Category: Comment

Manna from Heaven: The Case for Universal Basic Income
April 9, 2021 2:35 pm Comments Off on Manna from Heaven: The Case for Universal Basic Income
In 2009, Broadway, a London based charity, attempted a radical and novel way of dealing with homelessness. Instead of the usual offer of a hostel room, Broadway gave each of the 13 participants £3,000 (approx. AUD $5370) of unconditional spending money. The participant’s purchases varied from gardening classes to a telephone, and even a dictionary. None spent their money on alcohol, drugs or gambling. After one year the average participant had spent just under £800. After 18 months, seven of the 13 participants were no longer homeless, and another two were about to move into an apartment. All 13 participants had seen significant improvements in quality of life, with many attending rehab, reconnecting with family and making plans for the future. The most remarkable thing about this pilot social welfare program was how much it cut costs. The city of London spends an estimated £30,000 to £50,000 (approx. AUD $53,700 to $89,600) per homeless person per year, on expenses such as courts, police, and social security. However, Broadway managed to substantially decrease homelessness for just 6-10 percent of this cost.
There are two myths about poverty that have kept on keeping on in our modern welfare state. Firstly, that the poor can’t be trusted to make sensible financial decisions. Secondly, that free money makes people lazy and dependent. These myths are thousands of years old, with Paul the Apostle declaring in 58 AD “those unwilling to work will not get to eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10). Based on these assertions, we have constructed a modern welfare state made up of large, complex and overbearing bureaucracies. These bureaucracies are designed to supervise, scrutinise, and educate their benefactors, requiring them to apply for jobs, perform volunteer work and be re-trained. The USA alone has an estimated 126 of such welfare programs, costing the US government an estimated $1 trillion per year (Michael Tanner, 2016). However, despite being specifically designed to reduce dependency and increase economic mobility, this is the exact area in which modern welfare has failed to deliver. As economist Michael Tanner argues “in recent years we have spent more and more money on more and more poverty reduction programs, but seen few, if any, additional gains”. One alternative to our current costly welfare system is comically simple, yet dramatically more effective: just give the poor more cash. Specifically, we should replace our current welfare system with a universal basic income.
In developing nations, direct cash transfers have proven highly effective at alleviating poverty. One study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology analysed the impact of direct cash transfers of $274 implemented by the NGO GiveDirectly in Western Kenya. They found that the program increased household wealth by 58%, food consumption by 20%, improved the psychological well-being of recipients and their families and increased investment in livestock and local businesses. They also found no increase in spending on alcohol and tobacco.
A common theme amongst direct cash transfer research is that the money is seldom spent on goods such as alcohol or other drugs. One study in Liberia even gave $200 to alcoholics, addicts, and petty criminals. They found that the money was mostly spent on food, clothing, medicine, and small businesses. A review by the World Bank in 2014 concluded that in 82% of all researched cases involving direct cash transfers in developing nations, alcohol and tobacco consumption declined.
The evidence shows that the real ‘experts’ on how to alleviate poverty are the poor themselves. With a much greater understanding of their own needs and their communities, they can spend aid money more effectively than any social worker could. The University of Manchester has summed up the benefits of direct transfers as such: households put the money to good use, poverty declines, health improves, tax revenue increases, and the programs cost less than the alternatives.
Despite the success of one-time cash transfers, the question remains as to how people would respond if they were guaranteed a permanent income without having to lift a finger. Would the poor become lazy and dependent? Basic income experiments performed in North America in the 1960s and 70s suggest not. One basic income experiment in Dauphin, Canada, guaranteed that none of its 13,000 residents would fall below the poverty line. The study found several benefits from basic income, including children staying longer in school and performing better academically than previous cohorts. Hospitalisations and mental health complaints also decreased. In terms of work: those already acting as the main source of income for their family barely reduced work at all (dropping only one percent). Amongst women, many took the opportunity to spend more time looking after their children or receiving an education (reducing work by about three to five percent).
It’s clear that regardless of standard of living, people want to spend their time productively. As James Suzman outlines in his book Work (2020), even our leisure activities can be considered work in certain contexts. For example, to an ancient forager, hunting elk is work. Nowadays hunting elk is an expensive and time-consuming leisure activity. To a commercial artist, drawing is work, but to an amateur artist, it’s a fun and engaging hobby. Even video games simulate work that others get paid for, such as fighting in a war or managing a city. Anthropologist Jan Boersema argues that in ancient agricultural societies, our desire to overcome boredom and structure our day is the primary reason why early farmers created monuments such as the Moai on Easter Island and Göbekli Tepe in Turkey. The idea that people would become lazy if they were guaranteed a comfortable standard of living does not hold up to the evidence.
So how much would a universal basic income cost? The answer is: a lot less than what we currently spend on welfare. A study by Matt Bruenig, 2013, estimates that eliminating poverty through a basic income in the USA would cost just $175 billion – a fraction of the $1 trillion spent on current social welfare programs. Clearly a universal basic income is desperately needed to replace our present welfare system. As Bregman explains in Utopia For Realists,“the welfare state, which should foster people’s sense of security and pride, has degenerated into a system of suspicion and shame”. Instead of forcing people to prove how vulnerable and helpless they are (and thus reinforcing a mindset of learned helplessness), welfare should be a means to empower the less fortunate.
A universal basic income gives the poor the freedom they need to invest in their futures and make real differences in their lives. Instead of working two dead-end jobs to feed your children, a basic income can enable you to find the time to pursue a career with real opportunities for growth and advancement, without risking your starvation for your children. This is why countries with strong social safety nets such as Sweden also have the highest levels of social mobility and entrepreneurship. You can afford to take business risks and spend time on education when you aren’t living from paycheck to paycheck or running the risk of becoming homeless if you lose your job. As a different biblical narrative tells us, when God gave the Israelites manna from heaven whilst wandering through the desert, they did not become lazy and dependent. Instead, the manna gave them the ability to escape enslavement in Egypt and reach the promised land.

