Eggs and Onions

September 18, 2021
Written by: George Theodoridis
25 Replies

I hold an indomitable dogma which, though at first blush it looks like it belongs to matters culinary, in fact it is a dogma, an undeniable teaching, that applies to one’s whole life, and it is this: no decent fried egg should present itself without a good-sized fried onion. Whether dressed as an omelette or as poached, or scrambled, or as sunny-side up or down, no epicurean worth his saffron, no gourmand worth his bearnaise, would have anything to do with such eggs, unaccompanied by their reasoning, by their alter eggo! (Cheff’s Play on words there). It’d be vulgar and an affront to the morality of reason. Treachery to Socrates.

Eggs are delicious on their own and, drunk – yes, drunk! – straight out of the shell, still warm and with the chook’s bum-fluff still attached, they are also beneficial to your throat and thus to your voice, if not to your general physical as well as mental health. (It’d be too uncouth of me to add that they also increase your sperm or egg production, so I won’t.) They are self-assurance, confirmation of the greatness of being alive, confidence in Nature and all her beasts and curiosities and they are a very pleasant greeting from rose-fingered Dawn, all in one little fragile container.

Certainly, about the throat and the voice, I am an unimpeachable witness. My grandfather, you see, was a village priest whose little house was built on the only little hill of our little village, just a few yards from his little church and every morning, when I was little – barely the size of his beard – he’d instruct me to go and “steal” a couple of eggs -without disturbing the blessed (by him) chooks. Then, just before he’d start his instructions to me on the Byzantine music, especially on the psalms I’d have to sing solo the following Sunday, we’d dig a couple of holes on the stolen eggs, one on their nose and one on their bum and suck out their contents.

Delicious yes but this daily practice gave us also powerful voices that were as clear as the water that gurgled in the little river at the feet of the little hill. My grandfather would often sing the vespers mass from his front door and all the farmers, working at their fields would stop to cross themselves and take a holy rest while their priest performed his duties. I would be right next to him, obeying his every command, though, quite early on I learned all the cues.

And to this day I make sparrows a mile away, cry when I sing a byzantine psalm to them. (Only respectful comments are accepted!)

Onions present whatever statement the eggs want to make with the reason for making that statement. They are the basis, the logic, the proof that the eggs use to fortify their view, whether sunny-side up or down.

No onions, no proof, no logic, no basis for saying what you’re saying, and your words are mere waffle that had come out, not of an honest chook’s bum but from a fox’s mouth wanting to kill all your chooks and steal all of your eggs. And we see this phenomenon almost every minute of the day, these days. Foxes talking, while standing on egg cartons, lying as the mountebanks used to lie, standing on soap boxes by the river bank, once upon a time.

“We need more tax cuts!” those charlatans, will yell!
or “We must do as the American Military Complex tells us because they are our buddies!”
or “We need to dump $20bil in the French égout and spend $200 bill more on building new “nukelar” submarines to protect our nightmarish paranoias.”
or “We need to give earth-killing mining licences to the rapacious filthy rich!”
or “China is our enemy!”
or “There are ‘weapons of mass destruction’ all over the planet and we must destroy them – by bombing the whole planet!”
or “We must incarcerate refugees, or non-white trash people!”
or “No marriage between gays! God said so!”
or “No abortions!”
or “No euthanasia!”
or “Rape in Parliament is acceptable!”
or “We need to privatise everything, now!”

Or – but I won’t go on, you get the picture by now, I’m sure!

So, next time you see one of these smug bastard politicians, talking like that, no matter how pretty, no matter how articulate, no matter how seductively they’re dressed, yell out to them, at the top of your egg-enhanced voice, “where are yer onions?”

You may even wish to carry a few eggs with you when next you have your family picnic by the river but hurling those precious little health-explosives at these lying, bum-fluff spitting politicians would be a culinary blasphemy, A treachery to logic, to reason, to Aristotle and to Plato, to Socrates and an attack on St John’s 1.1: “In the beginning was the onion!” (He meant “logos” of course)

Why, they’ll even dare tell you that they’re from your own loving party, the party you voted for all of your life, the party you’re rusted onto all your life! It was always Hawthorn and Labor with pies, tomato sauce and beer and that’s how it’ll be for all eternity. That’s how low they can get!

Eat those lovely eggs, always with a full, large, fried onion, or else drink them, raw. When you’re eating them on a plate, you’re looking down, thanking Earth. When you’re drinking them raw, you’re looking up, thanking the heavens.

I so very much miss the early morning rooster’s call to prayer!

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Joe CarliSeptember 18, 2021 at 3:37 pm

Shite an’ onions, George!…the comment I just put up on another post here is more at home on your own!…so I will double post the comment replete with attached links onto this post…and may all your onions be full of flavour!

“Hello again, George..I watched with both a degree of alacrity and also one of inner humour yours and BB’s rattling of cudgels at each other in another recent post…and although it was a tad cruel of BB to call you an “old fart” in Spanish, the entire episode had me reflecting on the many thrusts and parrys I had endured on this same platform…and indeed, I have to agree that in essence you, George, are the more accurate in my opinion in that the arguement is not really about this party or that, but rather about a political system that in this nation of basically conservative voters, little difference will be observed by a lack of radical left-wing policies in a now subdued Labor party grown fat and sleek on a sinecured income.

The sad tragedy is that the world has gone down that rabbit hole of “just in time” neo-liberal economics and marketing, so the casualising of the workforce has made a mockery of secure income and the future for many unskilled and even skilled workers.

To my way of interpretation, the rot first set in with the massive post WW2 industrialisation..particularly in agriculture..the “tooling-up” from horse-drawn implementation to tractors destroyed not only many smaller farms, but also inadvertently destroyed whole towns and communities…for what little REAL community gain is yet to be debated, as we seem to have accepted that change/progress for change’s sake is all the excuse needed to explain away massive environmental and social damage…perhaps even to the point of having come so far into the tunnel, there is now no turning back and a “free-market” rampage will be the total undoing of humanity.

I wrote of these things here, as many will have noticed…One article I put up drew the ire of so many was the one about; https://theaimn.com/rosies-hut/ ..about those days of horse farming on the flats around here…THAT inspired me to write a story centering on the actual moment..the actual day when the farmer “Mattheus Kreuger” hands over the family farm to his two sons and their family who are keen to drop the horses and switch to tractors for the farming…I think it explains the loss of connection of humanity to nature and the start of a disaster of environmental / social collapse…..

Here if you are interested… https://freefall852.wordpress.com/2021/06/07/the-last-empire/ “

George TheodoridisSeptember 18, 2021 at 5:07 pm

Hi joe.
I’ve posted under your story but because i’m not a member i have no pass word so i think my comment has disappeared.

Shite on your lovely story!
Your observation about the cause of the irritating life we have now being the massive industrialisation post WWII has a fair amount of validity but it’s not the only story.
The greater part of our downfall, as i suggested in my comment, is the steering of that industrialisation, steering which unfortunately is in the hands of ignorant, short sighted, selfish, nasty bastards.

Please see if you recover my post but if not, there’s your justification for banning mechanical progress!

