Welcome to another year of Notes from The Movement. It’s good to be back, rested and rejuvenated after the festive season. I hope you also are rested and rejuvenated for another year.
We tend to see the new year as a new beginning, a chance to start over, start again, or develop and progress.
Our Movement has been going for decades. In that time, it has played a key part in the civic, political, social and religious life of Australia and Australians.
We have seen many changes over those decades, some for the good and some for evil.
But the biggest concern we’ve seen, the one that makes everything far more difficult, is the slow erosion of community life and civil society.
Atomised
We have become more divided – not fundamentally over politics, or race, or religion, or age, or geography – but as individuals and small groups. We lack the time, the energy, the resources to reach out to one another in meaningful and lasting ways.
As a result, we face an epidemic of loneliness. But we also face an epidemic of disengagement and disconnection.
Our democracy relies on us being aware of what is going on and getting involved. For example, over the summer break, many Australians would have missed the opportunity to make a submission to the Albanese Government inquiry into its controversial Digital ID bill 2023. However, the reality of the last few decades is that more and more people lack the capacity to engage meaningfully, face-to-face or in a group.
Smaller and smaller groups dominate the media, and the business and political classes. Bureaucracies and processes that are meant to make engagement and involvement easier are actually making it more difficult, and understanding how they work is becoming more and more an arcane art.
Shaky Ground
Lack of stability, understanding, and long-term vision leads to more and more short-term policies that seem good at first glance but fall apart when tested. And the cost – mental, as well as financial – of adjusting them or opposing them often seems too daunting to contemplate.
Take the recent example of the Queensland Health Department in the recent sacking of nurses for refusing the covid19 vaccine, despite the mandate being lifted last September. This is unjust, un-Australian and impractical.
We have realised over the last few years that it’s not enough to develop a policy and run a campaign. I’ve run a few and they were successful – but, ultimately, they were overtaken by the cultural shift we’re seeing.
The only way around this is to get back to basics and rebuild communities. And that is what we are focusing on – building intentional communities grounded with depth and oriented towards dealing with the biggest problems we are facing – problems of meaning and purpose, problems of self-respect and connection, the problems of existential survival.
Happy New Year to you and your family, and we hope to see you at the Democratic Conference 2024, February 2-3, Sydney.
