Green thought, in a green shade, Green views The Watermelon Blog Green on the outside, social justice inside
"We can do better" (Kennedy) |
Richest fluency
"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body." Walt Whitman
The Goodies
good television
good movies
good books
good poetry
more good books
good songs
good children
good boys
good people
good leaders

Try a lucky dip:

Strange
Bedfellows
John Howard
Kevin Rudd
Al Gore
George Bush
Malcolm Turnbull
Leon Trotsky
Thomas Huxley
Oliver Goldsmith
Kurt Vonnegut
Tony Blair
Samuel Pepys
Winston Churchill
Peter Costello
Joan of Arc
Fidel Castro
Sarah Williams
Peter Beattie
Ned Ludd
De-Anne Kelly
Barack Obama
Kylie Minogue
Tony Abbott
Alexander Downer
Barbaro
Sam Kekovich
Alan Bennett
Osama bin Laden
Rupert Murdoch
George Lakoff
Bjorn Lomborg
Adolf Hitler
Ayn Rand
George Orwell
Julia Butterfly Hill
Saddam Hussein
James Carville
Charles Darwin
Philip Cooney
Jacky Kelly
Irshad Manji
James Lovelock
Bob Hawke
Brendon Nelson
Barnaby Joyce
Robert Menzies
Robert Tressell
Slim Dusty
Noel Coward
Samuel Johnson
Walt Whitman
Edmund Hillary
Robert Byrd
Phillip Adams
Alisa Camplin
Arnold Schwarzeneger
Blogger's Cut
Best slices from the watermelon
Future to the back
Ox power
Whacko Texas
Ticked off
Inhaling the Sixties
God unwilling
Bakers Oven 5
Game over
All change for
Dog bites man
Whale tears
Flowers for bosses
Curtin spinning
Gotta love it
Dodgy intelligence
A glass darkly
Truth and consequences
Media-ocrity
Cant get me Im part of the society
Growing like woody weeds in the nanny state
|
A friend once said to me 'No one knows what you are really like when you are alone'. I was a teenager and fancied myself a philosopher and argued the point, suggesting that if people knew what you were like when you were not alone they could extrapolate, make predictions, about your characteristics when you were alone. I only realised some years later that I was quite wrong, and that what Jan had discovered was the psychology equivalent of Schrodinger's cat in quantum physics - the observation itself affects an outcome, so that it can never be known what the outcome would have been if it were not observed.
I was reminded of this teenage debate the other day when I saw that people in Britain now are each monitored by, on average, some 300 CCTV cameras every day. And I am reminded of it every time I am told, by right wing politicians, that if you have nothing to hide you should be happy to be filmed 300 times a day, have your emails and web use monitored, your credit card and bank details scrutinized, your library borrowings analyzed, your phone calls listened to, your presence at political protest rallies photographed, your membership of environmental groups noted. And all of this has terrible implications for political, civil, social and economic liberties in our society. But it also has personal implications.
When we had that debate, over 40 years ago, neither of us had any doubt that it was possible to be alone, even if briefly, from time to time. That while it was important to be a functioning member of family, community and country, interacting with people, presenting a face to the world, it was also important to maintain a sense of self, of personal identity, in privacy.
One of the worst aspects of being in any high security prison must be the total lack of privacy. When your cell is lit 24 hours a day, and cameras and microphones are recording every facial expression, every exclamation under the breath, every word spoken in your sleep, every moment of despair, then where does the real you go to hide, how does your inner self survive? And how far are all of us away from that now in western society?
Does it matter? Or will those same right wing politicians soon be saying to me that my inner life must be exactly the same as my outer life, that there is no room, in the interests of fighting crime and terrorism, for anyone to have private thoughts, unusual ideas, individual ways of looking at things different to the mainstream? And then we will all be exactly the same in private as in public because there will be no difference in the context. If you want people to be always under control then simply abolish the concept of 'private', and it will get rid of those silly philosophical arguments between teenagers on the meaning of life and the concept of identity.
Won't be missed, will they?
{ Post a Comment }
{ Last Page } { Page 483 of 936 } { Next Page }
|
"You are a person of some interest,one comes to you and takes strange gain away." (Pound)
"I find that I can have no enjoyment in the world but the continual drinking of knowledge. I find there is no worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some good for the world." (Keats)
People listen!
Browse recent entries (below), or select a
Category
Climate change Crop Marks (my novel) Dream Economics Education Environment Evolution Fire Health History Conquerors Infrastructure Iraq Media Nuclear power Politics federal Politics general Religion Rural life Shepherds Calendar The Arts Values Water
"We do not choose our convictions, but they choose us and force us to fight for them to the death." (Wedgewood Benn)
Recent Entries
Eyes Right This is the schoolroom I see dead people Sailing down the river Just Imagine More Jam tomorrow Just imagine Dr Yes He is baaa-ack Say Aaaaah Mirror mirror on the wall Louis et moi Eternal truths Quiddities and quillets I see your $10 billion and raise ... No going back Must try harder Smile for the camera Animal crackers Room with no view Petrol Tales Costs nothing to be civil Just like money in the bank I heard the news today If a sparrow falls
"nothing startles me beyond the moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights - or if a sparrow come before my window I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel." (Keats)

