BRAND, OR BULLSHIT?
WHY I'M LOOKING TO VOTE INDEPENDENT
IN THIS ELECTION
I’m fed up to the back teeth with bullshit. By “bullshit”,
I’m referring to that huge spectrum of public statements that fall between the
anchor points of Fact and Outright Lies.
It's really simple. I've had it with people who
hide or obfuscate the entirety of a truth when it’s there to be spoken. I feel
a visceral revulsion to right-fighters who slant and spin bits of the whole of
a situation in order to divide people and win an argument. I’m also done with being
talked at by would-be public leaders who feel it’s OK to be so lacking in
ordinary human experience of the real world, people with so few meat'n'potatoes
social skills, so little empathy with the breadth of people they hope or claim
to represent, such a dearth of knowing
or talent for effectively communicating,
and such a lack of intellectual, emotional and psychological maturity that they
feel the need to crawl into a political party, to play their clandestine games
until they’ve acquired enough skill at bullshit to qualify for the Inner Ring.
On a magic carpet of bullshit they then rustle up “the numbers” to get on to
the passenger list to parliament, get themselves a territory to shit on, and
ride in on the coat-tails of a leader they think will get them a seat in the Inner
Tribal Cubbyhouse.
No wonder most of them deliver crap; they are
crap. Crap at so many aspects of being human. Crap leaders. And like all people
who want something from someone else, they're a pushover for any vested
interest that beckons.
I have some experience of what I'm talking
about here. In my younger days I worked for a while in an electoral office, not
because I wanted to be a politician, but because I knew, respected and
supported the guy I worked for. Later on, as part of my PR business, I got the
job of attempting to train politicians who had actually got themselves elected
without having a clue how to relate to anybody outside of the party machine, or
how to effectively represent them while spending 5 days of the week in the
Clubhouse, out of their electorate.
My first reaction to a party politician, or
anyone thinking seriously of going into politics and doing some good for
someone other than their party bosses, their lobbyist “friends” and themselves
is this – “Forget It.” Forget about your Personal Image. Forget about who's-who
in your party, and who pulls the strings. Keep going to Branch meetings by all
means, but make your first priority to go out and build some character. Get a
real job – preferably one in which you'll actually get more than just your
hands dirty, learn about yourself and what really makes you tick, learn your
shortcomings and do some serious work on them. Earn your way up through creating
productive results, learn how to relate to real people and how to get them
working with you on a vision of something that's bigger than all of you and
worth the while. Become personally responsible for the welfare of people who
don’t belong to any of your tribes. Start creating projects that will be
measured in real results, and not just to a performance review by some
pasty-faced academic with a degree in HR.
For the first decade of
my professional career, I kept my mouth shut. SHUT! And my ears open. So what
the hell was I doing before I got so loud? I was learning. I was working. I was
working like steam to catch up on an upbringing that gave me no idea about
myself, about the world outside a hymn book, and possible places for me in it.
I was building a life, several vocations, and eventually a one-man business. I
wasn't loafin' or dreamin', or looking for a handout. Drama school and auditions were daytime
occupations, so I worked all-nighters and most weekends to support my family. I
got wise (slowly) to the ways of the world, and then found out that much of that
was more of an appearance than real. Start again…...
Politicians devote most
of their learning time to getting hep to the ways of their party. Their primary
aim is to survive and serve the political game, and only secondarily to actually
serve the public. No wonder there's a yawning gap of ignorance between those
who vote and those who get themselves voted. Nowadays I (obviously) spend more
time with my mouth open, but not at the expense of hearing, seeing, feeling,
smelling and tasting the feedback. Seriously, go and Google my name. Even as an
actor, you won't find a damn thing that predates me going to NIDA and serving
an apprenticeship with amateur theatre companies, the Ensemble Theatre (where I
got paid, not for acting, but for washing the dishes after the show each night),
the Pageant Theatre Company, the Australian Theatre for Young People, The
Canberra Repertory, the Canberra Theatre for Young People, and the Melbourne
Theatre Company. And those who knew me before then also knew that, even as an
amateur, I was studying seriously the theory and the craft, and going anywhere
and everywhere, working mostly for no pay, in order to get experience, and
experimenting to see for myself what worked and what didn't. I looked for opportunities
to fail. I still do. I don't like it, but I'm not afraid of it. If I fall flat
on my face, I'm embarrassed for 5 minutes, and sometimes have to clean up a
mess I may have caused. That's good for character, too. During that process though, I learned
something of depth about the project, the world, and myself in it. I got (God
knows how) that there’s no growth without risk.
