Big is not...

...better. What big is, is big! It is heavy, cumbersome, slow and proud. It crushes whatever is in its path and doesn't stop to survey the damage. Big doesn't react, it merely labours onward until the force of gravity slows its onward march and then it slowly turns around and goes back the other direction.

Big business is big in every way. Big doesn't care for the employee with cancer or their family. It doesn't know the struggles of its customers in any meaningful way. Big doesn't respond quickly to change, doesn't create from nothing, doesn't give without thought of self sacrifice. Big doesn't care for the loss of 100 customers the way small does; nor does it care for the needs of their suppliers, unless they too are big. It doesn't need to promote its virtues in any other way than big discounts, big volumes... and big margins. Big is excessive, wateful and more likely to corrupt and be corrupt.

Small on the other hand has to innovate, offers real choice, provides value rather than discounted price. Small cares for small and large alike; doesn't exert undue influence; doesn't have time to gloat or destroy its competitors or policy makers. It is the foundation of big, yet has not forgotten its roots like big can. Small creates, out of necessity and also out of choice. Small is the true source of competition, which is the basis of sustainability, efficiency and choice. Small may need some protection from big lest it be crushed by the momentum of cumbersome economic mass.

I'm not saying there isn't a place for big, but NOT at the expense of small. Big can have value when it acts small and doesn't use its weight to force conformity. Vote small with your words, your dollars and your choices, because one day you may be small too, and until then, small will add to our quality of life and true choice.

To be continued...

A Lesson from Two Little Boys

He may be some distance from a household name these days, but Rolf Harris has enjoyed international and domestic exposure for his music and art. Tim Freedman tonight on the ABC sang the song "Two Little Boys" for which Rolf Harris is renown. It struck me at that time that the chorus is somewhat similar to that stereotypical Australian concept of mateship:

"Did you think that I would leave you crying?
When there's room on my horse for two
Climb up here, Jack and don't be crying
I can go just as fast with two."

When did we forget this idea as a nation? We have one of the strongest and most successful economies in the world, and yet we quibble and squabble and argue and fight about the refugee problem. We politicise the response, debate the morality and effectively do very little. When will we say to them that we won't leave them crying? We can go just as fast with two!

 To be continued...

Somasites

In Aldous Huxley's prophetic Brave New World, the masses are controlled through the liberal application of the drug soma. Dissent was quelled, free thought was diminished, order was maintained and freedom was eroded all through the use of a popular mind altering drug. One might say that without an opiate for the masses progress is more difficult, and rarely substantial. In a recent piece published in the Sydney Morning Herald, the development path taken by communist China and democratic India contrasts a great leap forward economically, technologically and socially in the former, while the latter remains firmly entrenched in inefficient, ineffective democratic systems which seem to only serve to maintain the status quo within Indian society and inhibit true progress. Yet there are those who seem to pay little attention to the fact that freedom is very limited in China, despite its obvious progress. Communism has performed its opiate role well and allowed for a directed development which may not have otherwise been so readily achieved in such a short time frame, but at what cost.

Somasites of the brave new world of the 21st century are here in force in so called free democracies also. Religious dogma, political ideology or chemical control; our society is far from free. Our soma today is the gross indulgence of a society so paralysed by greed, material wealth, success and power that we are prepared to sell our freedom to the highest bidder and applaud as their political puppets push it further and farther from our reach until it is too late to retrieve. Yes, despite claims of actions in the common good, many decisions presently made by governments in this country and others are far from altruistic, often associated with the forceful and resourceful posturings of well to do interest groups or commercial interests.

Why then do the vast majority of the public not cry out in disbelief or outrage? Put simply, most people with the will and passion to voice their concerns lack either the means or influence to be heard. Those who are complacent or apathetic have been conned by the pursuit of wealth, or distracted by the trappings of affluence, or in its most concerning form, prevented from hearing the truth by the very groups who would stand to lose their position of power or priveledge.

Therefore, our rage must be directed toward the two camps who perpetuate the falicy of the brave new world. Firstly, those who peddle the distractions of excess and greed: the media who control information or distract through mindless entertainment; the global corporate barons who stand to lose most from a tectonic shift in the economic or political reality; the politicians whose ear the corporate barons possess; the military industrial complex; or the legal fraternity who facilitate or perpetuate existing social, economic and political institutions to entrench inequities. Secondly, those who are blinded by the soma metered out by the first camp. Their blindness may not be directly due to their own choices, but is nonetheless an integral component in the continual decline in the justice and equitability of our society. To rail against one and not the other is akin to treating cancer and not the pain; effective, but intolerable. What is needed is a war on two fronts, with consomasites united against both the disease and the symptoms of an increasingly dysfunctional global community.

Our brave new world will not be built on the 21st century equivalent of soma, but upon truly free economic opportunities, equitable access to health and education services, fair representation in government, ecologically sustainable development, and open and free press free from economic and political distortion, and such goals being realised as global commons regardless of ethnicity, religion, spatial, social and economic background. Call those who will fight for such what you will: egathocomasonites as I did in an earlier post, consomasites as I do here, or any other name you care to use. Either way, you have your movement, and their time will soon come.

To be continued...