Links
Huffington Post The Greens Common Dreams Australia Institute The Nation Independent Guardian Truth Dig Edge New Matilda Global warming Kitchen gardeners Conservation International Diggers Club Community Suported Agriculture Voiceless Toronto Globe International fund for animal welfare Humane Society Concerned Farmers Network Worldwatch Institute George Monbiot Sierra Club Aust Inst Health & Welfare Parks Association NSW Gun control Aust Council of Social Service Aust Council for Educational Research Education Network Australia Rural Australians for Refugees Greenpeace Bush Heritage Geoff Davies Naomi Klein BBC Mother Jones Tom Paine John Quiggin Human Rights Watch Amnesty International Doctor's Reform Society Dissent magazine David McKnight Aust Film Institute True Food Network Get up United Nations Assn Arms trade protest Michael Osborne Lee Rhiannon Intnl Peasant Movement World Conservation Union Biological Farmers of Australia Natural Sequence Farming Union of Concerned Scientists Rockridge Institute Climate action now Climate Ark Sustainable Population Australia Global warming blog Zero Footprint Charles Darwin Mars Climate Institute Jeremy Rifkin Gene ethics (GM) Slow Food movement Darwin Awards Stern Review Bob Brown Baghdad blogger Web Diary (Margot Kingston) Real Climate (science of climate change) Spatial literacy Oil and energy Stop global warming Wilderness Society Columbia Journalism Review NSW Rural Fire Service Google Book Search World Public Opinion Reporters without borders Doctors without borders Which? UK Choice Australia Energy Science Womankind Worldwide Work Foundation Rocky Mountain Institute Sustainable Development Commission International Forum on Globalisation Democratic Audit Australia Stem Cells Emily's List Electoral Commission Turning the pages Domesday Book W.I.R.E.S. Women's Electoral Lobby Leakey Foundation Richard Dawkins Intnl Agricultural Research Alpine ecology SETI at home Rare breeds Friends of the Earth Revolutionary women Afghanistan Nature & Society forum Sceptic's Society Republican Movement Tom Dispatch City of Joy aid Mumble (Peter Brent) NASA - Mars Murray-Darling Commission Marine Conservation Well Being Live science Women's Health Children & Youth World weather The Progressive Lester Brown Australian Archives Jay Rosen (Press think) World Policy Health & Global Environment Surtees Genealogy (IGI) Free census (UK) Genealogy mailing lists Farmer John Steve Waugh Jane McGrath Meteorology Global Fund for Women One World network Red Cross RSPCA Camp Quest Humanists Pierre Tristam Landscape design Creative non-violence human extinction movt Witness Save our rivers Terry Jones No sweatshops IPCC Forest Stewardship Global Security Bad science Green building Energy [r]evolution Free the bears Pamela Poole Press Emblem Inst. for Public Accuracy Progress Iraq oil Atheists of Florida Museum of Woman International Women's Day Rodale Institute David Michael Green Good LIfe Center Food First Robert Dreyfuss Oxfam Jubilee Debt campaign Astronomy photos Rock Ethics Institute Linda O'Brien Foreign policy in focus Global giving Rare species ringtones Biofuel dangers Commercial free childhood Tom Tomorrow Environment & Development Robert Kennedy Memorial Sustainability Institute Idealists Book Mooch Irish Radio Show Step it up David Korten Intnl Forum Globalization WIMN's Voices Blog Crooked Timber blog Earth Rights Intnl Women's Media FireDogLake blog Anti War Christopher Brauchli Robert Koehler Science Blog Green alliance Wildlife Coalition charity donations Idealists Aid Watch Solartopia Women blogging Envt Management Systems Fund for Peace Away with Words Peace Direct De Smog Blog UN climate change Water treaty Francophiles Peter Martin Question everything Story of stuff
Contact me directly -
greenviews at optusnet.com.au
Or subscribe to RSS feed
Subscribe
Site feed at http://www.blognow.com.au/ rss.php?w=mrpickwick

|