Not sufficient individuals speak about Anthony Albanese being the primary practising Daoist to carry the workplace of prime minister. A lot has been manufactured from his mastery of the turntable and semi-human speech, however his dedication to Daoist rules corresponding to Wu wei stays largely missed and underappreciated. And because the newest polls make one factor clear: Albanese is a grasp Daoshi.
What’s Wu wei, I hear you ask? Nicely, we are able to’t all be as enlightened because the wonks and politicos. For the uninformed, the famend sinologist Herrlee G. Creel thought-about the 2 contradictory forks of Wu wei, as discovered within the Daodejing and Zhuangzi, to imply two various things:
- an “angle of real non-action, motivated by an absence of want to take part in human affairs”;
- a “approach by way of which the one who practises it could acquire enhanced management of human affairs”.
It’s apparent to me, your common armchair Laozi fan, that Albanese is dedicated to Wu wei with the identical stage of enthusiasm his predecessor had for nihilism and delicate curry. The place some see a primary minister listlessly drifting in direction of electoral annihilation, borne on the winds of smugness, apathy and cynicism, I see a noble monk, self-immolating on the steps of Parliament Home in his non secular quest in direction of nirvana.
Latest polls counsel that the common voter isn’t as within the teachings of Laozi as you or I or the prime minister. Unable to grasp the artwork of detachment, voters stay caught on weak-willed mortal issues, corresponding to having a roof over their heads and/or consuming. These vices are all properly and good, however it’s an unenlightened man’s concept of what a Labor authorities’s holy goal is: to show us persistence, or else.
We should be affected person if we wish to condemn genocide, for instance. We should be affected person if we wish motion on local weather change. We should be affected person if we wish to transfer away from fossil fuels. We should be affected person if we wish to elevate the Jobseeker charge. We should be affected person if we wish to deal with the housing disaster. We should be affected person if we wish progressive tax reform. We should be affected person if we wish a lower in pointless army spending. We should be affected person if we wish to sort out the hovering value of dwelling. We should be affected person and lie down on the mattress of nails till it begins to really feel good.
One key determine steering the prime minister’s guided meditations is Tim Gartrell, his chief of workers and high strategist, a person articles love to explain as a mastermind. A “mastermind”, on this context, is somebody who has mastered the artwork of minding out for progress, motion, management and equally ineffective tosh in favour of “small targets”.
Gartrell is your basic neo-Labor ultra-wonk: a lab-bred consultatron5000 dedicated to an enormous image so massive (and clean) you can also make it out from area. The wunderkind behind Kevin ‘07 and *cough* Mark Latham *cough*, Gartrell is a champion of the aww shucks strategy to governing that has outlined each Labor PM since Rudd (the mere try of which drove Latham criminally insane).
Right here, the Wu wei technique has been interpreted as a form of gnostic apoliticism — an odd logic to arm your self with if you purport to work in politics. As an alternative of a Labor that had permission to tear the throat out of its enemies and depart them bleeding out on a mountain cross, we have now a celebration that determined it has to answer all exterior, inner and everlasting occasions with the passivity of roadkill.
Of their 10 years in electoral exile, Labor’s best minds milled in regards to the woods and wastelands of focus teams and assume tanks till they stumbled upon a common reality: they’re ineffective. As an alternative of rejecting this realisation like Christ rejecting Devil within the Judean desert, they selected to embrace it, and made it the cornerstone of their publish Rudd/Gillard/Rudd/Different resurrection.
What Gartrell and his followers understood then, and now, is that “the sunshine on the hill” is a essentially flawed concept, because it requires a) a light-weight, b) a hill, and c) somebody to screw in a brand new bulb at any time when mentioned mild goes out. Their radical reconfiguration of the ALP did away with the sunshine and the pesky hill altogether, and changed them with a low-sensory plain of nothingness. Atop that dimly lit plain, a “small goal” can appear to be a mountain, and the enactment of your opponent’s deeply unpopular tax reforms can appear to be integrity.
This “nothing” is on the core of the teachings of the brand new true believers, who really consider they’re on to one thing. So when ballot after ballot comes again suggesting they might be improper, one has to snicker. There is no such thing as a proper, there is no such thing as a improper, there’s solely what’s and what will likely be.
The voters’s impatience with what it sees as uninspired laziness is a check that they should fail if they’re to realize the identical stage of awakening (usually mistaken for apathy by the ignorant) because the prime minister and his acolytes. It’s primary zen and the artwork of Newspoll upkeep: do or don’t, why even attempt?
Are you impressed with Albanese’s enlightened type of do-nothing politics? Readers, we wish to hear from you — particularly whereas our feedback are closed resulting from our web site improve. Ship us your ideas on this text to letters@crikey.com.au. Please embrace your full identify to be thought-about for publication. We reserve the best to edit for size and readability.