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Angus Padley
Some Personal Reflections on the Uyghur Situation
2:31 pm Comments Off on Some Personal Reflections on the Uyghur Situation
As a politics student, I’m fully aware that one day I would encounter this issue, but I never thought it would be so soon.
Growing up in Urumqi and holding Uyghur heritage as well as Chinese heritage, I feel I’m quite knowledgeable when it comes to this topic: Uyghurs. Many of the more politically inclined readers may already be familiar with this topic, but a brief and proper introduction is important nonetheless.
The conflicts between the Uyghur community and the vast majority of the combined Chinese community is actually a controversy between states (nation-states) and nations (ethnic minorities). China contains nations like the majority Han, Mongolian, Tibetan, Kazakhs, Uyghur etc. In other words, the inconsistency between the nation and the state it belongs to, is possibly the main cause of the issues.
I have never been a patriotic person, quite unfortunately. I don’t like China one bit. I am never proud of my nationality and instead, I often see it as a motive that constantly drives me to work hard and leave as soon as possible (thanks to ScoMO’s harsh migration policies, that may be some time away). I hate almost every policy implemented by my government, except for the COVID-19 policies — it saved my life and got me vaccinated in the very first round. Growing up in a multicultural environment and attending an international high school, I have been very much exposed to different cultures, not just the Western world. Frankly, everything I believe in is the exact opposite of the so-called standard moral beliefs in China nowadays. I always feel like an outsider in my own country, a girl without a nationality. I don’t know what is true and what is not, so I am here to share some of my beliefs. Whether you agree is up to you.
I have to stress that there is a huge difference in the ideologies between the West and the East. Western ideology often identifies conflicts between a nation and a state that is striving for independence. Chinese ideology, on the other hand, chooses to ignore their differences no matter how trivial or significant, and aims to achieve a peaceful position in between. For example, Scotland and Catalonia have been fighting for their respective independence for decades. However, in China you rarely see ethnic groups seeking independence. To put it more simply, people in the East tend to surrender to their governments or authorities. They seek peace and quiet instead of freedom and so-called democracy. That’s probably the reason why countries in Asia are more successful during this pandemic. Even though some people (i.e. me) have their doubts about government policy, when it’s a matter of life and death, they end up reluctantly following government directives. Nonetheless, there were some Uyghur and Tibetan people who tried to gain independence from China, but undoubtedly failed and ended up escaping to the USA.
The 90’s are referred to as ‘the Golden Times’. Almost everywhere in the world people were experiencing an all-time high in prosperity in every aspect of life. Uyghur people at that time were also experiencing freedom, especially in the form of artistic expression. People of different nationalities (ethnic groups) in China created magnificent art during the 90s, because they were free back then. Nowadays everything is under a strict censorship.
In the 21st-century, the Uyghur community continued to grow. Before President Xi took office in 2013, we were living like a little kingdom inside a super country. People inside this little kingdom had achieved autonomy to the level of independence. When Xi was in charge, he came to realise that this little kingdom must come to an end or it would no longer be HIS little kingdom. Consequently, he did something that all of us considered cruel. He knew that when you want to erase a nation you must forbid its people to speak their own language. So he gradually closed all bilingual schools and forced ethnic children to learn only Mandarin Chinese. This lasted for some years. When I was young I saw some bilingual schools but from 2019 onwards, they ceased to exist.
Meanwhile, President Xi forced all television and radio shows to be broadcasted only in Mandarin Chinese. He sent a group of our great leaders, thinkers, authors to be ‘re-educated’, some of whom were never seen again. I have seen my people in great pain during the first few years of Xi’s movement. I have once been to the prison where those great minds were re-educated — it is too painful to describe what I’ve seen. Many Uyghur people escaped overseas to countries like Australia and Canada, but their relatives left in China remain under strict censorship. Passports have been taken away by the government, and hotels in other cities of China won’t accept Uyghur guests. Local shops were closed, everything written in Mandarin — ethnic languages were forbidden to be spoken even occasionally.
But in late 2018, Xi stopped and gave freedom back to those tragic people. Uyghur languages were seen again in the street. Radios and televisions could speak Uyghur or other ethnic languages as well. Passports were given back, some re-educated people released from prison and people were able to contact their relatives overseas. Everything seemed to back the way it used to be. But it wasn’t. It may have seemed okay, but the impacts of Xi’s political strategy were devastating, especially towards my generation. An increasing number of youth are claiming Mandarin as their mother tongue. Only approximately 25 percent of them can write in Uyghur. Cultural prosperity will never be seen again, we don’t have famous poets or philosophers or even artists. Our most famous works are now in Mandarin.
Even though Uyghur people have regained their freedom, their culture has been harshly damaged. As for the damage to the Islamic culture itself, sadly the last two generations in my family identify with their heritage before their religion. We don’t combine them together, and tend to explain our habits associated with Islamic culture as more of a ‘tradition’. For example, I don’t eat pork simply because ‘I just don’t’. Many people won’t follow a strict rule of ‘halal’, they’ll eat anything as long as there is no pork. They even get red packets resembling those from the Lunar New Year at Eid al-Adha.
There are also rumours about genocide and inhumane actions administered by the Chinese government. I personally don’t believe in that. It is brutal, but I have decided to keep an open mind about this until I find evidence of my own.
Last but not least, despite so many unfortunate things that have happened in the past, my generation are more and more accepted by the general Chinese public. Uyghur students are given a 50 points bonus in the most fiercely competitive Chinese gaokao (National College Entrance Exam) which enables us to more easily access the top universities in China. People now recognise us as a beautiful and mysterious ethnic group and you can see outstanding Uyghur people in every field within China. It’s true that we are under a lot of censorship here, but who isn’t? It’s China. I can’t even log onto Facebook without the help of a VPN.
We are living in a peaceful and free environment now, and all those fears are gone. This new generation is doing everything possible to spread our unique culture. It isn’t lost, and it never will be! I do not want my generation to be filled with hatred towards our country, all we ever wanted was peace and love. Like I said, I don’t like China one bit but I LOVE the cities and associated cultures I am living in, or have lived in – specifically Nanjing and Urumqi.
I hope this is the last time I talk about this issue. We should always have our own judgement and choose our own path.

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Anonymous
The Venn Diagram: Mental Health and Neurodivergence
2:27 pm Comments Off on The Venn Diagram: Mental Health and Neurodivergence
DISCLAIMER: I am neither a doctor, nor a professional. I’m just a person with a vested interest.

Last week, my boss told the team that while we should disclose to them when we’re sick and need support, “everyone has depression and anxiety”, so we shouldn’t bother them with that one. So, I’m here to (re)introduce you to two concepts that you may not fully understand: mental health and neurodivergence.
Mental health refers to the ongoing wellness of your mind, similar to how physical health impacts your body. You can look after your mental health through exercise, a work-life balance, variety in life, healthy eating etc. However, you can always develop an illness in response to something external – similar to catching a cold.
Neurodivergence is a different barrel of cats. While not formally recognised, the term neurodivergent is widely preferred to alternatives such as: “mentally d*sabled” or “ret*rded”. It was first used by Judy Singer as a more inclusive way to describe the Autistic community. The brain, or neurology, of someone who is neurodivergent functions as other than the norm. Often, this is something you are born with (the same way you can be born blind), but can also be developed as a result of an external event that causes lasting change to how your brain functions (e.g, a traumatic incident). Some commonly recognised branches of neurodiversity include ASD (Autism Spectrum D*sorder), ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity D*sorder), Dyslexia, Dyspraxia and many more.
Misunderstandings of these two terms, and all that they come with, continue to influence the ways people perceive themselves and others, and can harm those most vulnerable.
I like to think of neurodivergence as a sort of three-dimensional, multi-tiered Venn diagram.

