A Moron in a Hurry – Part 2

Aug 18, 2013 | Arts, Australian Values, Cultural Values, Democracy, Economic Values, Education, Fame, Freedom of Speech, Legal, Lifestyle & Life, Media Values, OzPol Values, Values

A Moron in a Hurry – Part 2

It’s Me! It’s Tim!

 

A s you know Sir Roger has been stood over by the rozzers of the Whitlam Industry, accused of the most nefarious crimes in the most aggressive tones. Almost as terrifying as the big boys threatening him for his lunch money.

To help the dear reader understand the response which follows, here, first, are excerpts from that letter from the Whitlam Institute which was rushed by email, with a copy by snail, under the hand of one “Helen” but actually from the desk of an “Allison” (who knows?). All one really knows about “Helen” is that she appears to be a ‘torturer’, or to put it another way, ‘abominable power point presenter’.

Therefore, in the spirit of that letter Sir Roger’s amanuensis began his reply as follows: 

Gosh! Comrade!
This is exciting, isn’t it? To be accused of “procuring”! Sir Roger feels he has at last achieved the heady heights of infamous celebrity enjoyed by Berlusconi and Strauss-Kahn!

Who even for a moment suspected that a t-shirt splashed with the ValuesAustralia.com logo could ever be suspected of being sanctioned by the arrogant old codger? Only those who knew that The Great Man’s now immortally corporatised self is also now legally wagon-encircled.

Ought one to turn oneself in to the police tonight? Might one wait till tomorrow? Will one need to pack one’s pyjamas? What sort of a sentence do you think one might get (were you to win)?

One says, “were you to win” because who knows for sure if a judge would find that the (now ex-) t-shirt was “passing off”?

One knows you can’t. Not till the judge puts the black cap on.

 

Since your concern is to protect the income of the Mighty Whitlam Edifice one can inform you that the Institute has lost no income in this matter. One finds no historic record of a sale of the allegedly offensive t-shirt and it is no longer offered for sale on the Values Australia website or at cafepress.

 

One hopes you will forgive any language which is not cringingly fearful under the onslaught of your strident, harshly worded and school-marmish threats but, you know, this blog post (series) if it lacked some frisson, some controversy, would be terribly dull and there would be nothing to tweet about. Sir Roger’s loyal fans would be disappointed and it would damage his reputation for robustness.

 

One hopes indeed that you will understand that this response may contain occasionally non-legal terminology because, as Sir Roger puts it, “IANAL”. And if you are offended, well, you know, you have as much right to be offended as Sir Roger was offended that the letter purporting to be sent by you was in fact sent for you, a task you delegated to someone else, perhaps the office girl.

 

Who is to know?

 

I am the nominee of Sir Roger Migently who commissions and is senior adviser to the website ValuesAustralia (hosted in and published from the United States of America with all the implications and complications that entails).

 

Sir Roger has therefore directed that I endorse the enclosure on his behalf. (You may need to look carefully for the signature towards the end.)

 

He was shocked to hear that, what with his pension and his gold ticket and all, old Gruff is so short of cash these days that he needs every cent you can get him.

 

Sir Roger (benighted before Gough changed the honours system) informs me that he had quite forgotten that he had created the sparkling opportunity to ignore the … er … opportunity to which you refer and which apparently no-one saw or – certainly on the evidence and to Sir Roger’s memory – not one person wanted. Sir Roger frankly couldn’t have given a stuff about it, as he says, after the 2007 election. Its time (oops, sorry!) had passed.

 

So he was shocked when the rozzers from Whittling Inc sent to his amanuensis the terrifying threats of, well, who knows what dire consequences by email! To Sir Roger it felt a bit like being dumped by text (which strangely chuffed him, being down with the kids and terribly contemporary and all).

 

Sir Roger demands that the forensic team at UWS Legal, should they locate any remaining instances of the offending item, immediately inform Sir Roger who will forthwith speak to his people to have them deleted.

 

(On a side note, there are on the cafepress website very many other instances of the phrase being used on possibly tens or hundreds of

g-strings
shirts
mugs
cups
caps
dog warmers and
mouse mats,

so if you wanted to pursue them – perhaps claiming piracy under extraterritoriality? – the office girl will have plenty of work to do for the next few years.)

