Skyhooks started the rot?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UduuxKdPt9Q

Lady Bracknell. Me, sir! What has it to do with me? You can hardly imagine that I and Lord Bracknell would dream of allowing our only daughter—a girl brought up with the utmost care—to marry into a cloak-room, and form an alliance with a parcel? Good morning, Mr. Worthing!

[Lady Bracknell sweeps out in majestic indignation.]

Do your own thing has changed from growing your hair long, or nudity or other liberating gestures, to always do whatever you like because you should and you can. A bit like sport has become win at all costs – well that’s how you should live your life: winners are grinners and nobody else matters.

But living like this means we’re all constantly bumping up against each other’s selfish desire to have everything for our own personal convenience. Hence road rage, hence indignant outbursts when I don’t get what I want.

That is, sometimes, it is conceded, there is no choice but to be indignant.

Sometimes, however, folks go out of their way to express indignation even though they have no legitimate reason to be indignant. They are touchy and/or they express their identity (Russell’s egotists) through their indignation.

Mark’s implication is that this second group is unusually large and/or it is a growing part of Australia’s population.

To return to my original question, how do we know whether these touchy and/or egotistical folks comprise a large and/or growing part of Australian culture

(Note, I’m not denying that this may be the case.)

So back to Mark’s question ” what is it, precisely, about our culture that fosters the desire to be indignant?”

It’s ego, let off the leash of good manners.

My reading of Indonesian history, and experience of living there, is that it is much more complex than that – the statistics don’t explain what happened. Strangely, the people I know who do think that Suharto was a monster were also big fans of Paul Keating, who seemed pretty enamoured of the old dictator.

So many countries, including European ones, have had a period of cataclysmic violence, resulting from various historical forces, that you really can’t say that 1965 proves Indonesians have some particular propensity to violence.

Many, many Australians have by now had some experience of Indonesian culture and society and all of them that I know have been impressed with Indonesians’ civility and the way they seek harmony within their community. Considering the face huge problems they’ve faced, I think they’ve done quite well.

Given the circumstances, and compared to its Asian neighbours, I wouldn’t say it’s a particularly violent country.

You do know that the commonly cited figure for the 1965 coup is 500,000 dead? You do know that the figure for East Timor is about 250,000 dead?

Even the backwash from the 1999 referendum was about 3000 dead.

Ok, that’s not Pol Pot standard but even so, you can’t blink your eyes and miss that, surely.

But re your list. Well, you know it’s a very big, poor and diverse country which had to fight for its recent independence. Its political institutions aren’t as developed as ours, and it’s had some outside interference. Given the circumstances, and compared to its Asian neighbours, I wouldn’t say it’s a particularly violent country.

I was using it as an example of a country/culture where expressions of outrage are not encouraged. To do so would be ‘kasar’ (“vulgar, curt, crude, crass, brutish, brutal”). That compares with the recent vulgarisation of Australia, which I think got quite a shove along from that whole Paul Hogan proud-to-be-a-bogan thing.

* independence struggle, guerilla actions
* murderous actions by groups within that struggle
* after independence, separatist groups using violence, 1950s
* the incident of 30th Sept 1965 (“coup attempt”, Generals murdered)
* the subsequent massacre of communists, sympathisers and/or Chinese Indonesians [see Katz above]
* anti-Chinese riots in Jakarta circa 1973
* riots in Jakarta around the time of massive street protests against Pres Suharto; some of these directed against Chinese women
* violence by occupying troops in East Timor; then militia groups in 1999

Compared with other societies, this doesn’t seem to evidence general social stoicism and calm.

Why was 1965 called “The Year of Living Dangerously” [by the revered Bung Karno, I think]? How does a society find itself with one of its wildest hotheads occupying the Presidential Palace? Why did he threaten to set off the powder keg? Why had the nation become a powder keg in the first place?