Those who come to gawk at the hookers or engage in ritual drunkenness are products of an education system that was debased by the Whitlam era libertarianism and is now firmly in the hands of ideologues who were taught by the Whitlamesque purveyors of hollow philosophies like moral relativism. Good manners and civility are sneered at. Empty-headed clothes horses and knuckle-headed sports figures are paraded as role models and fashions aren’t based on the aspirational, they are derived from the institutional.
Pour a morally rootless crowd into a 300m sliver of real estate bounded roughly by Bayswater Rd, Kellett St and Darlinghurst Rd, let them mass around the El Alamein fountain when they’re as full as state school buses and violence becomes a certainty.
In this hollow culture the added ingredients of booze and pyscho-stimulants are as volatile as nitro-glycerine. A glance is enough to spark an explosive outburst with lethal consequences.He nails the underlying worldview issues that are beginning to emerge as a cancer on our society and are also shapers of the world to come. It is really quite depressing, particularly (I imagine) if you don't have a transcendent faith.
His mention of the 'hollow culture' resonates with me because one of my favourite poems of all time is the 'Hollow Men' by TS Eliot:
We are the hollow men |
We are the stuffed men |
Leaning together |
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! |
Our dried voices, when |
We whisper together |
Are quiet and meaningless |
As wind in dry grass |
Or rats' feet over broken glass |
In our dry cellar |
Shape without form, shade without colour, |
Paralysed force, gesture without motion; |
Those who have crossed |
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom |
Remember us - if at all - not as lost |
Violent souls, but only |
|
The stuffed men.This is progress then in the Gillard era. We have moved from individually being 'hollow men' into the collective, that is into becoming a 'hollow culture'. |
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