Culture

  The concept of ‘nationalism’ has always seemed foreign to me. I’m an Australian because I was born here and the feds have given me a passport which labels me as from ‘Australia’. There’s a coat of arms on the cover and everything……….. along with my name and weathered image. To the international set and support officialdom, I’m definitely ‘Paul Regan’ and I’m from ‘Australia’. I quite like living in Australia because it’s really the only place that I know and this familiarity thing bolsters the comfort setting. Since jettisoning from mum in late 1954, I’ve grown up here, gone to schools here, worked here, entered holy matrimony here, scratched my arse here many times and, yes, I’m composing this blog here….right now. Is the apparent close association between the lucky country and me something that I cherish and/ or self-inflate my athletic chest over? Response- negative. That association is primed by sheer chance and it’s nothing that either party (i.e. country and...

One of the things that does my head in is that discussion (in oral and written forms) seems to have become an endangered species in 2018. Points of view, opinions and even the humble exposition are notable for their failure to leave footprints in the comfortable turf that’s been laid around our ranches. I also reckon that it’s a relatively recent development that has brewed for only a decade or so but it is now a strong marker of our times.   What is also strange is that we live in an age where data generation is increasing at dramatic rates yet information which helps to order and explain such data is missing in action. It feels like the ‘understanding’ filters have been switched off and we carry on as if everything’s cool. I believe that one of the reasons for this lies in the changing structures and roles of the media and by the media I mean both the traditional ‘mass media’ and the networked fourth estate. The transformations that have occurred in the way we re...