Joe CarliSeptember 18, 2021 at 5:21 pm

Sorry, George…I couldn’t see your comment there…but I get the gist from the one above..and yes..the industrialisation is not the only story, and I do not disagree with sensible progress..for there are many areas where science has spared so many of us from a brutal end…but the maniacal direction of such industralisation and the madness of its total control is fearful…The sad truth about that “story” is that it DID end as described..the town is now crumbling, the stability gone and many houses have been taken over as refuges for escapees from the cities..there is no real community left…it’s every person-Jill for themselves..
BTW…yes..a pox on mechanical progress!

George TheodoridisSeptember 18, 2021 at 5:55 pm

Pity, Je.

In any case I loved the story…
I remember saying that you have used the gentle eyes and hands of a romantic artist to pretty much the same conflict that Mary Shelley -perhaps the ever ever to do so- described between the belief of a catholic and that of a scientist, when science has delivered us electricity. A man, Frankenstein, whose morality, mind and behaviour are questionable.
It’s a bugger, isn’t it, thinking I mean. It hasn’t stopped since Thales predicted a solar eclipse, Pythagoras worked out how to measure hypotenuses, Archimedes how to work out the gold contents in rings, the invention of washing machines…
Can’t stop inventions, Joe and I’m sure that this is not what you’re saying but this is what I think many are applying to politics. Inventions don’t happen, political thinking is in the hands of politicians and not of the common man who pays for their caviar and endless real estate.

I am particularly interested in breaking this duo/mono poly of fascism that’s been going on utterly unfettered for many generations now. That it hasn’t work is blindly obvious, yet its promoters seem to be blind and unable to hear their own utterances which are unaltered for the same length of time.

If it wasn’t direly shite, it ‘d be hilarious, this dual slogan tool they use: “It’s time!” vs “now it’s not the time!” in an effort to keep the same broken two-wheeler going.

The idea that perhaps we ought to have a mechanic in the room never occurs to them. A third party to provide some numbers antithetical to those of the mono-duo poly so that their malpractices are at least somewhat, if not altogether curtailed.

The Greens have never taken a seat off the ALP. Their hatred for the LNP is so enormous that they never will. But they will tell the ALP when they are wrong and when they are behaving in the same was as their supposed enemies.

Anyhow, here, onions are very important. They provide variety of dimensions, of ideas, of taste and of reason.

Joe CarliSeptember 18, 2021 at 6:02 pm

An interesting developement that has come to notice recently is Xi Jingping’s ambition of all China to aspire for “moderate prosperity”….whatever that level is…though with 1400 million people, it wouldn’t want to be too high!..but the idea of moderating greed toward a more sustainable level sounds promising..whether it is just another slogan is yet to be seen…but going by the way these loony “anti-lockdown” protesters are behaving, you wouldn’t want even a few hundred million people getting THAT irate!

Joe CarliSeptember 18, 2021 at 11:08 pm

The thing is, George…about this thinking and the need to invent…this seemingly unstoppable force of necessity….is that the Aust’ indigenous peoples have been here for around 60,000 yrs and did not seem to have such a contageon…beyond inventing those things necessary for survival and domesticity…not that there was a lack of inquisitiveness, nor a lack of artistic expression….but there does not seem to be that competitive drive to be “one-up” on one’s neighbour…and as for material wealth ??. . . But there is another mystery for me…and I suspect for yourself also…: How was it that they never seemed to get bored…after so many thousands of years doing the rounds from camp to camp, did they not get a tad bored….WE..of the West would have at least invented drugs of choice by then!

BBSeptember 18, 2021 at 11:28 pm

“If it wasn’t direly shite, it ‘d be hilarious, this dual slogan tool they use: “It’s time!” vs “now it’s not the time!” in an effort to keep the same broken two-wheeler going.” “The idea that perhaps we ought to have a mechanic in the room never occurs to them.”

Has it occurred to you that your ideas are not positive ones, but have become overly dogmatic and are doing nothing to help!

You are being hilarious? What other choice is there? Time to wake up to reality, not wishful thinking. There is no other choice!

I am also annoyed with you suggesting my only intention is to keep this dual state of affairs going.. You don’t know me at all!
I strongly object where you suggested I am all about… “My beloved ALP”, fucking crap.. I dislike both parties, I dislike the Greens as well, pathetic, I dislike all the bs “choices” we have left, I dislike being taken for granted by crooked politicians.
But where you can only denigrate what little choice there is, I do not look at life through rose coloured glasses! Got that mate!

A few months ago I joined FIN. They may ‘in time’ become a “Third Party”. What constructive actions have you taken lately?
https://www.federalicacnow.org/

There is a chasm of difference between ALP and L/NP, but stuck in your thought rut, does the glaring obvious escape you?

Onions. “Pelar la cebolla”. Does peeling each successive layer of an onion, (life), bring more tears or a greater understanding?
Eggs. Well mate, when you can explain to me how to unscramble scrambled eggs I might actually think you know something!

Instead of belittling the ALP battle cry “IT’S TIME”, try making a positive effort instead of always being so bloody negative!

What is it about ex and retired school teachers? I play club golf with quite a few, they all have a ‘sour’ condescending manner.

Anyway just so you realise I’m not having a ‘go’ at you, I have already said I do believe we are in the same book, the same chapter, if not on the same page with the political situation here in Australia. As Joe said, we don’t want to end up as another Chile or Argentina. I simply ask you to lighten up with your untimely constant criticism of the ALP, the only hope presently left.

BBSeptember 19, 2021 at 12:15 am

Joe..
A civilisation that has lasted 60+ thousand years, and still going, most certainly had gotten over being “bored”.
All civilisations have had their particular recreational drugs of choice, in our western culture it’s sadly brutally been criminalised.
Indigenous folk the world over have always all used hallucinogens, in all the continents, and here in Australia they did as well.

“Plant hallucinogens, such as those of the Duboisia genus called pituri, have been used by tribal elders in Australian aboriginal populations to create managed states of consciousness, to provide their youth with a fast-paced educational experience, and to inculcate values, beliefs and religious tenets.”

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10437998/
https://www.outbackchef.com.au/pituri-bush-bush-medicine-native-hallucinogenic/

The River of Dreams by Charlotte McAdam

BBSeptember 19, 2021 at 6:09 am

“did not seem to have such a contagion”

One reason Indigenous people did not have a materialistic madness, a “disease” of keeping up with the “Joneses”, seeking to accumulate individual wealth, is their deep understanding with their connection to the earth, their surroundings, a total respect for such, an appreciation that earth is the “mother” who provides, not to be raped pillaged, torn up, ripped open, squandered.
The Australian Aborigines are not unique, many such native populations, tribes around the planet believe in “Mother Earth”.
I’m not alone to suggest one of the main causes of greed stems from the madness of religion, christianity, our vengeful “Gods”. The need to conquer neighbours, a paranoid state of insecurity, to prove we are more powerful than all our vengeful “Gods”. It’s a mixed bag of contradictions, whilst one the one hand to “improve” conditions of life, but only by stepping on all others.
A few millenniums of such paranoia, which in the last few centuries has increased exponentially to a nightmarish crescendo.