 

 

Discovery and Observations

You assert that the Whitlam Institute has a “substantial reputation”.

 

Who knew?

 

Sir Roger would be one of the more aware people in the community, both generally and politically. He had no idea! A Whitlam Institute? Doing great and worthy works? A t-shirt?

 

I must say, the UWS marketing unit needs to get off its arse about this one and let the world know that Gough’s spirit lives! If Sir Roger has never heard of it, few others have.

 

Looking at the Whitlam Industry website now one might suspect it is less the throbbing engine of social justice and democratic advancement one might imagine than it is a back-slapping nostalgia club for the ex-famous and forgotten, a few academics writing impenetrable scholarly works with obtusely academic titles and a fresh-faced legal team jumping out of the legal bushes to surprise the disobedient.

 

 

So, trademarks and passing off

 

“A cause of action for passing off is a form of intellectual property enforcement … particularly where an action for trademark infringement based on a registered trade mark is unlikely to be successful.”

 

“Passing off … does not confer monopoly rights to any names, marks, get-up or other indicia. It does not recognize them as property in its own right.

“Instead, the law of passing off is designed to prevent misrepresentation in the course of trade to the public, for example, that there is some sort of association between the business of defendant and that of the claimant.”

 

There are three elements which must be fulfilled:

 

• Goodwill owned by a trader

• Misrepresentation

• damage to goodwill.

 

In Reckitt & Colman Ltd v Borden Inc [1990], Lord Oliver stated that a plaintiff must establish all of the following:

 

1. a goodwill or reputation attached to the goods or services

2. a misrepresentation leading or likely to lead the public to believe that the goods or services offered by him are goods or services of the plaintiff

3. that he suffers loss or damage as a consequence of the erroneous belief that the goods or services of the defendant are the goods or services of the plaintiff.

  

 

  1. A case may be made that goodwill attaches to items for sale by the Whitlam Institute.
    However:
  2. As for misrepresentation, not even “a moron in a hurry” (which as you know is NOT the test) would imagine that the shirt prominently displaying the ValuesAustralia logo was an offering of the Whitlam Institute. [see below]
  3. The website never and nowhere represents (or represented) or if you like misrepresents or misrepresented in any way, or could have, that ValuesAustralia.com was in any way affiliated with the Whitlam Institute or that the shirt was in any way approved by the Whitlam Institute. It would not have been possible to make such a claim because ValuesAustralia.com in 2007 had no knowledge (was, as it now seems, blissfully unaware) of the Institute’s existence at all or of its commercial offerings.

    ValuesAustralia.com never knew, or in its wildest dreams could ever have imagined, that the two words “it’s” and “time” placed side by side, in dictionary order, were or ever would be, or for goodness’ sake ever could be trademarked by anyone.

  4. It is as impossible to demonstrate as it is silly to suggest that the Whitlam Institute has suffered or could have suffered loss or damage as a result of any confusion over the shirt’s provenance. As far as the writer knows no shirt was sold except for the one bought by Values Australia itself as a proof copy in 2007 and the person who bought that shirt (oneself) was, absolutely certainly, under no misapprehension whatever that the shirt was represented as a product of the Whitlam Institute. No person has ever contacted Values Australia with any question concerning the shirt’s provenance. Until now.

There never was any intent to deceive nor any intention to obtain a gain or cause a loss at the expense of the Whitlam Institute.

 

There never was any misrepresentation made and nor there was ever any intention in the course of trade calculated to injure the business or goodwill of the Whitlam Institute. No damage could be imagined probably to be caused, none was caused, and now certainly none can be caused in the future.

 

To make this point clear, I wonder if you would take a moment to view these two images and decide whether you can tell them apart, remembering that the test is not “a moron in a hurry”.

 

They have been placed side by side for ease of comparison). Can you tell which is which? Are you sure that the shirt on the right is not an offering, or representing itself as an offering, of the Whitlam Institute?

 

 [Images considered fair use for this document as exhibits in a legal context]

 

 

How can you tell?

 

. . . End of Part 1

 

 

The “moron in a hurry” is a term in case law:

It appears to have been used first by Mr Justice Foster in the 1978 English legal case of Morning Star Cooperative Society v Express Newspapers Limited [1979] FSR 113. In this case, the publishers of the Morning Star, a British Communist Party publication, sought an injunction to prevent Express Newspapers from launching their new tabloid, which was to be called the Daily Star.

