Down Our Bay

You saw the submarine down our bay?
I thought it was an island, but it's just iron,
the moon light on its surface seems too bright,
the sea under its weight just seems to struggle -
like hopes that linger silent on the smooth waves.

It's not the first deceit that this sky brings us,
it's not the first time things sound strange tonight -
whilst life reveals its plans and its next chapters
it all feels kind of peaceful, kind of right.

One year has passed and those familiar shores
have started to feel exotic, almost unreal,
the final night - the rain drops at the Chapel,
are only half exposed under the haze.
Like something which you fear might just go and fade.

And whilst the two of us walk down the Exchange,
and Darlinghurst outside doesn't know us,
I think this year may feel like a surprise,
just like this submarine down our the bay.

Fair Go

Over the last few months I have started picking up glimpses of revelations around the Australia's psyche - some of the key building blocks that make up this society. Australia is such a fascinating place, and I don't think that people like me really get how incredible and interesting this place is until we stop a second and think about it.

The country as we know it was 'discovered' (I am not going into the whole aboriginal issue here) in the later XVIII century. Now, let's face it: once you take out all the time that it took to start colonizing the place properly and turning it into a developing Western- style society we could probably argue that things really kicked off in the late 1800s.  This makes this place seem even more recent to European standards than it really is.

Whilst lots of people see this almost as a fault and the reason behind an alleged lack of culture and all that rhetorical blah blah blah, I see it as a big opportunity. Whilst our legacy helps us describe who we are, it also represents societies' weakest point. Just like a company that has to deal with old IT systems, that determines to some extent what can and cannot be done, societies can be crippled by their history and their legacies.

As I see it Australians' psyche reflects this position. One of the key things that I have picked up is that Australians are very keen about the concept of 'Fair Go'. This is actually more intricate than it sounds, so I'll have to simplify. Fair Go is giving an opportunity to honest people to make a good life for themselves. When I went to the museum of immigration in Melbourne it was pretty interesting to see how a lot of the campaigns aimed at getting the English over revolved about 'giving their children a better future'. A Fair Go. That concept has evolved, but not died.

If you couple this with the constant reinforcement of the 'hard working Australian' image, a country where farming and 'the land' are still predominant, the feeling that since you are so remote you need to put in twice the effort,  you get a place that is the closet I have seen to the romantic New World image and that has given birth to great intellectuals, scientists, actors, travelers and athletes.

I will give you an example. Whenever an Australian actor makes it into Hollywood without fail the interview by Australian press will contain the question :'So how are Australian seen in Hollywood?' and the actor will say 'They like us because we are down to earth and hard working'. I kid you know, Australians love this.

The concept of 'Fair Go'  also means that modern Australia value meritocracy and simplicity. Also it means that the concept of class in Australia is somehow loose, and there seem to be a massive middle class and the upper class keeps somewhat a low profile (more on this in a future log).  

What can I say? There are my impressions, so Terms & Conditions do apply.

Growing up with Berlusconi

I was 13 when Berlusconi came to power in Italy, after a colorful campaign revolving around the promise that his party Forza Italia would create one million jobs. There were a lot of blue banners and catchy jingles.

Back then people wanted to believe that one million jobs could be created, as well as we wanted to believe that Italy was in fact the 6th largest economy in the world.

Berlusconi was already one of the most powerful people in Italy, as he owned significant part of the media and a number of lucrative businesses. During his campaign Berlusconi traveled a lot of the country - a bit of a poor's man American president election campaign. I guess people liked him. One of the reasons must have been the fact that he was a business man who had actually accomplished a lot, rather than just talking about it. There was fluff - there always is in Italian politics, but behind the fluff there were results. Even if these results he had been achieved for himself, they were still results. That appealed to the Baby Boomer society.

What we might have failed to see is that Berlusconi was indeed a great achiever, however like many great achievers his desire and drive was more rooted in the selfish pursuit of self validation than a genuine care for the country he was supposed to lead. Someone who tries to change the law in preposterous ways to escape persecution himself is certainly not driven by selfless principles.

That is no news: Italian politicians have carved a delightful little niche for themselves over the decades...They come to power and there they stay, until like defeated geriatrics dinosaurs cannot do it any longer.  They seldom resign, never mind how insane the scandals they get involved into - or how detached from modern life they become because of their reverend age. There they stay. Whilst their international counter parties step down over what to Italians seem to be minutia, there they stay.

In Italian we say that they are glued to their armchairs.

They don't care. Inside their bubble they are powerful, untouchable, they are beautiful, they frolic with attractive young girls, they are politically incorrect, they are above the law, they are rich....In a word the own the country. The reason why they are so powerful and the normal people are so powerless is simple: there is no such a thing as meritocracy in the country.

I remember being more than shocked when I won my government scholarship for boarding school. In fact, everyone I knew was shocked that a nobody like me could have such a lucky break, beyond the corruption, the favours and the crap that go with anything that has to do with the government. It was like a small miracle, a Deus Ex Machina moment that allowed me to transcend my own destiny.

Meritocracy is a foreign word in Italy, where merit is carved through obscure networks and where power is like some sort of golden inheritance which is passed among a finite number of families and names.
So the dinosaurs stay up there, while the rest of the people wine Nietzsche's retaliation theory- style, alas they do nothing to drive change. The don't do anything partly because the dinosaurs don't care - there is hardly a scandal which is big enough to overthrow them.

Hard to agree that this is a First World country - more like a Third World Country which has been pretending to be evolved. The legacy of a great past has become a crippling baggage of self destruction. If you go to countries like Argentina, beyond the beauty of the country you recognize the same underlying issues that have taken Italy to the place it is now - well Argentina is full of Italians after all.

Berlusconi represents all the reasons why I have left my own country and why I would not live there again. In Italy I feel like a cripple, I feel like half the man I can be. I feel the weight of the dinosaurs, the weight of that baggage of self destruction. I feel powerless.

Italy was a disaster when Berlusconi took it over. I was 13. Now I am 31 and things seem to be pretty much the same, which makes things worse.  So whose fault is it? Is it Berlusconi, for making the most out of it, or is it the Italians' for doing nothing about it for the last 18 years? I do not know. What I do know is that the country is so entrenched on this journey that 'more of the same' is not the answer.

I wonder why the EU countries do not police each other more intensively - why don't premiers provide independent oversight to what happens in other countries? Each premier could be allocated a country to monitor. And by independent oversight I mean real scrutiny of policies and progress against them, not just summits. Independence is the only thing that can cut through the bullshit, through legacy, through the 'we have always done it this way'. If you don't get a person that is not part of that roundabout of crap to see through the crap and identify and address the real issues in a timely manner, you will only end up with yet another horror story.

I was 13 when Berlusconi came to power in Italy, after a colorful campaign revolving around the promise that his party Forza Italia would create one million jobs. There were a lot of blue banners and catchy jingles.