Lamenting Leunig

Michael

It was a cold Melbourne night in the year 2000, but we had left our coats at the door to the warm rooftop restaurant with its stunning view of city lights and the shimmering dark shape of Port Phillip Bay beyond.

Women in their best evening dresses outshone the men in suits and ties, or clergy collars. In the meetings during the day, I had been elected as Secretary of the Australian Association for Religious Education (AARE).

‘You are to sit here now that you are our Secretary,’ the Association President pointed to a seat at the top table.

A man about my age (early fifties) with a smart brown leather jacket, an open-necked shirt and a mop of grey hair was already seated.

‘Ted, meet Michael,’ the President said and rushed away to welcome other members.

In the restaurant, buzzing with the enthusiastic voices of members with a common passion, Michael was an oasis of peace. I greeted him and we shook hands.

‘Where are you from?’ he asked.

‘Perth. I work for the Churches’ Commission on Education there. Like Victoria’s CCES.’

‘Yes, I know CCES.’

‘Have you been to Perth?’ I asked.

‘I was in residence at the Chapel at Christ Church Grammar a couple of years ago,’ he replied.

I told him I had been chaplain there in the 1980s, and we chatted about people he had met, especially the then chaplain, Frank Sheehan.

Michael chuckled, ‘Frank put me up with the Wilsons in Peppy Grove.’ He invested the local name for the exclusive suburb with an ironic smile.

The Wilson family owned multilevel car parks in Perth and most other CBDs. I knew the Wilsons. Picking up on Michael’s irony, I asked,

‘The hospitality adequate?’ I asked.

‘Very,’ Michael smiled again. ‘Very comfortable, very friendly, but I couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable.’ He looked down at his dishevelled appearance, which I suspected was a conscious costume. He liked to dress down.

I probed more.

‘Peppy Grove is our wealthiest suburb,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ Michael replied, ‘and I felt sorry for the Christ Church kids. They had drunk the cordial. They believed they merited their privileges. Whether they were from Peppy Grove or Mossie Park or any of the suburbs round about.’

I was intrigued by Michael. Many of the AARE members taught at schools like Christ Church, and if they felt uncomfortable at the privileges of their students, it was impolitic to say so.

I remembered Christ Church kids reporting me to their parents because my views were so left-wing. I think the parents rather expected it of me, so no one criticised me (at least to my face).

I tried to think who this Michael might be. Frank Sheehan invited well-known thinkers to be in his residency program.

‘So I guess you don’t live in central Melbourne,’ I said.

‘I have a studio on my little farm.’ He must have realised he had given me a clue with the word ‘studio’, so he hurried on. ‘Only a few chooks, mind you. And a house. Just enough for me. All pretty rustic.’

I sensed Michael was belittling himself. Meanwhile, the President and other Executive members joined the table. The two of us continued our conversation. We were so deep in talk that others didn’t want to interrupt us.

We talked on about reforming our capitalist society and honouring the poor as Pacific oysters followed by vegetarian linguini and organic boneless chicken were served, paired by Victorian fine wines. Seppelts Riesling or 21 Coldstream Pinot Noir were offered.

‘Revolutions are out,’ he said, ‘but we need a revolution in the way we think about wealth.’ He held up his glass of white ruefully. ‘A gentle revolution,’ he chuckled, ‘just to whittle away at the rotten foundations of capitalism.’

After the main course, the President interrupted us.

‘I need you now, Michael. Ready?’

Michael nodded.

The President called for quiet.

‘Our guest speaker tonight is well known across Australia. Most of us have seen his cartoons and how he insists we think spiritually about our society. This has piqued our interest. He is the inventor of Mr Curly and Vasco Pyjama. Please welcome … Michael Leunig.’

I was dumbfounded. Or plain dumb. Because I was new to the AARE Executive, I had not been party to the planning for the AARE Dinner and I had no idea that I had chatted so earnestly to the celebrity cartoonist for twenty minutes while he had not revealed his identity. That took deep humility on his part.

More than Human?

Martin Higgins, Human+,

Kindle E-Book $US 3.99, Paperback 230 pages (online) from $AUD 18.26

Reviewed by Ted Witham

This book and I did not start well together. The narrator initially sounded like science fiction’s clichéd young male narrator who is attempting to channel Raymond Chandler and whose only friend is the barman. But within a few pages, I was surprised to realise that I was inside the head of a schizoid drug-user with heightened paranoia. I changed from groaning to admiring the writing.

