It’s hard to be forward thinking when the electorate have consistently voted in Tory governments for 14 years.

People find comfort in nostalgia and 'the good old days'. One of the reasons why this Oasis reunion is so big IMO.

Nothing wrong with finding comfort in ones past but it must be used wisely to shape the future.

To be fair I do think Little Englanders are just a loud minority.

You put the UK in the headline and then proceed to talk about England? Do you mean England, not the UK?

That, I suppose, would explain why the Australian government and Australian public are so well educated about the history of the colonial whities who settled what they decided should be called Australia; about the genocides of 300+ different tribes across the continent; and about the need for meaningful apologies, the recognition of distinct cultural rights and privileges, the return of lands and resources, and the payment of reparations?…

comment by Michel Pageaud (U1734)
posted 1 minute ago
You put the UK in the headline and then proceed to talk about England? Do you mean England, not the UK?
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Right you are Bazza

That’s probably because Australia doesn’t want to confront its past.

Nothing wrong with a bit of tv nostalgia, you’ve obviously just had shiiiiit tv.

What in particular is progressive about Oz as opposed to here?

There’s also the fact that Australia (or as I like to call it ‘The Israel of the South’ ) has only really existed in its ‘let’s pretend we aren’t a legacy settler colony’ form for 120 years, which leaves far less scope for nostalgia.

comment by Hector (U3606)
posted 1 minute ago
What in particular is progressive about Oz as opposed to here?
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They gave the world the woke Rupert Murdoch.

Meth

Of course Australia has a past, they just choose to ignore it and the people who have lived on the land the longest.

I largely agree with you, Robb.

To some extent this is an inherent quality. It's natural that a young country like Australia (in its current iteration) will be more future-orientated than a state with millennia of recorded history. To some extent, though, there are cultural factors that entrench past-gazing. For instance, British discourse has spent the last 80 years wallowing in WW2 mythos - we can be rightfully proud of confronting and helping defeat fascism, but too often these sentiments have been co-opted to promote jingoism and self-congratulation, and to avoid useful self-criticism and innovation. Boris Johnson's shtick is a particularly clear example of this: a veneer of Churchillian national provide worn as a cloak to hide lack of substance. I would contrast this with Germany, which as a country spent the post-war years looking back in shame and at the same time thinking more constructively about the future. Incidentally, Russia is even more obsessed with WW2 than the UK, even more backward-looking, and this serves a more malignant reactionary politics.

Overall I feel a bit queasy whenever I encounter too much nostalgia. We all feel warm and fuzzy about things that evoke our younger days, and there's nothing wrong with that. But nostalgia is easily leveraged in political discourse to appeal to hearts (for most people it feels like life was happier when we were young) over heads (we selectively recall the good stuff and tend to forget the bad). Nostalgia explicitly fuelled Brexit and MAGA; nostalgia for the 'simpler times' of the USSR helps underpin Putin's increasingly totalitarian state. And I think that nostalgic impulse is universal, and more or less everywhere being deployed for political ends, whether in a generally more future-orientated country like the US / Australia or a more backward-looking one like the UK.

comment by manutd1982 (U6633)
posted 33 seconds ago
Of course Australia has a past, they just choose to ignore it and the people who have lived on the land the longest.
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That’s not strictly true . Whilst what the English did to the indigenous people was absolutely shocking and even to this day the inequalities suffered by them needs a lot of work you’d be surprised how much progress has been made with welcome to country ceremonies, name changes of landmarks and locations back to indigenous names and ownership as well as apologies made.

A long way to go but certainly better than the equivalent in the Middle East and the Americas amongst others.

Not sure I’d agree that America isn’t backward looking when you consider the sanctity that the constitution holds in the minds of millions of Americans.

Australia isn't some progressive utopia, ask its women.

Robb, am I right to assume that the way people look at the past in Australia is quite contested along political lines, as it has been in the UK (on one hand people who want to tear down statues to slavers and include critical context in our histories, National Trust sites, etc; and right-wing counter-narratives about the Left obliterate our history, wanting us to be ashamed of our country, etc.)?

I guess there when there are giant spider, huge snakes, chlamydia ridden koalas, other aussies etc knocking about, you live more in the present

I think nostalgia is an important part of human psychology. The known compared to the unknown provides existential comfort.

comment by Joshua The King Of Kings Zirkzee (U10026)
posted 2 minutes ago
Not sure I’d agree that America isn’t backward looking when you consider the sanctity that the constitution holds in the minds of millions of Americans.
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I wouldn't argue that the US is absolutely one or the other. Within any country there are forces pulling in opposite directions. The US certainly has a lot of backward-looking cultural and institutional forces. But I would argue that in parallel to that it also has a stronger focus on the future, relative to the UK. I think it's a society that's moving on to the next big thing in a way that the UK isn't. And despite its decisive involvement in WW2, the war doesn't have the same icy grip on the American imagination.

And another thing Robb...

As United fans nostalgia is all we've got at present so don't try and take that away from us!

comment by Joshua The King Of Kings Zirkzee (U10026)
posted 3 minutes ago
I think nostalgia is an important part of human psychology. The known compared to the unknown provides existential comfort.
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Definitely. Most things are healthy in moderation.

comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 30 seconds ago
Robb, am I right to assume that the way people look at the past in Australia is quite contested along political lines, as it has been in the UK (on one hand people who want to tear down statues to slavers and include critical context in our histories, National Trust sites, etc; and right-wing counter-narratives about the Left obliterate our history, wanting us to be ashamed of our country, etc.)?
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It’s mainly the ones from British stock who remember a white only Australia time that want to conserve the past. They’re often the ones who shout the loudest like when we took in 3000 Palestinians compared to much smaller amounts from other countries. We have our own Nigel Farage in Pauline Hanson who is far more outright racist. So yeah, it’s not too dissimilar to the UK however I believe the youth here to be far more progressive than many western countries and much more multicultural

RR, I know you were here for just a few days but what was your impression of things in relation to this discussion?

comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 1 minute ago
comment by Joshua The King Of Kings Zirkzee (U10026)
posted 2 minutes ago
Not sure I’d agree that America isn’t backward looking when you consider the sanctity that the constitution holds in the minds of millions of Americans.
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I wouldn't argue that the US is absolutely one or the other. Within any country there are forces pulling in opposite directions. The US certainly has a lot of backward-looking cultural and institutional forces. But I would argue that in parallel to that it also has a stronger focus on the future, relative to the UK. I think it's a society that's moving on to the next big thing in a way that the UK isn't. And despite its decisive involvement in WW2, the war doesn't have the same icy grip on the American imagination.
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I think huge empires are often a mixture of both of these things, but I’d argue the forward looking nature of the US is more in terms of state’s long term economic and geopolitical goals, rather than something that’s shared by much of the general public.

The second world war obviously won’t occupy the imaginations of Americans in the same way it will the British because it didn’t have to suffer in the same way, nor did the threat to its very being exist.

But it’s a country that has its own world wars to occupy itself with the revolution and the civil war

comment by Robb Raygun (U22716)
posted 21 minutes ago
comment by manutd1982 (U6633)
posted 33 seconds ago
Of course Australia has a past, they just choose to ignore it and the people who have lived on the land the longest.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

That’s not strictly true . Whilst what the English did to the indigenous people was absolutely shocking and even to this day the inequalities suffered by them needs a lot of work you’d be surprised how much progress has been made with welcome to country ceremonies, name changes of landmarks and locations back to indigenous names and ownership as well as apologies made.

A long way to go but certainly better than the equivalent in the Middle East and the Americas amongst others.
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The English, and…