What’s the answer?
Well sad to say I doubt there is one, unless there is a total immediate shift away from how we live, which is very very doubtful.
I can just hear the multi billionaires saying.. Give up my wealth? Fuck off you plebs. God helps those who help themselves!

And then all the utter complete religious nutcases, desperately waiting for “The Rapture”. All the Armageddon “prophecies”.

The doomsday clock is now 100 seconds to midnight. And counting down……………..

George TheodoridisSeptember 19, 2021 at 7:42 am

Joe, the answer is I don’t know but to suggest that because we don’t have from them -and i use “them” with great caution since there were many different “them”- the enormous volumes that the Greeks and Romans have left us, works like The Iliad, The Odyssey, the Republic, The Laws, the Aeneid etc, the indigenous are in some way an inferior people is totally wrong.
Their language was, in the main an oral one and not a written one so their observation of the world around them were not put down on any writing material and so we don’t know what these observation were.
I feel totally unwelcome talking about the Indigenous since i know so very little about them. I buy books about them as i see them in book shops and read what articles are around but so far i have not learnt anything that could give me a strong enough foundation from which to make my own observations with any confidence.
So i won’t allow myself to make any judgements nor come to any conclusions.

Joe CarliSeptember 19, 2021 at 8:51 am

To my way of thinking, BB and George…any conclusion we, as westerners, come to in regards ancient indigenous cultures, has come from the rational debates and conclusions of western logic and reason..ie; BB talks of “them” not ;

“. . . seeking to accumulate individual wealth, is their deep understanding with their connection to the earth, their surroundings, a total respect for such, an appreciation that earth is the “mother” who provides, not to be raped pillaged, torn up, ripped open, squandered.”

Now THAT is the conclusion many of us come to in regards the indigenous community…and indeed, I posted an article on this site many years ago asserting just this thing..; https://theaimn.com/advanced-society-surely-not/ ..yet, THAT conclusion is surely the result of making a rational choice between ” this objective” and “that desire”…you get what I’m trying to say?..it would mean those indigenous peoples must have made a conscious choice between acumulating wealth or preserving their environment…THAT would mean (in our western thinking) they had a reasoning, consciousness PHILOSOPHY that offered a choice….

But in a world of human weakness where even the most junior-school child (at least back in MY day) knew the trading value of a “blood-tracker” as against a “cats-eye” marble…the tribal group who held a particularly valuable..say..ochre pit under their lands, might have “capitalised” via a monopoly to enrich themselves with such goods…NOT only as a tradable item, but as a “value added product” and go on from there…

What I am getting at is that we of western culture seem to have in our instinct the competitive streak that when an opportunity arises to capitalise upon something we go at it hammer and tongs…yet this competitive streak for personal wealth does not seem to manifest itself in the ancient indigenous cultures…the evidence tells us that…so perhaps there is a undiscovered philosophy harboured knowingly or subconsciously within the indigenous psyche that WE, of the west could adopt to ameliorate our rapacious want?

BBSeptember 19, 2021 at 8:55 am

The main conclusion I have come to as to why many ex and retired teachers, “learned” people, are and/or have become condescending is that as “teachers” they feel superior, feel entitled to opinions, but in reality have forgotten how to learn. They may well be upgrading their chosen knowledge base all the time, but this has little to do with what is the essence of learning. They’re not able to have any original thoughts of their own anymore, their minds are disciplined in conventional ways of thought. They’re loath to offer up any actual real solutions, they will huff and puff, make all sorts of intelligent noises that amount to zero. They only seek “knowledge and understanding” through continued reading, but not through any actual hands on lived experience. And too they have forgotten how to genuinely listen to others, arrogance and condescending attitudes go hand in hand!
I’d suggest to get out into the real physical world a bit more, travel, spend time in other places, avoid tourist destinations!

Indeed Joe, we, (western cultures for want of a better expression), have so much to learn from indigenous cultures, but we won’t because we see them as “savages”, as inferior, and we see ourselves as superior, as having more knowledge..
We are truly our own worst enemies, and are unable to give up our material possessions.
We do not know or have forgotten how to share, we have become dirty rotten greedy selfish bastards!

There is ample food in the world so that nobody has to go hungry, to starve. There is ample for everyone to have a happy and fulfilling life, could we but share. This is how Aboriginal and Indigenous societies survive, have survived millenniums.
But no, along comes modern man, full of his own self importance, and takes takes takes, and gives nothing but shit in return. We in the western world waste our precious resources on weapons of mass destruction.
We are “educated”…..!! 😎

BBSeptember 19, 2021 at 9:23 am

Ok, I trust all have a lovely day, the sun is shinning in my little corner of this planet, my slice of paradise, and I’m not going to waste it today being a keyboard warrior, there is the veggi garden to attend to, spring is in the air.. time to get my hands dirty.
I have no axe to grind with anyone, unless you’re a RW selfish greedy crooked ratbag miserable excuse for a human being!

Joe CarliSeptember 19, 2021 at 9:32 am

BB..I am not so much drawn by “what’s gone wrong”…we have that evidence ..I am more interested in “what can we do that is correct”…and if we conclude that the indigenous peoples have fostered such a deliberate philosophy of environmental maintenance over rapacious profiteering all these millenia…and the evidence is there to prove it..what was this philosophy…and if it was a deliberate choice..as you say..can it be written down or voiced?… For if we use (a most corrupted) Socratic logic, of one proved certainty thereby preceeds AND foretells the next then the logical conclusion must be that there was a deliberate avoidance of capitilisation of indigenous resources……WHY?

BBSeptember 19, 2021 at 9:57 am

Joe, I’m just about to step outside, but an answer as to WHY? Like you I feel there is probably only an obvious answer, indigenous folk are and have always been way smarter, and don’t feel the need to write it all down, it is not to be set in concrete, life is a living entity that evolves and moves along with and in time, with nature, evolution, harmony with all.
AND they learned how to share with each other! 👍😎☮️

GLSeptember 19, 2021 at 10:15 am

And on a side note:

The Women’s Affairs Ministry in Afghanistan now has a new title – Ministry for Preaching and Guidance and the Propagation of virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-18/taliban-seizes-women-s-ministry-building/100474004

“But we’re a different Taliban compared to what we were like 20 years ago. We care about women’s rights…sort of…”

https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/taliban-replace-ministry-for-women-with-one-restricting-them-20210918-p58svj.html

Joe CarliSeptember 19, 2021 at 10:50 am

BB…: “. . . life is a living entity that evolves and moves along with and in time, with nature, evolution, harmony with all. ”
THAT, still is a conscious philosophy…and a cultrally acknowledged philosophy has to be continually reinforced by cultural teaching to the young and continually overseen..and perhaps in some circumstances…enforced upon intransigent persons…and without a kind of genetic blueprint that accepts one’s place upon this Earth..without having a concept (that any evidence points to) that one was even ON a planet..AND without question of either location or situation…for many millenia . . . ?

georgeSeptember 19, 2021 at 11:51 am

The NUKULAR era had descended upon us yet again and with both war loving “parties” (inverted commas essential) noisily agree on its importance, you can see why I suggest, fuck them and go for the Greens! Listen to the words of all three and judge for yourself.

