Sydney-based think tank the Centre for Independent Studies puts out a quarterly magazine called Policy. The latest issue features a piece titled ‘The Rise of the Opinionators’ by Peter Saunders which suggests that:
“In the last 50 years, people’s socio-economic characteristics have become much less significant indicators of how they will vote: many working class voters support parties of the right, and large swathes of the middle class vote Labor.
Labor’s strongest support on a two-party preferred basis is not now among manual workers. It is among education, arts and social professionals, people Peter Saunders dubs the ‘opinionators’ for their role in developing, processing, interpreting and transmitting ideas, values and opininons.
The opinionators hold many views at significant variance from the general population. Compared to other voters, for example, the opinonators are less likely to support reducing tax and more likely to favour higher government spending, and they are much more in favour of asylum seekers and much less supportive of defence spending.”
Saunders also suggests that Opinionators stand out from other voters in their strong support for the Greens and their support for, what he calls, “high-visibility election issues like logging, or on touchstone issues like GM crops”.
The article concludes with the comment, “In terms of their wider ideological importance, however, the opinionators occupy many of the key positions within our core educational and cultural institutions. Their political significance should not be measured in votes.”
What has always struck me most about this group is that, yes, they have very definite and strongly held opinions on a range of environmental issues. I have also observed that they are mostly incredibly ignorant on the very same issues for which they hold such definate views. As a consequence I see them as a real threat to the environment. I wrote sometime ago for Policy magazine on this on this issue, the piece was titled Environmental Fundamentalism.
I have also been rather taken-aback when more than once ‘an opinionator’ has declined to discuss an environmental issue with me on the basis that, in their opinion, I knew too much about the particular subject! Most ordinary folk like talking to people who know something about a subject?
What is it about environmental issue and this group, a group that has so much political and cultural clout?
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Some of my best friends are opinionators. I’m not sure though, if my daughter has married one.
Two key comments I’ve heard from opinionators stick in my mind.
“That doesn’t sound like the type of thing we should support.”
“I wanted to do ideologically correct thing”
These two real quotes show how opinionators are driven, not by evaluation of factual material but on whether it fits with religiously derived starting beliefs or chatechisms. They are an expression of opinionators desire for their own ideas to be pre-approved by their peers as morally good, because of course, being at the heart of civil society, they want to make sure they are following the prevailing route along the moral high ground.
“That doesn’t sound like” was a wish to check on new concept to see if it fitted the teachings of Saint David Suzuki, but did not involve actually thinking about whether the new concept produces outcomes that are actually beneficial based on hard research on the evidence.
It was code for – this is what the ACF have made a lot of noise about so it must be bad, even though I’ve never check the facts myself or even whether ACF tell the truth.
Hence : chemicals bad, organic good.
Transnational companies bad, Transnational Greenpeace good.
Petrol Bad, Hybrid Prius good
Discardable Bad, Reusable Good
Nucular bad, renewable fuels good.
and so on.
Who cares whether nuclear fuel actually is better in our current circumstances, and whether biofuel from corn or wheat actually is environmentally damaging, or whether no-till farming with herbicide tolerant plants is better that the traditional evironmentally disruptive ploughing , one has Saint Davids approval , and the other not, so a quick decision can be made about their moral virtues.
Opinionators are environmentalist because of:
prejudice; against vulnerable, isolated, regional communities, their families and the people who owe their livelihoods to the activities of those communities;
fashion; where congregation confers avant-guardism;
ideology; that scapegoats the concerns of global sustainability upon areas not already irretrievably damaged by urban impacts; and
achievement; invoked by the solemn, earnest call for political intervention to alleviate fears.
Unfortunately, Australia’s democratic and federal system of government, existing under law to preserve and protect all Australians in an equal dignity, has been infringed by environmental injustice.
I think you may be a little harsh on David Suzuki, Detribe. He has gone on record to distance himself from some of the worst excesses of the lumpengreens but this has been swamped by the volume of crap from other sources. See “David Suzuki Champions Regrowth Forestry” at http://ianmott.blogspot.com/
Everyone is allowed an opinion,but the value of the opinion defers to knowledge but somewhere along the track non scientists and non analysts voted themselves and their opinion elite status in scientific areas. Incompetence was rewarded if it validated the status quo as accepted by elite opinionators (or utopians).
