Sydney Life

The lights on the porch were just right, enough to see the glass you are drinking from but not the pores of the person you are talking to. There was a bunch of relaxed looking students enjoying their weekend in the best way possible, with a crispy snag rolled in a fluffy piece of bread. I sidled up to the evening’s host to get some clarification about the guests that I didn’t know.

D: “So who’s that guy?”
H: “Oh he’s the neo-realist.”

For a moment, that struck me as a little bit of an odd way to describe someone. Then I remembered that sixty percent of the guests were government honours students.

D: “And that one?”
H: “Well he’s a Republican, but we let him come anyway”.

It took me a while to get over the extreme nerdiness that a simple thing like introductions had managed to acquire. To think that people around me were now being defined by their political orientation seemed absurd. But when you have made the decision to devote an entire year to one subject, having studied it for the three years previous to that, it is hard to relate to life in terms other than those corresponding to it. So here we were, living and breathing honours even as it influenced our social interaction.

Back at school I guess you were described by trivial things, according to who you were going out with, or what subjects you were studying, as everyone tended to be from a less diverse back ground. First year uni expanded all this, with a group of people from such different social, cultural and economic environments. I felt like the new friends I was making were my friends because we had more important things in common than where we lived. I made friends in my courses and was able to talk to them about things we were both passionate about, and friends through Clubs & Societies events based on particular extra curricular activities, things my school friends weren’t particularly interested in. Of course, people still need a way to categorise you, and eventually you’d be asked what school you went to. But the stereotyping seemed both delayed and less obviously verbal, the most immediate expression being based on what you were wearing… making you the hippy, the college kid, the activist, the socialite.

I feel like our propensity to classify people can hinder us a lot, because we often miss out on worthwhile experiences. You know, the old ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ argument. It’s a valid point, particularly as people start to work this tendency to their advantage, and re-invent their covers rather than changing the contents of the book.

These days everyone seems to have a cause. It is relatively easy to identify with particular issues, and is often seen as socially responsible to do so. But are we really doing anything about it? I’m not saying I’m an amazing campaigner for world peace, which allows me to freely criticise these champagne socialists. I am probably also open to this attack. In a world where people put each other in boxes it seems the most important thing is trying to make sure you are seen to be in the right one.

Last week Clive Hamilton spoke as part of the Sydney Ideas series presented at the Seymour Center. The room was filled with shocked laughter, as often laughter is the only way to respond when we hear things people have said that are so obviously untrue that it’s scary. And so we giggled nervously and shook our heads as he told us about the ways businessmen manipulated the government into misdirected policies. But perhaps we should have been crying instead, at least then we might look more like we realise the weight of the issue. As Hamilton explained “The Dirty Politics of Climate Change” the woman in front of me seemed particularly adamant to show her social concern. Indeed her head was nodding in agreement so much I feared it might fall off. I couldn’t help wondering if she lives in one of the houses in my street, which puts on the sprinklers at 2am as a sneaky way to escape the water restrictions. The whole thing reminded me of the article Honi wrote about just how much of a tokenistic gesture Earth Hour was.

Perhaps I am being cynical. Of course it’s better to at least be talking about these issues and acknowledging their importance. But I feel like if we spent less time labelling people and ourselves and more time doing something about the things we believe in then we might actually be getting somewhere.