The “Coalition of the Killing” as that buffoon George W. Bush, (and aren’t they all?) put it are now busy like starving bees working their way through the deeds that need to be done before launching on their next crusade against, this time China… in possibly 30 years, or earlier, or later, or… who the fuck knows when buyt certainly when these buffoons and we will be long gone! But our kids of course, won’t be!

Oz will be trampled ruthlessly by the boots of blood seeking barbarians until then.

When it comes to substansive issues these primordials make the same grunts!
War is imminent and war is annihilatory.
With nuclear in the mix the annihilation is quick and irreversible.

And, who can doubt any more that these creatures, still trying to breath in the primordial swamp they’re living in, relish the thought of a cataclysm of their own making.

I don’t know what your nightmares consist of but mine are almost solely of this cataclysm.

Why not discussion? Why not co operation? Why not accept that war is a constantly pulling act and not a repelling one? Why not accept that no one wins a war?
The image of the young vietnamese girl with fire burning her back, along with hundreds of other appalling war images disturb me enormously. Don’t they do the same to you?

I don’t want war!
I want peace!

Everything that i saw and read during my whole 76 years reinforce this belief. Everything

Let the makers of war, the believers that they are doing god’s work, their delusion that they are the cross-bearing crusaders, bring the true god to the world go build their own coliseum and let them fight each other.
Leave our children and grand children and the planet go on in peace.

I am so, so sick of thuggery, of war grunts, of grunts that have become so familiar to us that we’ve become desensitised by tham and, in fact, bought into the romance of slaughtering people in the most gruesome ways.

Iraq is till reeling by an atmosphere clogged with depleted uranium!

Enough, you fuckers, enough!

geSeptember 19, 2021 at 11:57 am

Just before the Iraq war, a group of intelligent women in America, who call themselves “The Lysistrata Project” have asked their members to either stage Aristopanes’ Lysistrata or do a reading of it, all on the same day and at the same time. There were over a thousand venues where that took place and a great number of them used my own translation. I’ve received many emails of thanks.
Then I saw the millions marching in the streets of the whole planet and thought that the attack will not happen.

Millions had marched!
Millions, as many as, if not more had died because those baboons wouldn’t give a stuff.

Baboons, like our own Shit-in-the-pants and brain, Johnny Howard.

Baboons understand the language only of baboons.

guestSeptember 19, 2021 at 3:21 pm

There has been a great deal of philosophising here about cultures old and new – and about politics of different flavours – and about how condescending teachers are and other comments I find somehow irrelevant. A bit of attacking and a bit of defending all round.

War is considered by some historians to be the driver of invention. In order to survive or to dominate, humans need to invent something better, bigger, more powerful, more accessible. And humans seem to have the ability and the curiosity to explore.

It amazes me that there were Aboriginal people in the south of Tasmania 2000 years ago at the end of the Ice Age. They survived at 6 degrees in the cold. And we can see that Aboriginal people explored the environment for food and learnt what food was edible and what was not and what was medicinal. And they recorded aspects of their environment in carving, painting, dance and song. They knew about the motions of stars and made meaning from them.

Contemporary with these early Tasmanians were the cave-dwelling painters of Lascaux and Altamira in Europe.

Some of the people who came here after 1788 died because they did not know what the Indigenous people knew.

But the colonists were of a different culture with weapons more powerful than spears and clubs. War was an unequal competition.

The environment became commodities for exploitation, even to the extent of mining raw materials for burning and threatening to cook the planet over time. Guns and swords and poisons sufficed for domination.

I have been reading writing by the Australian historian Inga Clendinning, about treatment of Aboriginal people, about also the appalling treatment in the 1500s of the Mexicans by the Spaniards, and the hideous behaviour of Nazis under Hitler. The human animal can be a monstrous, greedy and rapacious creature.

Yet humans can be so creative and able to create such beauty in a great range of endeavours. I saw just recently a documentary on Harry Seidler and his considerable lifetime achievement in architecture that enriched the human environment.

What I despise, George, are the people who toss about “rotten eggs”, with or without onions. People with power or aspirations to power can do much good, but also much damage. And the destructive ones will try to justify their actions with their own onions, explanations, myths and propaganda.

And there are those who are opposed. It is a kind of war. Some people talk of “vigorous debate”, others of “false news”.

At the moment China is the “bete noir” of the world. It is criticised for many reasons economic, philosophical, political, military, epidemiological, territorial…And yet China is our primary trading partner – and for a large part off the world. So many countries have used China for its cheaper labour. Historically China has traded with Europe for a long time along the Silk Road, old and new.

Now three English-speaking countries are seeking to join forces using nuclear submarines, Australia dumping an expensive contract to do so. The submarines will not be delivered until 2040.

Already there are those telling us that the citizens of Australia are in agreement with this plot conceived in secret. Many rotten eggs and flavoured spices – along with barrels of ink – will be cast about like confetti or chicken manure to justify this ill-conceived, chest-thumping belligerent display.

George TheodoridisSeptember 19, 2021 at 3:46 pm

Guest:
Ah, the onions!

Your last three paragraphs tell us what “their onions” look like; and that’s what I mean when I shout to them, “show us your onions!”

Are they truly onions, fresh and tasty or are they something else?

So far, they showed no onions but excuses for onions. Eggs, natural, fresh eggs with the chook’s bum-fluff still attached will never accept those false onions, the onions shown by some politicians, like Trump, Biden, Morrison and, well, you know who else I mean.

Sycophants are people who show rules a bundle of figs, figs being (according to whom you read) hard to keep fresh and tasty, since their figgness dissipates not long after they are cut off the tree. The sycophants begs the powerful person to help him with some favour or other.
The word literally means: fig showers, revealers, offerers. In practical terms, it means something like “let me show you what I’ll give you in return.”

My onions are not figs but reasons. St John’s (1:1) “logos” and logos is visible and arguable. The onions that these thugs are showing us are opaque and rotten.

ArndSeptember 19, 2021 at 4:12 pm

People with power or aspirations to power can do much good, but also much damage.

Alas, circumstances regularly seem to conspire to see to it that the latter outweighs the the former. “Power corrupts”, said Lord Acton. And the Christian part of the Bible advises especially, that it will be the meek who shall inherit the Earth.

Now, whether you, or I, or any AIMN reader put particular value on biblical wisdom is of less material importance than noting the fact that many of the most prominent political, commercial and military leaders in the West do – or at least go to enormous lengths pretending that they do. Which gives Joe Biden’s “We will not forgive! We will not forget!” stance a decidedly hypocritical flavour. Especially when it is followed up with revelations about a U.S. drone killing 10 civilians.

Also worth recognising is the fact that this particular biblical prediction was at least partially borne out by computer simulations of various permutations of the Prisoners Dilemma.

Whilst it is quite likely true to say that throughout the Holocene, war was the single most important driver of technological – and political, economic and social – progress, this does not ensure that it will remain so in the emerging Anthropocene. As always: “Past performance is not a reliable indicator for future performance!”