The judge was unsympathetic. He asked whether the plaintiffs could show:

a misrepresentation express or implied that the newspaper to be published by the defendants is connected with the plaintiffs’ business and that as a consequence damage is likely to result to the plaintiffs and stated that:

“if one puts the two papers side by side I for myself would find that the two papers are so different in every way that only a moron in a hurry would be misled.”

So any possible confusion by a “moron in a hurry” is insufficient to find for the plaintiff.

 

 

In our next instalment we ask: 
  • we share a personal moment with “Helen”
  • Who really owns the phrase “it’s time”?
  • Is the phrase already generic?
  • What about freedom of political speech?

 

A Moron in a Hurry – Part 1

Aug 17, 2013 | Australian Values, Cultural Values, Democracy, Economic Values, Education, Freedom of Speech, Legal, Lifestyle & Life, Media Values, OzPol Values, Values

A Moron in a Hurry – Part 1

Send out the Pages

WARNING:
POLITICAL DISCUSSION PROTECTED BY SECTIONS 7 AND 24 OF THE AUSTRALIAN CONSTITUTION.

  

S ir Roger (or at least his amanuensis) was harried recently by the legal department of a minor university which happens to accommodate a “controlled entity” bearing the name of a once terrifying but now sadly faded and largely ignored (for those who lived in his time) or unknown (for those born after his time) mythical hero of long ago. His name was “Goth”.

His time, comrade, was a time of social earthquake, of cultural lightning and political tempest whose like we shall not see again.

Heralded by fiery comets, bare-chested and thumping did he unchain the creativity of the nation’s sleeping beast.

With the life-giving elixir of freedom did he quench the crumbling leaves of its dreams.

And “Liberté, Egalité! Fraternité!” was his battle cry. To those who awoke it was as if St Crispin himself were there amongst them.

And the beast was roused! It shook off the dust of the dead, Mingsian years and romped and played for joy.

But it grew and grew and its liberator, though mighty, was no match for the beast which became a monster and destroyed him.

The largest stars shine brightest and briefest and explode with shocking spectacle. And are gone. Their supernova remnants linger for a time but fade and are forgotten.

As Oscar Wilde almost wrote of the Star Child,

“ Yet ruled he not long, so great had been his suffering, and so bitter the fire of his testing, for after the space of three years he was destroyed. And those who came after him ruled evilly.”

And they still do and today they promise to rule more evilly than ever before.

And so the fabulous beast was drugged by the Hooded Brethren and encased in a concrete bunker called The Institute. Emblazoned above the portal was the name of our hero, “Goth the Whittler”.

The Hooded Brethren, in fear that the monster may reawaken, administer to the beast, in its concrete bunker, their witches’ brew of soporific drugs while chanting incantations from the pages of The Magic Laws and remember the long gone, real gone stompy wompy songs of yesteryear.

So it was that one day the beast groaned in its sleep. The Executive Hooded One was summoned. The runes were cast. The skies did she interrogate for signs. And she turned with dark and flashing eyes and said,

“ Send out the Pages!”

At the old witch’s word were unleashed the snarling, barking, pissing hounds with eyes as big as saucers and mill wheels and towers. To their backs were bound the sacred pages of The Magic Laws and away like Dapto Champions they rushed to an unfortunate person’s humble abode to deliver the dreadful Laws and threats.

And that ‘s how Sir Roger got them really.

More or less.

His amanuensis was more shaken than Sir Roger, having had to answer the door and face the slavering beasts in person.

The Laws were brimstone-hot to the touch and covered in slimy slaverings and piss but one’s amanuensis unbound them and read them and considered them and laughed and laughed and eventually brewed up some ink, raised the quill,  and fashioned a response on finest e-parchment which he attached to the still-waiting canines. 

If there is one thing Sir Roger hates above other things it is bullying.

If there is one group of people he despises it is people who are so far up themselves they can look themselves in their own eye sockets, and who then insist that everyone else take them seriously. It is those attitudes and this type of person that Sir Roger believes his amanuensis was forced to address.

