Not that long ago I wrote a post about how the technology of surveillance and its ever-increasing role in policing was overtaking fiction. As a sometime science fiction writer, it comes with the territory to explore future societies. In my fiction, I really don’t attempt to forecast the future, I simply use a fictional social landscape to explore ideas and, in particular, relationships with advanced technology. There is an element of fantasy in my stories as well.
All governments know the importance of controlling information, called ‘controlling the narrative’, which is why an independent media is essential to a democracy, and it’s also why the most totalitarian governments find ways to imprison journalists who challenge the ‘party narrative’. In the current political climate throughout the Western world, opinions have become polarised on almost every issue, and, as someone recently pointed out, media outlets have become default political mouthpieces. Followers on both sides of politics now want to silence or muzzle media sources that disagree with their particular political point of view.
Very recently, in Australia, following a surprising election win by an incumbent conservative government, media outlets were raided (both public and commercial sources) including an award-winning female journalist’s home. This rang alarm bells from all sides of media. The timing was significant because the 2 different news stories went to air more than a year earlier, yet the raids occurred within a week of winning an election. The Government claims the raids were independent of them; so aren’t they lucky the raids didn’t occur the week before the election instead of the week following.
In the case of the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), Federal Police officers sat in a room and went through emails and edited them, apparently. Effectively changing records to suit their purpose. If this happens in a democracy, what happens in totalitarian regimes. (Well, journalists are put in jail or assassinated in some cases, like Russia).
Now imagine a future society where everyone is tracked by facial recognition and everyone has a social ‘rating’ which determines what buildings they can enter, what job they can apply for and even what transport they can board, be it a train or a plane. Did I say future? This is already happening in the most populous nation in the world. It’s well known that this same nation controls very exactly what information people can access.
It was less than 20 years ago, when there was a ‘Y2K’ scare, predicting that important utilities and infrastructure would fail when computer clocks ticked over to the year 2000, because their clocks didn’t go beyond that date. As it turned out, the scare was ill-founded, but it highlighted how dependent we are on the internet infrastructure, and how vulnerable it could be in a future transcontinental conflict.
Most people are blissfully unaware of how our computing systems are based on 2 formats that go back decades – Microsoft and Apple – so it would be virtually impossible to introduce a new system from scratch. But what if the internet infrastructure became just as dependent on one system, and as their monopoly grew over the entire world, how hard it would be to ‘disconnect’.
Now, also imagine if the infrastructure that everyone depended on was run by one of the most totalitarian regimes in the world, who had a paranoid obsession with the control of information.
Wednesday, 24 July 2019
Sunday, 21 July 2019
Religion and politics in secular society
This is a letter I wrote to The Weekend Australian, Christmas 2017, so 18 months ago. There was a side-debate at the time, during the same sex marriage debate about ‘religious freedom’. It seemed to me that ‘religious freedom’ was ‘code’ for freedom to discriminate against gays and lesbians, and it’s not over. From what I’ve read and seen, the only arguments against same sex marriage came from conservative religious figures (some being politicians) even if they claimed it was about ‘the sanctity of marriage’.
The letter below alludes to that debate, even though the topic is much broader. It’s really about a perceived conflict between secularism and Christianity in Western societies, including Australia. There is a recurring argument that our Christian heritage provides the moral fabric of our society with the inference that, without it, we’d lose our moral compass. If that was true, and we really followed Christ’s calling, we wouldn’t treat refugees the way we do. In fact, our 2 most conservative Christian leaders, in recent times, have been the most ruthless advocates for persecuting refugees, and of fomenting xenophobic sentiment in the electorate.
The names referenced in the letter below, are journalists or commentators. The Australian is a Murdoch publication, so it has conservative political leanings.
Both Paul Kelly and John Carroll in separate articles (Weekend Australian, Enquirer, 23-24 Dec.2017) seem concerned that the modern secular world that dominates Western societies, and therefore Australia, has forgotten, even ‘turned its back’ on our Christian heritage. I’m officially retiring age, so I grew up in post-war Australia when going to Sunday School and scripture classes (in public schools) was still considered part of a child’s education (neither of my parents were religious; they just thought it was the cultural norm). Strangely, I don’t lament the loss, for want of a better word, the Church’s role in political and secular life, epitomised by the divide between Catholics and Protestants that dominated even the small country town where I grew up.
I found the greater part of Paul Kelly’s lengthy editorial a stimulating read, even when I might proffer alternative views, but his commentary on High Court judge Dyson Heydon’s concerns about the future of Christianity in this country, I found alarmist to say the least: “The question for the West is how it retains its civilisational heritage if it abandons beliefs in its Christian ethic or, indeed, if its political culture begins to assault that ethic.” Without referencing them specifically, he’s obviously referring to the passing of the recent same-sex-marriage bill in Federal Parliament and the euthanasia bill in the Victorian State Parliament. Both of these have provoked ‘concerns’ from the Catholic church, in particular, who are effectively under siege for the sins they committed in the previous generation.