Indeed, I seem to recall that the Drake Equation – which endeavoured to give structure to estimates about the likelihood of making contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life – had a variable for the probability that a life form that has attained an advanced stage of technological of development, will not use its technological prowess to annihilate itself.

Just sayin’ …

guestSeptember 19, 2021 at 4:36 pm

Arnd,

Interesting observations.

I especially remember a particular cartoon. It was of a pair of extra-terrestrial aliens observing the Earth as it explodes. “You have to be especially intelligent to be able to do that,” said one.

leefeSeptember 20, 2021 at 4:02 pm

guest:

“It amazes me that there were Aboriginal people in the south of Tasmania 2000 years ago at the end of the Ice Age. They survived at 6 degrees in the cold. ”

The ice age ended around 12,000 years ago, so I hope that was just a typo.
And, given there is evidence of occupation in Tassie going back more than 30,000 years prior to that, and evidence of occupation in the south (eg kutikina cave) since at least 23,000 BP, their knowledge of, and adaptation to, various changing ecosystems down here is hardly surprising. You don’t survive in unforgiving conditions if you don’t learn. That goes for individuals and societies.

wamSeptember 20, 2021 at 6:30 pm

Egg throwing is steeped in Christianity with its beginning 699 years ago and the record is 98.51m But those are fresh eggs. Our Scummo deserves his rotten eggs like Dutton, Joyce, littleproud, McKenzie, let, hunt, birmingham, Ethan, cash, Taylor, ribert and josh. We can hope Albo keeps portering the absolute top stinker to the media.
ps good one BB, It was so sad that boat people of the 19th century were ‘civilised’ in dickens’ society. They thought real people could not share, respect laws and not seek possessions so Aborigines were neither civilized nor intelligent. Today all 9 white Australian education systems accept that there is nothing to learn from Aboriginal people nor society and history. In the territory we are lucky to have little corners where English is the foreign language. (Indeed the capital cities also harbour similar little language islands)
I consider closing the gap impossible until the system recognises the worth of Aboriginal learning and demands the teachers to learn the language of the students.
When I was a young teacher I read an extract about a pregnant Tasmanian being chased by two whites she gave birth when hiding in a tree and they shot the baby and I couldn’t read any further.

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Joe CarliSeptember 18, 2021 at 3:37 pm

Shite an’ onions, George!…the comment I just put up on another post here is more at home on your own!…so I will double post the comment replete with attached links onto this post…and may all your onions be full of flavour!

“Hello again, George..I watched with both a degree of alacrity and also one of inner humour yours and BB’s rattling of cudgels at each other in another recent post…and although it was a tad cruel of BB to call you an “old fart” in Spanish, the entire episode had me reflecting on the many thrusts and parrys I had endured on this same platform…and indeed, I have to agree that in essence you, George, are the more accurate in my opinion in that the arguement is not really about this party or that, but rather about a political system that in this nation of basically conservative voters, little difference will be observed by a lack of radical left-wing policies in a now subdued Labor party grown fat and sleek on a sinecured income.

The sad tragedy is that the world has gone down that rabbit hole of “just in time” neo-liberal economics and marketing, so the casualising of the workforce has made a mockery of secure income and the future for many unskilled and even skilled workers.

To my way of interpretation, the rot first set in with the massive post WW2 industrialisation..particularly in agriculture..the “tooling-up” from horse-drawn implementation to tractors destroyed not only many smaller farms, but also inadvertently destroyed whole towns and communities…for what little REAL community gain is yet to be debated, as we seem to have accepted that change/progress for change’s sake is all the excuse needed to explain away massive environmental and social damage…perhaps even to the point of having come so far into the tunnel, there is now no turning back and a “free-market” rampage will be the total undoing of humanity.

I wrote of these things here, as many will have noticed…One article I put up drew the ire of so many was the one about; https://theaimn.com/rosies-hut/ ..about those days of horse farming on the flats around here…THAT inspired me to write a story centering on the actual moment..the actual day when the farmer “Mattheus Kreuger” hands over the family farm to his two sons and their family who are keen to drop the horses and switch to tractors for the farming…I think it explains the loss of connection of humanity to nature and the start of a disaster of environmental / social collapse…..

Here if you are interested… https://freefall852.wordpress.com/2021/06/07/the-last-empire/ “
George TheodoridisSeptember 18, 2021 at 5:07 pm

Hi joe.
I’ve posted under your story but because i’m not a member i have no pass word so i think my comment has disappeared.

Shite on your lovely story!
Your observation about the cause of the irritating life we have now being the massive industrialisation post WWII has a fair amount of validity but it’s not the only story.
The greater part of our downfall, as i suggested in my comment, is the steering of that industrialisation, steering which unfortunately is in the hands of ignorant, short sighted, selfish, nasty bastards.

Please see if you recover my post but if not, there’s your justification for banning mechanical progress!
Joe CarliSeptember 18, 2021 at 5:21 pm

Sorry, George…I couldn’t see your comment there…but I get the gist from the one above..and yes..the industrialisation is not the only story, and I do not disagree with sensible progress..for there are many areas where science has spared so many of us from a brutal end…but the maniacal direction of such industralisation and the madness of its total control is fearful…The sad truth about that “story” is that it DID end as described..the town is now crumbling, the stability gone and many houses have been taken over as refuges for escapees from the cities..there is no real community left…it’s every person-Jill for themselves..
BTW…yes..a pox on mechanical progress!
George TheodoridisSeptember 18, 2021 at 5:55 pm

Pity, Je.

In any case I loved the story…
I remember saying that you have used the gentle eyes and hands of a romantic artist to pretty much the same conflict that Mary Shelley -perhaps the ever ever to do so- described between the belief of a catholic and that of a scientist, when science has delivered us electricity. A man, Frankenstein, whose morality, mind and behaviour are questionable.
It’s a bugger, isn’t it, thinking I mean. It hasn’t stopped since Thales predicted a solar eclipse, Pythagoras worked out how to measure hypotenuses, Archimedes how to work out the gold contents in rings, the invention of washing machines…
Can’t stop inventions, Joe and I’m sure that this is not what you’re saying but this is what I think many are applying to politics. Inventions don’t happen, political thinking is in the hands of politicians and not of the common man who pays for their caviar and endless real estate.

I am particularly interested in breaking this duo/mono poly of fascism that’s been going on utterly unfettered for many generations now. That it hasn’t work is blindly obvious, yet its promoters seem to be blind and unable to hear their own utterances which are unaltered for the same length of time.

If it wasn’t direly shite, it ‘d be hilarious, this dual slogan tool they use: “It’s time!” vs “now it’s not the time!” in an effort to keep the same broken two-wheeler going.

The idea that perhaps we ought to have a mechanic in the room never occurs to them. A third party to provide some numbers antithetical to those of the mono-duo poly so that their malpractices are at least somewhat, if not altogether curtailed.

The Greens have never taken a seat off the ALP. Their hatred for the LNP is so enormous that they never will. But they will tell the ALP when they are wrong and when they are behaving in the same was as their supposed enemies.