Level 1: Visible Symptoms
The body has only so many ways of expressing symptoms. Anyone who’s been confused about whether they have a cold or COVID can relate. If you search up any different branches of mental health or neurodivergence, you might argue with me: “But Zofia, I can’t find any similarities between ADHD and depression at all?” This is where our internal biases come into play. Symptom lists frequently describe similar or equivalent symptoms using different terms, often because of the preconceptions associated with the conditions they’re describing.
At the end of highschool I was diagnosed with chronic depression and generalised anxiety disorder (GAD). When asked what I was struggling with, I described mind fog, numbness, difficulty sleeping, procrastination. The words I used to describe my struggles came from words I had heard before, unconsciously, in lessons on mental health they taught us in school*. Last year, I was re-diagnosed with ADHD and bipolar II. This time, they asked the questions: “Do you feel as though you’re driven by a motor?”, “How long did those feelings last?”, “Are you distracted easily?”, “What are your sleeping patterns?”. These questions changed the lens through which I viewed my own mind. The symptoms hadn’t changed, but they were now described using clinically recognised vocabulary which I had never heard before. Yet externally, despite the different formal descriptions, those symptoms in me had presented the same way.

Level 2: The Internal Sources
Behind this web of overlap, every branch of neurodivergence has its own root causes for the symptoms it displays. For example, I give you three symptoms: “An inability to cope with everyday stress”; “Fidgeting or restlessness” and; “Being easily annoyed or irritated”.
Try guessing which branch of neurodivergence I’m talking about. Good luck! These symptoms come from lists describing three different diagnoses, and crop up with different phrasing on many more.
Someone with depression might experience fatigue, as everyday tasks become more exhausting and taxing for them. Intrusive thoughts might make them restless and frustrated at their lack of control. This in turn might cause them to become irritable, or easily upset.
Someone with anxiety might find the unknowns of day-to-day life overwhelming, making it extremely difficult to cope with tasks that might be seen as simple from the outside. They might fidget and become restless as a way to distract themselves, and funnel nervous energy into productivity or over-preparing. Constantly being on edge makes it harder to control emotions and can make one easily annoyed, irritated, or exhausted.
Someone with ADHD might have trouble keeping track of time and find the uncontrollable nature of day-to-day life exhausting and difficult to cope with. They might have too much energy and struggle to sit still, becoming restless or fidgety. They might feel flooded with thoughts and have trouble regulating their emotions and, as a result, sometimes react disproportionately to certain situations.
These symptoms may appear anywhere, but to seek help, identifying the source of the symptom is crucial. No amount of CBT** is going to give my ADHD brain a semblance of understanding linear time (google: time blindness). Antidepressants would not only be useless for my bipolar II, they might actually make my cycles more volatile. On the other hand, mood-stabilisers have been the miracle I was waiting for. Knowing these sources changes how we understand our symptoms and gives us the tools to both recognise our strengths and seek support for our weaknesses.

Level 3: Diversity
The final, most fun tier! Within everything, there is diversity. Not every person with ADHD is alike, nor do they experience ADHD in the same way. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) literally has spectrum in the name. It would be misguided, however, to view this spectrum or diversity as a simple sliding scale.
It is not a linear progression from “bad/nonfunctional” to “not-bad/normal”, and looking at it that way is frankly offensive. It’s a beautiful sphere of experience, with variation in expression, experience and intensity. No one in these groups has it inherently better or worse than another. That concept comes from onlookers, who determine our worth or our legitimacy by how much they perceive us to be different.
The diversity within these groups is within them, meaning contrary to the beliefs of many boomers, we are not “all on the spectrum”. Or at least, we aren’t all on every spectrum.
“But wait Zofia! My doctor said I had anxiety because of my exam?? Does that mean I’m neurodivergent?? I’m better now, does that mean I know how to fix it??” Good question! Of course, I am not a doctor, and I don’t know you. But here we circle back to the beginning: mental health vs neurodivergence. Remember that first tier of our diagram? The symptoms? Over the course of your life, you will at one point or another experience some or many or all of the visible symptoms on that tier. Your experience with those symptoms might be passing, or it could be a major event in your life. Whatever it is, however mild or severe, your experience is valid, important, and real – and you deserve and need support.***
But there is a difference between experiencing a symptom, experiencing mental illness, and having a fundamental difference in the way your body works. Many people experience feelings of anxiety associated with a high stress situation. This can sometimes be debilitating. But remove them from the situation and, with support, help and treatment, they may no longer experience that anxiety. Someone with GAD or an anxiety d*sorder experiences anxiety without necessarily having those external stimuli. While they can do things to manage those symptoms, at the end of the day, that is the way their brain works.

Managing your mental health is as important as your physical health, but is not always comparable to a branch of neurodivergence. Despite the similarities in symptoms, the way you manage, or treat mental health don’t always work as a usable mechanism for someone neurodivergent.
For us, this is not an illness, nor is it something inherently bad. This is just us, who we are. Not defining, but part of. We have our strengths and our weaknesses, just like you, but ours might be in more unlikely places. There is no one-time-fix that will cure us. Why would being neurotypical be seen as a cure anyway?
This is not to say that mental health is trivial. It is vital, and as someone with both Bipolar II and ADHD I, know the importance of maintaining that health. Without it, the intensity of my episodes increase, I struggle more with regulating my emotions, my time blindness is amplified and I lose track of my physical self-care. Mental illnesses can be, at best, exhausting, and at worst, deadly. This is why it is so important that we understand where our overlaps lie, so we can all get the help we need, and celebrate the diverse strengths that our diverse minds bring to the table. With some luck and communication, we can muddle through the mystery of our heads together.

*I am so, so glad we talked about mental health in school. This is in no way a criticism of that.
**Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: very helpful for intrusive thoughts often seen in depression and anxiety
***Your experiences with mental illness are important and should not be dismissed. Please seek help if you feel yourself experiencing trouble with your mental health, or if anything in this piece has spoken to, or provoked something for you.

Lifeline Australia: 11 13 14
Kids Helpline: 1800 55 1800
Junction Youth Health Services: 6232 2423
ANU Wellbeing and Support Line: 1300 050 327
Access Mental Health: 1800 629 354
ANU Counselling Centre: 02 6178 0455

Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.

