Australia has arrived into a new age … one of physical and intellectual obesity …. and into a new idiocracy. And compared to the threat of this new epidemic, the economy and reigning in the national debt are mere trifles!
Most people would be aware that obesity has been identified as one of the major health concerns facing Australians today. You can’t help but notice the number of people on the street who are clearly carrying more weight than is good for them. The problem, it seems, is the result of poor diet choices coupled with a sad lack of exercise.
Seems to me though, that there’s a more serious form of obesity that has infected our society and it seems to have gone quite unnoticed. I think that the major health problem facing Australia and its people, is that of mental obesity!
I have long been puzzled by a simple fact of political life, here in Australia. The long standing tradition of making political promises at election time is fascinating enough …., but its the blatant back flips and promise breaking after the fact, that really takes my breath away. You’d think that in a Western society that claims a reasonable education standard for its citizens, our politicians would be held more accountable for the commitments that they make when wooing the electorate.
Nothing, it seems could be further from the truth. Its as if Australians know that anything that politicians promise at election time isn’t to be taken seriously and that it just wouldn’t be cricket to actually hold them to account. In fact, I was reading an article today that claimed that our current leader has created a new record for the number of political promises broken in the short time since our last election (http://www.independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/abbotts-new-world-record-25-broken-promises-in-150-days,6145) While I can’t comment on the accuracy of the article, I doubt you’d find anybody who was willing to put much effort into refuting its basic claim! This government seems to be outstanding, mostly for the apparent contempt that it displays towards the Australian public.
That being so, I have wondered long and hard at how Australians seem to tolerate (or perhaps not even notice) the overbearing, off-handed attitude of our Government towards the people who vote them into office.
Today, I think I worked it all out. I think that Australian society has become intellectually obese … morbidly so! We have subsisted on a steady diet of mental junk food in the form of endless reality TV shows for quite a few years now. We’ve been content to sit on the couch and soak up tons and tons of take-away food and hours and hours of reality TV shows …. until our bodies and our minds have become fat and lazy, unfit and incapable.
If you asked the average Aussie to run a kilometre, I doubt he or she would make it more than a few yards before collapsing in a heap. If you ask them to provide some insight or a considered opinion on some current topic of political, economic or philosophical interest, I reckon you’d find their performance similarly inadequate. We, as a society, have become fat and lazy … both physically and intellectually. Its not that we didn’t have an adequate intelligence or a healthy body to begin with. Its that we have forgotten how to use both.
I read today that just last Tuesday, 3.7 million Australians sat glued to their idiot boxes, watching a reality show called ‘My Kitchen Rules’. At the same time, another 2 million were watching a rival reality show called ‘The Block’. For a country with only 25 million inhabitants, that’s an amazing portion of the total adult population.
So I think I am beginning to understand how our political jokes actually manage to get elected and how they are able to get away with the promises and the lies that they roll out endlessly. We used to be a democracy but I think we’ve changed. Without anybody noticing .. and with no resistance whatever, we have transformed ourselves into an idiocracy! I suppose we could get off that couch and take a stroll around the block every night. I suppose we could turn off the TV. I suppose we could try reading a book, spending time interacting with our loved ones or maybe pursuing some mind-expanding hobby. But I’m guessing that we won”t. The couch is so comfy and the TV so undemanding.
Andrew Caddle 2014_05_03
andrewcaddle.com
For a previous article on this issue, please see ….http://andrewcaddle.com/wordpress/tv-junk-food-for-your-mind/
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