RABID FIRE

The Market, 143 Commercial Rd, South Yarra
1 Feb 2k

Utopian Dreams Come True

Introduction - Crusader Hillis

Julie Peters is transgendered; she made her most important childhood dream come true; she became a woman; now she believes she can make all her dreams come true.

Presentation start here - Julie Peters

What is it we all want? Utopia of course! And utopia is useless if it happens in 50 years time; we want it now!, so we can enjoy it.

We all want utopia; so why don't we have it?

Well for a start we can't agree on what Utopia is; we all want different Utopia. My utopia is very different to those of Pauline Hanson or Bill Gates.

The Economic Rationalist Utopia is to exponentially increase profits, reduce wages, dis-empower governments; not acknowledge greenhouse gas emissions nor the addictivness of smoking nor the depletion of oil; and to not accept any responsibility for the environment nor social dislocation.

The Catholic Utopia is very simple - to have all people of the earth Catholic.

There are some environmentalists who'd like to reverse evolution; to bring back the species made extinct and to reduce the human population to pre-industrialisation levels.

I'm starting to think that I need to add - "the coexistence of diverse and even incompatible utopias" - to my utopia.

But I'd like evoke one of the great utopian philosophers of our time - Maxwell Smart.

For Max, utopia is the forces of niceness and goodness defeating the evil reign of Kaos. So let's examine Max's utopia more closely.

Niceness and goodness?

Well yes? - I can interpret niceness and goodness as - Social Justice, reconciliation; support, life education and empowerment for all; not blaming the victim, animal liberation and nurturing Mother Earth.

(evil)

But Maxwell Smart devoted his life to fighting evil; yes I can agree with that. So often have we seen false argument used to prop up an evil regime.

So many hideous examples to choose from - where do I start.

When whites invaded Australia, they had plenty of intellectual bullshit and pseudo-scientific "race" science that told them that Aboriginal Australians were lower order creatures, who did not farm like they did and so the land was un-utilised and so empty - this terra nullius lie made them feel a lot better about their theft, rape and genocide and this continued as the "White Australia Policy". And this racism is still very much at work in conservative politics today.

Another example - The "so called scientific" eugenic experiments of the US and Germany in the 1930s; which, surprise surprise, conveniently proved that blacks, queers, Jews and gypsies were of lower value than themselves and so it was wise to sterilize and/or eliminate them.

Today we have "economic rationalists" who have convinced our media that anything of value can be measured by their economic model - funny how they seem to be getting richer and everyone else seems to be getting poorer.

But I'm not an anti-intellectualist - I just don't want "rationalism" abused. There are some very clever people out there; con-men who look for "pseudo-intellectual" mumbo jumbo to feather their own nests. We need to call their bluff.

(chaos)

Now back to Max; he also devoted his life to fighting Kaos. Sometimes we feel we want a comfortable life free from chaos. But a world devoid of chaos is sheer fantasy; an unrealistic over simplification of the real world.

One of the big advances in last century's science was "chaos theory". We know that science and logic can't explain everything; logic only works up to a certain level of complexity - great for building bridges. But when things get complicated - such as when we are dealing with people's problems and political issues - we need the very advanced skills of probabilistic logic - better know as "intuition".

We are very priveliged living in Melbourne; we have a very deeply ingrained sense of chaos theory at work - our weather systems.

So in my utopia we don't try to fight nature and eliminate chaos - like Maxwell Smart did - we acknowledge chaos and we learn to thrive on it. Chaos generates the change which allows us to evolve.

(summary)

Many people criticise Utopians as being impractical; but our cultural imagination isn't that good; running water, electricity and the telephone were utopian dreams not long ago; we need to realise that we aren't that imaginative; most of our dreams are fairly easily achieved; but we need to have the mind-set of many tribal cultures that says "dream it - then do it".

I'd like to share with you a dream of mine.

i dream

I dream of justice and no child in hunger
I dream of rich soils, pure air and clean water
A world with no greed nor violence nor fear
Where all and every are fed, bedded, housed well led and well read.

Blue fluffy white clouded skies
Leafy, red and yellow flowered trees
Vivacious, wavy blue green seas
Passionate trust, new ideas
Dissident views, listen, debate and change ... together

So dream with me dreams of incredible worlds
We'll redraw the map to show all Utopia
Set sail for her shores and grow strong and give love
Then dream dream to make these dreams come true and do

And climb the high hill and see New dreams of utopian lands
Again redraw the map to show all Utopia
Set sail for newer shores and grow strong and give love
Then dream Oh dream
... to make these dreams come true
...... and do
.......... really do!