“Risk averse” politics,
and those who currently practice it, give me the shits. Apparent busy-ness and
a string of “enquiries” doth not make for progress or growth. Not a single
breakthrough in human history, as far as I'm aware, was ever achieved by a
Careful Person. No monuments have ever been erected to someone who said “Let's
not do anything. Let's just sit tight, and maybe no-one will notice, and we'll
get elected again next time because we can say 'See? I didn't stuff it up: it
wasn't my fault that it went wrong. It was...........(the legacy of the last
mob)'”
Thank the lord for
social media. When I first became politically aware, the guy who won the
election then pretty much forgot about those who voted, and looked after those
who donated instead. Until the next election when he pretended – again. Now
it's different. Day after day they're reminded “We're watching you” which is
why they’re funded by their party to take classes in lying, and hiding and ducking
and weaving weasel-words. Every time a minister makes a statement, you'll find
an Emergency Exit lying in it somewhere. Very rarely will you find an unequivocal
commitment. And they're no longer bothering to bring some subtlety to bear. Ask
a question nowadays and politicians openly ignore it and go back to their
songsheets. They get away with it because they can. We – yes, you and I – let them.
It’s only a matter of time, though, before people at the bottom of the
drip-line who are actually falling further and further behind will rise up and
get nasty. It’s already breaking out in random acts of rage and frustration.
But the signs are there that the dispossessed and disillusioned are getting
organised.
I don’t want to be
around when that erupts. It’s called “a day of Reckoning”.
It stuns me that people
“go into politics” without having a clear understanding of what the founding
fathers intended a representative should bring to the table. It is my
understanding that a candidate would first have acquired knowing of some truths
about his/her temperament, and the personality built on top of that, and how
that comes across to others. It was intended that you first be successful in a
useful career – not a mediocre lawyer of policeman, not an elected official of
a trade union, or a banker or accountant whose only success in life has been to
help rich bludgers avoid paying their dues to society. You are supposed to
rock-solid know out of bitter experience what your values are and in what
hierarchy you stack them, and under what circumstances you'll re-order that
hierarchy. You will have seen a real need in our society, and have a clearly
articulated idea of how to fill it. You have to learn how to read the duality
and the importance rankings of others, too, and get utterly familiar with, and
become an acknowledged authority on the subject matter of what you think you
might stand for.
I think, too, that our
forefathers envisaged that every politician should do his time in public
service, then bugger off back to join the ranks in his/her former life in the
real world, not suckle up to another teat for the rest of a bloated, parasitic
life.
What’s getting my goat
is this notion that is so prevalent right now, which is that you can just come
out of nowhere, have your photo taken with the party leader, and build a
concocted brand through various marketing tactics. To position yourself as an
expert is not difficult; If the Salim Mehajer and the Kardashians can do it, so
can anyone with enough money to buy or wangle a spot on “A Current Affair”.
Experts are a dime a dozen on the nightly news and comment shows, but most of
them have never left school! And those who pretend to engage in discussion with
them aren’t asking the hard questions like “What's the answer?” and “How do you
know?” Except Leigh Sales who bailed up La Turnbull one night with “You say all
this is true, but where's your evidence?” He just stared at her with a stunned
mullet look that would have done Tony Abbott proud. Busted! What I’m hearing
are too many vague policy utterances carefully crafted, not from vision or any appreciation
of a real need, but from tepid cauldrons of opinion polls and focus groups.
Unless you want to
spend the rest of your life inert and dripfed on the kind of fluids one gets
when the water in the fishbowl isn’t changed, you need to ask the same questions
of yourself -- “Come on precious, you think you're so special, and suckholes
who want something from you are telling you you're so special. But special at
what? What's your particular gift? What use is it, and to whom? When did you
last successfully exercise it for someone else’s benefit? What's your proof?
How do you “know” you're not just jerking off? What do you want to provide
people with? What are you great at? How do you know that?”
Show me your evidence.
Show me the fruit that tells me what kind of a tree you are. Who is being
nourished by it? What do you love? What is your emotional and social currency –
Approval? Praise? Security? Wealth? What is your Legacy going to be (because
legacy is always superior to currency)? What's your step-by-step plan for
achieving that legacy, and what's the time frame for each step?”