I remember years ago arguing with my maths teacher that I just couldnt get it (what he was teaching, he said and quite rightly that perhaps if I couldn’t get my head around differentials then math was not for me he wasn’t rude and so I struggled until I got it and went on into maths at a high level).
The problem is that the high profile opinionators are lazy on the issues and arrogant in their defence of positions. Thats not science thats politics, square peg round hole stuff, the realm of the thug and the bully.
I wasn’t intending to bucket David S. in what I said Motty, merely uncritical acceptance of what he writes as being THE TRUE GOSPEL. Actually I think he says a lot of good things and some stupid things, and I tend to play them as I see them.
However with one issue I took up with him directly – an outright error caught by TV cameras if my memory is correct – he responded to actually avoid discussing the error by saying mysteriously “obviously you and I inhabit different worlds”.
So yes, by his own admission, he’s not concerned anymore with factual or scientific accuracy. He thinks Bt genes move frequently from plant pollen into caterpiller chromosomes apparently,that’s what he said, but it’s complete nonsense.
The PR spin defense was needed to protect his TV image I suppose. Doesn’t impress me as being scientifically professional though.
When I made a similar approach to Dick Taverne on the other hand, HE said “Oh how silly of me.” and my respect for Dick T. went up immediately.
You have a blog that many people read jennifer, does that make you an opinionator (what a ridiculous attempt to classify ones idealogical opponents by the way)?
Or is ‘opinionator’ as a label reserved for environmentalists/leftists/etc only?
Didn’t you notice that when Saunders says “our core educational and cultural institutions”
he doesn’t include
business (esp farmers federation, mining industry and property industry)
think tanks?
all obvious shapers of opinion?!
And he also only covers the ALP, not govt policy making in general, which is surely much more relevant these days.
Here’s one for you, (especially you detribe): Which opinionator first coined the term ‘green religion’, who was it who first compared environmental thinking to religion as a rhetorical device? Have you been swayed by an opinionator, or did detribe come up with this original analogy himself?
What a LAME thread – talk about making an issue out of a non-issue. People hold opinions. Influential people (of any ideology) can sway the opinons of others. Its no more profound that that, and these concepts are ideology-inspecific.
This discussion is simply a rehash of the now decade old discussion about “elites”, in which the right successfully pigeonholed and marginalised the opinions of their opponents on the left using a label- they effectively swayed the opinion of the masses who are supposedly easy prey for ‘opinionators’.
Lets not give Peter Saunders (who is obviously trying to shape opinions) any credit for coming up with an original idea by discussing this further. Quick, before somebody dredges up an even older idea than elites by talking about “memes” or something.
I agree, David, that really is sloppy “acquired characteristics” stuff that I was not aware that Suzuki had made. His water-babble is on the same plane and the mock highlighting of his honorary Amerindian status is just too, too, puke-making for words.
Hey Steve, ‘Boxing’ (as in making up names to categorize broad groupings) can help us understand the world. There are always exceptions to the general ‘rule’, like you and me?
Steve you missed the point, any body even the farmers, miners etc are entitled to a position but I doubt you’ll find them vilifying anyone or brainwashing anyone to make sure their message is delivered.
They certainly would not be making certain little kids in year 3 are brainwashed into believing cutting down a tree is an evil act and that the people who do so are evil nasty people who want to bring an end to the world of cute and furry critters for their own demented power kick. (NB all that emotive walue laden language)
Try standing up to this brain washing and you’ll find just how insidious the influence of the opionionators is.
My son in year 3 had a homework sheet with the question give 6 reasons why you should NOT cut down trees? There was no corresponding question give 6 reasons why you should cut down trees? But to give the teacher (whom I considered to be an excellent teacher) the benefit of the doubt I went up to the school to ask in what context the question was being asked.
– it was an english assignemnt becasue they were reading a book about how people in the cities cut down trees just to improve their view. (Oddly enough the author of this insightful tome was employed by the dept to tour the district to provide tutoring to the gifted and talented writers amongst the pupils)
I asked if the next work sheet was going to have a question about good reasons for cutting down trees. The answer was no. When I asked if this was just a little unbalanced and unfair I was told that it was a set piece and came in a kit but that they had considered asking the question but would be inundated with distressed parents who opposed logging and the school couldn’t upset them.
