As an American living in Sydney, I take offense to the comparison between Australia and the US. I had never been here before visiting here but it's surely made me appreciate my own country. We have our faults and they don't need reiterating, but at least we recognize them as such. I have never been to a place more obsessed than Australia about framing its culture and hanging it up on a wall.. America is a dynamic culture that is not afraid of change - it's what makes us who we are. America accepts its immigrants and we certainly don't call third generation Americans 'Greek' or 'Lebanese' or 'Indian'.. they're American - period. Individually we're free to hyphenate our own identities as we please. About 30% of us are non-caucasian and we don't dread losing our identity - I grew up in New York where caucasians are now a minority and it doesn't bother me.. I was lucky to have friends from several different backgrounds and it taught me to never presume anything about anyone. Pat Buchanan (a lunatic right wing idiot) once said that America was in danger of becoming a 'polyglot boarding house'. Sadly, when I look around Australia I see nothing more than that and its because Australians are afraid to embrace change and instead choose to hang on to a racially pure concept of nationhood that the rest of the world dropped about 40 years ago. People like John Howard don't see the difference between doing what it takes to win an election and building a nation and Australia as a relatively young nation needs a lot of that. I think Australians individually are the same as anywhere else, basically good and just trying to get by. By trying to label and brand yourselves you are crippling your own intellectual diversity and consequently your ability to adapt and innovate.
I've always been proud to identify with certain Australian values: self-deprecating humour, laid-back approach to most things, live-and-let-live attitude, etc. However, it's a useless exercise to try to "frame our culture and put it up on a wall", not to mention incredibly vain. There are plenty of Australians (i.e. those who've lived almost exclusively in Australia) who don't exhibit any of the aforementioned characteristics. Any analysis of the national character is fine so long as it's a discussion, not a conclusion.
Australia's history has never been stable for long. For the first century of white settlement Australia was a collection of British colonies, not a nation. As for nationhood: what timing! "Australia" was born in a drought. In its teenage years, it forged its identity in World War 1. This was followed by the Great Depression and World War 2. Relaxed and comfortable, anyone? Culturally, modern Australia (well, urban Australia, anyway) was born in the post-WW2 waves of migration, which have never stopped. In that sense, we're only 60 years old! That's very young for a culture.
It's a natural part of life to reflect on the ties that bind you to your compatriots. It's also natural and enjoyable to engage with the myths that evolve in any culture. There's a genuine identity crisis in Australia at the moment because two decades or more of aggressive multiculturalism have rendered those ties and myths extremely tenuous. The massive diversity of people means that if you pick two Sydneysiders at random, there's a good chance they will have a different first language, and very different knowledge of or perspectives on Australia's history and character. This is not a good basis on which to measure the national character.
People in general can cope with a national character - whatever they think it is - changing, but it's difficult to deal with it changing, or deteriorating, so fast. Because people like to engage with national myths, it can be disconcerting to be confronted with the young and fragile nature of Australian culture. To counter that instability, some people are obviously going to over-compensate by trying to frame the national culture and put it on a wall, as the anonymous American contributor wrote. Complicating matters is the fact that Australia is, objectively speaking, one of the best places in the world to live. It's not wrong to be proud of this, but it's wrong to credit Aussie values for this achivement, when the real drivers are stable government, natural resources and physical isolation (from wars, for example).
Thus the prevalence in the national debate these days about Australian values. We've suffered the embarassment of our dear leader John Howard trying to have "mateship" enshrined in the preamble to the constitution. Even though that referendum was soundly defeated, he continues to exhalt it as an Australian value/virtue. Owing to growing tension in multicultural Australia, there's now a proposal to institute a citizenship test (which I don't oppose). I see these things as inevitable growing pains of a nation. All the debate about values means people have too much time on their hands, which is a good thing: it's a sign of prosperity.
Viva la difference! And may people increasingly seek and find differences between people based on who they are, not where they were born.
No comments:
Post a Comment