What a job - to characterise the Australian people. I might get accused of over-generalising, but here goes. First of all, there is a personal context in every person's life. I have met Australians who I very much liked. I am reminded of an Australian I met in Tokyo. He must have thought I was gay. I say to him "How come I don't meet any Australians like you in Australia". He said: "I wouldn't have any friends if he discussed the subject matter at hand"...anyway, words to those effect. I couldn't argue with that. But then...did he need to be liked by everyone...why not an 'interesting minority. This is my loathing of practical people...they are defined by others. It kind of makes him two-faced. But I understand we all hold back to achieve goals. But then the extent to which he is defining himself as something other than he is, just makes my think, to what end? What new low does a society have to descend to before it stands up and says 'enough!'. So clearly there are expatriates who are as disappointed by the state of the Australian psyche as me...but they are more practical than me....or maybe that just reflects the fact that I live off investments in mining stocks. Mind you, it got a little hairy last year when two of my stocks went broke because of the corruption in mining. The problem is that stocks can be low for two reasons:
1. They are under-valued
2. ASIC is not doing its job - and at the low end of the market, unless you listen to rumours in WA, because you drink with mining executives, you are not likely to know. Maybe I ought to go live in WA.
So back to the Australian people. We tend to think Australians are easy-going people, and this is certainly true. I love that aspects about them. I think they have a lot of personal pride, and also a pride in their country, which I could care less about. Its as much a pride in their lifestyle as anything else. Not really an attribute to take pride in - like the climate - but they manage to do it. I think the reason is - they are proud of retaining the best secret in the world - their country - without getting on the internet and bleating about it.
The problem in Australian is the liberal or social democratic values which dominate the country. There is this collectivist pride in nation, whether it be its lifestyle, values, 'the empire', which make me sick, but which makes them think they are pretty good, when in fact its not their achievement at all, but notionally the fact that they live in a country with immense mineral & energy resources, little competition (because its a small, isolated market) and because are just 21 million people sharing this bounty.
These liberal values mean that despite these advantages, they are 'pilfered away' like they are in Norway or Brunei. They are wasted on the poor and subsidising corporations, at a huge opportunity cost to them and everyone else.
There is a divide in the country. A great many Australians are outward looking and aspirational. This aspirational nature, is no question, underpinned by a commonsense, practicality, however I would describe them as intellectually, under-developed, to the point of insecurity. These people are goal-orientated, and sadly this comes at a price of psychological repression. This is a worldwide phenomenon, so maybe you can relate.
Australians are among the most well-travelled people in the world, despite being the most remote (aside from NZ), though arguably that is why you travel. Australia in my youth did feel like a 'poorer cousin', but that is no longer the case. Maybe that is reflected in the currency. In the 1970s to 1980s the currency fell from $1.20 to $0.50...today its back to $1.01 against the USD, and it will probably get up to $1.35 in the next 10 years.
Educational standards are comparable to other countries....that is bad. Friendships are pretty superficial in the upper and lower class. Intrinsic love from the lower class, social climbing from the aspirational middle and upper classes, regardless of whether the value is wealth or pretensions of such.
I seldom meet real people in Australia. It is manly to be psychologically repressed, and women might well be judged by the same standard. Sadly women confused altruism with empathy, so when they became career-orientated, they sadly set aside their better nature.
In contrast to Australians, I think I would prefer the company of expatriate Western men and aspirational Filipino women. Why? Standards of value are richer when compared between countries, and I have met a number of Filipino women who have impressed me....fewer men...but then I was not really mixing.
In comparison with NZ, I would say NZ men are even more repressed, psychologically less developed, i.e. Subjects of tough love. NZ is far more of a welfare state, and the aspirational class is less developed, and enslaved by the state. A great many might well understand that on some level because there are probably 700,000 of them in Australia, with a further 30,000 coming to Australia each year.
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Andrew Sheldon www.sheldonthinks.com