I went to the principal with a letter I intended sending to the MInister for Education and got the agreement that the next work sheet would include a question about give six reasons why you should cut down trees. I didn’t want to send the letter because I didn’t want to jeopardise the employment of a teacher I had a great deal of respect for but it was a matter of principle.
I got the question on the next homework sheet although it was modified to give “three( NB 3 NOT 6) reasons why you should not cut down trees” it was written in pencil on the bottom of a stencilled sheet. I felt I had made my point.
Even so I was frozen out of that particular school community and ended up removing myself from involvement in the P@ C, the reading programs and even eventually the canteen. Personally I feel that my children were the poorer for NOT HAVING MY CONTINUING INVOLVEMENT in the school.
When they went to secondary school I found my reputation as a trouble maker had preceded me.
The moral of the story being they’ll get you which ever way you go so its best to go along with them.
If you think this is just a primary school and a trivial matter then you have obviously been brainwashed too. I used to support the idea of public education for all but not any more. It is now a value laden, biased and immoral institution with only a very few who have any idea of fairness balance and genuine academic values.
You should hear what goes on in university tutorials and lectures if you try studying community and environment without what is deemed to be essential values and opinions. Group think and freeze out and social exclusion is believe me a very powerful tool.
Ah dear, my opinion of the opinioneaters is pretty low, and thats just because I am being conservative.
For once I agree with Steve, onioneaters are profoundly a non issue.
If you were presented with a graph depicting the rising increase of autism in the community since the late 70s and told that this was proof that increased use of chemicals was causing increased levels of autism would you accept it as scientific and balanced?
Or that there was a study of five (I repeat five) women who had given birth to deformed children in the Michigan area and it was found they had all eaten fish from the great lakes which was polluted with chemicals and this was proof that chemicals in the environment cause birth defects? And that this was just like Minimato.
And if you questioned these “facts” would you expect to be asked if you supported poisoning the nevironment with chemicals?
A sort of if you don’t agree with me then you must support the poisoning of the environment and you are therefore an evil person.
Mary, you may not appreciate it yet but your children are already a long way along the path to enlightenment. For they already know, and may already be developing a very healthy contempt for, mindless conformity. And the sooner they learn that authority can be full of shit the saner they will be and the more use they will be to themselves and others.
Be glad. Your kids are already on the road least travelled by, and it WILL make all the difference.
RE Question about who was the first to see connection between Green beliefs and religions;
I’n not sure but an early one was Mary Douglass and Aaron Wildavsky Risk and Safety, Berkeley, 1982.
Other Good ones THe Apocalyptics by the late Edith Efron, and recently The Green Crusade, (Charles Cowan)and The March of Unreason by Dick Taverne. I recommend them all.
Correction, not Cowan Charles T Rubin. Have to catch a taxi!
Mary I sympathise with your encounter with primary school level mushiness and lack of intellectual rigor but I think you are asking too much of the system.
Being a primary school teacher is not the most intellectually appealing profession and unfortunately it attracts those who are not so inclined. Teaching is also not very well-paid and doesn’t attract those with a hard-edged view of the values of free market economics and the virtues of competitiveness (may be they are too busy putting their principles into practice by making money). Primary teachers seem to want to shield little children from the harsh realities of life and to value soft cuddly animals over the harsh economic choices they will have to encounter later in life.
I suppose that is why so many parents are now sending their children to private schools so as to avoid this wishy-washy approach. After all if you believe in the economic imperatives in society then I suppose you just have to yield to it and pay for education.
I agree that miners, business people, etc are not in the classroom brainwashing our kids. However they do have TV advertising to aid them in moulding young lives. They also have think tanks to reprimand these opinionators so as to wake them up to broader issues. I recognise my children’s teachers’ deficiencies but as I also recognise that I am not willing to take on the burden of teaching myself, nor the low pay, I will just have to hope that my kids muddle through as I did at school. After all, having teachers who have faults may help them realise that adults don’t have all the answers and that they just might have to rely on their own resources if they are to get a proper education.
I have been trying to understand who these “opinionators” are supposed to be. It seems that they are any well-educated people who have strong concerns for the environment, but are not highly qualified scientists. I am puzzled at the strongly insulting terms used to discredit them, e.g above, by “diatribe” and by Neil Hewett.
