There’s a lot of talk in Australia at the moment on the question how rich is rich enough. At what point do you stop deserving hand-outs from the government? Is a combined income of $150,000 too much to receive welfare payments?
Ross Gittins at the Sydney Morning Herald summed it all up nicely yesterday when he talked about “pseudo-battlers” demanding their rights. Sure, people with incomes of $150,000 or more aren’t rich by Australian standards, but they’re not exactly doing it tough. As Gittins points out, they’re already three times better off than the average Australian. Yet the way some people have been carrying on in the media, you would think they are on the brink of poverty.
The sense of entitlement that people have these days is truly astonishing. Newspapers have shown maps of the “perfectly ordinary” Sydney suburbs full of $150k+ households and told us stories about these “average” Aussies who struggle to pay off their five-bedroom in Epping, NSW and send their kids to private school.
There seems to be a flaw here. These people need cash bonuses and tax cuts so that they can keep the basic human rights of a large house in a nice suburb in one of the most expensive cities on Earth and $20,000 tuition for Susie? When most families can’t afford to live within 20km of Sydney CBD?
It all comes down to comparisons. We always look at the life we aspire to live, not the one we could have been consigned to. And eventually we start to think that the Joneses are the average and we’re falling behind. And from there it’s not a big leap to feeling like you’re doing it tough, when all your basic needs and more are already met.
I read a study on philanthropy and giving in Australia a few weeks back. The key message was that a lot of well-off people don’t give away their money because they feel insecure about their finances. Despite the amazing growth in incomes in recent years, most people are convinced that they could lose it all at any moment. Those precious dollars are needed for an imagined rainy day - unlike the rainy days that others are already experiencing.
It’s basic human nature, sure. But it’s something we as a society should be trying to fix. Face it - you are rich.
A while ago, I had a weird dream that I went along to a synagogue. But it wasn’t all traditional - it was kind of more like the way we’re starting to do church now. It was just full of Jews talking about Judaism.
So you can imagine how hilarious I found it when Andy pointed me to the post on Out of Ur where they show the “Emerging Synagogue” movement.
Watching the video and seeing they sitting around talking exactly the way we pretentious Christians talk, except with “Judaism” instead of “Christianity” and “synagogue” instead of “church”, was mind-boggling. It almost seemed like a hoax.
Maybe next we’ll see something like “emerging” Islam and Hinduism and Taoism.
I’ve got a couple of friends crashing at my place this week - one on Friday and another on Saturday. It seems to be sometimes that most of my friends don’t live in Sydney - but I’m lucky that sooner or later most of them pass through. Compare and contrast with Canberra where I received one non-related visitor in over three years.
The downside to this kind of jet-setting social life is it’s ridiculously variable. I can get to Friday night and have nothing to do, or I can have three friends who are all making a one-night-only appearance in my town.
We’re at an interesting phase right now, as a small group of twenty-and-thirty-somethings eases its way out of a traditional church and into something…well, who knows?
Last weekend was the launch of a new “missional experiment” - which involved an amazing rooftop BBQ and some great conversations about how we can be more involved in the local community. What it will lead to over the coming weeks is anyone’s guess. And who will still be a part of it after a month of so is equally up in the air.
For me, it’s a little strange. I don’t live in the beachside suburb around which the new church will be centred. I don’t even know whether my future lies in Sydney. But after talking about new ways of doing church for years and how to make it less like mainstream religiosity and more like Jesus, it’s time to see what that actually looks like.
And what will my role be? I’ll tell you when I know myself.
In August 2004, I bought a TV. My housemate Kerry had departed for Canada, taking with her the set she had borrowed from a friend.
“I’m not going to get one,” said both my remaining housemates. “I never watch TV.”
So I forked out $500 for a big CRT and there it sat in our living room with my DVD player and my VCR and somewhere in there I forgot to watch it. Mostly I found that with working full-time and trying to have a social life and reading and listening to music, I didn’t really care about the telly much. But my housemates who “never watch TV” got plenty of use out of it.
When I moved to Sydney last year, I couldn’t even plug the thing in to the aerial socket because the cord was too short. I watched some shows on DVD, but I never watched anything new and when it screened.
“Have you seen that new show?” I get asked occasionally.
“Nah, my TV isn’t even plugged in to the antenna,” I say.
Well, I finally bit the bullet. Maybe it’s because Flight of the Conchords has started screening. Maybe it’s because talking about how I never watch TV doesn’t even impress me anymore. But I now have a TV that gets four channels of shitty reception. Progress.
In case you hadn’t noticed, my bloggerati friends, things move mighty quick in our accelerated internet culture. Trends go from non-existent to massive back to non-existent in the space of weeks. These days, a band can play its first gig and its entire career will be over by the time Pitchfork gives the debut album 8.5, a month later. The rockumentaries of tomorrow will consist of 4 minute YouTube clips, spanning the birth and death of a band in real time.
Blog popularity is just as ephemeral. It’s hard not to feel that a blog’s best days are behind it before the New York Times has brought it attention. And almost nothing can retain its cultural relevance once the book deal has been signed. New media ceases to be new once it can be on your coffee table without your iBook.
A lot of activity, very little progress - that seems to summarise my life right now. Work is piling up with endless redrafts of the same documents and meetings and dinners and networking sessions to spare. On the plus side, I’m gradually becoming accustomed to the almost daily experience of walking into a room full of strangers and making my presence felt. On the negative side, I’m feeling pretty stressed.
But I know I made a choice to take on something that seemed out of my comfort zone for the simple reason that it would eventually fall within the zone. And at only two months in, it’s hardly a bust.
At least I have the pleasures of good music, good books, good friends and lengthy phone conversations with my girl on the other side of the world.
That, in a short post, is Dave’s life circa May 1.
