The Second Dreaming

It occurs to me that the world is in the early stages of the grieving process, and our public servants are merely pandering to our collective state of mind currently set quite stubbornly to denial.
The jobs of whom I fear for the most are the world’s economists, the neoclassical whom if there is any justice will lose all pretence of having qualifications.
But for most of us we just don't want to face up to the unpleasant realisation as years of savings in super funds are wiped out in a matter of weeks, of travel plans, dream holidays and sports cars slip thru our fingers. Of dream homes, our road to lifelong wealth stand poised on a precipice about to slip into oblivion.
It's all a tremendous loss of the meaning we chose to give our own lives.
Except I think, I've never had any investment in this lifestyle so for me the whole grief and denial phase has been tiresome.

That housing has blown up in our faces is convenient to my own prejudices, but I admit it is rationalization. It would not have made a difference to me if it had been a sound investment strategy.
I think my problem was that the 'Australian dream' was so bland, so unimaginative as a small block of land with some bricks, mortar, an air conditioner and a tv stacked on top of it.

I now put to you, that this dream is beneath us. It is the dream of small comfort and little ambition. It is a dream of retiring from the challenges of time, to do nothing with our lives but rest our heads tired by the anxiety of existence in general.

There is no point to us being alive merely to survive. It was not the intention of the biological and cosmic game we were born into. We rest merely that we can rise up each day and clash with the elements. A roof is but shelter to those afraid of the stars.

We do not look at them any more, and it is a shame. This is no tragedy at all. It is the most enormous opportunity for all of us to ask 'were the good times really that good?' an honest eye cast briefly backwards would see two decades where the growth of our fatcells outpaced our life expectancy, where depression was rife, anxiety and insecurity ruled.

Where our eldest and wisest clawed desperately at creams and unguents in a bid to restore their youth so that this time they do not waste it on an unadventurous life.

And yet here it is, a world in which there is so much work to be done, its big its scary and its chaotic. It is an imposing mess of clay that tells us nought of what’s to come, who will rise as stars in the new dreaming and who will be forgotten to perish in our collective memory.

And so in denial we cling to what we know, wishing it to stay because the new dreaming is uncertain.

It is time I say to forget that history of Europeans arriving in boats, stretching their legs and appropriating the land. To clear fell the trees and plant fencepost. To raise sheep and shear them, take them to market and build little cottages.

A dream that has been dreamed so long that all that now remains is some of the most uninspired housing creeping ever outwards into the outback.

The context we gave our lives is gone, the small victories. The little trophies of consumer goods.

It is time for a new dreaming, the likes of which made this country before the serpents swam downwards into the depths of the rivers and billabongs to end the dreaming.

The dreams where the sky was carried upwards by birds that we all stand under now, the arrogant hunter was speared to become the kangaroo, and like elsewhere on this earth fire was stolen from the gods.

Its time to move on, to engage in a new dreaming, of a new future and a new Australia. In the midst of all this tumbling paper that is a financial crisis we cover our shocked expressions with our hands as car companies lay off workers and we almost forget amongst our worries how much work there is to be done.