind of ridiculous and best done with a smile, a beer and tongue-firmly-in-cheek, we like people who think of others more than themselves, and we distrust enormous egos. We embrace the word 'ordinary'. At Australian funerals, there are few epithets more affectionately delivered than 'he was just an ordinary bloke'. That tells you something, I think.
So along comes a person like Jana Pittman. She's a pro-athlete. She's very driven, very serious, and very self-important. It's a character-type pretty common in sports, especially individual sports, where everything is about you because everything IS. That's the sport, from early morning to late evening, the whole day is about ME ME ME, because that's the dedication and self-attention it takes to get to the top. It's not a team sport, there's not someone else who can do part of it for you. It's just you, and self-centeredness is a part of the job description. Now of course there are many athletes who can do this while still earning an Aussie crowd's love... but Jana has the disadvantage of also being a social-dyslexic. Meaning she really just doesn't get it, the same way a kid with Asperger's Syndrome just doesn't get it. It's called social skills, the instinctive ability to know what people think of you, and why, and how to change your behavior to affect outcomes. Some people are really good at this, to the point that everyone loves them, despite them actually being assholes. And some people are really bad at it, and manage to make lots of people dislike them despite being good people, while having no idea what they've done wrong and desperately wanting everyone to love them. That's Jana.
I sympathise because to some extent, it's also me. Some of the time anyway. Clearly I'm not as bad as Jana, because I know enough to be able to cringe when I see her interviews, and see her prattle on so earnestly about her plans and dreams and goals and achievements... not because she annoys me, but because I can just see how she'll annoy other people. Other Australians, who just don't like anyone sounding like they think themselves important or something. But Jana just blunders into it, as blind as a fly into a funnelweb's lair, deeper and deeper.
It shouldn't happen, because of course, Australians are all so easy-going, so laid back, so forgiving... yeah, right. You can make this great list of wonderful qualities that your average mythical Australian is supposed to possess, and they're largely true. But this becomes nationalism, and nationalism is exclusive. It's a club, and in this club, we have rules. You must conform to the rules, or you're out. Never mind that one of those rules is supposed to be about how we don't give a stuff about rules and how everyone's invited... it doesn't matter, any rule forcefully applied becomes exclusive, even if it was intended to be inclusive.
And thus, a bunch of people who fancy themselves to be easy-going, egalitarian and good humored, in attempting to enforce those qualities as compulsory membership rules, end up acting like a bunch of priggish, stuck up, puritan, judgmental snobs -- in other words, like everything Australians once professed to hate about the elitist British upper classes, and defined ourselves in opposition AGAINST. Crazy, huh? But human behavior is circular. That means that if you run far enough away from a paricular form of behaviour, you'll eventually find yourself right back where you started, every time. That's why Socialists who hated fascists ended up acting just like them in the USSR, and vice-versa in Nazi Germany. It's all just different expressions of the same human thing, and we're all stuck in the circle.
The enemy here, of course, is exclusivity. You're not allowed in. You're different. I hate you for being different, because you make me feel insecure. Because I am insecure. I must pound on you to make myself feel better, and that at least despite my insecurities, I'm not getting pounded, and you are. That will allow me to fool myself into thinking my penis is larger than it really is.
I'm tired of exclusivists, and I'm tired of people who make excuses to justify irrational hatred in any form. If you can make an excuse for irrational hatred of unusual people in one form, you can make it in another. That's a precedent, and a dangerous one. I shouldn't need to say what it's a precedent for. Smart people shouldn't need to ask why institutionalised hatred of outsiders is dangerous. These people in the nightclub should just remember -- the pack can be your friend, and it can make you feel powerful, and wanted, just as neo-nazis no doubt feel powerful and wanted when they're gang bashing some Asian kid in a car park. But one day the pack will turn, and then it'll be your turn.
Human behavior is circular. Break the pattern.
Those of you who aren't Australian might not know who Jana Pittman is. She's the 400 meters hurdles World Champion, currently being subjected to a good old fashioned Australian tall-poppy syndrome lynching. If you are Australian, and a sports fan, you'll probably know this all too well.
Well anyway, poor Jana, having had many dramas (and earned the nickname 'Jana Drama') thought she'd finally gotten over her difficult relationship with ordinary Australians when she won a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games in front of 80,000 screaming Melbournians and a TV audience of millions. Then she went to a nightclub to show off her gold medal, and this happened.
Well, this is why I don't go to nightclubs, because they're usually full of pricks. But there's something else going on here, something that's puzzled me about my home country for quite some time. Australians like to laud themselves as the most laid back people on Earth, which is possibly true... but the actions of so many Australians towards people like Jana (she sure as hell isn't the first to get this treatment) seem incredibly self-important. As statements go, 'I hate you for no particular reason and want to make you cry' is about as stuck-up, selfish and immature as is possible to get. So what's happening here? Are we Aussies really so inclusive and friendly after all? Or are we really, under the facade of mateship and fair go, just a pack of wankers?