Is it the case that only technical “experts” can have opinions, on the environment. A bit like past times when only asbestos “experts”, or tobacco company “experts” were qualified to have opinions on asbestos or tobacco respectively?
detribe – “Question about who was the first to see connection between Green beliefs and religions”
But of course there is nothing religious in Brown beliefs is there?
Christina,
There is a difference between having an opinion and being informed. What’s that saying ‘ignorance aint what you don’t know. its what you do know that aint correct’.
I get concerned when important public policy is made on the basis of ’emotion’ and ‘politics’ and ‘belief’ masquerading as ‘science’ and this is at odds with the evidence, with the real science.
As a civil society and as a secular society we should be able to do better, for the environment.
Christina Macpherson: (puzzled at the strongly insulting terms used to discredit them, e.g above, by “diatribe” and by Neil Hewett).
I suggest that you re-read Jennifer’s original post. Opinionators’, were dubbed by the author of the article under discussion and the question was asked, “What is it about environmental issue (sic) and this group, a group that has so much political and cultural clout?
My comment is self-explanatory. It describes the strongly insulting infringement of equal dignity.
The issue at hand is a confidence deception. It argues to an exclusive notion of self-righteousness; because the argument is put by environmentlists, any opposition is implicitly anti-environmental.
I disagree.
This has done some rounds
Fleece – the coat of wool that covers a sheep or similar animal (Macquarie Dictionary)
To fleece – to strip of money or belongings; plunder; swindle (Macquarie Dictionary ).
To greenfleece – to knowingly or unknowingly promote environmental objectives and requirements based on less than full disclosure of the information available
Ender,
What are ‘brown beliefs’and what group holds them?
Jennifer, Ender is referring to Prof John Quiggin’s argument that doomsayer environmentalists can be split into 2 groups; either deep brown or deep green
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2006/06/05/against-the-doomsayers/#comments
A deeply colourless analysis in my opinion, both colours are bordering on the black.
Who put the mental into the environ?
correction, I should say “probably referring”, maybe Ender has his own gloomy palette.
No – bang on rog. If you can call us Greenies then we should have a similar emotive label that we can attach to your side. I think Browns or Brownies fits the bill nicely.
Just read Quiggin’s post. Too naive to bother with really.
I thought Ender was perhaps referring to a group perhaps best labelled as “users of the environment”.
There are a huge number of people who love the environment and want to keep using it i.e. fisherman, loggers, horse riders, bee keepers. They don’t consider their activities incompatiable with conservation but they are slowly being locked out/denied access to their livelihood/hobby and they have come to hate ‘greenies’ because they perceive greenies as wanting nature “locked up” when they want to use it.
Ender: Perhaps you are refering to religious ideas about soil, you know, buried cow horns and the like, such as the mysticism promoted by Wilhelm Reich.
http://www.wilhelmreichmuseum.org/
No don’t really see that they are relevant like the books I quoted before, they arn’t very mainstream of influential, so no I haven’t come across any solid books on soil nutters that are worthwile discussions that match the quality and relevance of The Green Crusade, especially Rubin’s scholarly discussion of Deep Ecology. (eg Arne Naess).http://www.deepecology.org/deepmovement.html
Serious Gaia extremists fit into same mystical category, but after looking at James Lovelock’s latest book, I can see he still hasn’t decended into that morass. Whethe the Gaia worhippers have been writen about before 1982 I dont know.
I should perhaps have mentioned The Flight from Science and Reason by Paul Gross, Norman Levitt, and Martin Lewis (New York Acadeny of Sciences 1996) which has chapters on Radical Environmentalism, by Martin W Lewis, who wrote Green Delusions, and another section on Religion and it’s intrusion into science, but this latter is mainly deals with Creationism and the Religious Right in the USA.
I note Edith Efrom published The Apocalyptics in 1984 (you can still buy it second hand for 54 US cents on Amazon). So the front runner for your original query is Aaron Wildavsky and Mary Douglas in 1982.
Folks,
The question before us is, “Why are The Opinionators also ‘Environmentalists’?”
The answer is, people like to be on the correct side of an issue, and for most people, it is more important to be on the correct side than to understand what they’re talking about.
It used to be quite popular to be on the correct side of an issue by appealing to the sentiments of a deity. In academic and other “elite” circles, this has fallen out of fashion, only to be replaced by similar appeals to “the environment.”
For people such as this, deciding who loves the environment the most resolves the issues.
