After two years of delays, I received word that my field trip to Australia was finally to go ahead. Conditions for the trip were subject to significant uncertainty due to the continuing social upheaval in the country. But with no end in sight to the current confusion, it was deemed a case of now or never and I accepted the risks and boarded the plane for Melbourne.
What became apparent from the very first but which I was very reluctant to accept was the dreadful state of our anthropological literature on the country of Australia. The picture given to me by our reference books jarred so strongly with the country I experienced by my senses and intellect that I wondered whether or not the pilot had taken me on a misadventure to a completely different land. I shall attempt in these initial notes to convey the main points of difference between the reality I saw and our lofty tomes on the matter and thereby to begin to correct our understanding.
The first error which I mean to correct is the notion that Australia is a culture devoid of faith, religion and religious ceremony. From the very first, my journey to Melbourne forced me repeatedly to call this assumption into doubt. Indeed, the Australians have as sophisticated and complex an array of religious ceremonies as any culture that we nominally call religious. Entry to the country is predicated on one such ceremony known as a “test” whereby a member of the priestly caste dressed in a full ceremonial outfit suffered me to open my mouth and have a special stick stuck down my throat. The stick, known as the “sample”, is promptly presented to the oracle who decides whether entry into the country may be allowed. Fortunately, in my case, the oracle favoured my entry. However, several others were not so lucky and were thus tripped up at the first hurdle.
On arrival at the airport in Melbourne, members of the priestly caste were once again highly notable for their elaborate outfits by which they were distinguished from the functionaries responsible for processing my paperwork for entry. Of this priestly caste I will have more to say presently. But let us now attempt a brief description of the religion from which the priestly caste derive their authority.
The god of the Australians they call by the name “science”. It is, to be sure, a very strange god by both anthropological and theological standards for the Australians say their god is nothing more or less than truth itself. Apart from truth, he has no properties. This disembodied god has no feelings nor emotions, he appears not in any art or painting and only rarely and very indirectly in literature and song. One might say of this god that he is all head and no heart. In this way he is perhaps the exact opposite of the old god who ruled in the west who was all heart and no head.
Of the priestly caste I have hitherto referred, the highest type are known as the “experts” and it is they who intermediate between the god and the general public. Now this leads us to the second great error in our anthropological literature on the country of Australia for it is said that the Australians have a separation of church and state and that the priestly caste and the political class are entirely divorced from each other. Nothing could be further from the truth. The priestly caste, the experts, run the country to such a degree that I often found it difficult to ascertain in what way the political caste was involved at all. A phrase I heard repeated over and again by the political caste was that they were just “following the advice” while the common folk would often admonish each other to “trust the experts”. In this way, fealty to the god and to the priestly caste is almost universally practiced by the highest and lowest members of the society.
The main day-to-day responsibility of the priestly caste of experts is to cast oracles which are referred to as “models”. These oracles are used extensively by the political class and the general public. It would not be an exaggeration to say that most of the activities of daily life are based around these oracles, once again putting paid to the notion that the Australians are an irreligious people. Indeed, it was the casting of such oracles in March 2020 that led the Australians to completely overturn their social arrangements, a matter I will return to presently.
Oftentimes I asked my informant to explain such and such a cultural practice and he would refer back to the oracle as if that by itself was enough explanation. The wearing of a mask, for example, is dictated by an oracle who at any time may declare that the mask must be worn indoors, outdoors or not at all. The dictates of the oracle are final. Several times, upon attempting to interpret the oracles for myself, I asked whether or not they seemed incorrect and my informant simply laughed and said that I must “trust the experts” and that was the end of the matter.
Beneath the experts in the priestly caste are a number of lower level ranks among whom are counted the “bureaucrats”, the “journalists”, the “fact checkers” and the “opinion writers”. It is their role to disseminate the expert “opinion” and the details of the latest oracle readings to which the public must adhere. It is here that a significant change has occurred in Australian society since the great upheaval of 2020 for a new class of experts have come to prominence and replaced the old readings with new oracles while also implementing a completely new set of social practices and ceremonies. The old oracles which governed society were from the experts in the field known as “economics” and the name of the priestly caste were the “economists”. However, beginning in March of 2020, a new caste took power who call themselves “epidemiologists”. These epidemiologists threw out the old oracles such as the “GDP” oracle, the “inflation” oracle and the “unemployment” oracle, and implemented new ones, the most important of which is the “cases” oracle. It alone seems to drive much of the new practices and ceremonies that have been introduced by the new priestly caste.
