Coming home - Page 3

From Griffith REVIEW Edition 10: Family Politics
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.

Written by David Whish-Wilson

IN CONTRAST TO MY OWN, MY FATHER'S WORLD VIEW WAS SHAPED by a childhood spent in Depression-era poverty and an early emphasis on self-reliance as a means to escape poverty. In the isolated rural area where he was raised, an orthodox religion was the means of encouraging both a moral life and, therefore, some degree of harmony within family and community. From his mid-teens to his early thirties he worked for a military institution, reinforcing his ideas about discipline and honour and self-reliance (he succeeded in becoming an officer and gaining a subsidised university education). The experiences of the emergency in Malaya, the Indonesian Konfrontasi and the war in Vietnam shaped his political perspective. The Cold War looms large in his politics and in his justifications for the actions of America in the world. What remains largely unsaid, but which I suspect to be most important of all, is his experience on his return to Australia. I don't think my father will ever be able to forgive what he terms the "left", for the way that he and his fellow combatants were treated on their return. Rightly or wrongly, he believed that he was fighting for the good of Australia and for a way of life he feels many take for granted. He saw the hatred and revulsion on the face of his enemy – to see it again on the streets of his homeland, after such a long absence, has meant that he no longer feels entirely at home.

For these reasons, it amazed me to learn that my father was born into a socialist household. He remembers his own father railing against "private enterprise", at its injustices and failure to support the "small man". It was therefore entirely natural that my father voted Labor, unthinkingly (as he puts it) for most of his early years. In his own words, until one reaches the higher ranks, the military teaches one what to think, not how to think, so it was only when he started his own university studies in philosophy that he really began to question the relationship between his politics and his greater world view, based on his experiences and observations. Encouraged for the first time to question his beliefs and those of others, he simply couldn't manage to reconcile these things with either the overt Marxism of his lecturers (particularly the belief that it was acceptable to impose this system by force if necessary) or the ideology of the Labor Party at that time. One day, he found himself at a polling booth and, voting slip in hand, realised that for all its imperfections, the conservative ethos tallied more closely with his view of how the world worked.

Because of our natural political antipathies (and because of the fears of my mother whenever we share a drink together) my father and I have had to develop a language, a political Esperanto, by which we can communicate such feelings. This is, of course, learned behaviour (not what to think, but how to think) and is an entirely different language from our ironic conversations about football, family, our lives and other matters. To an outsider, unaware of our history, this careful discourse between father and son might seem a trifle strange, sad even, ironed of feeling as it appears (in fact, it feels rather like walking on hot coals) except that both my father and I realise that when we are talking about politics, we are also talking about ourselves (and that the greater world of politics is deeply rooted in the politics of our family). It is a language characterised by seeking, above all, to avoid violence and disdain – and what Robert Musil has called the real disease of culture – that "bright stupidity" (not a lack of intelligence, but rather a "failure" of intelligence) that expresses "an insufficient harmony between the one-sidedness of feeling and a reason that is not strong enough to hold it in check".

What we both agree on is this: that the current and growing polarisation in political discourse is unfortunate (according to my father, our society today is more troubled, confused, polarised and unstable than at any time in his adult life) but that at least in dialogue and disputation there is always the possibility of coming to an agreement. Debate and political opposition are obviously essential to the health of a democracy, and so is the existence of an organic opposition between conservatives and liberals. Whether such political convictions are the result of nature or nurture, or both, is irrelevant. What matters is that our society is complex enough to make it obvious that any one ideology is insufficient to encompass that complexity. Conservatives will always be there to serve their essential function of limiting the possibility of destructive change, while social democrats will always be there to question the way things are done and to seek the means to improve them. It is when either side moves towards extremity, blinded by ideology or imagined political necessity, that the danger lies. Neither of us would disagree, for example, with US Congresswoman Barbara Lee when she demands that "in the attempt to defeat terrorism, [we] do not become the enemy that we deplore".

As a younger man I regretted intensely – as did my father – that we failed to share the same political view. And yet now I can see that I have been lucky – there is something suspicious about the automatic transfer of ideas and beliefs – a suspicion he shares. It was in explaining to him, however, the reasons why I thought so many people disliked George W. Bush and John Howard so intensely, that I realised the true extent of our differences. We talked about it long into the night and for most of the following day – and yet I was still unable to convince him – just as I remained unconvinced by his arguments. It seems to me that Pascal's dictum is quite true and that "the heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing". Yet it was also during this prolonged and sometimes heated discussion that we both realised how similar we were – and how much we therefore have in common. At the heart of it, our values are essentially the same.

My father and I have lived different lives but there are good reasons for believing what we believe. Both of us are the products of our experiences and our times. Our politics differ according to these differences, if not our ideas about what it means to live the good life. And yet, despite these differences, more and more often I am told how much I am like my father.

This is, I suppose, how a father gives birth to a son. ♦