The Big Picture (the psychology of voting)

Why is that people are no longer interested in their own best interest politically. Has it become too difficult to get to the real heart of issues that directly effect us or has our interests been intentionally obscured by media and our politicians. Especially here in Australia.

My view is that we have been steered away from what's in our own interest in school, to be more concerned with what's is in "societies interests"ore than that of the individual. The politicians and media are just their to guide you to what they "believe" is the interest of society. That is at least for the average citizen.

The average citizen won't care because what could they do any way. However there are groups that do care and do get things changed and do get funding and do manipulate our government decisions through lobbying. Corporations, organisations and NGOs are all vying for our money. At a time which spending money is not in the best interest for Australians. Most of these special interest groups end up feathering their own nests at our expense with mis-directed funds being spent on non existent (or close to) problems.

The government do not want us to have a vested interest in how they spend our money. If we did we they would be more inclined to spend it wisely. All of the money that Australia spend is actually borrowed from the bank, with the plan that Australia will pay it back. When you go for a loan, they will give you one on the basis that you have a job, some savings or really some collateral for the loan. For a country we are the collateral (our labour), it is is the intention that you and I will pay back their loan for what ever it is they have spent. For me this is what made me start to care, as it directly effects me, and how much tax I pay, how much I pay for electricity and communications, what jobs are available and how many etc etc.

I'm no expert by any stretch of the imagination, however I have modest success establishing possibilities of a given action in the future and then assigning likely hoods for each possibility. My methodology is to look at past events and how they have effected us today and extrapolate out further to what they might mean in the future. With this I also look at trends occurring in media as a whole. I started doing this as I was experimenting with the stock market years ago. For example if you told me 20 years ago that I would be x-rayed and checked for explosives at the airport, I would have laughed at you. However after 911 it was not so difficult to predict the outcome.

If I look at the big picture today what will be the possibilities? The issues in the media are seem to be pushing the following:

• Breakdown of the family
• Equality of outcomes
• Breakdown and realigning of morals and the idea of what is moral.
• Acceptance of the idea, that we will owe more to government and be paid less.
• Acceptance of surveillance of the population in the interest of security.
• Propagation of postmodernist ideology masquerading as morals
• Giving up of personal privacy.

The above to me are all largely social themes rather than economic, at a time where Australia needs economic attention. I wonder what possibilities I could come up with when I take a look at similar themes as they have occurred throughout history and extrapolate them forward. What will I be shocked about in 20 years time, what changes will we notice as Australians and should I even care.

Through my future posts I want to discuss what some of these possibilities might be for Australia. Will postmodernism usher in the utopian dream of peace love and veganism or will something else develop...

LB