12 October 2006

human nature

So, if gagging debate on the cross-media lawsis using the Senate power "wisely, soberly and sensibly"...oh, it is. I forgot, it's not about the Australian people, it's about the interests of the Parliamentary Liberal Party. How could I have forgotten.

I mean, what's the bloody point? (Insert gratuitously offensive description of PM here). I didn't vote for him. True.

Instead, human nature. I mean, proper human nature (that is to say, the nature of proper humans). I got invited to a meeting at the last minute a few days ago and for reasons that need not be gone into here, I went. It turned out that I probably didn't need to go, although I picked up some useful stuff, mainly that some conclusions I had jumped to independently about some stuff (yeah, detail, but I give away no details about my work life here...) were correct. It's nice to get some confirmation that something you had more or less guessed at turns out to be right. Anyway, that wasn't the main point I wanted to make...

Rather, given that some bits of this meeting would put bricks to sleep, I started getting some word (or rather project) association going on in the usually uninhabited space between my ears, and so made a whole heap of notes about stuff I really should do. Now, would I have thought of these things if I hadn't had the catalyst or spur, even though it was from something relatively unrelated? It got me thinking about... thinking. This is always dangerous because I have no training in either the neurology aspect or the insert word that describes the process of thinking - hmm is that cognitive processes? - of it. So, no surprise, I never get very far apart from a general wondering. In this case, what was the link that I somehow perceived and how did it come about?

Note 1: I made notes about things I should do, but I haven't done any of them yet. That is another matter entirely.

Note 2: When, in the first post here at VVB, I said it wasn't going to be an academically inclined blog, I wasn't kidding. Heh heh.

The other human natural thingie worthy of a blog (well, as the author...) was a visit today to a company which, unbeknownst (isn't that a great word?) to us, had been through some rough times. The bloke we saw we had not met previously but, in answering some basic questions about the compnay, he proffered a very full and frank summary of the tribulations of the company and how, in his view, they had come about. Maybe people trust folk from government ("and we're here to help you") more than I thought, but it was a very useful bit of info for us. It was all quite calmly delivered despite the fact that he personally had suffered a bit.

I find this kind of honesty utterly refreshing. For some reason I never expect it - are we so habituated to spin and PR? - so it always blows me away when it happens.

Because the alternative is this, from one of the articles linked earlier:
"The last thing that any political leader or party in this country should ever
do is to assume that they have a licence from the Australian people to indulge
in any kind of over-zealous way their ideology or their enjoyment of power," Mr
Howard told a breakfast of business delegates.


Good advice. Why don't you take it and f**k off?

2 comments:

JahTeh said...

He must have a very thick skin considering that over half of the population gives him this advice every day and he's still with us.

phil said...

He's deaf in the left ear. That's the PC one.

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