The nonsensical reasoning here is---because we are a nation of John Howards,
we should keep the Monarchy until we somehow cease being a nation of John
Howards and face our shameful past, thereby becoming whole enough to have
our own Head of State.
How about---if we change our most obvious symbol---our HOS from a foreign
Monarch to an Australian we may gain enough fortitude to take responibility
for our national identity, including our shameful past, and do something
about it?
Laurie.
--------------
Trudy Bray wrote..........
-----Original Message-----
From: Trudy Bray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: news-clip <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Tuesday, November 02, 1999 9:04 AM
Subject: The Age: Voting from the heart on the republic
And yet another point of view... --- Trudy
===============================
THE AGE
Voting from the heart on the republic
By DAVID TACEY
Tuesday 2 November 1999
MANY Australians, probably the majority of us, will vote no to the republic
for
basically non-rational and spiritual reasons. These reasons have been
ignored in the
clamor to outline the technicalities that have some lawyers in knots and
tangles.
Citizens will not be casting their votes on the basis of technicalities:
they will be
voting according to gut feeling and emotion.
The gut feeling of many of us is that our replacement constitutional model
cannot be
trusted, partly because it has left so much human reality out of account. It
is not that
we distrust our own kind in positions of high authority, but that we doubt
the
authenticity, depth, and stability of a system that makes no attempt to
connect with
enduring spiritual and moral values.
While the heads of many Australians are secular, rational, and receptive to
the
logistical chatter of glib republicans, the hearts of many of us remain
unconvinced by
the rhetoric and will vote against Peter Costello's "common sense" on
6November.
It is not that we are necessarily pro-British or conservative, but that we
sense
something vitally important is missing. The symbols of the state need to be
suggestive of a larger reality. They must lift us out of the mundane and
connect us
with values that are larger than life.
This transcendent aspect of public symbols can hardly be overestimated. The
genuine symbol, wrote the psychologist Carl Jung, is the "best possible
expression of
something as yet unknown".
A sense of awe and mystery must attend to a public symbol, so that it
attracts human
interest and commands respect. Ultimately, social authority can be believed
only if
there is a sense that it is connected to a source that is greater than
itself. Until we
locate that greatness in our own cultural context, we naturally remain
attached to a
borrowed greatness.
It is easy for rational minds to bad-mouth the monarchy and to talk about
inherited
privilege, unfair advantages and a queen too far away to care.
But the transcendent dimension afforded by the monarchy has much appeal. It
has
continuity, with kings, queens, rituals, ceremonies, and other symbolic
elements that
trail off into the mists of time. Cohesive social structures are based on
such irrational
symbols, encouraging citizens to form their own emotional identifications
with these
historical symbols.
Progressives protest that this is nostalgic and sentimental attachment to
the past, but
these mythic elements have real value for the soul. We think of the monarch
not only
as the head of state, but as the head of the Church of England.
I am neither English by descent nor Anglican by faith, but I find these
elements
attractive. Central to the monarchy is a deep connection between people and
their
God, or between ordinary life and their dreams of eternity. These are
important
symbols, and they provide a point of stability in an unstable world. They
provide a
powerful tradition of mystery and elevation in a world that has become
appallingly
flat, secular and bland. Will that blandness merely be enshrined and
extended by our
current republican model?
The idea of an Australian head of state does not arouse our imaginations,
because it
is not clear what mystique the presidential role will carry, and what
transcendent
values will be embodied in the new position. When we think of an Australian
head of
state, we imagine merely a man in a suit and tie or a woman in a frock. When
we
think of the republic, we see a new kind of bureaucracy, and people working
efficiently, but without transcendent meaning.
Our current images are too banal, and if the soul of the nation is to get
excited about
a shift to a republic, we must know what vision the presidential role will
serve and
what great values the republic will strive to uphold. The sociologist Robert
Bellah
wrote: "No one has changed a great nation without appealing to its soul."
Australia cannot manage a transcendental public symbol at present because we
have
not done enough soul work. White Australia's traditional symbols are
European, and
they relate to an ancient past that progressives say is irrelevant to our
present
context.
But the local or indigenous symbols of transcendence are Aboriginal and are
therefore not available to Euro-Australia.
However, a spiritual dialogue could and should take place between
Euro-Australia
and Aboriginal Australia. It is from such dialogue that new symbols will
emerge. Until
such dialogue occurs, we are still essentially a colonial nation, and are
not mature
enough to have our own symbols of higher authority.
In this way, politics, morality, and social justice are intimately tied up
with spiritual
questions of meaning and identity. We cannot have local transcendental
symbols until
reconciliation has taken place between the races in Australia.
Symbols will emerge, in time, like fruit from the tree of the Australian
nation. But we
cannot display wonderful fruit until we have tended the tree and allowed the
roots of
this country to be repaired and nurtured.
Not only is the soul of this country afflicted by present injustice and
unfairness, but it
is burdened by the memory of great suffering, conflict, massacres, and
brutality.
Our nation's sorrows have yet to be honestly recognised or consciously
mourned.
There is enormous unconscious grief in the Australian psyche, and this grief
is
blocking our way into the future.
It is only by facing our wounds with integrity that the wounds will close
over and the
future will be allowed to be born. In this sense, our impatient and
rancorous cry for a
republic is premature. It is like wanting the prize without putting in the
hard work.
The same John Howard who refuses to apologise for our past, who rejects the
so-called "black armband" view of history, is the Prime Minister who
advocates
clinging to our European symbols of political and spiritual identity. There
is some
consistency in this position. Genuine Australian symbols of identity will
not arise until
we have integrated our own experiences, until the soul of this country is
reconciled
with itself. Until then, we will remain existentially unsure of who and what
we are.
There is integrity in our uncertainty. For me, a no vote means that we
recognise we
still have a long way to go, and we refuse the banal, bureaucratic, and
empty
symbols that are on offer this time around. I will vote no to say yes for a
better
Australia.
David Tacey is associate professor of English at La Trobe University.
E-mail:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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