I must say it is has been many a moon since I have seen a journo talk about “the Left.” We are all “Progressives” now, you see.

“Equality of opportunity” is a bit of meaningless agitprop, shamlessly copied and pasted from Xianity, whose only practical implication is equality of outcome.

What you are saying by referencing Margaret is also correct. I don’t think it conflicts with the application of any reframing tool.

but he would say he’s created the lowest unemployment for 30 years, more opportunities, more wealth …

Exactly! That’s what he says he’s creating. So to reframe that conversation with Howard (imagine this happening on television!) in terms of what he’s creating, you can bring up the future battlers and tier of overlords! You are picking up there, Russell, exactly, how this works. You’ve identified the ways Howard speaks about what he’s creating, so if you were in a position to bring to light what else he’s creating he is forced onto your terms of debate. You don’t just swallow the line, you work with him in his creative work to unpack that issue more completely.

If you don’t like what he’s creating, by reframing your conversation with him you put him in a position where he has to defend it. That challenges it, and weakens his selling of the expedient line. He’s now in a position to have to talk about a generation of battlers he’s creating and those bloody overlords. That’s your power, by identifying that common element of creativity and reframing. That’s an application of what I’m talking about, which brings Howard into the real world!

Russell, regarding your vision, I’m not to challenge it or press you on it. I respect people do have a vision for life: that’s exactly my point to: we all do.

I guess all I wished to share there as ideas is that a general, cohesive vision hasn’t been provided from people who consider themselves part of the “Left”.

That’s where you need to, as Margaret said at the beginning “Live in the real world – marshall your evidence and get your facts straight” and puncture the claims of prosperity by talking about mortgages, debt, the difficulty for young people to get a house and start a family, the under-employed, the lack of planning and investment for what comes after the boom etc.

“it really does behove you to get a vision!” yes, how are you going to do that?

You said earlier, of the left “to me, there is a central, cohesive, powerful idea missing” – not for me, I’ve always had a vision of what the left stood for and it hasn’t changed. Most people commenting here are left-wing, where did their beliefs come from? – presumably something like mine: family background, church and reading. And then as you get older, experience.

What I’m talking about here is a new way of looking at an old problem. But the way I am asking it to be looked at is as old as humanity itself. It has its roots deep in the human pscyhe, just as the alternative, current way of looking at politics (left right).

Let’s remember, also, that many people in real life don’t give a hoot about left right. They, more readily, appreciate what I’m suggesting, not wishing to engage in the ideology of politics (which is not to denigrate that either of course).

So what it comes down to is the application. I’d like to bold that line but it would be visually offensive. May i say it again?

So what it comes down to.. is the application.

How do you apply the simple question of “What do I wish to conserve, and what do I wish to create?”.

Try it yourself. Look at any political issue and ask of it: what do you wish to conserve, what do you wish to create?

As a tool, it is incredibly powerful, because it unpacks the issues, removes the distractions from them, and allows you to be a part of them. Then you can be effective.

(Variations of course on the same tool, same principle, are to ask: what do I wish to see conserved, what do I wish to see changed, built. Or, within a particular issue: what are the creative elements of it? What is it creating? What is it conserving, keeping?)

So in effect all that happens is that you have been given a tool, which allows you to integrate and be effective. (Anywhere and anyhow you like).

Russell, I don’t for a minute think the great pscyhological divide will merge. Journos for instance cannot remove the word “Left” from their thinking because to do so is the equivalent of removing the letters…. t f e l …from their keyboards: they wouldn’t feel they could write anything! It’s in their interests, as one example of many, to maintain the divisive terms. This suits the conservative and is one reason why it behoves us to begin to learn to think differently if something other than that agenda is to be implemented.

However, as a simple tool, to apply whereever and however you wish, it does empower you, personally, if you give it a good go and get used to it. It actually makes politics exciting, just to look at it that way.

Ask of Howard: what is he creating? Sheesh, he’s creating a whole new generation of subservient battlers, and with that the cementation of a tier of born leaders over them. How awesome is that? How creative!! And what has he conserved in the meantime? And so it goes…

For practical application, a good example once again is watching Kevin Rudd, who’s applying many of these principles of integration (the practical implementation of this way of thinking) in pragmatic, comprisingly effective, ways.

