Vale Hugh Slattery, 1915-2005
This morning, at about 0740, my maternal grandfather, Hugh Slattery, died. He was 90.
The event
Dad called me at around 0800, and told me, his voice shaking a little as the call ended. He’d died peacefully, Dad said, “just stopped breathing.” He had been suffering from both emphysima and myelodysplasia, both of which decrease the body’s ability to take in and use oxygen, so I assume that he died mainly of a lack of it.
After the call, I went straight back to sleep, having been up until 0530 playing World of Warcraft. I’d feel a little guilty for being so detached, but guilt is for suckers.
Hugh and I weren’t close in the last years of his life. He was a committed Catholic and anti-communist, and for the last ten years or so his children have walked on metaphorical eggshells around him, failing to communicate about many things for fear of unsettling him, an old man who everyone feared might be about to die. This meant that many of the people close to him didn’t communicate some of the most important things happening in their lives. Mum eventually told him that I was a Buddhist, but I doubt he knew I am also, and more strongly, an anti-Christian. We never talked about things like why I wasn’t married after six years on and off (he would only have known about the on) with the same girl (the answers are that we’re not sure we’re the right partners for each other, and that I believe marriage is an antiquated form of union that treats people as property, and not as free agents). Mum, I guess, never told him that she doesn’t entirely believe in god anymore.
A tragic story
Here’s an example of how well-meaning concern for people’s feelings can cripple family relationships:
It’s Sunday 5 September, 2004, my 23rd birthday. In the Sunday Age, I unexpectedly find my first ever letter to the editor. I am ecstatic. The letter, which the letters editor has entitled “Let teens decide,” reads:
Why is it so often assumed that sex between adults and teenagers is morally reprehensible? ‘Don’t stand so close to me’ (Agenda 29/8) repeatedly implies that it is immoral for a teacher to have sex with a high-school student, even when that student wants sex and consents fully.
Our laws make such a consensual act a crime. But nowhere do we hear compelling reasons why consensual sex is anything other than morally neutral.
As a teenager, I always found the idea that anyone had “a duty to protect kids from themselves” incredibly insulting. Teenagers can make their own, rational decisions.
Hugh is staying with my parents, who are helping to take care of him after he had a fall that put him in rehab, where he was diagnosed with myelodysplasia, a blood disorder that a doctor told him would kill him in ten weeks. (This was several months ago, probably close to a year.) Hugh Slattery was a very intelligent man: not an intellectual not by training, but arguably so by inclination. He is proud of me, and wants to know what the letter was about. I have to avoid him all day, because Mum flips out and begs me not to tell him, or to let him read it. I’d always thought it was disrespectful to keep things from him, as though he couldn’t handle it, and was quite content to have impassioned debates in front of him with my family about such things as why the government shouldn’t get involved in trying to regulate internet porn, or why it was ridiculous to insist (as one of my aunts did over lunch at the Rivoli some years ago) that a husband and father ought to be the ultimate authority in a family. But this time I caved. At dinner, he asked me about the letter directly:
“What was the letter about?”
“You’d better ask mum that,” I reply.
Minutes later: “What was the letter about?”
“You’d better ask mum,” I repeat, deadpan. The reply is against my nature, and it treats Hugh like a child whose parents each pass the sex talk off to the other until he finally gets his answers by reading medical reference books.
A man I learned to admire
From my late teens onwards, we had disagreed about religion and politics, and it stopped us from talking to each other as much as we might have, in the way that ideological disagreements never should stop dialogue, especially between family members. Finally, towards the end of last year, I started to see things in him that I respected as I never had before.