Sir Roger has seen it.

He thinks it is a nice piece of nasty work, and if not his best then perhaps quite close.

 

 

 Why is this story titled, “A Moron in a Hurry”?

He will share the answer to this and other mysteries with you in A Moron in a Hurry – Part 2.

 

Life in Australia

Jun 25, 2013 | Australian Values, Citizenship, Cultural Values, Democracy, Economic Values, Education, Freedom of Speech, Humour, Immigration, Legal, Lifestyle & Life, Media Values, OzPol Values, Religious Values, Terrorism, Values, War

Life in Australia

One word: Durian

 

Robert – a self-styled “foreigner” to our shores – is most upset to have been hoaxed by the false promise and dashed hopes of life in Australia. A few days ago Robert commented on an ancient post here at Values Australia and his comment was upsetting.

Sir Roger cannot bear the thought of another’s pain and Robert surely is in pain.

So is Sir Roger. He had no idea how unhappy he himself must be, given Robert’s assessment of the Oz he had until then thought so wonderful.

 

 

So following is Sir Roger’s response to Robert. 


Sir Roger has asked his manservant esteemed assistant to pen a response to Robert. He would have liked to have been able to respond personally but is unable as he is packing his belongings in preparation to leave this dreadful hell of a country.

He is astonished that he had been so blind in his comforts, his pleasures, his friendships, his safety and his freedoms not to realise how utterly miserable he must obviously be. And indeed he is at this very moment beset by a grotesque problem. That is, where he should move away to and how should he get there? By plane? Or by boat?

The United States may seem a much better option except for the constant shootings, the fundamentalist christians and the Tea Party.

The UK? Very civilised, at least on the surface, and the world’s funniest comedians, but, oh, the endlessly whining whingers! And the weather!

Somewhere in Africa, perhaps? Central African Republic? Chad, Nigeria, South Sudan? There are plenty of spaces becoming available there since so many of them are choosing to come to Australia. But the job opportunities are not so good and someone like Sir Roger is sure to be kidnapped. And he questions why, if it is so wonderful there, so many of them are choosing to leave, that so many could even find Australia preferable. Big question mark on that one.

Asia? He fears the death penalty for minor crimes in China. He values his internal organs (and his external ones for that matter) and doesn’t want them shared with a transplant tourist before his time.

Japan fails to offer the wide open spaces that he craves.

Malaysia? He just doesn’t like their appalling racism. You know? Of course as a white man he could live behind a tall fence in a white compound with fierce dogs but where is the interest in a bunch of self-absorbed, arrogantly superior, self-congratulatory, western businessmen and their bored wives and nasty children?

Thailand? One word. Durian.

Indonesia beckons…but trips at all the hurdles of entrenched – and world famous – political, judicial, law-enforcement and corporate corruption, not to mention brutality to animals, religious intolerance, terrorism, death by firing squad and plain ignorance. Pretty country, though, and lovely people if you get to know the ones who aren’t trying to rip you off.

India? Well, you know, of course it’s worth a visit but … Sir Roger doesn’t consider rape a worthwhile or even enjoyable pastime. One of his friends is moving to Bhutan. Would he have to convert to Buddhism, though? He’s not all that religious. AT ALL.

And South America is the most dangerous continent on earth.

There’s always western Europe, of course, and Sir Roger does love to spend large amounts of time there, especially in their restaurants and in the cheese and wine aisles of their supermarkets, but they can be cold to strangers who don’t speak their languages perfectly, don’t you think? And it’s all so old and the skies are so murky. There’s very little that’s fresh blue.

As for Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and Syria … hmmm … you know, Sir Roger’s not much of a one for car bombs, Talibans, shooting young girl students, hatred, bigotry, religious intolerance, violence, bloodshed of any kind, actually – not even Rugby League – or cranky old narrow-minded farts in funny turbans and beards a pelican could nest in, doling out fatwahs like Easter eggs at Christmas.

So Sir Roger is struggling to find a country either

a) that would accept him or
b) that he would accept.