Zofia Francis
The Social Language of Social Media
2:17 pm Comments Off on The Social Language of Social Media
So, as it turns out, the net is no longer metalanguage associated with the knee-high gumboots and waders of fishermen, but rather a universal jargon for the cyber-world. In this new century of ‘LOL’ and ‘OMG’, it’s not difficult to see how, perhaps, this coded underworld has reappropriated the founding pillars of human language. We’ve turned emotions into emojis, exclamations into abbreviations, life milestones into Instagrams… why are the fundamental components of human expression irrevocably discarded? I’m sure our late literature scholars would be appalled to observe the wizard of modern literature herself, J.K Rowling, tweeting about her dog’s ‘festive farting’ as a representation of the pinnacle of writing. But is it possible that these loosened guidelines on what constitutes the English language may, in fact, liberate all avenues of thought?
It’s easy to note how the literal shortening of words may contribute to a loss of complexity in the English language. But that’s just it. It may destroy some facets of English language, but as a ‘death knell’ for one avenue of communication, it could spark the construction of an entire new sub-culture. Whilst we generally frown upon the over-reliance on social media, we fail to recognise how this establishment of new subcultures allows global communication between like-minded individuals. Barriers with regard to dialects between people in Australia and Japan, for example, can be dissolved, allowing individuals to connect and interact with international values. In a roundabout way, these new programs of translation interconnect us to those with the same ideas and thoughts, regardless of the language they use to express them.
On a more superficial level, the removal of arguably redundant words and letters allows for greater succinctness in the way people choose to argue their thoughts. Symbolic changes attach metaphorical meaning to letters whose definition would be rendered redundant if communicated orally. There is a whole ‘data analysis’ of the shift in meaning from ‘hey’ to ‘heyyyyyyyyy’ – from a simplistic greeting to a joking opening or even a flirtatious proposition. It’s frustratingly simple, but the distinction is there. Yes, it’s founded in traditional literature standards regarding tone and intonation but, fuelled by the broadening platform of social media, a simple greeting has now been scrutinised based solely on the number of ‘y’s included.
This newfound encouragement toward lexical density, in the most hyperbolic manner imaginable, has allowed strings of history and controversy to be displayed and understood in a fraction of the length of an academic essay. Take the Twitter viral hashtag #MeToo. With just five letters a person can connect their singular experience to a string of stories, incidents and injustices from all over the world, placing their heart with a cause to fight sexual harassment. Since October 2018, over 19 million tweets have cited the hashtag, including stories such as Christine Ford’s case against Supreme Court judge nominee Brett Kavanaugh, journalist Ashleigh Raper’s against politician Luke Foley, and the 265 elite US female gymnasts’ case against Larry Nassar. These stories have encouraged people to speak up and speak out about issues challenging to detail. Those five letters symbolise solidarity and strength; made possible only by the endless opportunities that the new language of social media creates.
So is social media just a means to brainwash the world into archaic forms of articulation? Are we just pawns in Zuckerberg’s plot to access all our information and rule the world? Or, possibly, could we have overlooked the capacity of social media to bind us, form language and create new, if not dual, meaning of the word connected.

Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.

Lara Hather
The Blue Skies of Reconciliation
2:08 pm Comments Off on The Blue Skies of Reconciliation
I remember the distinct feeling of wanting to throw a frying pan at my brother’s face in the middle of an argument, but six months later, as he visits Sydney from Melbourne, all I feel is love and the urge to give him a hug. How could my feelings for him have changed so dramatically? Was our reconciliation just a matter of time?
As my rollercoaster feelings about my brother have taught me, time is a powerful phenomenon. It is the natural path that allows reconciliation between individuals or groups. My personal guru, Justin Bieber, asks for forgiveness and reconciliation in his renowned song Sorry: “Yeah, I know that I let you down, is it too late to say I’m sorry now?” In fact, as I could tell Justin personally, it is never too late to say you are sorry, rather you just have to give the person you’re apologising to enough time to be able to accept your gesture of reconciliation. In contrast, seeking reconciliation hot on the heels of an argument is never a good idea. That’s when you really could end up with a frying pan in the face. Time allows the sting of hurt to fade. Our memories, especially of pain, don’t linger. I remember the sharp flame of the anger I felt towards my brother, but now it is distant, dim. Just a memory with no power.
Almost every adage about reconciliation expresses the common wisdom that ‘time heals’, just ‘give it time’ and ‘time softens the blow’. But why is time such a powerful healer? How does it help reconciliation? It’s more than just forgetting. Having time allows one to reflect, and this can lead to acknowledgement to take responsibility for our own part in the hurt that has occurred. This recognition is the first step to reconciliation. When storm clouds are closing over a relationship, time is the light that sheds understanding on a situation.
In Gwen Harwood’s poem, Father and Child, time plays an interesting but key factor. It is clear in I Barn Owl that the father and child share a relationship lacking in trust as the child secretly “crept out with (the) father’s gun”. However, in II Nightfall, as forty years have passed, the child reflects on the relationship, fondly stating: “what memories pack them home”. Has time allowed them to overcome mistrust and reconcile? Has it cleared the skies over their relationship? Or was there another decisive factor, perhaps the father’s approaching death?
If time was a person, death would be its older sibling. The painful experience of death, as the end of time, has the ability to force reconciliation as an imperative, in a way that time does not. Infinite amounts of time allow for an infinite number of future opportunities for reconciliation. Death marks the last and ultimate deadline for this opportunity, creating a strong incentive for forgiveness before it is too late. But why does this urge occur? We are taught at a young age, from the classic Disney movies, that there should always be a happy ending at the close of every story. Cinderella forgives her evil step-sisters, before riding into the sunset with a prince. Perhaps from childhood we subliminally believe this fairy-tale message that being generous, forgiving and reconciling with those who’ve hurt us means we might be rewarded, maybe with a prince?
When facing the end of a life’s story, with death, the concept of a happy ending through reconciliation finds expression in popular psychology as ‘closure’— the healing or conclusion to a personal loss or trauma. Why leave the story unfinished with loose ends? In terms of reconciliation, one simply needs closure to be satisfied, otherwise the pain of death is all-consuming.
However, maybe it isn’t time or death but our primal need for social interaction that allows reconciliation to occur? Ultimately if we didn’t crave connection, we would have no compulsion to reconcile. Relationships are too complex for tensions not to arise – and so we are constantly having to resolve this. If I wasn’t able to forgive my brother for always dipping his fingers in my tea, my parents would have to celebrate two separate Christmases. Humans need family; we need friends and partners in order to be happy in life. Reconciliation isn’t always motivated by love; it could be the result of our innate fear or anxiety of being alone. We have to be able to reconcile, or else we would live a solitary, and sad, life. The lonely storm cloud in a sky of blue: separate and distant.
Ultimately, regardless of why reconciliation occurs, it is a self-determined process. In Father and Child, the mistrust between the two protagonists are relatively minor, or at least able to be overcome in their eyes. But would that be true if their relationship had suffered a more serious wound? It is up to the individual to decide whether the relationship is worth reconciling; to decide whether the problem is forgivable, or even if they have the will. Do they want to wake up to blue skies instead of grey? I always forgive my brother, knowing that within 24 hours of him being home he will wind me up again. I reconcile with him on the understanding that even if his behaviour is unlikely to change, it is more painful not to be reconciled. The feeling of connection provides an embedded metaphysic map to reconciliation. Perhaps every relationship is a series of betrayals and reconciliations.
Reconciliation helps an individual progress their identity, and better understand themselves and others. Like most things in life, reconciliation is a learning experience and a choice, irrespective of the factors that contribute to it.

Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.

