I support trawling for 'root causes' when it's Western Cultural Imperialism (tm) in the spotlight. But when it's multiculturalism - something I owe my livelihood and love of Australia to - it's a different story.I support trawling for 'root causes' when it's Western Cultural Imperialism (tm) in the spotlight. But when it's multiculturalism - something I owe my livelihood and love of Australia to - it's a different story.
Four coloured kids blow themselves up in London and all of a sudden multiculturalism has failed. The call comes to integrate, to assimilate, rather than live and let live. The opponents of open immigration were right all along. It would never work out, so let's wind the clock back.
How far back should we go? Just a quarter tank in the time machine will do. Enough to get back to 1988. I was a schoolkid 5 years out of Singapore, still coming to terms with an unfamiliar country, and a world that was not as it should be. Cold War descending, the environment fad nowhere in sight, multiculturalism rising but not yet entrenched. "Ching chong chinaman, hit on the nose with a frying pan" was still an acceptable greeting.
It was extremely hard to accept that I could not change the world, because such thought goes against a central tenet of consumerism: that we can control everything by purchasing it in little pre-packaged pieces. But no matter what I bought, I could never fully integrate because I would never look the same, think the same, or buy the right things.
But apparently, full integration does not matter as long as everyone adopts fundamental values that resonate with Australian society, like democracy, equality, and ... and...
Well, just what ARE these fundamental values? I certainly didn't learn about them in school, and I was a top pupil, so I'm sure my classmates didn't either. That's probably why they told me one of the 'fundamentals' of being a naturalised Australian was eating lamb chops at least once a day. Oh! That classic larrikin humour! If you don't know something, make it up. And bash whoever doesn't believe you.
It's patronising to believe that immigrants only think of Australia as a place where they won't get shot by their government, and can busy themselves stealing jobs from white Aussies who are too lazy to work 50 hours a day. PRs and Citizens alike know there's more to Australian life than that. Yet, there's something Kafka-esque about being accused of violating Australia's 'fundamental values' when one does not know what those values are.
Shock, horror! We may actually have to define and express our national values in a way that's unambiguous. And if we were really committed to fairness, we would subject ALL citizens to it, not just new arrivals. After all, London's Bombers were local boys. Oh no! We may have to develop our education system!
Too much work for politicians. Much easier to blame ethnics. Look at the London Bombers.
If the failures of multiculturalism gave us London's Hussain, Khan, Lindsay, and Tanweer, then what gave us [Australia's] David Hicks and Jack Roche? Those two were caught with their taliban hats on, yet they're as skippy as a VB slab in the back of a ute.
Clearly we must look beyond culture for the 'root cause' of the Baby-Bombers. (The average age of Hicks and the London bombers is 19.) Two definites come to mind: They had access to dangerous knowledge, and they were, pardon my French, really pissed off.
Can we do anything about their knowledge of murderous techniques and technology? Unless we censor the entire internet and kill the world economy, we cannot. The genie is out of the bottle, sorry.
Can we stop them from getting pissed off? How? Withdraw from the Middle East? Change to their religion? Give them whatever they want? This does not work with little kids, it will not work with bigger kids. You know from the tantrums you threw how much of it was valid demand, and how much was just getting your way.
Growing up means learning to deal with the disappointment that the world is the way it is. Jocks on the right, faggots on the left, from high school to eternity. I had to deal with it. I'm still dealing with it. (I work in State Government. I breathe disappointment.) No reason why these middle-class toddlers of terror shouldn't learn to accept the same. Everyone gets angry occasionally at a world we cannot change. We can only buy it better to a limit. We certainly cannot blow it up better. Sometimes we just have to suck it and smile, that's life.
1988 again. You've just been dumped on. You know how to blow shit up and you've wanted to for years. But somehow you don't. You bite your pillow. You turn up the tape deck on some obscure band only you and your misfit friends listen to. You get over it, you get your shit together, and you tolerate - eventually loving - the world for the impossible place it is.
That's not multiculturalism, but it's close. And we must teach both if we don't want more terrorists.
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