Perhaps after all he will have to remain for a little longer amongst the awfulness of:

  • religious tolerance (despite the fact Sir Roger is a little intolerant of religious beliefs in general),
  • freedom of speech
  • a more or less free press
  • freedom to congregate
  • personal safety
  • world standard education, free to secondary level
  • a social safety net
  • free medical treatment
  • stable democracy (with no shootings at election time)
  • astoundingly pleasant weather
  • mostly generous people
  • a thriving triple-A economy (no matter what they say)
  • a rich cultural life (very well, yes, much of it imported)
  • comparatively high incomes
  • comparatively low unemployment
  • electronic access to the fascinating rest of the world (while keeping it at a safe physical distance)

and many other such depressing qualities.

Perhaps therefore he will stay for a bit longer.

He has just phoned your writer now to explain that he is beginning to understand that when a person comes to another country of course they will come to that country with preconceptions.

Those preconceptions, when they come in hope, will often be that the new country will be just like the country they escaped but somehow better — their home country but without the bits they don’t like. And this will not work.

For example, Australia is Australia. It is not Sri Lanka, or Britain, or India, or Germany or wherever, with bells on.

It is Australia.

That is it.

Anyone who comes here will find strangeness and things that confuse and they don’t understand; social conventions they are not used to, and that grate with how things used to be in the old country.

When they come here their task is not to compare it to the world they know and the expectations they had. That leads inevitably to disappointment.

Their task is to discover Australia for what it is and to interact with that. And love that. Or leave.

If they don’t want to be here we have no wish to force them to love it or to stay. They have the choice.

In Australia we allow people to come and go as they please. Unlike North Korea or China or so very many other countries.

At least that is what Sir Roger told your writer to say.

Just a note or two to ‘Robert’ from Sir Roger’s own Montblanc:

“  This is Australia, Robert. And this blog is Sir Roger’s home. Here you do not have to be mealy-mouthed or pretend to be genteel, or try to swear without swearing.

If you write “fkcng” you are intending that people will think “fucking” and so you are swearing anyway. So writing “fkcng” is, you see, slimy. You said “fuck” and pretended not to. And it’s true that many Australians don’t like this sort of deceitfulness in anyone, not just what you call “foreigners”. You can write “fuck” here. And “fucking”.

And even ‘FUCK YOU, CUNT’

Also, Australia is not a “convict island”, at least not for 150 years. We are a big grown-up country now. We have cars and houses and the internet and everything, just like a proper country.

The only social-cultural vestiges of those origins are the remains of a belief in equality and fairness, and a healthy disrespect for authority, both sadly on the wane.

And when you talk about ‘the way foreigners see Australia’ this is blatant intellectual dishonesty. Certainly some foreigners don’t like Australia. Of course some don’t. It would be a miracle beyond all miracles if it were otherwise. So, a few “foreigners”, then? The ones who agree with you and are as stirred up about their disappointment as you are?

Robert, we are not required to create the country you wanted in your dreams in order to satisfy you, although we would very much like you to enjoy this country – very much. But we simply cannot create that country just for you.

So the use of the “convict” epithet and the lumping of all foreigners into your basket of betrayed hopes reveals both emotional desperation and intellectual dishonesty.

I really feel your pain that caused this outburst. I went to Sumatra once, hoping to experience a tropical paradise with generous, friendly people, only to discover it (Medan, anyway) was the absolute arsehole of the earth, even worse than Tehran, although the Batak people of Samosir Island were indeed very lovely.

But when I want my own arguments to be taken seriously I personally find it is best to refrain from corny, shouted insults and sloppy arguments.

 

 

Welcome to Australia, Robert!

 

 

Migently Mountain Manifesto: 1

Dec 23, 2012 | Arts, Australian Values, Cultural Values, Economic Values, Education, Freedom of Speech, Lifestyle & Life, Love, OzPol Values, Religious Values, Science Values, Values

Migently Mountain Manifesto: 1

 

S ir Roger is returned from the Mountain with the Migently Mountain Manifesto.
Here are Tablets One to Five: 

 

1. 

Do what is right.  

 

2. 

 You are safe.

Now, at this instant, you are safe.
You are safe, right here, right now.

This might allow you to calm down and get a grip to deal with stuff.

Nothing is promised for the next instant, however.

But right now at this instant you are safe.  

  

3. 

Most people are about as honest and ethical as they can afford to be.

Yes, some people are less honest than they could be.
Some struggle to be honest at all.
Some are frankly more honest than is necessary or comfortable.