Delilah Isherwood Critchley
Ambition on Fleek: How Pinterest took me from GirlFlop to GirlBoss
2:02 pm Comments Off on Ambition on Fleek: How Pinterest took me from GirlFlop to GirlBoss
At the start of my final year of high school, things were about as far from perfect as they could have been.
COVID-19 was starting to rear its ugly head in places that actually mattered to the media of the Western world. Bushfire smoke meant my summer days at the beach were limited. My grandmother had been dying in hospital for months, and I had just been prescribed antidepressants for my depression and anxiety.
To make matters worse, what I had always struggled with in high school wasn’t the workload itself, or writing essays. Between my undiagnosed attention deficit disorder (ADD) and the subjects my father had ‘encouraged’ me to do, the key factor I was missing was motivation. What good would it do the world if I wrote an essay on the significance of the policy of containment in the Cold War? Who was actually going to care about my thoughts on TS Eliot’s textual integrity and canonical status?
These questions lingered each time I sat down to gather notes for Modern History, or sketch out a Legal Studies essay. Most nights ended with me crying at my desk – mostly because of my general emotional instability, but partly because of schoolwork.
Being a student in these end times is, in a word, utterly Sisyphean. What could the relevance of the structure of the communist Russian government in 1918 possibly have in this warming world, with WW3 on the horizon, where every choice I make as a consumer will eventually trace back to the mistreatment of a four-year-old sweatshop employee? I repeated this rhetoric to my psychiatrist, to my parents, to my school counsellor, even to my cat Jackson as we laid outside together. Jackson had motivation, drive, a reason to get up and face the day in the morning. He had trees to climb, birds to abuse, other neighbourhood cats to terrorise. I only wished some of his sense of purpose could rub off on me.
I couldn’t escape this mentality throughout the bulk of the year. What good was it to pay attention in my online classes when I could simply mute them with a click of a button? When we returned to school, I was so behind that it seemed impossible to make up lost time, however purposefully it had been lost. Modern History classes were ripe to explore the internet in; I memorised the fifty states of America, played online trivia, watched the West Wing muted with subtitles on, even started and finished a podcast with over seventy hour-long episodes just through the transcripts.
The most valuable past-time, I found, was not any of these, but the website that would be my saviour – Pinterest. Oh, Pinterest.
I had known of the site for years, of course. It was an oasis of aesthetically pleasing images, Keto recipes, and easy workouts that had served to further my middle-school disordered eating. Due to the latter, I hadn’t frequented it much in recent years, but faced with the unending torture of double Legal Studies, I found myself on it more and more. I made a new account so as to better suit my current hyperfixations. Little did I know, that decision would come to serve me more than I could have ever anticipated.
Logging onto my Pinterest feed, freshly wiped with no knowledge of my niche interests in 90s adult animation and Donna Tartt novels, I was faced with the selection the site showed to an average new user. Again — Keto recipes, OOTDs on emaciated Instagram models, and motivational quotes.
I could have never imagined the impact these quotes would have on me. I saved one, and then another, and then another. They saturated my feed, and would echo in my head relentlessly. One day, or Day One? You decide. The disembodied voice of a GirlBoss was right – today was the first day of the rest of my life, a life in which I understood to what extent the USSR rejected capitalist ideology.
If I was to be so bold, perhaps this knowledge I had deemed ‘irrelevant’ could become relevant, if only to be a stepping stone to the future empire I knew I could build. I could manifest success. Pinterest told me to be savage, not average. I wouldn’t be average any longer. Today was tomorrow’s yesterday.
Of course, I will disclose that after a particular depressive episode that concluded with a 49 percent markin my Modern History trial and a pesky 4/25 in my Cold War essay, my therapist prescribed me dexamphetamines for my now-diagnosed ADD. But it wasn’t the small white pills that made me focused, of course – it was Pinterest. It had always been Pinterest. I was, as the website had instructed, addicted to the feeling of having my shit together. I was going to create the life I couldn’t wait to wake up to.
As a writer, I do value honesty. And so, reader, I will be honest with you – the life I ‘couldn’t wait to wake up to’ didn’t involve Modern History. I know that the good guys won in the Cold War, that Nelson Mandela ended racism; what else was there to know? And so, I took the leap I knew I had to as a GirlBoss. I stopped going to most of my Modern classes, because I’m a powerful woman, and I’m not going to let little things like two out of my ten HSC units bring me down.
I visualised my highest self, and I showed up as her.
When my friends filled me in on practice essays I missed, I’ll admit, these things concerned me. But you don’t grow when you’re comfortable, my desktop wallpaper reminded me, and so I embraced the discomfort. Pinterest allowed me to actualise my true self. It told me to ‘wake up Beauty, it’s time to Beast’, so I lied to my parents. They didn’t need to know about Mr Kwok’s panicked emails to me, not when I was on my own path to greatness.
You may seem doubtful, but this story has a happy ending. I graduated at the top of my English Extension 2 class, and the top of my Studies of Religion 2 class, because I’m a fucking GirlBoss. I put in the work, and I exclusively focused on the things that came naturally to me with little extraneous effort. With the help of dexamphetamines, I cleared the useless knowledge of ‘democratic principles’ and ‘significant figures in Nazi Germany’ out of my head.
Why would I consider the political tensions in the Weimar Republic when there are real political issues happening right now? I’m a passionate socialist, and I don’t have time for Mr. Massey to bring me down talking about whatever happened to the system in Germany in the 1920s. Gustav Stresemann certainly wasn’t a GirlBoss, and he’s irrelevant now.
I just barely snuck into the top 50 percent of my Modern History cohort, which was good enough for me. If anything, my placing third in Extension English and first in Extension 2 is a testament to the power of language.
Now I’ve graduated and harnessed the power of motivation, who knows what hardships I’ll conquer next? I’m seventeen, out and experiencing the real world, and I see no reason to change my ideology. Now I know the value of a simple Pinterest board, there’s nothing I can’t face – whether it be toxic friendships, normalised substance abuse at university, WW3, or the impending destruction of our environment.
My mantra is simply to keep GirlBossing, Gaslighting, Gatekeeping, and Getting refills on ADD medication.

Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.

Sophie Rosen
Academic Progress
April 1, 2021 12:59 pm Comments Off on Academic Progress
I’m a stranger amongst these bushed seas. Still after calling this place home for the past four years, I still can only appreciate parts of our city. Studying at the ANU and living in Canberra are intrinsically linked. Perhaps, this is my tale of keeping on. After being here for so long and by writing this article I’m hoping I’m able to self-justify my continued existential existence. As the days pass, I feel an increasingly disjointed sense of self— torn between what I came here to do originally and what I am doing now.

Canberra has perhaps some of the widest lanes on its roads, and equally, a diverse and widening depth of opportunities for those who come here for a new future. This was the hope and motivation that made me move here all those years ago. But as the university year restarts and the summer weather crawls into the retreats of autumn, Canberra returns to a cold atmosphere. With the plummeting temperatures and blistering winds, my own sense begins to freeze. Whilst the local populace and social hive of the city seem to continue on into the winter, it’s only with the passing of seasons to summer that my life returns to a sense of normality.