When he had the fall that made it clear he couldn’t live alone in his house any more, he didn’t press the emergency call button hanging around his neck. Instead, he spent two hours crawling to the phone, just to do it himself. Some of his children clucked disapprovingly: “he should have just pressed the button.” But I firmly believe that if he’d been the kind of person to do that, he would have died in ten weeks, just as the doctor ordered. He didn’t listen to the doctor, somewhat unwisely in my opinion, fantasising that the doctor had actually told him he had five years to live. Better to face the reality if you really are going to die, but in practice that’s what he did: he put everything into living as well as he could, despite being crippled by conditions that so destroyed his ability to utilise oxygen that he ended up having it permanently fed into his nostrils just to maintain a healthy person’s mental functions and a fraction of their energy. Here, I realised, was an absolutely self-determined man. His body was failing, but his mind fought on. For his 90th birthday, in January, I’m glad I had the guts to send him a card that told him how much I admired his tenacity.
A few months earlier we’d had another conversation, where I told him how I’d changed my mind about socialism, that I’d realised how its proponents didn’t tolerate dissent. He was so weakened by illness that our conversation couldn’t last long enough for me to tell him that it was also because I finally realised that government interference in economic matters was inconsistent with my uncompromising insistence on maximum personal freedom (provided that one’s actions do not infringe another’s right to self-determination). I didn’t get to tell him how a colleague’s argument that to achieve socialism (a thing this colleague desires) we would have to abolish individual subjectivity, fills me with horror.
Hugh had, for a time, been National Secretary and National Vice-President of the National Civic Council, a body dedicated to fighting the perceived threat of communism in Australia, linked with the Democratic Labor Party and the Catholic Church. He was a social conservative, and wouldn’t have agreed with most of my politics. He’d told me himself that though he often didn’t agree with what I said, he found me interesting to listen to. I’m glad he appreciated my being spirited enough to speak my mind in front of him.
“I’m glad,” I told him, “that people like you and Bob Santamaria were around to fight against communism.”
“I’m glad to hear you’ve changed your mind,” he told me.
I heard that he was so pleased by my phone call that he remained animated for a whole afternoon. I’m glad I could do that for him. We said we’d talk about politics again, but we never did. The last time I saw him, at Christmas, he was overtaken by a coughing fit that stopped him from having a conversation with anyone. But here, again, I had seen a way in which I could respect him: a way in which I thought that it was right and admirable to live the way he had.
I don’t believe it makes sense to think there’s an afterlife: that since we don’t know if there is, we have to live as though there isn’t. Publicly, Hugh believed there is an afterlife, and that he’d be going to heaven in return for his good works. Whether he believed it in his heart, I’ll never know. My guess is that whatever doubts he had would have vanished before the immediate prospect of death, the fear that it would be the end, and the hope that it wouldn’t be.
I’ve said it before: I don’t want to die. I think we humans can aspire to better than being snuffed out by our faulty biology just as we’ve begun to understand life properly. Hugh deserved better. We both deserved more time to live, and to talk, and to overcome our differences. We all deserve more time.
I raise my coffee cup to the memory of a man who was determined to live until it was no longer possible. Since I won’t cry tears, I cry words for him instead. Oh, damn it, now I am crying tears.
End government arts funding now!
So I proposed in my review of Japanese Story. Adam Ford commented:
This is a joke, right?
No, Adam, it’s no joke. Here’s why I’d like to see an immediate end to government arts funding:
Taxation is a form of coercion (which under normal circumstances I view as always being wrong). The government uses the threat of force (eventual imprisonment if you don’t pay) to extort money from you. One may argue that taxation allows us to provide necessary services, and even socially beneficial services, but since the coercion is wrong the government should tax only when absolutely necessary, and as little as possible.
Art is a luxury. This doesn’t mean to say I’d want to live without it, but it’s not so absolutely necessary that the government should extort money from people to pay for it. The wrong involved in taxation, for me, outweighs the limited benefits of funding the arts.
