Categories
politics

populism down under

The appeal of populism is that it makes complexity feel unnecessary. The cost is usually discovered much later.

Categories
politics

australia, please…

Populists tell you they’re going to smash the system for your benefit. Funny how it still always seems to end with the rich getting richer, the government getting worse, and everyone else paying for the repairs.

Categories
politics

political speed-dating down under: the golden bulldozer

Australia’s political speed-dating with One Nation suggests that what has happened in the USA is not an exception, it is a franchised political method.

Categories
politics

please explain: xenophobia

Xenophobia does not stop a changing world. It converts psychological vulnerability into political power.

Categories
politics

one notion politics

Populism turns complex national problems into kindergarten theatre, then sells the applause as policy.

Categories
Philosophy

populism, unmasked

Populism is not an opinion. It is a phase dynamic.

Categories
politics

political theatre

One Nation raised millions for political theatre while a Queensland hospice had to beg for palliative care funding. This is clearly ridiculous but is also hardly an isolated incident of misplaced priorities and dodgy reasoning in sociopolitical systems.

Categories
cybernetics

populist capture: one nation 

A society overwhelmed by complexity eventually stops seeking explanations and starts seeking certainty; that is when political movements such as One Nation cease to be anomalies and become warnings.

Categories
politics

big money, small ideas: power corrupts politics

The future will not be defined by any single party or leader. It will be defined by the widening gap between the complexity of the systems governing society and the increasingly simplified narratives through which society attempts to understand them

Categories
Philosophy

the communicative engine of populism

The deeper question of our historical moment concerns whether large-scale communication systems can remain sustainably coherent while continuously generating the uncertainty upon which their own operation depends.

Categories
politics

one nation: grievance politics surge down under

As frustration with conventional politics grows, Australia is turning towards alternatives whose appeal rests less on their capacity to solve complex problems than on their ability to give that frustration a political voice.

Categories
cybernetics

insurance industry: climate, consequence, catastrophe

Climate change becomes civilisational risk when insurance can no longer translate catastrophe into recoverable cost.