What can Australia do to overcome how boring the
place is? Well, as I alluded to fairly strongly above, I
think the GloMedia will have a major impact on the
country for the same reason that it will have on all
countries. Australians will become less “Australian”
and more “globan” (i.e. citizens of Globa). They will
think more globally rather than nationally. They will
be exposed to the ideas of the world rather than to
their traditional brawn-based preoccupations such as
sport and lolling on the beach.But, there will be limits to what Australia, or any
small country for that matter, can do. (Australia is
small in population terms, only about 20 million
people, but is the size of continental USA or China in
surface area, with most of it useless for habitation,
due to it being too dry, too desert like). With a small
population, only a small number of talented
intellectuals and artists are generated each human
generation. Their numbers are usually too small to
create a self sustaining critical mass, so they do not
feel supported by the values of the culture they grow
up in, and hence feel alienated and disgusted. Many
of them simply leave the culture, thus lowering the
quality of the gene pool, and tightening a vicious
circle.
But as Australians become more global in their minds,
they will be exposed to the best that the whole planet
has to offer in terms of ideas, the arts, ideologies,
attitudes, etc. They will be equal with the best,
because they will be exposed to the best in the world.
As Australians, they may not be able to contribute
much, due to their small population, but at least they
can be absorbers of the best the planet has to offer.
GloMedia will make Australians, and nationals of all
countries, more interesting, less boring, because they
will have their minds expanded from the dreary limitsof their small-time mono-cultures to the glories of a
truly global culture.
Very probably, a global culture, with a GloMedia to
support it and sustain it, will have the net effect on
Australia of creating in the early years, a rather deep
seated inferiority complex (similar to what happened
to the French when they were exposed to European
wide media in the 1990s), as millions of Australians
realize that on the world scene they don't amount to
much, and contribute almost nothing to world events,
and especially to world intellect and knowledge. The
same comment could be made about any small
country.
However, as the years pass, and Australians and most
of the world’s citizens feel more and more global and
less and less national, their sense of identity and self
worth will shift. One can make an analogy with
people living in a major city and a small town in the
US. Americans have a real pride in their nationality,
since they know there is a certain objective reality in
their claims of being “Number One”. Some nation at
any given time has to be the top nation (as judged by
surveys across the planet).
So instead of the small town American feeling
depressed about how little his town contributes toAmerican culture, he can focus on the fact of his
belonging to a greater whole, i.e. the US, and feel a
sense of pride, real pride. Well, similarly with
Australians, or any small country. As globism grows,
and people of all nations identify increasingly with
their new global state, they can take a new pride in
being globans, citizens of the new Globa.
Isolated
Traditionally, Australia has always been isolated,
both geographically, and intellectually. It is
essentially a European culture situated in South East
Asia. Most of the country is desert, with the majority
of its small population living in the south east
“corner” of the country, where there is enough rain
for some grass to grow.
When I was growing up in Australia in the 1950s and
1960s, Australia had a very bad reputation
internationally for being extremely provincial minded
and philistinic - a beer bellied, sport oriented, anti-
intellectual, anti-authority, low-class bunch of
mindless middle and lower class materialists. As will
be mentioned frequently throughout this book (for
emphasis), any migrant new world nation, including
Australia, never had an upper class in the old worldEuropean sense. The upper class chose not to migrate.
(How would migrating have benefited them? They
would have had to work with their hands in a virgin
land, without the trimmings of an upper class culture,
i.e. no symphony orchestras, no poetry salons, etc).
In the 1970s, the young people of Australia took
advantage of the new jumbo jets and mass touristed
to Europe and the US, where they were rudely
shocked into a recognition of their own country’s
general inferiority. The most talented ones simply
never returned, but most did, and brought with them
the realization that their own culture was a backwater
in all senses of the word. They felt ashamed, and
motivated to lift the cultural standards of their
country, and did to some extent.
The recent rise of the internet, especially “broad
band” internet (i.e. fast internet allowing real time
movies, videos, lectures, and high quality sound) has
brought the world to Australia, and those with minds
curious enough to be interested, can convert
themselves into world citizens. Many do, but many
don't. On my recent visit to Australia, I found the
young people preoccupied mainly by American pulp
movies, that they absorbed by the hundreds. They
had had their minds colonized by the US. They used
US slang, had US attitudes, and in many respectswere as boring as the generation I had left behind
when I was in my early twenties, i.e. nearly 40 years
ago.
So with the penetration of broad band internet,
Australia may have lost its isolation. It is a fairly rich
country. Its citizens travel internationally more, so
the rough provinciality of the past has largely gone,
but the general “middle class mindlessness” seemed
to me (on a recent visit) to be as strong as ever.
From my perspective, the problem with migrant
nations is that they do not have an intellectual upper
class, that has power and teeth, that expresses an
impatience towards the stupidity and ignorance of the
middle and lower classes, and slaps them down for it.
In the old world, especially those with large
populations (e.g. over 50 million people) the top 1%
in intelligence (IQ) terms amounts to a subpopulation
of half a million people with real talent. That is large
enough to generate a self supporting critical mass.
Over the centuries, this intellectual upper class elite,
has disciplined the culture, and made it more
intellectually rigorous, and civilized.
But, you may object, “What about the US? It has 300
million people. That's 3 million intellectuals, so why
is the US not a paragon of culture and intellect? Howthen to explain its overwhelming middle class
mindlessness and vulgarity?” I will deal with that
problem when I discuss the CONS of the US. But
you have a point.
I do not wish to spend much time on Australia, given
its non-world-ranking-nation status. I only included a
bit of comment above for the sake of completeness,
and to follow the pattern of responding to all the
CONS of the countries listed in the previous chapter
(except India, which I know very little about).
We turn now to the truly great cultures of the planet,
i.e. the “world-ranking-countries of the world (in my
opinion).