Creative work should be for audiences, unless it’s just your own self-indulgent catharsis that you keep in a drawer/shed/etc. One of the good things about subjecting artists to market pressures is that it forces them to really think about what their audience wants. Some artists might want to do something crazy that most people will never enjoy or understand, or some piece of political propaganda or nation-building that a government body would be happier to fund than audiences would be to consume. Such artists don’t have to rely on taxation to fund their life and work: James Joyce, for instance, enjoyed private patronage, and despite Bloomsday, I would classify Ulysses as one of those crazy pieces of work that most people don’t get (I slogged through it, though, and actually enjoyed most of it). Even in a more populist vein, work that doesn’t have an obvious potential for commercialisation can still be funded by private patronage. This is what Jason Kottke, who recently quit his job to blog full-time, is banking on.
If an artist can’t get audiences to fund their work, though, either by buying it or donating to it, they obviously have to find other ways of making a living, unless they’re a wealthy dilettante (man, I wish that was me—-I’m just another tax-funded leech). Under no circumstances should creative workers imagine that they are entitled to this support from the government, nor that it has a duty to support us. I can’t blame anyone from taking the money that gets dished out (after all, I take my government scholarship): you’d be mad to turn it down, since if you do it’ll only go to someone less worthy and less principled. But this doesn’t mean that the money should get dished out in the first place. I once read a quote from Mark Twain where he advised aspiring authors to “write for three years, and if no-one pays you, give up,” or something to that effect. I think that’s good advice. Surely there are people out there who are wasting their time on artistic pursuits that they’re just no good at, and that no-one (not even hyper-sophisticated private patrons) is interested in. If they find working another job for a living robs them of the energy they need to create, then it can’t be helped. Shôganai, ne, as they say in Japan.
Just to make things perfectly clear, it’s not just government arts funding that I’m opposed to. It’s funding for all things that are clearly luxuries. That includes sports, public swimming pools and so on, street parties, Christmas decorations in the CBD, tourist information centres, museums, art galleries, and maybe, even, public libraries. Yes, public libraries. I am a mad, evil bastard.
It would break my heart to get rid of public libraries, but should I be driven to advocate their end, to be consistent? I think perhaps I should. I am confident that people would find ways to share books, probably using the internet and tools like Delicious Library or BookCrossing to build private book-sharing networks that aren’t built on a foundation of coercion.
End government arts funding now!
Japanese Story (review)
Sue Brooks (dir.) Japanese Story. 2003.
2/10
I was determined not to like this film, and so, unsurprisingly, I didn’t.
On one level, this is a film about a woman’s being forced to face and accept the reality of death. That part of it, which occupies the last twenty minutes or so, is mildly emotionally affecting. It is not, however, a particularly original theme, and nor is it exceptionally well-executed here.
The rest of the film, which is about an encounter between an East Asian man and an Australian woman, has little to recommend it. My first grievance, which I commonly hold against Australian films, is that it indulges in a view of Australia that is dominated by the outback. Since the majority of our population lives in state capital cities and their suburbs, this prevents such films from accurately representing Australian life even as they use farms or ‘the red centre’ to visually signify their Australian-ness.
Japanese Story also manifestly misrepresents East Asia and the Australian relationship with it. Why, for instance, does this encounter occur between a Japanese man and a white Australian woman? It’s not the 1980s anymore, and Japan is no longer the world-fascinating economic miracle that it once was. China and Southeast Asia are stronger presences in our cities, our culture, and our international political and economic contexts.
Accepting, though, that for whatever reason, scriptwriter Alison Tilson decided to focus on Japan (I would have done the same, Japanophile that I am), the representation of Japanese culture is stereotyped and outdated. Hiromitsu, and later in the film, his wife, are completely alien presences, whom the female protagonist, Sandy Edwards (Toni Collette), evidently struggles to understand or communicate with on all levels but those of primal emotion and desire. The Japanese characters appear, also, to have come out of the distant past, adhering assiduously to the idea prevalent in the West of the 1970s and 1980s that Japan is an unfailingly rule-bound, reserved, formal and traditional culture. To make this impression even clearer, scenes that are meant to be emotional, such as the sex-scene between Hiromitsu and Sandy, are overlaid with traditional Japanese music, rather than the J-Pop that would be more familiar to most Japanese ears (and also to many Australian ones). I get a stronger sense of Japanese contemporaneity from some historical films, such as The Last Samurai (set directly after the Meiji Restoration of 1868) than from Japanese Story.