Similar approaches to the issues are evident in decisions over who most loves the poor, the country, etc. but only the environment is sufficiently all-encompassing and mysterious to fill the rhetorical void left by the deity.
This “holier than thou” approach to current issues is merely a version of the *ad hominem* argument.
Schiller.
Schiller,
Without getting bogged in the definition of ‘love’, I would suggest that the multitudes that give political currency to the opinionators, love the environment to a far lesser degree than those slowly being usurped by this tidal wave of dishonesty.
I suspect that your reference to love describes the emotional clawing beneath the well-provisioned exterior of metropolitan Australia that yearns for nature (as irrepressibly as rural Australia’s contempt for political betrayal).
Approximately eighty-five per cent of Australians live in cities and major towns. In this era of political correctness, it is hardly surprising that many share a common concern for the natural environment. Opinionators harness these innocuous individual concerns and multiply them across the body politic to derive significant environmental power. Incendiary propaganda fans the flames of popularist environmentalism and governments quell the wildfire by converting natural capital, confiscated from communities in the bush, into political capital, through the illusion of environmental protection.
To put measure to the magnitude of the movement, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reveals that in 2001, 12.09 million Australians stated that they were concerned about the environment. 1.56 million registered their environmental concern by writing letters, telephoning, participating in a demonstration, signing a petition or making some other form of official expression. 1.365 million stated that they belonged to an environmental group and 3.9 million stated that they donated time or money to environmental protection. Businesses gave $33.768 million to the environment in the form of charitable donations and sponsorship. Natural Heritage Trust Funding and Commonwealth Environment and Heritage, and Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Portfolio expenditure was $1.364 billion. Australian local government spent a total of $2.5 billion on measures to protect the environment and $1.8 billion on natural resource management.
Territorialism binds individuals and families together in their common possession. It is a loving relationship and the building block of both communities and nationhood. Popularist environmentalism has become anti-territorialism. It is disintegrating Australia. It is divisive, anti-community and un-Australian. It peddles the perverse notion that the relationship between Australians and their natural environment should be based on divorce rather than marriage.
Hardly a loving relationship.
So then Neil – how would you rate our national stewardship of the Australian environment?
Is the Australian landscape and our biodiversity in good conditon?
What’s our score-card?
Neil,
I agree with you whole-heartedly. Carry on!
Schiller.
Luke,
It depends on your outlook. I live within an extraordinary biodiversity and marvel at the perseverance of the oldest surviving rainforest in the world.
In a previous existence, I lived amongst the world’s oldest surviving human culture and without hesitation acknowledge the bona fides of its unparalelled record of stewardship.
Overlooking a metroplitan setting might be less encouraging. Funny though, when native vegetation is planted in suburbia and fauna returns, it is not always welcomed (eg. possums in roofs and flying foxes in botanical gardens).
IMHO, Australia urgently needs to improve the relationship between its people and the natural environment. Attacking those most reconciled is counter-productive. Indeed, Australians living sustainably within the natural environment should be encouraged as a national environmental objective.
Ian K – I’m not asking too much of schools or teachers. I expect my children to be taught HOW to think not WHAT to think.
I would be equally dismayed if they were being taught” hard edged view of the value of free market economics and the virtues of competitiveness” as you put it.
As for teachers in their defence – it is an honourable profession, which should ( and once was) held in high esteem. as for being poorly paid – in comparison to what ? In a country town teachers are some of the highest paid workers. Granted in the city they are by comparison to accountants, high flying ad man or lawyers not well remunerated but they are the ones who chose their profession and regardless of comparative wages should either do their job or get out. In the public education system which should exclude any political or religious slant there should be no place for the guff my kids came home with. Given that some green beliefs such as loggers are evil, farmers are lazy ( and evil) national parks is heaven, state forests is hell rangers are heros /foresters are devils etc etc… belong more in the religious domain and since the Greens is a political party …you get my drift.
As for the miners etc big business using advertising – I am totally oposed to the influence McDonalds etc have over little kids but I haven’t since MIM BHP et al doing the same thing. Whereas I have witnessed Blinky Bill a children’s cartoon of an iconic Australian children’s book corrupted to be a blatant campiagn against the timber industry. This is just one example of many.
oh and I forgot Ian. My son was in year 3, a time when I woulsd expect consolidation of basic skills in literacy and numeracy to be paramount objective of his education. Skills which are important if you want to learn hw to think, work things out for yourself and express yourself.