The value of honesty is relative.
People will steal a loaf of bread if they really have to.
They may not want to but if that’s what they must do to feed their children then they will do what they need to.

Some things are more important and more pressing — in the moment in real life — than esoteric debates about morality.

It’s true that some people exhort you to be honest.
Other people want you to be honest. 
They don’t want you to be honest for your benefit. 
They want you to be honest for their benefit, so that they can make informed decisions based on reliable reports.

In reality, though, most people don’t make decisions based on facts anyway.

On the other hand, being honest places less stress on the memory.
And it (sometimes) makes you feel better.

Telling the truth is a different matter.

There is no such as THE Truth.
There’s my truth and your truth, for a start. 
What most people mean by ‘the truth’ is merely opinion and interpretation based on life experience, emotion, limited information, conjecture, flawed logic, magical thinking, and vague probabilities.

There’s the “whole” truth. 

No, just joking. If there is a “whole truth”, it’s impossible to know because — for just one thing — you would have to describe the velocity and position of every fundamental particle in the Universe from the beginning of time.
You can’t tell both the position and velocity in any case, and if you could even get the information in a whole lifetime you wouldn’t get past describing the first billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second of the Universe. Let alone interpreting the data. 

The best you can do is describe the best interpretation of the motley collection of tiny random scraps of perception you can grasp as they rush by.

Then there’s the “ABSOLUTE” Truth.

There isn’t one.

So stop killing people because you mistakenly think you have it.  

 

4. 

A Job is trading time for money.

But your time — your life itself — is of immeasurable, incalculable value.

Your Job is something you do because you have to, to survive financially, pay the bills, feed the kids, pay the rent or the mortgage. 

Your Work is something you want to do, something you must do — so it is also something you do because in that sense you have to do. 

It’s something you “have” to do because it’s an expression of who you are.
It’s your contribution to the world. It’s the difference you make because you are you and because you can.

For example, a teacher has two basic jobs:

1) spend time in a room with people and

2) do paperwork.

Being in a classroom is how we know you are doing your job. The paperwork is how we know you did your Job.

A teacher’s Work on the other hand is growing people, inspiring them, helping them learn to learn, to love learning, to appreciate life, to contribute to the world, to experience the most of the world that they can, as richly as they can.

The “Dignity of Labour” is a myth.
It is born of a conspiracy cooked up by capital and colluded with by labour, probably beginning during the Industrial Revolution, if not even earlier in the feudal era.

Capital needed — and still needs — workers to be as close to compliant slaves as possible.
Long hours, dirty work, few rights and low wages stopped people getting notions too far above themselves, or amassing the savings to escape.
It kept them needing the employer and the job.
Labour needed a social mythology to justify its powerless dependency — and the degradation of selling its soul to make others rich.

The solution was to frame labour as bestowing “dignity”. 

And eventually it became a fact instead of a pretence.
And it didn’t hurt to have the (obscenely rich) Church bestowing God’s blessing on the charade.

Blessed are the poor, the meek, the hungry, for they shall eventually get all the good stuff.
Just not in this life. 

As a result “early to bed and early to rise” assumed a moral character to the point where anyone who gets out of bed after 6am or goes to bed later than 10pm is committing a “sin”.

This is all bullshit. Any job in which you give over your labour and your time and your life to make someone else rich is shameful, degrading and humiliating and not dignified at all. It would be a sin if there were such a thing.  

If there were such a thing it would be a sin not to do Your Work, the Work you must do, the Work you love.

Be the person you are who makes a difference in the world.  

 

5. 

Great leaders (and managers) don’t manage people (or boss them).

Leaders manage outcomes.
They do this by facilitating people in doing what they know how to do — which, after all, is why they were employed in the first place — and in developing skills to do it better.

Leaders share a vision which inspires and engages.
They provide meaningful goals and engage their colleagues in the value of the work they do.

People who work for coercive managers do the least they can in order to keep their jobs.
They have low job satisfaction and low productivity because they don’t own the work they do.

People who work for inspiring managers do the most they can because they want to and they want to because they own their work and they know why it matters.

That is why they have such great work satisfaction. And that is why they stay.

 

Most people want to do a good job.