The majority of the public does not concern itself with the act of divination, preferring simply to be told what the latest reading is. Nevertheless, the “cases” oracle is all important in Australian society. It is the first thing a man checks of a morning whereupon he gives much thought to what the oracle portends for his business, his career and his personal life. The political and merchant class also pays much attention to the oracle and will often announce new ceremonies and rules based on the oracle reading. Even in my short time in the country, I was surprised by the varying nature of the oracle which one day says this and the other says that and the two have little to do with each other. This has been the charge of a small group that has formed within the society who have criticised the new priestly caste of epidemiologists saying their readings of the oracle are false and there seemed to me to be substantive grounds for this accusation. However, when I put the idea to my informant he became angry and I was keen to avoid the subject thereafter.
This latter observation also contradicts the statements in our literature on the country of Australia where the Australians are said to be an easy going and satisfied people. This was not my impression at all but rather a general tension was the predominant emotional atmosphere of the land leading often to anxiety and anger in equal parts. This tension seemed to me directly related to the arrival of the new priestly caste who have implemented many new ceremonies and practices in a very short period of time from an anthropological point of view. This has included a society-wide initiation ceremony known as a “vaccination” which is now a significant determinant of a man’s social standing. Many of the new ceremonies and practices follow directly from participation in this ritual and this has caused significant discontinuity for many members of the public who do not wish to partake in the ritual saying that the oracles used to justify it have been read wrong while also denying the ascendancy of the new priestly caste about whom they say they were not consulted.
The speed with which the new priestly caste has taken power has given rise to a small but determined sect of dissenters that is made up a wide cross section of the society including a number of members of the priestly caste itself. These have been written off as blasphemers and heretics in the usual fashion by the use of such derogatory phrases as “anti-vaxxer” and “conspiracy theorist”. It appeared to me as if what had happened in the last two years in Australia was really the beginning of a sectarian religious split although my understanding of this was greatly hampered by the curious fact that the Australians themselves do not believe they are partaking of a religion at all and thus any attempt to get my informant to speak on the subject hit a dead end. If I may speak philosophically rather than anthropologically for a moment, it seems to me problematic that the Australians believe their god to be truth itself for this negates appeal to their god on any other basis while also preventing the questioning of the oracles which are assumed to be correct a priori rather than a posteriori.
In closing, I posit that one explanation why our anthropological literature has got it so wrong on the country of Australia is perhaps because the country, like many of its civilisational sister countries, is right in the middle of what is either a religious collapse, revival or realignment. Which of these it is and the exact nature of the phenomena are not clear but I suggest that subsequent field trips in the years ahead will repay the investment by what looks to be a major anthropological change occurring with great rapidity.
Hahaha! That’s awesome, Simon! Thanks for the laugh. 🙂
Irena – no worries. This was a fun one to write 🙂
Sincere thanks for making these notes available. No doubt you would’ve encountered similar conditions if you’d made a field trip to Sydney. Public sentiment here can be quite hostile towards we uninitiated, though, as you observed, and which may be cause for hope, apostates number among the initiated. Your interpretations caused me to laugh indecorously into my mask on a train en route to a gym where all staff have converted to the new faith & appear to be true believers. I wonder what country you came from? Some of my friends might want to emigrate there.
Shane – I believe the author of this guest post was either from Renaissance Italy or Shakespearean England. Clearly their flight was through time as well as space. As to their interest in a country that didn’t exist yet, well, I’ll have to ask them next time they show up.
Interesting report. Sounds like a strange place this Melbourne.
Of course it is a religion! Why are you so surprised? https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-rise-and-fall-of-scientism-do-we.html
Thanks. That was superb.
Inge
Thanks, I enjoyed this.
“….the country, like many of its civilisational sister countries, is right in the middle of what is either a religious collapse, revival or realignment. ”
All three, probably.
I love reading your take on things, always good to see a reframing with the religious dimensions highlighted!
Roland – I like the old Melbourne better than the new Melbourne.
Ugo – thanks for that. Brilliant post. Seems we have a religion-shaped hole in our society and we keep trying to fill it with other things. It used to be thought that art could do the job. Now we are trying “science”. Eventually, something that fits will come along.
Inge – thank you.
Cathie – true. As per Ugo’s post, I think scientism is both rising and collapsing at the same time. Then we get to whatever comes next.