Anyhow, here, onions are very important. They provide variety of dimensions, of ideas, of taste and of reason.
Joe CarliSeptember 18, 2021 at 6:02 pm

An interesting developement that has come to notice recently is Xi Jingping’s ambition of all China to aspire for “moderate prosperity”….whatever that level is…though with 1400 million people, it wouldn’t want to be too high!..but the idea of moderating greed toward a more sustainable level sounds promising..whether it is just another slogan is yet to be seen…but going by the way these loony “anti-lockdown” protesters are behaving, you wouldn’t want even a few hundred million people getting THAT irate!
Joe CarliSeptember 18, 2021 at 11:08 pm

The thing is, George…about this thinking and the need to invent…this seemingly unstoppable force of necessity….is that the Aust’ indigenous peoples have been here for around 60,000 yrs and did not seem to have such a contageon…beyond inventing those things necessary for survival and domesticity…not that there was a lack of inquisitiveness, nor a lack of artistic expression….but there does not seem to be that competitive drive to be “one-up” on one’s neighbour…and as for material wealth ??. . . But there is another mystery for me…and I suspect for yourself also…: How was it that they never seemed to get bored…after so many thousands of years doing the rounds from camp to camp, did they not get a tad bored….WE..of the West would have at least invented drugs of choice by then!
BBSeptember 18, 2021 at 11:28 pm

“If it wasn’t direly shite, it ‘d be hilarious, this dual slogan tool they use: “It’s time!” vs “now it’s not the time!” in an effort to keep the same broken two-wheeler going.” “The idea that perhaps we ought to have a mechanic in the room never occurs to them.”

Has it occurred to you that your ideas are not positive ones, but have become overly dogmatic and are doing nothing to help!

You are being hilarious? What other choice is there? Time to wake up to reality, not wishful thinking. There is no other choice!

I am also annoyed with you suggesting my only intention is to keep this dual state of affairs going.. You don’t know me at all!
I strongly object where you suggested I am all about… “My beloved ALP”, fucking crap.. I dislike both parties, I dislike the Greens as well, pathetic, I dislike all the bs “choices” we have left, I dislike being taken for granted by crooked politicians.
But where you can only denigrate what little choice there is, I do not look at life through rose coloured glasses! Got that mate!

A few months ago I joined FIN. They may ‘in time’ become a “Third Party”. What constructive actions have you taken lately?
https://www.federalicacnow.org/

There is a chasm of difference between ALP and L/NP, but stuck in your thought rut, does the glaring obvious escape you?

Onions. “Pelar la cebolla”. Does peeling each successive layer of an onion, (life), bring more tears or a greater understanding?
Eggs. Well mate, when you can explain to me how to unscramble scrambled eggs I might actually think you know something!

Instead of belittling the ALP battle cry “IT’S TIME”, try making a positive effort instead of always being so bloody negative!

What is it about ex and retired school teachers? I play club golf with quite a few, they all have a ‘sour’ condescending manner.

Anyway just so you realise I’m not having a ‘go’ at you, I have already said I do believe we are in the same book, the same chapter, if not on the same page with the political situation here in Australia. As Joe said, we don’t want to end up as another Chile or Argentina. I simply ask you to lighten up with your untimely constant criticism of the ALP, the only hope presently left.
BBSeptember 19, 2021 at 12:15 am

Joe..
A civilisation that has lasted 60+ thousand years, and still going, most certainly had gotten over being “bored”.
All civilisations have had their particular recreational drugs of choice, in our western culture it’s sadly brutally been criminalised.
Indigenous folk the world over have always all used hallucinogens, in all the continents, and here in Australia they did as well.

“Plant hallucinogens, such as those of the Duboisia genus called pituri, have been used by tribal elders in Australian aboriginal populations to create managed states of consciousness, to provide their youth with a fast-paced educational experience, and to inculcate values, beliefs and religious tenets.”

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10437998/
https://www.outbackchef.com.au/pituri-bush-bush-medicine-native-hallucinogenic/

The River of Dreams by Charlotte McAdam
BBSeptember 19, 2021 at 6:09 am

“did not seem to have such a contagion”

One reason Indigenous people did not have a materialistic madness, a “disease” of keeping up with the “Joneses”, seeking to accumulate individual wealth, is their deep understanding with their connection to the earth, their surroundings, a total respect for such, an appreciation that earth is the “mother” who provides, not to be raped pillaged, torn up, ripped open, squandered.
The Australian Aborigines are not unique, many such native populations, tribes around the planet believe in “Mother Earth”.
I’m not alone to suggest one of the main causes of greed stems from the madness of religion, christianity, our vengeful “Gods”. The need to conquer neighbours, a paranoid state of insecurity, to prove we are more powerful than all our vengeful “Gods”. It’s a mixed bag of contradictions, whilst one the one hand to “improve” conditions of life, but only by stepping on all others.
A few millenniums of such paranoia, which in the last few centuries has increased exponentially to a nightmarish crescendo.

What’s the answer?
Well sad to say I doubt there is one, unless there is a total immediate shift away from how we live, which is very very doubtful.
I can just hear the multi billionaires saying.. Give up my wealth? Fuck off you plebs. God helps those who help themselves!

And then all the utter complete religious nutcases, desperately waiting for “The Rapture”. All the Armageddon “prophecies”.

The doomsday clock is now 100 seconds to midnight. And counting down……………..
George TheodoridisSeptember 19, 2021 at 7:42 am

Joe, the answer is I don’t know but to suggest that because we don’t have from them -and i use “them” with great caution since there were many different “them”- the enormous volumes that the Greeks and Romans have left us, works like The Iliad, The Odyssey, the Republic, The Laws, the Aeneid etc, the indigenous are in some way an inferior people is totally wrong.
Their language was, in the main an oral one and not a written one so their observation of the world around them were not put down on any writing material and so we don’t know what these observation were.
I feel totally unwelcome talking about the Indigenous since i know so very little about them. I buy books about them as i see them in book shops and read what articles are around but so far i have not learnt anything that could give me a strong enough foundation from which to make my own observations with any confidence.
So i won’t allow myself to make any judgements nor come to any conclusions.
Joe CarliSeptember 19, 2021 at 8:51 am

To my way of thinking, BB and George…any conclusion we, as westerners, come to in regards ancient indigenous cultures, has come from the rational debates and conclusions of western logic and reason..ie; BB talks of “them” not ;

“. . . seeking to accumulate individual wealth, is their deep understanding with their connection to the earth, their surroundings, a total respect for such, an appreciation that earth is the “mother” who provides, not to be raped pillaged, torn up, ripped open, squandered.”

Now THAT is the conclusion many of us come to in regards the indigenous community…and indeed, I posted an article on this site many years ago asserting just this thing..; https://theaimn.com/advanced-society-surely-not/ ..yet, THAT conclusion is surely the result of making a rational choice between ” this objective” and “that desire”…you get what I’m trying to say?..it would mean those indigenous peoples must have made a conscious choice between acumulating wealth or preserving their environment…THAT would mean (in our western thinking) they had a reasoning, consciousness PHILOSOPHY that offered a choice….