So, specifically, it’s a tool. A tool to apply, as you wish.

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I’d add, also, that when you begin to think in terms of those essential forces, the creative and conservative force, it really does behove you to get a vision! It throws up our own inadquacies, dogmas, and kneejerk thinking, because those things are not effective.

Hence, the problems when applying this tool are not of the tool, but of the vision, the lack of depth, cohesion, usefulness and relevence. That’s been a big criticism of non-conservatives. Do you have one? How deep, specific, cohesive is it?

That’s not to criticise, either, but to highlight a general problem for progressives.

“The pre-multicultural Australian immigration program 1945-75, which you conveniently ignored, worked pretty well. Non-Anglo European immigrants were quite successful at making a go of it in this country.”

wow, you mean like providing a generation of stupid bogans in southern and eastern sydney causing riots and making docu-soaps that valorise macho violence? yeah, awesome culture that one. well integrated.

No immigrant ever stopped me from doing something Australian. Has any non-Australian ever stopped any Australian from doing something Australian? can anyone please provide an example of where an Australian was stopped from doing something Australian because of a non-Australian?

I can remember the thing about someone being called ‘Mate’ at new Parliament House, but that was a class thing. Then they stopped the Mexican Wave at the cricket, but that is ok cause it was Mexican. Hmmm, oh! Some Turkish people tried to intervene in every young Australians’ dog-given right to go to ANZAC Cove and make a drunken spectacle of themselves. We should be able to invade the Cove whenever we f’ckin want to and as f’ckin drunk as we want to be.

“Finally, the Culture Wars have taught the Left a philosophical lesson: if you try to replace modern nationalism with post-modern globalism you just might wind up with pre-modern tribalism.”

The only tribalism I have witnessed in the last decade is a product of the pocketed anglo-australian nationalism. ‘Pocketed’ means it only appears in pockets of (to be slightly paradoxical) pre-modern nationalism. Of course the ‘national’ here figures as a kind of tribalism for weak-minded fools who try to enrich the existential poverty of their lives by incorporating a fundamentalist love of certain symbolic remnants of the national imaginary: “Kiss the flag!”

“My biggest criticism of the Left, in the post-modernist context, is their failure to acknoledge the virtue of conservatism in improving the situation of the low-status. A conservative seeks to conserve the Good Society. This is an epistemological, not ethnological, committment.”

My biggest criticism of the conservatives, in their neo-post-modernist context, is their failure to acknowledge the true costs of conservatism in improving the situation of the already privileged. A conservative seeks to conserve the Good Society at an unacceptable cost to present and future generations.

“These characteristics were usually considered low-status but are now considered higher-status eg â??vibrant ethnicsâ??, â??sassy womenâ??, â??trendy gaysâ?? etc”

Sassy women were not valorised in previous times? wtf. I love the sassy women. Pure sass. f’ck yeah. If nothing else this demonstrates how advanced we now are. Thanks.

“I am afraid you misunderstand the Left completely. It is the Left that is into transcendence. It is the Left that seeks to escape the challenges of today by trying to control the future. The Left is in denial, so escapes into various types of utopian eschataolgies.”

Oh, most importantly, John Greenfield, I forgot one: the Left don’t stick their heads in ovens.

One of the very basic challenges that the conservatives and/or Right have never been able to properly to attack is the reality that most problems the world faces today demand a politics that exceeds short term political games and some even exceed the frame of reference of human generations. These include the middle-east conflicts, environment, the privileged distribution of socio-economic wealth, housing/mobility crises in most metro-urban areas, etc.

We need more elites. No enough elites. l33ts. If only to serve as positive role models that are not boofhead rugby players and accountant politicians.

I agree with looking for a vision broad enough to accomodate everyone, but I think you need to be more specific. A lot of what you write sounds to me like something from the back of a “new age” paperback. That’s not meant as an insult – I don’t mind occasionally dipping into the new age – but you won’t get too far with that kind of language in a conversation with the average person. Remember the phrase “get real” ?

I think you need to express your vision in more specific goals. A political party has to have a brand – I think Labor’s brand should be: a fair go, community building, progressive/creative. It’s not hard to craft distinctive and broadly popular policies in line with those values.