David, the drug-user, turns out to be a select adept at psychological precognition – mind-reading. He has the ability to tune into people’s thoughts, moods and memories. A mystery organisation recruits him and offers to train his precognitive gifts. He befriends the trainers and discovers that his talents outshine theirs.

The organisation engineers a high-profile position for him, inventing a back-story with academic papers and university records. Lawrence, one of the trainers, seemingly deserts the organisation, and David is left to wonder whether being caught up in the world of high capitalism is the best use of his supra-human gifts.

To its credit, the book does not give a pat answer to this question, but leaves the reader with complex possibilities: with the help of nanotechnology, will human beings ever develop advanced communication abilities? Can capitalism deliver the most ethical future for humanity? Will there always be people left behind by human progress – will the poor always be with us despite all the promises of technology? Are reading and story-telling technologies by which we enter the thought-worlds and moods of other humans and transform ourselves into more than humans?

At the end of the book, I was surprised how much I had enjoyed it. I enjoyed the company of the first person narrator, I was intrigued with the bigger questions raised by his experience, and I continued to wonder where the hard science ended and the fiction begun. That’s a mark of good science fiction.

The book was professionally presented, so I did not have the common experience with E-books of being confronted by spelling and grammar clangers. The story kept me interested until the end, and it was altogether an enjoyable and worthwhile read.

Spitting at capitalists

Tax and God
Calls to destroy capitalism and boycott Facebook and Google resonate well with Franciscans. They are a way of dealing with our anger at the greed of corporations and the selling of our personal lives to advertisers. My Facebook wall is filled with slogans against this consumerist plague.

But slogans are not an effective way to critique capitalism. Slogans have no hope of achieving their purpose, because capitalism is so entrenched that its power permeates everything we do. Our slogans will simply accrue to capitalism’s benefit as we use Google or Facebook to shout them. Religion scholar George Gonzalez puts it this way, ‘Capitalism buys and sells futures and shares in the ideas of its own enemies.’

A more thoughtful response will admit the value of capitalism. In the 19th Century, wealthy Christians wanted to respond to the growing urban poverty, and used the new technologies of the industrial revolution to raise many out of poverty into respectable working lives. They poured money into enterprises that not only gave workers the financial means to house and feed their families, but gave them consumer goods, infrastructure like electric lighting, and the sense of well-being that only meaningful work can supply.

The surplus money generated recycled into this system, and most of us in the West have seen the final results of this Christian endeavour in our living standards. Think of the difference in housing, consumer goods, entertainment, and communications in the last fifty years. These are the fruits of capitalism, and few of us protesting its evils are willing to give them up.

In the urbanisation of India and China today, we are seeing millions being lifted out of poverty annually, as the benefits of capitalism trickle down.

When I was young my parents taught me that I should always spend real money that I had actually had earned or owned. I should restrict debt to buying a house, and I should ensure that any shares I owned were shares in real life productive industries.

A rule of thumb current in the sixties was that CEOs should earn no more than four times the wage of their lowest paid employee, and that virtuous companies produced useful goods or provided useful services.

Most people failed to acknowledge the importance of the creative tension between unions and bosses. For this system to work at all the employers need to insist on making a profit to continue the operation of the industry, and the workers’ associations need also to insist that workers are paid fairly and that conditions uphold human dignity.

This ‘modest capitalism’ works. I am neither Calvinist nor conservative, and I believe, for example, that relying on the ‘trickle down’ effect is an abrogation of responsibility, but I understand that this system has its value and should not be easily abandoned. What makes me angry is the distortion of this system. We know the symptoms:

1. Executives paid thousands of times more than their lowest paid employee.
2. People exposed to risk through virtual money, derivatives and futures which relate to nothing in the real world.
3. The commodification of human beings to be sold by giant corporations to advertisers.

These expressions of greed should be condemned, but slogans are not sufficient. We need to understand more fully how the system we have inherited actually works and to thoughtfully articulate good reasons why these practices despoil the vulnerable and destroy our community.

I submit that the responsibility of Franciscans (who are called to be sensitive to the use and abuse of money) is to grow in their understanding of economics, to be real about how capitalism lifts people out of poverty, and from that position of understanding articulate their critique of greed.