In addition, this is a story about a gauche, uncosmopolitan Australian’s relatively neat encounter with Asia. Hiromitsu arrives on a business trip, sees some of our iconic landscape, has sex with Sandy twice, dies, and then is taken back in a coffin by his Japanese wife. Hello Asia. Goodbye Asia. This is not the Asia that Australians engaged with it know. This is not the Asia where some of my good friends, who I have known for several years, were born. This is not the Asia whose daughters I have dated. It is not the Asia some of whose values I have learned and adopted, by learning about Zen and about classical Chinese philosophy. It is not the Asia that I buy $6 meals from in the Melbourne CBD. It is not the Asia where I intend to teach English after I finish my PhD.
The director, Brooks, and scriptwriter, Tilson, seem to have no real knowledge about the realities of Asian (in this case, Japanese) life or culture, or about the ‘Australian’ relationship with Asia. For them, Japan is just a novelty, a disposable piece of the exotic.
In conclusion, here’s a list of other things that I found noteworthy about Japanese Story:
- Before Sandy has sex with Hiromitsu for the first time, she gets naked, then puts on Hiromitsu’s pants. She then rides him, cowgirl style, without us seeing her taking off the pants. Why she puts the pants on is unclear. It is also unclear how they were able to have sex, since the pants would have made it difficult, if not impossible.
- There are far too many shots of cars driving down roads, and of other things which do not advance the story or develop the characters. There is also not enough dialogue. This makes the film unneccessarily boring.
- The film was funded by numerous government agencies. This is a disgrace. Even if it had been a good film, it would still be a luxury, and the government has no business taking our money only to give it back as luxuries we did not choose. I propose an immediate end to all government funding for the arts.
- The most valuable lesson Japanese Story has to teach us is this: never dive into a body of water before you check that it is safe to do so.
The halo effect
Macworld UK - Oz Mac sales double – IDC
Apparently sales of Apple computers are really taking off in Australia.
Macworld UK quotes IT analyst Michael Sager saying “Apple seems to be finally benefiting from the iPod halo effect.”
I get really tired of people talking about how the popularity of the iPod is going to make people buy Apple computers. Especially since iTunes is on Windows now (where, as on Mac, it’s the best music player there is), iPod owners can get on just fine without Apple computers. And, incidentally, Mac owners can get on without iPods. I have an 80GB hard drive in my Powerbook, holding, among other things, my entire 3728-song music collection, which I play through speakers connected to my Airport Express wireless base-station. iPods and Macs don’t need to be paired up.
Despite this, Apple are selling loads more computers lately. Why could it be? Here are some of the things I think might be contributing:
- Windows XP is ridiculously antiquated, much the way the old Apple OS 9 was. On top of that, it suffers drawing glitches, constant and often unexplained slowdowns (usually from too many applications having installed useless memory-resident utilities), myriad viruses, and spyware. Every useful feature is buried under a mountain of wizards, menus, and dialog boxes. It is also just plain broken. Every time I plug in my firewire drives under Windows, the system reboots. Genius.
- After years of having an operating system that geeks laughed at, Apple now has OS X, the best operating system there is. Both geeks and people who don’t know what RAM is manage to love it simultaneously. That’s a fine achievement on the developers’ part.
- Their lead industrial designer, Jonathan Ive, is a god. My white iBook G3 and its successor, an Alumnium Powerbook, are the only computers I’ve ever owned that I’d describe as “beautiful,” and the build quality is superb.
These are the reasons why I tell everyone I know who uses a PC that they should be using a Mac instead. Notice none of them had anything to do with an iPod.
Are you using a Mac, reader? If not, do yourself a favour. Go get one. For the budget-conscious, I recommend a Mac Mini, or an iBook G4.
It’s the Mac that radiates a halo, not the iPod.