Personally, I think it’s a landmark moment that gays and lesbians now have the same rights as heterosexual couples. A law that has symbolic and pragmatic importance for the people it affects, and absolutely no effect on the people who oppose it. No one is being forced to have same-sex marriage – it’s a choice. Kelly and his fellow detractors will talk about religious freedom, but it’s only an issue for the people who, for whatever reason, think that homosexuals and lesbians should stay in the closet, or at least, stay out of our churches. If it comes to a choice – and it shouldn’t – between gay and lesbian rights and religious freedom, then it’s a no brainer for most Australians, including the ones like myself, who are heterosexual.
To give credit to The Australian, on the same page as John Carroll’s very lengthy piece on Christmas and the declining relevance of Jesus’ story to most Australians, there is a piece by Helen Dale, who explains, at some length, the pagan roots of Christmas that most Australians are either unaware of or blissfully apathetic about. This created a counter-perspective that was running through my head even while I was reading Carroll’s thesis.
Don Cupitt, a theologian, turned philosopher and author, is a bit of an iconoclast when it comes to religion and Christianity in particular. He’s made the salient point that humanist morality really started with the novel, where moral dilemmas and issues concerning good and evil were resolved without invoking a Deity or scripture. Carroll, to his credit, makes a similar point about the role of literature and popular culture in stimulating our psyche in this regard, without resort to prescriptive Christian ethics. He then goes on to say: “Further, we have now had 150 years of gloomy prediction that the death of God would lead to political anarchy and the moral collapse of the West. That has simply not eventuated.”
For Carroll, the Jesus story is all about imbibing us with meaning, and that is what we are losing. The point is that the Jesus story is mythology and when I was a child, undergoing the religious education I mentioned in my introductory paragraph, I really believed the stories were true, because at that age we believe whatever adults tell us. Like many of my generation, I grew up disillusioned in my mid teens, when I realised the stories were not only mythologised but defied rational analysis. And that is the real reason that Christianity has lost its meaning for most people with a Western education.
In the Review section of the same issue of the Weekend Australian, John Carey reviews a book by Stephen Greenblatt, The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve, where he charters the literary history of the book of Genesis, from its origins in The Epic of Gilgamesh to Augustine’s seminal re-interpretation as signifying the ‘Fall of Man’. I’m not sure if it’s Carey’s or Greenblatt’s insight, but one of them points out the logical inconsistency in the morality tale: “For if God was all-knowing, why did he forbid Adam and Eve to eat the fruit, knowing they would disobey? Why did he create them at all, since he intended to kill them?”
Both Carroll and Kelly refer to the heritage or legacy that Christian ethics has provided to Western cultures. Well, historically, so-called Christian ethics has created a lot of bigotry, wars, genocide and inquisitional torture. Many contemporary commentators point to the current issues surrounding Islam, claiming that the religion itself is flawed. Well, if Islam is flawed then so is Christianity.
Hugh Mackay, in his book, Right & Wrong; How to Decide for Yourself, warns of the dangers of believing that God is on your side, because then anything can be justified, which is what we’ve witnessed both historically and contemporarily.
Addendum: The same day I posted this, I read an article in the Australian Weekend Magazine (July 20-21, 2019) about Israel Folau and the issue of religious freedom. Folau is a star rugby player with the Australian Rugby Union team and famously posted a piece on Facebook that all homosexuals, adulterers, liars and various other sinners would go to Hell. What created a furor wasn’t so much what he said but that he was sacked from the team (his contract was terminated). I agree with former Australian Human Rights Commissioner, Gillian Triggs, that the Australian Rugby Union went outside their remit.
The incident has brought out the worst on both sides of the debate, and demonstrates what happens when you try to enforce what people are allowed to say in public. Peter Singer is another unexpected supporter of Folau's right to free speech. My attitude is that everyone should be allowed to make complete fools of themselves, whether they be sports stars, TV celebrities, politicians or even the President of the United States.
The letter below alludes to that debate, even though the topic is much broader. It’s really about a perceived conflict between secularism and Christianity in Western societies, including Australia. There is a recurring argument that our Christian heritage provides the moral fabric of our society with the inference that, without it, we’d lose our moral compass. If that was true, and we really followed Christ’s calling, we wouldn’t treat refugees the way we do. In fact, our 2 most conservative Christian leaders, in recent times, have been the most ruthless advocates for persecuting refugees, and of fomenting xenophobic sentiment in the electorate.
The names referenced in the letter below, are journalists or commentators. The Australian is a Murdoch publication, so it has conservative political leanings.