Politicians and the parliamentary year return to provide the endless theatre of spectacle we see in the halls of democracy. Public servants begin to crowd our roads and public transport in the peaks of the day. Marking their returns to the offices and frequented cafes after exhausting last year’s worth of accumulated leave. The endless construction sites and projects return to smite our undeveloped capital with endless amounts of light trucks and utes parked everywhere. Our small city centre becomes a hive of social buzz and pleasure on the end of the week trawls of Thursdays to Saturdays. And of course, both school and university students return to academia’s halls of wisdom in its lecture theatres, libraries, and classrooms.

For me, as the days go by, the capital’s routine begins to eerily plague my weeks and days. It’s only the working week that drives me towards the end. Perhaps a couple of years ago time seemed meaningless to me. Certain days of the week were only distinguished by who was out, and what was open. With growing up and working, time becomes more important to me, especially the weekends and days off where my commitments and obligations are not set in stone. After three years of the same student accommodation, a double degree spread out over four years, and the same chaotic over-demanding retail job, an indescribable toll has scarred my small soul.

The virus and the year we shall not mention initially offered a bleak future. It was terrible working in the frontlines of the life-draining supermarkets and studying by Zoom™. It was terrible for all of us. I was only beginning to appreciate summer, vacations and not adhering to routine. Last year was the year that made us wait for these things to come.

I guess writing this jumbled mess of words makes me feel catharsis and relief for what actually happened to me last year. The taking up of a full-time job and the decision to drop to part time studies were met with little resistance from my parents, friends, and ultimately me. It has eased my mind in terms of the instability caused by full time studies and part time work for such a long period of time. Having now also comfortably nested myself in the ANU-wide hated south, I feel more at ease than I did when I first came to Canberra.

I still question my decision to come to Canberra. Its people’s lifestyle, culture and life experiences are quite different when compared to experiences of people from the rest of the country. The upbringing of many townies could overwhelmingly be described as sheltered, comfortable, and in some respects, quite privileged. An overwhelmingly white population, mostly supported by government money on wages and salaries, a lack of diversity and regular engagement with outsiders from other parts of the country.

The complaints by many here are not only first-world in many respects, but out of touch with the realities that many other Australians in other parts of the country face. Arguments of continued skyscrapers, a loss of the bush capital’s trees, a lack of support for the elderly and traffic are common but easily reasoned with when considered with Canberra’s small population. In fact, Canberra’s experience of the COVID-19 lockdowns versus the experiences of the other states, especially Victoria’s prolonged second wave lockdown, revealed entitlement, dispassionate and self-absorbed reactions from not only our leaders, but from its people too.

Perhaps the Canberra bashing part of this article is too much, admittedly written when I was sad and angry as well as after a seven hour wait in Cavalry Public. I return to what I intended to set out to express in this article. For me, the city which I unfortunately call my home was not built for the university student. It is and will be a city built for a different set of people at a different part of their lives. The structural issues with how Canberra is both geographically positioned, planned out and also internally run has perhaps meant interstate, first year university students are not the best placed to move into Canberra’s community. Whilst we can’t change how Canberra is both socially and economically structured, at least not in the short term, we can change the experience of those coming here.

So I implore you, the reader to perhaps adventure out into the local Canberran and wider Australian community and experience the issues facing most. The local stories of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people’s struggles with recognition and healing as well recognising the conflict in both people’s claims over country. The untold plight of the disadvantaged and have nots, as well as issues around both community and affordable housing. And perhaps most importantly, the thousands of communities’ stories of pain gained from last year’s horrific bushfires and worldwide pandemic. These issues are perhaps worthy of mention. If Dr Andrew Leigh in his maiden speech to Parliament can state that Canberrans are some of the most generous, then surely empathy must be a common characteristic of our community.

Ultimately, I felt that continuing to study for a prolonged period of time was not for me, and it really shouldn’t be for all. There will be a point in time where some may feel that continuing to grind a degree at university is not worthwhile. There are perhaps more all-around benefits by going into the workforce early, not just monetary stability. After a chaotic couple of years working part time, balancing studies and social commitments a normal routine comes as a blessing

A firmer grip on time and the importance of organisation to managing time well. A better ability to empathise due to my work in the local community has meant that I engage with issues that aren’t taught in tutorials or books. And finally, the ability to feel like I am beginning my adulthood the right way. Reality matters more to me rather than hypotheticals, and this is perhaps the underlying reason why I decided work was, in the end, the right choice.

For the readership, this article may be confusing to read at first. Simply put, the city we trap ourselves in isn’t the best to fully support a long academic path like mine. Do other things outside of academia, the more life experiences you gain will be a credit to both you and perhaps the wider Canberran community. If this means stopping or pausing your studies, don’t hesitate or even double think it because it will mean a better outcome for all.

The routinely comedic story of many; came from a major city, got a hospo or retail job, did student society stuff and are either now in an internship or set to graduate, is perhaps something that should disappear. I’m for it, nothing of that life story is interesting. Of course professional success is desired by all but there is so much to miss out by going down that life story. Just like Finding Nemo, life can and should take you to places where you wouldn’t expect to be.