Incidentally, about half an hour ago, Apple unveiled its newest revisions of the iPod line. Check them out, if you must.
Will trade labour for money
Why don’t you ever see a homeless person in a movie or on TV holding a sign that says that? Why do their signs always say something like “will strip for food”? I suppose it’s because those fictional characters neither realise that there are many people who want things other than stripping done for them, nor understand the versatile, abstract power of money. I however, understand these things well.
Currently, my credit card balance is way higher than I would like. While I could keep accumulating debt in the hope that my soon being titled “Dr. Ben Hourigan” will bring a whole load of money my way, I am seriously contemplating finding a job right now, hopefully some kind of proofreading or editing work. Also, if I really want to be working in Japan in the next 6 months (which I do), I’d better apply soon.
In the service of this end, I have posted a new version of my resumé, redesigned in response to Annette’s insistence that the old one was ugly. Anyone who’s familiar with Apple’s new Pages application will immediately see that I used it to do the layout. In fact, I didn’t do much except type one of the templates, it was that good. Overall, I’m really impressed with the new app, which has a lot of DTP functions as well as word-processing ones. It’s just a shame there aren’t any templates for book-length documents, like theses…
Addendum to yesterday
Yesterday I wrote about the wrong way to relate to the powers of science: to scorn them as inauthentic.
For the curious, I think Ray Kurzweil has the right idea on this matter, according to a report in Wired. Kurzweil expects that within 20 years, humans will have invented the technologies they need to make themselves immortal. I wish I shared his optimism about the time frame: I don’t expect that we will reach this goal within my lifetime. Even so, I think we’ll get there soon, and that it’s probable my children, when I have them, will never have to die.
I have had conversations with people who think immortality would be a bad thing, because it is the authentic nature of humans to die. I think those people are fools. Well, they can die if they want to; if Kurzweil’s right, and I have the choice to live for ever, then I will take it.
I want to be immortal. I want to be an übermensch. I want to live in space. I want to be a god.
Acquiescence is futile
I am going bald.
Or at least, I was. Today I went to a doctor and got a prescription for finasteride, a drug that halts male pattern baldness (also known as androgenetic alopecia). Of course, it remains to be seen if the drug will work for me, and I am unlikely to regain any of the substantial amount of hair I have already lost at my temples.
It is this last point that makes me view the record of my decision-making on this issue as a cautionary tale.
Back when I started losing hair, probably about three or four years ago, I was inclined to think: “It’s okay. This is the natural course of life. I will grow old gracefully, and learn to live with it.” This thought was a manifestation of a particular way of responding to the world, which supposes that one should reconcile oneself not just to the frailties of the human body, but also to the failures and misfortunes of all kinds. This kind of acquiescence is supposed to lead to peace of mind.
I got this teaching from Zen, and from Daoism, but I see it more often elsewhere. It also animates a kind of environmentalist thinking that abhors the achievements of modern civilisation, and thinks we’d be healthier and happier if we still lived in grass huts. It inspires some feminists to leave their armpits unshaven and undeodorised in the apparent belief that to do so is somehow more authentic than the alternatives (this is not a generalisation: I’m thinking of at least one specific example). In all its manifestations, it makes the foolish fail to act in order to shape the world and themselves in order to realise their ideals, no matter how trivial. And it makes some people, like the environmentalists and feminists I’ve mentioned, aspire to the base out of disdain for the refined.
In my case, it stopped me using the products of science to preserve my hair. If I’d believed then, as I do know, that it is right and admirable to use the power at our disposal to sculpt the world and ourselves as we see fit, I would still have all my hair. Ultimately, that is the outcome that would have made me happiest at the present moment. If we can change something we do not like, we should not be reconciled to it happening anyway.
Acquiescence is futile.
Upgrade to Wordpress 1.5
If you notice that the site is a mess, it’s because I just upgraded to Wordpress 1.5. I’m hoping to soon have things looking like they were before.
Thanks to all the Wordpress developers for making such mayhem possible.