Kalgoorlie Miner: (3) Inside the Whale

I share my house with three other young men. In the communal toilet there is a variety of reading material including the obligatory trashy magazines (they disappear when parents come to visit), joke books and, surprisingly for some guests, assorted high-brow literature and poetry.

The odd book out is "Russian Political Institutions", a 300 page volume on the inner workings of communism. No-one knows how it got there, and no-one has ever soldiered on past the first ten pages.

Anyway, one of the toilet books is "Inside the Whale and Other Essays" by George Orwell (I just realised that it is probably bad form to have "Russian Political Institutions" alongside a book of essays by Orwell, who is best known for anti-communism novels like "Animal Farm" and "1984" - my comrades and I will rectify this). In the feature essay, the title of which is a reference to the biblical story of Jonah and the whale, Orwell explains that novels generally use either passive or active characters, and does so using the whale as a metaphor for life, or the world.

Passive characters are said to be inside the whale; willing Jonahs, happy to let the whale go where it pleases, riding through life inside the protective blubber, and indifferently accepting everything that happens to themselves or others.

Active characters are outside the whale; renegade Jonahs, emotionally unprotected by the blubber, and constantly questioning and attempting to control the whale's direction.

I'll get to the point now.

I reckon that much of the western world is deeply inside the whale, far too easily ignoring or forgetting or feeling helpless against wrongs done to themselves, to others, and to the environment.

Why and how are issues like the irresponsible invasion of Iraq so effortlessly swept aside come election time, drowned amongst trivial nit-picking and competition over who has the shiniest teeth?

I think we are just so warmly cocooned inside the thick blubber of a booming global economy, that we will sit idly by while basic human rights and values disappear. We will more than happily trade the right of an Australian citizen to the presumption of innocence and a fair trial, for new "rights" like having a plasma television and a boob job.

Where is the rage in the electorate? Are we plain dumb, just forgetful, or has "Big Brother" (read Orwell's "1984") successfully trampled our spirits and brainwashed into this state of permanent and disgraceful apathy? Evidence suggests all three.

One man who maintained the rage up until the day he died was Hunter S. Thompson, who most people, perhaps unfairly, think of only as the maniacal, drug-addled, gun-toting fiend who wrote "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas". He certainly was all these things (and more), and was from all accounts a complete and utter bastard to deal with, but only because he never ever compromised on his values.

I urge anyone who needs an injection of rage to get a hold of Thompson's writings, in particular a compilation of his letters called "The Proud Highway" - you won't forget it. He was a man who sat defiantly on top of the whale, bottle of whiskey in hand, jerking on it's reins and flogging it until he was red in the face - we need more like him.