Back in Wellington it was the Southerlies that were the ones to watch out for. Here? Northerlies. 39 degrees yesterday, and nowhere to hide. Yay. Luckily the cool change came through around midnight and today is a pleasant 29. Good news.
In the bad news stakes though is the same weather patterns causing these fires in South Australia. Before Christmas I remember reading some Sydney reporter for the NZ Herald waxing lyrical about how great all the rain in NSW had been, you know, verdant lawn and all. My first thought? Munter. After a big rainy season it takes about 5 minutes for a 44 degree day to turn that stuff to the perfect tinder. Let’s hope for no more loss of life.
Meanwhile, in both the good and bad news stakes is how much I depend on the web for good information. It’s bad news because I’m still out in the boonies, net-less (but enjoying the space and privacy). It’s good news because isn’t the web the best source ever? I miss it. I remember back in the day, having to do stuff like buy newspapers, or consult things like books or magazines to find out great stuff, but no more!
One of my favourite stories is of a mate back in ’92 who told me he had a “modem”. I said, “What, like in that film wargames? Let’s crank it up!” We spent the next 20 minutes perusing the text-only bulletin boards at the Victoria University server, looking for the results from the local chess club. Hi-tech and awe-inspiring stuff let me tell you. I was gob-smacked by it.
I mention this because without the interweb (and still living in Clayton) I can only talk about two things. The crazy neighbours, or the work I’m doing on the thesis. Lucky you.
Oh, I could also talk about the news I’m seeing on TV, but all I’ve noticed recently is Howard making the mistake of referring to “his decisions, and those of his government” in a particular kind of way. But I don’t want to be the one to warn him about hubris. My spidey-sense tells me he’s in for trouble if this gets too grandiose.
Greatest Aussie PM ever? Only if you consider being ruthless enough to exploit the Tampa in 2001, and to ‘progressively’ adopt all of Hanson’s policies since ’96, mumble mumble....
Anyhow. My thesis. At the moment I’m reworking the introduction, and it’s requiring me to take a ‘big-picture’ look at what I’ve written. It’s interesting, like all projects I do I’d now like to rewrite a substantial portion of it, but my commonsense tells me that the threat to my pride at not producing the ‘best thesis ever’ needs to take a back-seat for awhile.
But hey, I’ve been looking at the subject of nations and nationalism for near on fifteen years and I still don’t know everything. So maybe I just need to be a little more humble and just produce the best I can in the time I have. Or, to be more precise, in the time I’ve had. Six years on one project is more than long enough.
It seems like only yesterday that I was consulting with people at and around Auckland University about the prospect of taking up a Ph.D. I pretty quickly noticed that people were using words like ‘ordeal’, ‘loneliness’, and ‘arduous’. I should have listened.
The thing is, pretty quickly you become one of the few experts in your chosen field, if not only because there’s so few people who want to be such a specialist. Consequently, you end up being unable to talk about the details of what it is you know with normal people, and it means you can enjoy the bestest and mostest fun social life ever, but there’s always this weird and intangible ‘distance’ between what you know and your ability to explain it.
This must be what being Batman was like. But hey, it’s better than waking up in the morning and thinking, ‘I will be a dishpig forever’.
To be honest, I wouldn’t give up the last six years of character-building for anything in the world. I undertook this task because I knew it would be the most difficult thing I’d ever undertake. I knew that it was the pinnacle of my chosen field. Sure, I’ll never get the same kind of recognition as wearing that silver fern, but I know that I’ve accomplished something that few others have.
Except for the 10,000 Ph.D.’s that graduate very year in India. But most of them are in computer science or telecommunications, so sweet as.
FYI, I’ve entitled the thesis ‘The National Cell’, because it captures nicely the main motivation behind the project, which is to justify diversity in contemporary nation-states. The aim is to illustrate how in countries like New Zealand and Australia the people form a kind of ‘organic whole’ in terms of their social and political interaction.
The analogy I like to use is of an apartment complex, with each residence forming a kind of ‘cell’ that contributes to the overall dynamic of the entire complex itself. In one cell you have the smell of curry, they’re English, in another you have the sounds of a didgeridoo, they’re Japanese tourists, in another you have really loud talking, they’re Canadians trying to explain why they’re not American.
My interest is the interplay between each of these individual cells. In a real apartment block people can come and go, but if your apartments are the individual minorities in a nation-state then each type of person is pretty much stuck with one another. Sure, you can try and isolate yourself from the types of people you don’t like, but most normal people will try to find a way to get on.
In my experience the main cause of trouble in these types of circumstances is usually misunderstanding. So you can always try to make the complex more harmonious by ensuring that every apartment is stocked with the same kind of person, but this is a fallacy. If one thing is true in the real world it is that people always form cliques, and sometimes on the flimsiest of excuses. This means that harmony is always under threat from argument.
My opinion, based on the opining of a lot of other people who like reading, is that you don’t have to try to entirely stop conflict. Instead, you make sure that the structure and systems of the apartment block minimise the opportunity for conflict, and encourage communication to prevent misunderstanding. In a practical sense, you make sure that the feng shui of the building is good, you know, no one interrupting other peoples privacy or what they consider 'their business'. And you make sure the English have good extractor fans, the Japanese have good sound proofing, and you quietly reassure the Canuks that no one thinks they’re American, because Americans don’t say ‘aboot’.
Conflict in the form of arguments will still occur, after all it is natural. Some people just like to argue. But instead of freaking out about the possibility of conflict, you expect it, and make sure you can prevent it from ever becoming violent, a far scarier proposition.
In essence this idea pivots on the word engagement. You want to make sure that it’s no one group that calls all the shots in the apartment block. Sure, a group committee might decide to ban curry, but it has to be a collective decision that allows for the fact that the English seem to depend on this stuff, and might not be able to do without it (or might be willing to put up a fight to keep it), and make sure the English are included in the decision.
Translating this idea into academic jargon is of course 'fun' and challenging. I'll keep you posted on the progress, and in the meantime enjoy the rest of what holidays you may have.