We have two well-padded
political “leaders” right now who keep playing hoppo-bumpo around each other, talking
about so-called “plans”, but there are few active verbs in their
sentences and no detailed evidence of a real plan, or of any actual planning
going on. There’s scant detail – just a slogan with no verbs in it, a few
splashes of coloured bullet points, some fasntasy picture-book CGI and a bit of
a media strategy for selling something that doesn't exist. There's nothing
joining up the dots. No map that I can read and see a) where we're actually
going (really); and b) how we're going to get there if we follow that plan; and
c) what are we going to have to risk in order to get it (if there’s no risk,
it's not worth anything)? Nothing. Nothing except slick-looking, obfuscating
bullshit. Which leads me to suspect that there may indeed be a plan, but it's
nothing like what we're being told. The Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus are still
out front and centre, covering for an agenda that will not be spoken, except
later on Wikileaks, when it's already too late (eg. The Free Trade
Agreements with hidden clauses that allow corporations to sue governments if
they don’t get what they want).
Some acquaintances of
mine properly and reasonably disagree with me about the political class. For example,
“Cabinet Ministers”, one pointed out to me recently, “don't need to know
education and science and arts and agriculture etc. That's why we have a public
service. Look at football coaches”, and what she meant by that is: good coaches
aren’t all good football players. “You don’t have to be a great player to be a
great coach”. To that I added: “In some cases, true. But have you looked at
every football coach?” Ignoring the fact that there are skill sets to being a
coach, teacher or mentor that are entirely different to being a star player
(because that’s another whole conversation), there is no football coach that
comes out of nowhere at age twenty-three and takes his team straight to the
Grand Final. Coaches are often people who grew up the son or daughter of a
coach, and played and coached for decades in the lower grades... Turnbull grew
up the son of a “battler” (from Double Bay), and judging by his first year,
he's running true to form. Oh and, by the way,” I couldn’t help adding, “How
come public service top brass are now outnumbered and over-powered by privately
contracted “advisors”?? The expert, experienced advice part of “coaching” is being
drowned out by “brand-makers”.
By combing our
viewpoints, we got to a deeper understanding of at least one shortcoming in the
present practice (or lack) of “ministerial responsibility”
The “Join-a-Party”
political shortcut to Somebodyland, this quick hack of using a political party,
social media and modern tech to build up a Self-Image that will get you elected
by the same people who vote for contestants on “The X-Factor” – is not
enough. Not nearly enough. Look at Julie
Bishop last week, when questioned about one of her party's central bits of
election flummery, looked stunned, miffed and snapped “Well this is one of your
gotcha moments is it?” Did she say the same thing in school in an aural exam?
Probably. She is, by her own manipulation, Deputy Leader of the party and
Minister for Foreign Affairs, and she hasn't bothered to even pre-read her script
for the day???? If I’d done that on stage, radio and TV, my career wouldn’t
have lasted 5 minutes. But somehow a lesser standard is OK for appearing to
running the country and its relations with other countries???
I think not.
There is no substitute
for assessing and founding proper groundwork. That means getting honest about your
self and innovatively addressing the deficiencies you find. That entails answering
the three constant invitations that life sends you every day:-
· The invitation to be
honest and authentic in the moment.
· The invitation to let
go of what’s over (if it happened more
than a second ago, it’s over), and get on with growing.
· The invitation to
dissolve your prejudices.
Groundwork for wannabe
politicians also means doing the research on the skills and the content that
you could profitably master. It means seeking out and getting with people who
can teach you by example. It means honest, committed hard work, and developing
a vision for exactly how you'll measure your success in making a difference to
others. It also means becoming an authority on what you and the Party are
actually doing, or “promising” to do. It means having nothing to do with
pretending to do one thing while you're actually doing something quite
different. It means thinking things through and not doing a Sinodinis and
bleating, “Look, just vote for us and I'll bring it up at a party meeting after
the election.” How lazy and arrogant can one get???
Like Nick Xenophon,
Tony Windsor, and, yes, even Jacquie Lambie you have to earn the privilege of
having a “personal brand”, and the only way to do that is to actually know what
you stand for, and why, formulate a plan, recruit willing participants, and
execute it. If you're looking for short-term “fame” and recognition in politics
– believe me, you're not even barking up the wrong tree; you're in the wrong
bloody forest. As a nation we have well and truly had it up to the eyeballs
with emotionally and psychologically deprived egotists who, on no real evidence,
have decided what is “right” for everyone.
Ask yourself “Where
will I be 10 years?” If the answer doesn't involve someone other than yourself
and envisage firstly a determined regimen of self-improvement, please do
yourself and everyone else a big favour, and find another line of work for
which you really do have to grow up if you're going to keep up with it.