But in a world of human weakness where even the most junior-school child (at least back in MY day) knew the trading value of a “blood-tracker” as against a “cats-eye” marble…the tribal group who held a particularly valuable..say..ochre pit under their lands, might have “capitalised” via a monopoly to enrich themselves with such goods…NOT only as a tradable item, but as a “value added product” and go on from there…

What I am getting at is that we of western culture seem to have in our instinct the competitive streak that when an opportunity arises to capitalise upon something we go at it hammer and tongs…yet this competitive streak for personal wealth does not seem to manifest itself in the ancient indigenous cultures…the evidence tells us that…so perhaps there is a undiscovered philosophy harboured knowingly or subconsciously within the indigenous psyche that WE, of the west could adopt to ameliorate our rapacious want?
BBSeptember 19, 2021 at 8:55 am

The main conclusion I have come to as to why many ex and retired teachers, “learned” people, are and/or have become condescending is that as “teachers” they feel superior, feel entitled to opinions, but in reality have forgotten how to learn. They may well be upgrading their chosen knowledge base all the time, but this has little to do with what is the essence of learning. They’re not able to have any original thoughts of their own anymore, their minds are disciplined in conventional ways of thought. They’re loath to offer up any actual real solutions, they will huff and puff, make all sorts of intelligent noises that amount to zero. They only seek “knowledge and understanding” through continued reading, but not through any actual hands on lived experience. And too they have forgotten how to genuinely listen to others, arrogance and condescending attitudes go hand in hand!
I’d suggest to get out into the real physical world a bit more, travel, spend time in other places, avoid tourist destinations!

Indeed Joe, we, (western cultures for want of a better expression), have so much to learn from indigenous cultures, but we won’t because we see them as “savages”, as inferior, and we see ourselves as superior, as having more knowledge..
We are truly our own worst enemies, and are unable to give up our material possessions.
We do not know or have forgotten how to share, we have become dirty rotten greedy selfish bastards!

There is ample food in the world so that nobody has to go hungry, to starve. There is ample for everyone to have a happy and fulfilling life, could we but share. This is how Aboriginal and Indigenous societies survive, have survived millenniums.
But no, along comes modern man, full of his own self importance, and takes takes takes, and gives nothing but shit in return. We in the western world waste our precious resources on weapons of mass destruction.
We are “educated”…..!! 😎
BBSeptember 19, 2021 at 9:23 am

Ok, I trust all have a lovely day, the sun is shinning in my little corner of this planet, my slice of paradise, and I’m not going to waste it today being a keyboard warrior, there is the veggi garden to attend to, spring is in the air.. time to get my hands dirty.
I have no axe to grind with anyone, unless you’re a RW selfish greedy crooked ratbag miserable excuse for a human being!
Joe CarliSeptember 19, 2021 at 9:32 am

BB..I am not so much drawn by “what’s gone wrong”…we have that evidence ..I am more interested in “what can we do that is correct”…and if we conclude that the indigenous peoples have fostered such a deliberate philosophy of environmental maintenance over rapacious profiteering all these millenia…and the evidence is there to prove it..what was this philosophy…and if it was a deliberate choice..as you say..can it be written down or voiced?… For if we use (a most corrupted) Socratic logic, of one proved certainty thereby preceeds AND foretells the next then the logical conclusion must be that there was a deliberate avoidance of capitilisation of indigenous resources……WHY?
BBSeptember 19, 2021 at 9:57 am

Joe, I’m just about to step outside, but an answer as to WHY? Like you I feel there is probably only an obvious answer, indigenous folk are and have always been way smarter, and don’t feel the need to write it all down, it is not to be set in concrete, life is a living entity that evolves and moves along with and in time, with nature, evolution, harmony with all.
AND they learned how to share with each other! 👍😎☮️
GLSeptember 19, 2021 at 10:15 am

And on a side note:

The Women’s Affairs Ministry in Afghanistan now has a new title – Ministry for Preaching and Guidance and the Propagation of virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-18/taliban-seizes-women-s-ministry-building/100474004

“But we’re a different Taliban compared to what we were like 20 years ago. We care about women’s rights…sort of…”

https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/taliban-replace-ministry-for-women-with-one-restricting-them-20210918-p58svj.html
Joe CarliSeptember 19, 2021 at 10:50 am

BB…: “. . . life is a living entity that evolves and moves along with and in time, with nature, evolution, harmony with all. ”
THAT, still is a conscious philosophy…and a cultrally acknowledged philosophy has to be continually reinforced by cultural teaching to the young and continually overseen..and perhaps in some circumstances…enforced upon intransigent persons…and without a kind of genetic blueprint that accepts one’s place upon this Earth..without having a concept (that any evidence points to) that one was even ON a planet..AND without question of either location or situation…for many millenia . . . ?
georgeSeptember 19, 2021 at 11:51 am

The NUKULAR era had descended upon us yet again and with both war loving “parties” (inverted commas essential) noisily agree on its importance, you can see why I suggest, fuck them and go for the Greens! Listen to the words of all three and judge for yourself.

The “Coalition of the Killing” as that buffoon George W. Bush, (and aren’t they all?) put it are now busy like starving bees working their way through the deeds that need to be done before launching on their next crusade against, this time China… in possibly 30 years, or earlier, or later, or… who the fuck knows when buyt certainly when these buffoons and we will be long gone! But our kids of course, won’t be!

Oz will be trampled ruthlessly by the boots of blood seeking barbarians until then.

When it comes to substansive issues these primordials make the same grunts!
War is imminent and war is annihilatory.
With nuclear in the mix the annihilation is quick and irreversible.

And, who can doubt any more that these creatures, still trying to breath in the primordial swamp they’re living in, relish the thought of a cataclysm of their own making.

I don’t know what your nightmares consist of but mine are almost solely of this cataclysm.

Why not discussion? Why not co operation? Why not accept that war is a constantly pulling act and not a repelling one? Why not accept that no one wins a war?
The image of the young vietnamese girl with fire burning her back, along with hundreds of other appalling war images disturb me enormously. Don’t they do the same to you?

I don’t want war!
I want peace!

Everything that i saw and read during my whole 76 years reinforce this belief. Everything

Let the makers of war, the believers that they are doing god’s work, their delusion that they are the cross-bearing crusaders, bring the true god to the world go build their own coliseum and let them fight each other.
Leave our children and grand children and the planet go on in peace.

I am so, so sick of thuggery, of war grunts, of grunts that have become so familiar to us that we’ve become desensitised by tham and, in fact, bought into the romance of slaughtering people in the most gruesome ways.

Iraq is till reeling by an atmosphere clogged with depleted uranium!

Enough, you fuckers, enough!
geSeptember 19, 2021 at 11:57 am

Just before the Iraq war, a group of intelligent women in America, who call themselves “The Lysistrata Project” have asked their members to either stage Aristopanes’ Lysistrata or do a reading of it, all on the same day and at the same time. There were over a thousand venues where that took place and a great number of them used my own translation. I’ve received many emails of thanks.
Then I saw the millions marching in the streets of the whole planet and thought that the attack will not happen.