In actual fact the book in question was more suitable for yr 5 and upwards. And when I asked to read the book I was told there was only one in the school – I got it from the local public library and read it. I also realised that I had attended a talk by the author organised by the local writers group at the library about a year before. The author was quite happy to talk about the encouragement she had received from an environmental group who were organising a grant for the book to be turned into an interactive cd with teaching materials. This was what made me sufficiently angry to go up to the school and demand equal time for the opposing views.
Whilst we are on the subject of the arts. I have been involved in a few things outside the area I live in. It has been my experience that when people find out where I come form they are more than happy to tell me of their experiences of the area – almost invariably it involves protesting. In one memorable instance it involved attending a meeting which was attended by my own mother ( A Progress Assoc meeting I might add) My own mothers version involved complete bewilderment when she and few of the older residents found the hall inundated with a howling mob all of whom claimed to be local residents and who proceeded tomove motions put forward by the local greens ( not one of whom was a longstanding member of a small rural community)
The three artists I had given a ride to told me they and their friends had camped on a ten acre block owned by her step father and attended two progress meetings. She was scathing of the rednecks at the meeting one of whom was a stupid old woman who said the wombats were causing the erosion not logging. My mother had actually said “even wombats cause erosion” to whihc the mob had risen as one and howled. When my mother attempted to leave saying she wasn’t putting up with it anymore her neighbour said no you must stay. This is mob rule and we have to stand up to them.
I did not say anything to the artists but let them go on. They had really enjoyed their time down her e and were confident they had saved the forest.
I like the Brownies label, appropriate with all the well-funded and ladder-climbing brown-nosing that goes on.
Why doesn’t Jennifer get offended if public policy is influenced by business donations to think tanks and political parties, especially secret donations? I call that a corruption of democracy by excessively concentrated power but others here think it’s authentic policy to be defended from the opinionated rants of educated individuals?
ENDER asked where do Green activism connections with religion start to be asserted. Well at least to 1979, and possibly around 1927.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolores_LaChapelle
Dolores LaChapelle was one of the earliest ecological activists to see the connection bewteen religion and ecological activism,in her
Earth Wisdom (1978) page 94 she says [Martin] “Heidegger is the only westen philosopher to reassert the essential mystery of the world in the face of rationalism. Nothing religious is ever destroyed by logic, it is destroyed only by god’s withdrawal, But the gods, Heidegger says, may always return.”
see also
http://wildsnow.com/tips/booklist/book_review_lachapelle.html
http://www.forestry.umt.edu/personnel/faculty/borrie/papers/heid/
and so on.
Thus LaChapelle goes back to Martin Heidegger. His writings goes bact to writing in Germany in 1927, and were published in English after WW2 ~1949-53.
Martin Heidegger “The question concerning technology”
Martin Heidegger
The Question Concerning Technology
in William Lovitt, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, Harper Torchbooks, [1954] 1977, 3-35.
http://www.culturaleconomics.atfreeweb.com/Disertation/6a.%20An%20Aside.htm
A.08 The English-speaking world, in effect, ignored the philosophy of technology because of its Marxist connotations and the inability to express technology and praxis in logical propositional terms. In Western Europe, however, scholars beginning with Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology (1859-1938) extended above and beyond Marxian thought seeking a deeper appreciation of the relationship between ‘being’ human, intentionality and the manipulation of space, time, matter and mind. These developments reached an intellectual denouement in the phenomenological existentialism of Husserl’s student and subsequent colleague, Martin Heidegger:
Philosophy of technology, in its contemporary development, may be said to have roots in the work of Martin Heidegger. It began to form as early as 1927 in Being and Time and later took more specific shape in the period around “The Question Concerning Technology” (1950s on). (Idhe 1991, 48)
A.09 Heidegger’s work, however, was not well received in the Anglosphere partially because it was not written in English and partially because of his early support of Hitler and the Nazi party. Accordingly, it took time for his and the thought of other European scholars, e.g., Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and Foucault (Idhe 1991) to break into English-speaking consciousness.
As evidence, consider that the American Philosophy of Science Association was founded in 1934 while the Society for Philosophy and Technology was founded some fifty years later in 1983 (Idhe 1991, 4)
Mary, thank you for filling me in a bit on where your passion comes from. Believe me I sympathise with you completely over the village meeting incident. Being subjected to such storm-trooper tactics must have been distressing.