Mark – it’s been equal parts fascinating and terrifying to watch science get shoehorned into a religion. I just hope when all this is done that science itself can survive.
A bit off topic, but I’ll bring it up anyway.
You said it is hard to see how the Djokovic saga could get more absurd. Well it did now.
The Australian Open is about to start. The best tennis player in the world is sitting in Melbourne in detention and is not allowed to play.
That one should be hard to beat, but I am sure they’ll think of something.
Roland – at the risk of bringing everything back to The Devouring Mother, it is incredible how this fits the pattern. Djokovic is one of the most prominent unvaccinated in the world and unvaccinated is now the same as rebellious child. If the mother wanted to punish him, why not possess the Australian government and have them lock him in jail for a week or so while making him waste heaps of money on legal fees. Notice also that the punishment here is gratuitous. We give him a visa and a medical exemption, then lock him in jail when he arrives, then he gets out for a few days and everything looks good only to have the door slammed shut at the last minute.
Of course, in the process, the Australian government looks like a bunch of imbeciles and causes huge reputational and political damage to the country while ruining a sports tournament that they’ve invested billions of dollars into, but what do the gods/archetypes care of that?
I’m starting to think the Greek myths were actually non-fiction.
Keep in mind our government only looks like a bunch of imbeciles because that’s exactly what they are so this is some weird kind of honesty.
About myths, somebody said a myth is something that never was but always is, so you might have a point there.
What’s going on with Djokovic is terrible for Australia, but paradoxically, it may be good for Serbia. Now that the national hero has been given this sort of treatment by a foreign country, and now that Serbia’s highest representatives (including the President and Prime Minister) have spoken in his defense, well, maybe it’ll be a tiny bit more difficult for the local medical totalitarians to impose their will on the rest of the population. We’ll see.
Roland – politicians are not the smartest tools in the shed but they can normally organise it so somebody wins (because that somebody is telling them what they want). In the Djokovic case, everybody loses. Makes me think again of The Joker in a card game; a card game where everybody is a loser.
Irena – hope somebody gets something out of this. Looks like a loss all round to me (much like corona in general).
One’s perspective on science, or even Science ™, is surely dependent upon whether one experiences oneself as an experimentalist, or one experiences oneself as the experiment….
Scotlyn – there’s a third category: people who have no experience with science at all (either as experimenter or experimentee). I’d say that’s the overwhelming majority of the population.
> there’s a third category: people who have no experience with science at all (either as experimenter or experimentee). I’d say that’s the overwhelming majority of the population.
Unfortunately that is no longer true – the third category has been all but eliminated. The only question now is if the experimentees will realise what has happened, which depends on the outcome of the experiment.
> I’m starting to think the Greek myths were actually non-fiction.
Isn’t whether they are fiction or non-fiction beside the point? The myths are a complex model for reality, refined over centuries (or even millennia?) and are now clearly a much better fit for our observable world than the models of Science, which seem rather quant and limited in comparison.
Daniel – fair point. I interpreted it more specifically as are people aware they are in an experiment because most people think they are not (i.e. they think the evidence is that the vaccines “work”).
As for the fiction/non-fiction thing, you’re right. I’m still functioning in cause/effect land but it seems to me that the archetypes, just like language, are acausal. The “tracks in space” idea from occult philosophy works much better here. We manifest the tracks in space by default with some wiggle room to exercise our will to change them. Then myths are “non fiction” to the extent that they are really a way of interrogating the tracks in space and we judge them “true or false” based on their ability to do that which is an intuitive process and not a “rational” one.
Not sure of your intent, but ‘tracks in space’ evokes, for instance, the idea of planetary paths, hence planetary cycles, hence historical correspondences w/ the Saturn-Pluto cycle, such as the conjunctions coinciding w/ (though not causing!), for starters, the outbreak of Covid in 2020, the onset of WWI, the climax of the Black Death in the 14th century… I think your devouring mother archetype might qualify as plutonic, & adding Saturn gives us the devouring father as well…?
Shane – I don’t know enough about astrology to draw the links there. The analogy with language makes a lot of sense to me, though. A grammar evolves over time. Individuals can break grammatical rules for effect but ultimately must follow them. Nevertheless, we wouldn’t say the grammar “causes” speech. It’s just a “track in space”; a pattern that exists. I guess the underlying idea of astrology is the same. You’re born under a specific sign. You have some room to play within that but you can’t just break out of it.