Alexander An
Liar, Liar
March 15, 2021 4:52 pm Comments Off on Liar, Liar
On January 6th 2021, the world looked at America in awe, confusion and distaste. We saw the supposed leader of freedom and democracy, promoting chaos and the world’s most powerful nation in turmoil. As angry hordes of Trump supporters scaled the Capitol walls and ran wildly through the corridors screaming, we wondered, how had it come to this?
Former President Donald Trump has always been a loud voice on Twitter, spouting false news, lies and derogatory language to his followers who willingly soak it up like sponges. Twitter attempted to counter his influence by implementing a fact-checking system and later banning him altogether, but it was too late. Trump’s followers sit comfortably in their echo chambers, locked in and unwilling to believe anyone but their oracle and his followers.
Was the storming of the capitol a surprise? Doubtful. A line can be drawn from Trump’s win of the 2016 election right up to the storming of the capitol and the deceit behind Trump himself is to blame. Throughout his 2016 campaign, Trump undermined traditional news media. Trump claimed he was being treated ‘unfairly’ for not being a career politician. By presenting himself as a powerful businessman instead of a politician, he distanced himself from the distrust Americans direct at politicians. Through this, Trump was able to use the fact that only 10 percent of Republicans trusted traditional media to convince them that he knew all. . Once the campaigning began, he called climate change a hoax, claimed Hillary Clinton was an unsuitable candidate due to illness and stated that the traditional media was ‘corrupt.’. By the time Trump had won, he’d already consolidated a scepticism of the media among his followers. In 2016, as Trump was sworn in, his followers’ belief was reinforced, because if Trump had lied, how was he then President?
A 2017 journal article by Hunt Allcott and Mathew Gentzkow found that social media’s capability to spread unreliable news fuelled a rumour mill crucial to Trump’s win. Twitter and Facebook gave Trump a platform to preach to his adoring fans every day, hour and minute. Both platforms also provided an audience prepared for information isolation. Allcott and Gentzkow determined that only 20 percent of our Facebook friends have alternate political beliefs to us . This is natural human behaviour, we surround ourselves with like-minded people. By eliminating opposing views, we start to believe that everyone has the same opinion, which makes perfect sense. If you don’t see any contradictory opinions, you’ll assume that yours is the only one.
So what caused the storming of the Capitol? It was the change of tact in Trump’s tweets. Previously his tweets would claim the Democrats threaten the economy or fuel violence. But then Trump stated that the Democrats were destroying something far worse to white middle-class Americans. Their freedom. Months before the election in August 2020, Trump would tout that mail-in ballots could and would be easily rigged. In April, he tweeted that mail-in ballots had “Tremendous potential for voter fraud, and for whatever reason, doesn’t work out well for Republicans…” Trump had begun to sow the seed of conspiracy among his supporters. He stated this in August, “Make sure because the only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged”.
Trump continued to cast doubt into the population but upped the ante following Election Day while votes were still being counted. Before taking the stage to claim that “frankly we did win this election”, Trump tweeted that “WE are up big, but THEY are trying to STEAL the election… Votes cannot be cast after the Polls are closed” . Trump insinuated that ballot counting was taking longer because ballots were being falsely counted. Following this, Trump began to threaten court cases against states, all of which were thrown out.
Trump predicted his loss, at no fault of his own, and that he was the victim of a rigged election that undercut the two key pillars of American society, Democracy and Freedom. On January 6th, Trump spoke at the Capitol protests; “We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore…So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue… and we’re going to the Capitol”.
Their fates were sealed.
Whilst there can be no justification or excuse for the events of January 6 2021, true Trump supporters believed that their democracy was under threat because that’s what they were fed. We need only look at the right-wing media’s response to see this. Tucker Carlson of FoxNews brought into the narrative that the election had been undemocratic, stating that “as long as people sincerely believe they can change things by voting they stay calm, they don’t storm the bastille…”. The truth is the 2020 election was, statistically, the most democratic American election ever, with 66 percent voter turnout (the largest since 1900) and greater minority representation. . Regardless of who they voted for, the US citizens took part in their democracy to the fullest extent possible. The right’s attempt to blow off the election as fraudulent only served to show us how little of the truth they can see.
In the end, the Capitol storming was a long time coming. The combination of Trump and social media created a form of poison that we’re lucky to have a cure for – his banishment from these sites. This doesn’t mean that the danger is all gone though. While Trump no longer lingers on social media, we’re not immune to his sickness. It is not just the far-right that can find itself in echo chambers. It can happen to anyone. We should all strive to question more, research more, learn more. This article is not an attempt to ban all social media, but to serve as a warning for what happens when we fail to see the truth. When someone yells from their soapbox, should you always listen?

Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.

Coquohalla J Connor
Dignity, Healthcare and Reform
4:51 pm Comments Off on Dignity, Healthcare and Reform
At first glance, it looks unlikely that the wider United States and Vermont have much to learn from one another. The United States is fuelled by division and discourse, a land of countless contradictions and winner-take-all races to the top. Vermont is one of the most homogeneous states in the nation. For the past 30 years, Vermont has embraced liberal progressivism, democratic socialism and has coveted its image as one of the most left-leaning states in the union. So, what could the United States possibly learn from a place that appears so different to the rest of the country? The answer is simple — Vermont’s past political battles both won and lost, are the future battles of the United States.
In America today, millions are without access to quality healthcare. At this moment, in the world’s wealthiest nation, cloaked in immense power, the middle-class is required to choose between going bankrupt or getting sick. Despite the lack of a universal healthcare system, the United States spends more on healthcare than any other nation in the developed world. The only thing Washington DC appears to agree on is that the current system doesn’t work. Since 1993, countless administrations have tried and failed to fix America’s broken healthcare system. Where the United States has defeated itself time and time again, Vermont has forged a path to victory. By learning from Vermont’s battle to correct the failures of American healthcare, the United States can begin to plan for a future where universal health care becomes the only viable option.
Sufficient access to quality healthcare represents perhaps the most fundamental ingredient to any functioning, equitable and sustainable society. If an individual’s capacity to become unwell and their degree of suffering is dependent on their wealth or social status, such a society is politically, economically and morally bankrupt. An individual’s health and wellbeing are crucial to their capacity to exercise key socio-economic and political liberties. This reflects their ability to function as a human being with dignity. Without a government-led system which ensures that every citizen has the same equal expectation to quality healthcare, the capacity for a sick individual to work, to vote or to thrive will wither away.
In a society without a sufficient healthcare system, the sick are forced to gamble their income against their health as they are pushed defenceless and without leverage into a market characterised by asymmetric information, exuberant prices and unequal bargaining power. A society which allows markets to discriminate against the sick and the poor entrenches dormant inequalities. Over time these foster resentment, anger and social violence, fracturing societies into hundreds of tiny pieces. The lack of a universal system in the United States has given birth to a society dominated by class warfare, social tension and a broken politics defined by anger, hate and envy.
In 2011, Vermont set to work creating a new healthcare system, one which sought to cover all people, regardless of their health, income or creed. The state legislature created the framework for a single-payer healthcare system, which would see everyone in the state covered by the government and offered the same standard of care. However, this once popular proposal was stagnated by Vermont’s limited state-budget and became feared by the very people it intended to serve. The combination of a federal government hostile to single-payer healthcare and the size of Vermont’s population and finances meant that there was no way the plan could be implemented without increasing taxes. This ultimately led to the abandonment of single-payer healthcare in Vermont in 2014 and the retirement of its cheerleader, Governor Peter Shumlin, just two years later.
Ultimately, Vermont’s failure to achieve this goal reflects America’s self-defeating approach to policy and governance. Since the great inflation of the 1970s, the United States has long had an aversion to government, big or small. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society fell prey to Nixon’s law and order, Reagan’s states’ rights and Clinton’s third way. The last 50 years have engineered a deep fear and visceral loathing of tax increases, federal government intervention and anything with traces of communitarianism. For much of the 20th century, those seeking power exploited political and economic crises to convince people that the powerful had abused their position.Their goal? To create an imperial state characterised by excessive public expenditure and unrestrained government intervention.
This has created a society hostile to and fearful of its own survival and prosperity. One that shuns the very efforts of good men and women in the nation’s capital who are trying to correct the failures of the free-market excesses of the 1980s. The elimination of Roosevelt’s New Deal consensus and the triumph of the myth of small government has created an electorate fearful of change and progress. The 2008 Global Financial Crisis, the Great Recession which followed and the comprehensive failure of the United States government to adequately respond to the COVID-19 pandemic are all symptoms of this anti-government disease. The chaos and pain this schism has inflicted on the United States and the world has fostered a deep mistrust of politicians. This has rendered reform painfully stagnant and creating a global political class characterised by indifference, frustration and populism.
Even in Vermont, the closest thing the United States has to a socialist republic, these same concerns killed the state’s single-payer plan. The Obama administration, concerned about the political ramifications of supporting single-payer healthcare, refused to cooperate with Vermont’s government. In addition, a coalition of ideologically and culturally similar states such as Massachusetts and New Hampshire failed to materialise due to the recent election of small-government socially liberal republicans. This meant that the only option available to finance the plan was to raise small-business taxes, something that even the country’s most liberal state could not stomach. The populist backlash, where both sides of the debate united in their anger and frustration to almost defeat the incumbent governor, led to the abandonment of this noble, necessary and fundamental first step.
This dangerous anti-government ideology has cost the United States time and lives. The last 10 years have proven that only strong institutional reform can correct the unchallenged structural rot of America’s economy and society. Healthcare reform in the United States is long overdue. The COVID-19 pandemic, the failures of Obamacare and an ultra-conservative Supreme Court have put healthcare front and centre in the minds of the American people. When the time does come for massive institutional reform, the United States should look to its most progressive state. Vermont’s attempt at reform was a long, painful and lonely process which was ultimately unsuccessful. However, it offers a crucial lesson about the nature and failures of the American system of governance and politics which the next generation of leaders must grasp.
The United States should learn from this failure and wage reform with an eye to heavy federal-state cooperation, working with all states and parties, regardless of ideology or power, to set up a system which will endure for the long-term. Taxes are critically unpopular and have become as ‘unamerican’ as Michael Moore. Those in power in the coming generations must prove to the American people that programs reminiscent of Roosevelt’s New Deal or Johnson’s Great Society like single-payer healthcare, vast infrastructure projects and investment in renewable energy are worth the taxes they pay. Democrats and Republicans must show the people they serve that the government can work for them, if they only give it a chance.
Current US President Biden was perhaps the only candidate who could have beaten President Trump. Even with 200,000 Americans dead, the worst recession since the Great Depression and the rise of racism, bigotry and white supremacy, if just 1.16% of Biden voters changed their minds nationwide, Trump would have snatched victory from the jaws of common sense and dignity. Given America’s pain and long sojourn into midnight, Biden must now prove that he is the right man to bind the wounds of division, end America’s flirtation with populism, authoritarianism and fascism, and govern in a way which puts an end to America’s darkest decade since the 1930s. Healthcare is perhaps the best and only way to begin.
The United States is in a race against the fiscal clock. Eventually, the costs of healthcare will become unsustainable and the system will collapse. When that time comes, the United States will have a choice; either it can allow millions to go bankrupt and live without care, or it can choose to recognise that healthcare is a human right and implement a system which entrenches a basic level of socio-economic equality and human dignity. It is only through such radical and moral institutional reform that the United States can truly promise opportunity, prosperity and justice for all.

Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.

Elliott Merchant
BREAKING (the) NEWS
11:33 am Comments Off on BREAKING (the) NEWS
There is a new drug out on the market which is causing ‘a misperception of risk, anxiety, lower mood levels, learned helplessness, contempt and hostility towards others, and desensitisation’ — Jodie Jackson, 2016. This drug is consumed on average by 80% of adults in Western countries each day and is more popular than alcohol or even caffeine. This drug is subsidised and legally protected by many governments, and can be tailor-made and delivered on a mass scale to anyone with a social media account. This drug is the news.
Although many of us may be aware of the dangers of fake news, new research suggests that even true news can be dangerous, especially for our mental health. The vast majority of news seen online or on TV focuses on negative, sensational, and attention-grabbing stories. This focus distorts our view of humanity and causes us to believe that the world is a far worse place than what most statistics would suggest. Mainstream news is suffering from a deficit of perspective. The truth matters, but the truth can be harmful if we are not given the full picture.
There is growing literature which suggests that the news is a mental health hazard. In a study by Johnson and Daveyin 1997, people who were shown negative news stories displayed increases in anxiety, a lower overall general mood, and were more likely to catastrophise a personal worry. Some would say that this is, of course, a natural reaction when one escapes their own bubble and faces the facts. The news is simply revealing the truth: that the world is a terrible place, and society is on the brink of collapse.
To measure people’s overall sentiment with this gloomy view of the world, one survey of individuals in 28 different countries asked ‘Overall, do you think the world is getting better, staying the same, or getting worse?’ The survey found that the vast majority answered with ‘things are getting worse’. Amongst Australians, only three percent reported that things were getting better. Those living in developed countries also appeared to have a far more negative view of the world than those in developing countries. In the same survey, when asked about indicators of quality of life such as child mortality and absolute poverty, the vast majority of people around the globe believed these variables to be increasing or staying the same.
Astonishingly, this could not be further from the truth. Globally, over the past few decades, absolute poverty, child mortality, hunger, deaths from disease, and deaths from conflict have all decreased. Meanwhile, education, hours of leisure, income, life expectancy, and security have all increased. The average middle-class person in a developing country today enjoys a quality of life that would put the luxurious lifestyle enjoyed by John D. Rockefeller (the richest man in the U.S.A as of 100 years ago) to shame, mostly thanks to advances in technology. We are living in the healthiest, wealthiest, and safest time in human history and the majority of people do not realise it. As Max Rosser from Our World in Data says “we think more poorly than we should about the world we live in, and we think more poorly than we should about what people around the world are achieving right now.”
Evidence suggests that the media has a large role to play in building this pessimistic view that humanity has of itself. In 2018, a team of Dutch sociologists analysed how aeroplane crashes are reported in the media. Between 1991 and 2005, when the number of crashes steadily decreased, they found that the media attention for such accidents steadily increased. In another study from 2018, a team of media researchers similarly found that in times when immigration or violence declines, newspapers give them more coverage. This leaves us with the conclusion that there seems to be no relationship, or in fact a negative relationship, between news and reality. Although these events did happen and can be considered the truth, the way they lack perspective distorts reality for the average viewer.
The reason we are so susceptible to these doom and gloom stories is due to two psychological biases: the negativity and availability bias. The negativity bias describes how negative experiences of equal intensity to positive ones leave a far greater psychological impact on how we think and behave. For example, studies find that the negative traits of an individual impact our impression of them more than the positive traits of that individual. Availability bias describes how we believe that events that can be easily recalled occur more frequently.
By exploiting these biases, the news becomes about what is exceptional. You are far more likely to read a headline reporting on a recent homicide in a town which has not had a murder in the past five years than to hear the same report in a city with the highest murder rate per capita. As Charles Bukowski once said in Ham on Rye in 1982, “News travels fastest in places where nothing much ever happens.”
Social media may be exacerbating the mental health issues related to news consumption. In an increasingly competitive, attention-based economy, more and more news outlets turn to sensational ‘breaking’ and ‘urgent’ headlines. Headlines which are distracting, agitating, and more accessible than ever. Of course, much of the news today is still highly informative and useful. We live in an age when accurate information on any topic can be acquired in a matter of seconds. This can be and has been a great force for good. However, we should be more mindful of our news consumption and realise that the reality of the world lies beyond a few exceptional breaking news events. The truth matters, but the truth is nothing without perspective.

Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.

Angus Padley