Millions had marched!
Millions, as many as, if not more had died because those baboons wouldn’t give a stuff.

Baboons, like our own Shit-in-the-pants and brain, Johnny Howard.

Baboons understand the language only of baboons.
guestSeptember 19, 2021 at 3:21 pm

There has been a great deal of philosophising here about cultures old and new – and about politics of different flavours – and about how condescending teachers are and other comments I find somehow irrelevant. A bit of attacking and a bit of defending all round.

War is considered by some historians to be the driver of invention. In order to survive or to dominate, humans need to invent something better, bigger, more powerful, more accessible. And humans seem to have the ability and the curiosity to explore.

It amazes me that there were Aboriginal people in the south of Tasmania 2000 years ago at the end of the Ice Age. They survived at 6 degrees in the cold. And we can see that Aboriginal people explored the environment for food and learnt what food was edible and what was not and what was medicinal. And they recorded aspects of their environment in carving, painting, dance and song. They knew about the motions of stars and made meaning from them.

Contemporary with these early Tasmanians were the cave-dwelling painters of Lascaux and Altamira in Europe.

Some of the people who came here after 1788 died because they did not know what the Indigenous people knew.

But the colonists were of a different culture with weapons more powerful than spears and clubs. War was an unequal competition.

The environment became commodities for exploitation, even to the extent of mining raw materials for burning and threatening to cook the planet over time. Guns and swords and poisons sufficed for domination.

I have been reading writing by the Australian historian Inga Clendinning, about treatment of Aboriginal people, about also the appalling treatment in the 1500s of the Mexicans by the Spaniards, and the hideous behaviour of Nazis under Hitler. The human animal can be a monstrous, greedy and rapacious creature.

Yet humans can be so creative and able to create such beauty in a great range of endeavours. I saw just recently a documentary on Harry Seidler and his considerable lifetime achievement in architecture that enriched the human environment.

What I despise, George, are the people who toss about “rotten eggs”, with or without onions. People with power or aspirations to power can do much good, but also much damage. And the destructive ones will try to justify their actions with their own onions, explanations, myths and propaganda.

And there are those who are opposed. It is a kind of war. Some people talk of “vigorous debate”, others of “false news”.

At the moment China is the “bete noir” of the world. It is criticised for many reasons economic, philosophical, political, military, epidemiological, territorial…And yet China is our primary trading partner – and for a large part off the world. So many countries have used China for its cheaper labour. Historically China has traded with Europe for a long time along the Silk Road, old and new.

Now three English-speaking countries are seeking to join forces using nuclear submarines, Australia dumping an expensive contract to do so. The submarines will not be delivered until 2040.

Already there are those telling us that the citizens of Australia are in agreement with this plot conceived in secret. Many rotten eggs and flavoured spices – along with barrels of ink – will be cast about like confetti or chicken manure to justify this ill-conceived, chest-thumping belligerent display.
George TheodoridisSeptember 19, 2021 at 3:46 pm

Guest:
Ah, the onions!

Your last three paragraphs tell us what “their onions” look like; and that’s what I mean when I shout to them, “show us your onions!”

Are they truly onions, fresh and tasty or are they something else?

So far, they showed no onions but excuses for onions. Eggs, natural, fresh eggs with the chook’s bum-fluff still attached will never accept those false onions, the onions shown by some politicians, like Trump, Biden, Morrison and, well, you know who else I mean.

Sycophants are people who show rules a bundle of figs, figs being (according to whom you read) hard to keep fresh and tasty, since their figgness dissipates not long after they are cut off the tree. The sycophants begs the powerful person to help him with some favour or other.
The word literally means: fig showers, revealers, offerers. In practical terms, it means something like “let me show you what I’ll give you in return.”

My onions are not figs but reasons. St John’s (1:1) “logos” and logos is visible and arguable. The onions that these thugs are showing us are opaque and rotten.
ArndSeptember 19, 2021 at 4:12 pm

People with power or aspirations to power can do much good, but also much damage.

Alas, circumstances regularly seem to conspire to see to it that the latter outweighs the the former. “Power corrupts”, said Lord Acton. And the Christian part of the Bible advises especially, that it will be the meek who shall inherit the Earth.

Now, whether you, or I, or any AIMN reader put particular value on biblical wisdom is of less material importance than noting the fact that many of the most prominent political, commercial and military leaders in the West do – or at least go to enormous lengths pretending that they do. Which gives Joe Biden’s “We will not forgive! We will not forget!” stance a decidedly hypocritical flavour. Especially when it is followed up with revelations about a U.S. drone killing 10 civilians.

Also worth recognising is the fact that this particular biblical prediction was at least partially borne out by computer simulations of various permutations of the Prisoners Dilemma.

Whilst it is quite likely true to say that throughout the Holocene, war was the single most important driver of technological – and political, economic and social – progress, this does not ensure that it will remain so in the emerging Anthropocene. As always: “Past performance is not a reliable indicator for future performance!”

Indeed, I seem to recall that the Drake Equation – which endeavoured to give structure to estimates about the likelihood of making contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life – had a variable for the probability that a life form that has attained an advanced stage of technological of development, will not use its technological prowess to annihilate itself.

Just sayin’ …
guestSeptember 19, 2021 at 4:36 pm

Arnd,

Interesting observations.

I especially remember a particular cartoon. It was of a pair of extra-terrestrial aliens observing the Earth as it explodes. “You have to be especially intelligent to be able to do that,” said one.
leefeSeptember 20, 2021 at 4:02 pm

guest:

“It amazes me that there were Aboriginal people in the south of Tasmania 2000 years ago at the end of the Ice Age. They survived at 6 degrees in the cold. ”

The ice age ended around 12,000 years ago, so I hope that was just a typo.
And, given there is evidence of occupation in Tassie going back more than 30,000 years prior to that, and evidence of occupation in the south (eg kutikina cave) since at least 23,000 BP, their knowledge of, and adaptation to, various changing ecosystems down here is hardly surprising. You don’t survive in unforgiving conditions if you don’t learn. That goes for individuals and societies.
wamSeptember 20, 2021 at 6:30 pm

Egg throwing is steeped in Christianity with its beginning 699 years ago and the record is 98.51m But those are fresh eggs. Our Scummo deserves his rotten eggs like Dutton, Joyce, littleproud, McKenzie, let, hunt, birmingham, Ethan, cash, Taylor, ribert and josh. We can hope Albo keeps portering the absolute top stinker to the media.
ps good one BB, It was so sad that boat people of the 19th century were ‘civilised’ in dickens’ society. They thought real people could not share, respect laws and not seek possessions so Aborigines were neither civilized nor intelligent. Today all 9 white Australian education systems accept that there is nothing to learn from Aboriginal people nor society and history. In the territory we are lucky to have little corners where English is the foreign language. (Indeed the capital cities also harbour similar little language islands)
I consider closing the gap impossible until the system recognises the worth of Aboriginal learning and demands the teachers to learn the language of the students.
When I was a young teacher I read an extract about a pregnant Tasmanian being chased by two whites she gave birth when hiding in a tree and they shot the baby and I couldn’t read any further.

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