I moved to Melbourne from Sydney 2 years ago, nearly to the day, and started the Pharoz blog a couple of weeks after arriving here in Melbourne. The blog has over 800 posts now, on a wide range of topics, with a number of novel ideas. Last month the blog had 80,438 hits, with about 6,000 being the record for one day. In the last two years no one in Melbourne has ever approached me and talked about the blog, even though I have regularly heard snide remarks from others that allude to the blog. I have raised the blog with a few people, but they didn’t want to discuss the issues with me.
I suspect that there has been some interest in this blog, and myself, over this time and I also suspect that the public perceptions have been all over the place and truly weird. The perceptions would be off if there has been no one who has ACTUALLY talked with me about the blog and the ideas there. Through discussing the ideas any misunderstandings could be very quickly clarified and you might even get an idea of a real person who would write things like that. As it stands I have not been included into society as the author, and have no option other than remain silent on it, while also being presumably subjected to intense and invasive personal scrutiny that I can do nothing about, and that I find inappropriate and extremely offensive. There is also the issue of privacy.
There is an incredible imbalance of power between myself and the people looking in on me. I have not put that wall up. I am behind that wall and bound within that wall. It has been put there deliberately in order to keep me marginalised, and silenced. The thing that surprises me is that society here in Melbourne has largely gone along with that power game and is pretending that it isn’t there. I am communicating constantly through this blog, with quality ideas I think, and yet I am continually shunned and mocked. The major ideas can stand for themselves, and some of the ideas are novel and of value. Anyone who could think them through would surely see them as being reasonable, and they propose answers and strategies to deal with some seemingly intractable problems. Yet, some people may think that I am not communicating on a personal basis? How can I with such an imbalance of power against me, and when no one will talk with me about the blog? That criticism should be more correctly directed toward the society that I am in, not me. It’s been two years. Bully someone like that for long enough and they will get pissed off, and that is exactly the purpose of that bullying.
Then there is the issue of arrogance. I don’t think my stance is arrogant. I have put down my reasoning and expressed my ideas in ways that can be followed. The topics addressed are important at this time, issues such as global warming, nuclear power, terrorism, the crisis in democracy, issues with religion and politics, and so on. It is important that these new perspectives are expressed, so that they can be fully developed and evaluated for what they are worth. These are ideas. Treat them as ideas. The one-sided power plays and weird typecasting cast in my direction are arrogant, I would contend. Personal attacks should not be a technique to have the substance of ideas that person expresses discounted, even if that is the way some conservatives work. While I am not included I can not defend myself. We can’t be happy-clappy and smiley-smiley across such an imbalance of power. That imbalance of power needs to be addressed first. That also applies to situations of systemic social disadvantage well beyond me. You are asking us to abandon truth and to accept that imbalance of power, which are unacceptable conditions. Your request to do so betrays the fact that you can’t be trusted to treat us as equals anyway, even if we did comply. The notion that everything will be okay if only everybody was happy and friendly is fanciful. There needs to be ways to work through disputes and disagreements, and in a liberal democracy these ideas are well established.
One other point: political theory and philosophy is very different to political power. A philosopher is concerned with ideas and, hopefully, notions of truth. A political operator is a completely different kind of animal. A person who was interested in gaining political power would be doing things completely differently to how I have been doing things. I wonder whether some of the people in the public can even realise that. If after all this time some of my posts have an impact that is because there may be some truth in there. It may also be the case that our political system has become badly corrupted. I have no money, no social network, no political influence. I am not a politician. A politician wannabe would not write like I have. My concern has ALWAYS been the health of our political system. If you have any doubt about that, read my submission to the Senate Inquiry into a Republic. It is shocking how poorly Australians today understand our democracy, or how power works. You can not be ignorant and free, so the saying goes. That I have to keep pointing these things out…