I haven’t been much involved in school disputes myself. I was involved in one however when the high school here, due to timetabling constraints, organised things so kids in year 9 were precluded from doing sufficient “hard” subjects and could only opt for “softer” subjects. Our little protest was organised by a friend in the teaching faculty of the local uni. She would be lumped into this “opinionator” class but believe me she is all for academic rigour in the way things are taught. Our little dispute did get a bit heated and a compromise was found. I’m sure that the teachers found us a pain in the neck and that we were more impolite to them than they were to us, because when your kids are involved you tend to get worked up! I didn’t find that there were any adverse repercussions to it. In general I feel that teachers welcome parental involvement and feel they fight a lonely fight because parents are not sufficiently involved.
As for this whole “opinionator” stuff. I decided to read the original article and find out what it was really all about. Apparently about 10% of the electorate fall into this category. They are supposed to be unusual because they vote against their economic interests by supporting Labor. 64% of them vote this way and this is supposed to imply an unusually strong ideological bent. Voting against your economic interests could be defined as “altruistic” behaviour. Now to scientists altruistic behaviour is hard to explain. Recently they have discovered however that people’s main motivation for such behaviour is a sense of injustice towards other people. The author of the article doesn’t try to investigate what motivates the opinionators but I think I found a clue. In the footnotes of the article he tells us that “Managers and administrators split 75/25 for the coalition when employed in the private sector…”
So it seems that there is one group in the community who is more ideologically committed (as registered by voting intentions) than the opinionators. These guys seem to know in whose interests the country is currently being governed! I suspect therefore that the opinionators sense this more keenly than the rest of us and that most of their opinions are coloured by an overall feeling that certain segments of the community are being ill-treated by others.
As to the environmental attitudes of the opinionators, I think the author fudges this somewhat. Again if you look at the endnotes you find that 13% of this group belong to environmental groups compared to 6% of others. Although that is statistically significant does that suggest they are rusted on ideologues? May be they are just “belongers” in general: who knows? It is true that 33% of them have thought of joining such groups. But after all these people are supposed to be thinkers and I am sure they have thought of many things.
My take home message from this is that the opinionators are “people” people who are (rightly) concerned with injustice in society in a general way. These are people if you could put the case of poor timber workers to them in the right way would support such a cause. Unfortunately I think that they are concentrating on what they see as the main game and certain underprivileged groups get caught in the middle.
Rot,
it is a very deliberate courting of the opinion makers, the influencers and the reporters by national and quite often, multi national groups.
Take our little meeting for instance – to start with my artistic friends were probably taught in primary and secondary school and tertiary level by at least some of the “professionals” who taught my son so their opinions were well entrenched and reinforced.
They then had petrol vouchers and other financial encouragement from their group (please note a multinational organisation) to travel hundreds of kilometres to “stick it up the rednecks”.
Their clash was then reported in the local media in favourable terms ( Community supports Protests) by one of their own who no doubt also contacted the local ABC who then passed on the story to the national ABC all without any thought or criticism.
End result – positive reinforcement of multinationals pov and campaign, an exciting month in the country for some young artists, and a small community which had until then been very healthy riven with suspicion, resentment and bad blood to the pooint where local customs and institutions were rendered unworkable.
What was completely lacking was any sense of morality, perspective or decency. If the argument is that bloody good and so convincing go talk to the politicians and get out of our lives.
I don’t know whether you are replying to my arguments or not. If you are, I thank you for your rude one-word analysis as it frees me from any more consideration of politics. I regret trying to engage with you here and…enough said.
Ian K
Yes I said rot to your “take home message” that these are just nice people with opinions who care so passionately about injustice that they can dismiss the destruction and trauma their campaigns inflict on small isolated rural communities by considering it as just so much “collateral damage”.
And that ignores the bit I found most offensive which was the pleasure the “sport” of redneck baiting gives to these people.
In conclusion the opinionaters are environmentalists because a. they are educated to be environmentalists from an early age, b. cultural product like cartoons, newspapers, and movies (eg 3 dollars) reinforces the position c. social acceptance is given to “activists” d. and their opinions are never challenged because they rarely if ever meet a redneck like me and when they do we are usually too damn scared/busy/polite to stand up to them or they’re ears are closed and it’s not worth the trouble.