A good manager doesn’t have to force people to do their best.

A good manager knows to get out of the way of people doing their best.

 

Almost everyone wants to do the best work they can. 

Manifesto Tablet 2
Manifesto Tablet 3
Manifesto Tablet 4

Sir Roger: Archived in Perpetuity

Feb 26, 2012 | Arts, Australian Values, Citizenship, Cultural Values, Fame, Freedom of Speech, Media Values, OzPol Values, Values

Sir Roger: Archived in Perpetuity

 

Fame of a Sort?

 

Can Lordship be far behind . . . 

 

Sir Roger has just received a request from Canberra saying that the National Library of Australia wished permission to include ValuesAustralia.com in the PANDORA Archive of Australian websites.

So … Sir Roger … archived in perpetuity . . .

That’s a kind of immortality.

Although, as Woody Allen said,

“ I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.”

Its fame of a sort, one supposes.

It’s better than not being archived, certainly.

So that’s nice.

  

[Sir Roger said yes.]

David Hume

May 7, 2011 | Australian Values, Cultural Values, Democracy, Education, Freedom of Speech, Media Values, OzPol Values, Religious Values, Science Values, Values

David Hume

. . . and so to the democracy that we enjoy today

David Hume, hero of the Enlightenment, father of skepticism, linchpin of democracy and human rights and freedoms,

Happy 300th Birthday! 

 

Sir Roger has some slight understanding of how Hume felt when he said this:

“ Here am I who have written on all sorts of subjects calculated to excite hostility, moral, political, and religious, and yet I have no enemies — except, indeed, all the Whigs, all the Tories, and all the Christians.”

Although the great Hume had many antecessors and successors his work in its clarity, rigour and accessibility was crucial to the flourishing of the Scottish Enlightenment and therefore to the rights and freedoms, to the political and social foundations – and so to the democracy – that we enjoy today.

Our system is not obvious and it is not “natural”. It is better than any other so far tested but it could disappear in a moment if we take our eye off it, if we do not cherish it and care for it and fight for it. As they say in another context, “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance”.

“ Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.

In fact, the price of freedom is internal vigilance.

There are those who dream of its collapse – not only those who want a caliphate but also those who wish to arrogate power to themselves, those who arrogantly believe they have greater wisdom and greater value than others, those who feel entitled to rule . . .

“ It is seldom, that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. Slavery has so frightful an aspect to men accustomed to freedom, that it must steal upon them by degrees, and must disguise itself in a thousand shapes, in order to be received. But, if the liberty of the press ever be lost, it must be lost at once. The general laws against sedition and libelling are at present as strong as they possibly can be made. Nothing can impose a farther restraint, but either the clapping an Imprimatur upon the press, or the giving to the court very large discretionary powers to punish whatever displeases them. But these concessions would be such a bare-faced violation of liberty, that they will probably be the last efforts of a despotic government.

. . . and those (some in one of our mainstream political parties) who dream of a latterday christian theocracy. It is these people, invariably committed christians and most often “practising catholics”, whom you will hear increasingly – and chillingly – talking about the “failure of the Enlightenment” and the “failed ‘experiment’ of democracy”.

Hume, prophetically, has something to say about them as well.

“ In all ages of the world, priests have been enemies to liberty; and it is certain, that this steady conduct of theirs must have been founded on fixed reasons of interest and ambition. Liberty of thinking, and of expressing our thoughts, is always fatal to priestly power, and to those pious frauds, on which it is commonly founded; and, by an infallible connexion, which prevails among all kinds of liberty, this privilege can never be enjoyed, at least has never yet been enjoyed, but in a free government.
…

Survey most nations and most ages. Examine the religious principles, which have, in fact, prevailed in the world. You will scarcely be persuaded, that they are any thing but sick men’s dreams: Or perhaps will regard them more as the playsome whimsies of monkies in human shape, than the serious, positive, dogmatical asseverations of a being, who dignifies himself with the name of rational.
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Hear the verbal protestations of all men: Nothing so certain as their religious tenets. Examine their lives: You will scarcely think that they repose the smallest confidence in them.

And so Sir Roger recommends the following on David Hume’s 300th birthday:

“ Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous…A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.
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If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

Happy Birthday, and thank you, David Hume!