THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN

 

The lyrics of that Bob Dylan song that goes: Come gather 'round people ... Wherever you roam ... And admit that the waters ... Around you have grown ...And accept it that soon ...You'll be drenched to the bone ...If your time to you is worth savin' ...And you better start swimmin' ... Or you'll sink like a stone ... For the times they are a-changin' ... currently carries a message as poignant as it was when in 1964 it was the title track of his album. It was a song with a purpose and it resonates still. Literature is fertile ground to till if we are illuminate our search for meaning and metaphor.

Somewhat curiously a Launceston Councillor in talking about the binary of relative wealth and poverty somewhat surreptitiously, knowingly or unknowingly, invoked the opening paragraph  of a Charles Dickens novel, A Tale oF Two Cities.

In his Letter to The Examiner's Editor he wrote:

"LAUNCESTON tells the tale of two cities: A tale of poverty and prosperity, scarcity and affluence, hunger and abundance, despair and comfort. We see these contradictions in strips of land a few hundred metres apart, a five-star hotel next to people experiencing homelessness, living in poorly constructed tents or old caravans, exposed to harsh, Tassie winters. 

Recent conversations have highlighted some of the devastating reasons so many Launceston locals are experiencing homelessness, such as mental health conditions and domestic violence.  

"Some nights it gets so cold that they cannot sleep, they stay awake at night and go to sleep during the day." "One day I woke up with the water flooding my tent." 

"We often eat tinned food because we do not have fridges to keep fresh food." 

"I suffer from asthma, and I had to be admitted to hospital because of Pneumonia." 

"I suffer from mental health issues, and I struggle to find a doctor and get medications." 

We need to address the root causes of the problem, rather than merely shift the homeless from one place to another as if they do not exist. 

They are partly the result of social changes of modern society obsessed about accumulating wealth leading to worsening inequalities and poverty, with nearly a quarter of Tasmanians suffering from food insecurity. 

We need to reclaim the Australian ethos and become more active in caring for each other by making space and room for all Tasmanians who deserve to be seen and heard. Cr Dr George Razay, Relbia."

Yet Cr Dr Razay sits on a Council that sends impoverished people suffering from the loss of a secure HOMEplace off to some charity or other rather than seriously examining the Council's own planning cum placemaking imperatives and its raison detre as a PLACEmaker. And, the irony seems to have been missed.

 

The CULTURALmindset on display is troubling when so many of a jurisdiction's consituents are in distress.

The irony of the opening paragraph of Dickens book is lost to all who seeming do not know how to care or have become quite lost in the bureaucratic humbug that is increasingly evident in current PLACEmaking in this jurisdiction. However, the city is not alone by any means.  The CULTURALmindset is there for all to see if they dare to look.

It may well be that the City of Launceston's Councillors just do not see the irony in invoking Charles Dickens writings. Until recent  times Launceston's 'heritage imaginings' where almost completely invested in the city's 'colonial era'.  That was a time when Launceston was a port albeit a somewhat unsatisfactory one. The city's placedness, albeit named as it was for a place elsewhere, was 'invested in' what left for elsewhere and arrived from elsewhere, essentially to enrich the colonisers and later on, the peri-colonists – people for whom their 'HOMEplace' was elsewhere.

Dickens wrote of a place, the 'motherland', that consigned its unwanted social misfits to places as far away from 'home' as they might be before they might be imagined as getting closer again nin another direction. Dickens, albeit via the devises of fiction, talked about the life and times of the 'motherland', that nurtured them in their colonial imaginings and that began the 'settlement' in 1806 that grew to colonial Launceston.

Dickens' novel 'Tale of Two Cities' , 1859, spoke of a time in the 'motherland' when the 'French Revolution's' – 1787-1799 – social upheaval was ever present.  It was a revolution that set out to fundamentally change the relationship between rulers and the citizens and to redefine political power. Napoleon Bonaparte rose to prominence during the French Revolution and he led successful campaigns during the Revolutionary Wars. 

Napoleon was the leader of the French Republic 1799 to 1804, then  the French  Emperor  from 1804 until 1814 and briefly again in 1815. Napoleon's political and cultural legacy endures and he is a celebrated and controversial leader. Along the way he initiated many liberal reforms that persist.  Recounting all this here and now alerts us to a subliminal historic backgrounding that still shapes Eurocentric sensibilities in the City of Launceston's governance.

In all this there are some TAKEaways that let somer light fall upon some darkened corners in the MINDsets that make up the 'place's' pacedness'.

Albeit somewhat haplessly Cr Dr Razay kind of stumbled into this aspect of CULTURALimaging in the city. Nonetheless there is a certain poignance relative to the city's CULTURALcapital. It is especially so when we look at the dates and times that have shaped a large slice of the city's CULTURALlandscape. Moreover, there is a certain poignancy in Dickens' opening phrase inn the 'Tale of Two Cities' ..."It was the best of times, it was the worst of times".

Indeed, 'haplessness' seems to be a trait all too evident in Town Halls all over as the roles and functions of governance and management get to be blended and blanded with a 'weather eye' focus on the the status quo. Here it is worth thinking about Ronald Reagan and his understanding of the status quo. He told us "Status quo you know is Latin for the mess we are in".

Councillors and Alderpeople all too quickly learn to stand behind the parapets of their 'castles', defended as they are by an army of mercenary bureaucrats, in order that they might fire off a slingshot and an arrow or two into the marauding  constituency. They do so not to defend and build upon the city's CULTURALcapital, rather it is more to do with ensuring that their bank accounts continue to be topped up as the Parkin's Law 'underlings' get on with things. 

You see, in TOPdown bureaucracies is are the places where autocratic subordinates need subordinates ad infinitum. It is self-serving and self-defeating all at once. In pyramidal TOPdown structures those at the top may only stay aloft until one or other of those holding them up inevitably buckle or tire.

Watching from a safe distance to witness pragmatic ideologues in governance fire their shots into the ether simply to announce their presence becomes a kind of existentialist 'theatre of the absurd'. In a kind of a way it is 'WAITING FOR GODOT' writ large.

Albert Camus argues that life is essentially meaningless, although humans continue to try to impose order on existence and to look for answers to unanswerable questions. The irony of the pointlessness is all too poignant. Yet the status quo need not pertain. So, now is the best of times, and the worst of times for pyramidal structures that persist in rising and falling in CULTURALlandscapes.

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