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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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?
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.
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.
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.