Both Paul Kelly and John Carroll in separate articles (Weekend Australian, Enquirer, 23-24 Dec.2017) seem concerned that the modern secular world that dominates Western societies, and therefore Australia, has forgotten, even ‘turned its back’ on our Christian heritage. I’m officially retiring age, so I grew up in post-war Australia when going to Sunday School and scripture classes (in public schools) was still considered part of a child’s education (neither of my parents were religious; they just thought it was the cultural norm). Strangely, I don’t lament the loss, for want of a better word, the Church’s role in political and secular life, epitomised by the divide between Catholics and Protestants that dominated even the small country town where I grew up.
I found the greater part of Paul Kelly’s lengthy editorial a stimulating read, even when I might proffer alternative views, but his commentary on High Court judge Dyson Heydon’s concerns about the future of Christianity in this country, I found alarmist to say the least: “The question for the West is how it retains its civilisational heritage if it abandons beliefs in its Christian ethic or, indeed, if its political culture begins to assault that ethic.” Without referencing them specifically, he’s obviously referring to the passing of the recent same-sex-marriage bill in Federal Parliament and the euthanasia bill in the Victorian State Parliament. Both of these have provoked ‘concerns’ from the Catholic church, in particular, who are effectively under siege for the sins they committed in the previous generation.
Personally, I think it’s a landmark moment that gays and lesbians now have the same rights as heterosexual couples. A law that has symbolic and pragmatic importance for the people it affects, and absolutely no effect on the people who oppose it. No one is being forced to have same-sex marriage – it’s a choice. Kelly and his fellow detractors will talk about religious freedom, but it’s only an issue for the people who, for whatever reason, think that homosexuals and lesbians should stay in the closet, or at least, stay out of our churches. If it comes to a choice – and it shouldn’t – between gay and lesbian rights and religious freedom, then it’s a no brainer for most Australians, including the ones like myself, who are heterosexual.
To give credit to The Australian, on the same page as John Carroll’s very lengthy piece on Christmas and the declining relevance of Jesus’ story to most Australians, there is a piece by Helen Dale, who explains, at some length, the pagan roots of Christmas that most Australians are either unaware of or blissfully apathetic about. This created a counter-perspective that was running through my head even while I was reading Carroll’s thesis.
Don Cupitt, a theologian, turned philosopher and author, is a bit of an iconoclast when it comes to religion and Christianity in particular. He’s made the salient point that humanist morality really started with the novel, where moral dilemmas and issues concerning good and evil were resolved without invoking a Deity or scripture. Carroll, to his credit, makes a similar point about the role of literature and popular culture in stimulating our psyche in this regard, without resort to prescriptive Christian ethics. He then goes on to say: “Further, we have now had 150 years of gloomy prediction that the death of God would lead to political anarchy and the moral collapse of the West. That has simply not eventuated.”
For Carroll, the Jesus story is all about imbibing us with meaning, and that is what we are losing. The point is that the Jesus story is mythology and when I was a child, undergoing the religious education I mentioned in my introductory paragraph, I really believed the stories were true, because at that age we believe whatever adults tell us. Like many of my generation, I grew up disillusioned in my mid teens, when I realised the stories were not only mythologised but defied rational analysis. And that is the real reason that Christianity has lost its meaning for most people with a Western education.
In the Review section of the same issue of the Weekend Australian, John Carey reviews a book by Stephen Greenblatt, The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve, where he charters the literary history of the book of Genesis, from its origins in The Epic of Gilgamesh to Augustine’s seminal re-interpretation as signifying the ‘Fall of Man’. I’m not sure if it’s Carey’s or Greenblatt’s insight, but one of them points out the logical inconsistency in the morality tale: “For if God was all-knowing, why did he forbid Adam and Eve to eat the fruit, knowing they would disobey? Why did he create them at all, since he intended to kill them?”
Both Carroll and Kelly refer to the heritage or legacy that Christian ethics has provided to Western cultures. Well, historically, so-called Christian ethics has created a lot of bigotry, wars, genocide and inquisitional torture. Many contemporary commentators point to the current issues surrounding Islam, claiming that the religion itself is flawed. Well, if Islam is flawed then so is Christianity.
Hugh Mackay, in his book, Right & Wrong; How to Decide for Yourself, warns of the dangers of believing that God is on your side, because then anything can be justified, which is what we’ve witnessed both historically and contemporarily.
Addendum: The same day I posted this, I read an article in the Australian Weekend Magazine (July 20-21, 2019) about Israel Folau and the issue of religious freedom. Folau is a star rugby player with the Australian Rugby Union team and famously posted a piece on Facebook that all homosexuals, adulterers, liars and various other sinners would go to Hell. What created a furor wasn’t so much what he said but that he was sacked from the team (his contract was terminated). I agree with former Australian Human Rights Commissioner, Gillian Triggs, that the Australian Rugby Union went outside their remit.
The incident has brought out the worst on both sides of the debate, and demonstrates what happens when you try to enforce what people are allowed to say in public. Peter Singer is another unexpected supporter of Folau's right to free speech. My attitude is that everyone should be allowed to make complete fools of themselves, whether they be sports stars, TV celebrities, politicians or even the President of the United States.
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