Now, if you’ve met all
those requirements above, if you’re really a business badass and your legacy is
strong, here are some tips I have for getting your brand out there:
o Be a Creator of
Contexts, for yourself and for those you take with you on your journey.
o Be a teller of stories.
Paint pictures of what has been and what could be – if only..... Detailed
pictures, please.
o Give up being right
about anything, and instead be a devout student of Further Possibilities.
o Be like bamboo – firm
and flexible.
o Level with people. Take
them into your confidence. They will reward you with their confidence. Whatever
you want to reap you must first sow.
o Cultivate real
openness. Avoid pretences of it. Notice when Malcolm open his arms in mock
surrender, one of them (usually the righthand one) is either a barely disguised
finger-point, or a karate chop. He's such a lousy pretender!
o Trust. To do that, you
have first to trust yourself; that involves knowing where you cannot be trusted
– where you might sell out. And don't kid yourself that you don't have sellout
points – you do. And it's the ones you don't acknowledge, at least to yourself,
that will bring you undone sooner or later.
o Have yourself regularly
tested for levels of Empathy. Empathy is not the same as Sympathy – the latter
is “feeling for”: Empathy is “feeling with”. If your Empathy levels are getting
low, do something about it before you start doing serious social damage.
o Take a course in reclaiming
your Integrity. Very few people even know what it is. They confuse it with one
of its ingredients – honesty. Integrity is much more than just “honesty”. Begin
by looking it up in a really good dictionary. When you get to something like “a
state of being in which nothing is missing, nothing is hidden”, you're getting
warm. A person with Integrity is an open book – not a trait to be found in the
present Treasurer, Finance Minister, Environment Minister, Minister for Women,
or Immigration Minister. A person with integrity is never compelled to plead “Trust
me!” If anyone says that to you, open your eyes and ears and have your “Maybe”
tray ready. Without Integrity (even if you don't know what it is) you are not
to be trusted and, deep in the core of your soul, you know that.
o Decide if you’re ready
to put yourself out there. Do you know what this is?
UU
It’s the International Symbol of Commitment – put your arse
on the line. If you're not prepared to risk your arse for a better world for
everyone, bugger off back to Twitter; it’s where you belong for now.
o Be responsible. Make “The Buck stops here” a daily practice,
not a slogan.
o Never automate anything
that should be human. Politics, whether in public service or in boardrooms, is
personal. Always. Robocalls have me hanging up annoyed before the first
sentence is complete. If some area of your life becomes impersonal, you've lost
the plot. Whatever you do, or don't do, affects people – personally.
o Lead from in front.
Never send anyone to do a job you're not prepared to undertake yourself. And
never squib on doing everything to completion. No loose ends. That requires
doggedness, and commitment to something larger than yourself.
o Keep your commitments.
Make your word your wand on your own authority.
o Make no promises.
Promises are made by people who secretly know they might not deliver. They may
not be aware of why, but they promise in order to sweep niggling self-mistrust
under the rug. They’re using an altruistic value (eg. Trustworthiness) as a
whip to keep its opposite chained up in a back-kennel. Promise nothing; instead,
state your clear intention and your plans to fulfil your intention. When you
know you're going to deliver what you intend, or something even better, a
promise is no longer needed. Intentions have the validity of purpose and
direction; promises are meaningless vacuums. The jokes about politicians'
promises are no longer funny – not after Tony Abbott and his cross-party heirs
and successors.
o Keep scaling you’re the
content of all that you think, feel, say and do. Make sure your substance stays
substantial. Constantly review – “How am I doing, and is there another, better
way right now?”
o Do everything you do in
the utmost humility. Acknowledge your successes, but keep them quiet. Learn
from your failures and openly acknowledge “I can do this better”. Constantly
check -- “What am I leaving behind me as I move my world along the path?”
There it is. Have you
noticed that nothing on the above list is particular to politicians? It applies
to all humans who are engaged in being. So I have one more suggestion –
o Get all of the above
under your belt first, then decide if you really want to engage in politics.
People will follow you
anywhere as long as they know where they are now, where you're taking them, and
how far they've come so far. Do just this much and you'll have already a
“brand” without wasting resources having to construct one.
Hustle. Yep, hustle.
Widen your armoury of ways and means to wangle, so that you can always apply
methods that are appropriate to the people you're dealing with at the time. Get
used to horse-trading.
And once you become a
brand, the work never stops. If you truly love your legacy, respect it and
maintain gratitude for the opportunities to create one, your chosen path today
will be the best decision you ever make.
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