So okay... what makes Australians, including myself, feel so proud to be Australian? Mostly, I think it's a bunch of characteristics that are largely related. Informality, for one. Also at the Commonwealth Games, my basketball girls not only got to snog the Prime Minister, they called him 'Johnny'. Can't get much more informal than that. Which is connected to all the other things -- we don't take ourselves too seriously, we think nationalism is kind of ridiculous and best done with a smile, a beer and tongue-firmly-in-cheek, we like people who think of others more than themselves, and we distrust enormous egos. We embrace the word 'ordinary'. At Australian funerals, there are few epithets more affectionately delivered than 'he was just an ordinary bloke'. That tells you something, I think.
So along comes a person like Jana Pittman. She's a pro-athlete. She's very driven, very serious, and very self-important. It's a character-type pretty common in sports, especially individual sports, where everything is about you because everything IS. That's the sport, from early morning to late evening, the whole day is about ME ME ME, because that's the dedication and self-attention it takes to get to the top. It's not a team sport, there's not someone else who can do part of it for you. It's just you, and self-centeredness is a part of the job description. Now of course there are many athletes who can do this while still earning an Aussie crowd's love... but Jana has the disadvantage of also being a social-dyslexic. Meaning she really just doesn't get it, the same way a kid with Asperger's Syndrome just doesn't get it. It's called social skills, the instinctive ability to know what people think of you, and why, and how to change your behavior to affect outcomes. Some people are really good at this, to the point that everyone loves them, despite them actually being assholes. And some people are really bad at it, and manage to make lots of people dislike them despite being good people, while having no idea what they've done wrong and desperately wanting everyone to love them. That's Jana.
I sympathise because to some extent, it's also me. Some of the time anyway. Clearly I'm not as bad as Jana, because I know enough to be able to cringe when I see her interviews, and see her prattle on so earnestly about her plans and dreams and goals and achievements... not because she annoys me, but because I can just see how she'll annoy other people. Other Australians, who just don't like anyone sounding like they think themselves important or something. But Jana just blunders into it, as blind as a fly into a funnelweb's lair, deeper and deeper.
It shouldn't happen, because of course, Australians are all so easy-going, so laid back, so forgiving... yeah, right. You can make this great list of wonderful qualities that your average mythical Australian is supposed to possess, and they're largely true. But this becomes nationalism, and nationalism is exclusive. It's a club, and in this club, we have rules. You must conform to the rules, or you're out. Never mind that one of those rules is supposed to be about how we don't give a stuff about rules and how everyone's invited... it doesn't matter, any rule forcefully applied becomes exclusive, even if it was intended to be inclusive.
And thus, a bunch of people who fancy themselves to be easy-going, egalitarian and good humored, in attempting to enforce those qualities as compulsory membership rules, end up acting like a bunch of priggish, stuck up, puritan, judgmental snobs -- in other words, like everything Australians once professed to hate about the elitist British upper classes, and defined ourselves in opposition AGAINST. Crazy, huh? But human behavior is circular. That means that if you run far enough away from a paricular form of behaviour, you'll eventually find yourself right back where you started, every time. That's why Socialists who hated fascists ended up acting just like them in the USSR, and vice-versa in Nazi Germany. It's all just different expressions of the same human thing, and we're all stuck in the circle.
The enemy here, of course, is exclusivity. You're not allowed in. You're different. I hate you for being different, because you make me feel insecure. Because I am insecure. I must pound on you to make myself feel better, and that at least despite my insecurities, I'm not getting pounded, and you are. That will allow me to fool myself into thinking my penis is larger than it really is.
I'm tired of exclusivists, and I'm tired of people who make excuses to justify irrational hatred in any form. If you can make an excuse for irrational hatred of unusual people in one form, you can make it in another. That's a precedent, and a dangerous one. I shouldn't need to say what it's a precedent for. Smart people shouldn't need to ask why institutionalised hatred of outsiders is dangerous. These people in the nightclub should just remember -- the pack can be your friend, and it can make you feel powerful, and wanted, just as neo-nazis no doubt feel powerful and wanted when they're gang bashing some Asian kid in a car park. But one day the pack will turn, and then it'll be your turn.
Human behavior is circular. Break the pattern.
1 Comments:
What makes you say Australians are forgiving? Easy-going, sure. Laid back, definitely. But forgiving? Not in my experience.
I was in a store the other day and the bakery section had "Bavarian Donouts" for sale. An older couple (not that old, I'd guess early 60s) was looking at them and the woman suggested they try them. The man wouldn't and his whole problem was that they were German.
That's a whole lot more typical Australian if you ask me. Aussies have to be one of the most tolerant people on Earth, but given a grievance, most will carry it to the grave.
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