|
|
 |
The Festival Of Ideas.
Packed halls and eager applause make it clear that Adelaide
folks love a lecture, a bit of spirited debate, or a just good
old talk-fest. Phillip Adams helped when he introduced the speakers
for the opening night's session Perils Real Or Imagined by announcing
Adelaide "the capital of Australia". This was later to be updated
by Adam's smooth baritone to "Adelaide the centre of the known
universe", to further mirth and applause. Adelaide's ego clearly
loves to be stroked, and our city is clearly proud to be providing
a forum for thought and ideas.
Dr Basil Hetzel, the patron of the festival, opened with a stimulating presentation of some of the problems facing the world. The strident public health advocate, born in London and educated in Adelaide, knows something of solving problems: he has improved and saved the lives of millions by recognising iodine deficiency and establishing an international NGO dedicated to alleviating the problem through the iodisation of salt for human and animal consumption. He raised a few problems he sees as inhibiting human progress and happiness, a major one being the supremacy of economic rationalism in nation states. This was a theme that garnered more attention as the weekend proceeded. He presented a solution, borrowed from a British economist, to overcome the singularity of market forces: the triple bottom line, measuring profit economically, socially and environmentally.
P. Sainath, a journalist and chronicler of India's poor farmers, gave a developing-world perspective on trade as a measure of success when he spoke of the inverse relationship between share-price rises and conditions of the poor, He provided some startling statistics about developing nations' stock exchanges rising just after the Tsunami hit last December - Sri Lanka's and Indonesia's rose dramatically and have sustained, it is suggested, with the prospect of foreign aid and rebuilding of infrastructure in the wake of the disaster. If the sympathetic audience required more reason for suspicion of free market globalisation, here it was.
Sainath gave the essential perspective of globalisation from the largest democracy in the world - India - which sees its benefits go straight to the top ten percent. He unveiled the 'perfect crime' achieved by this disparity of international trade known as globalisation: the benefits are attributed to the 'common sense' market policies, the problems attributed to the country itself (as an aside, this very argument had been used by a free trade fetishist the night before with George Negus on TV when discussing G8 and the problem of Africa: there is nothing wrong with the policies, the people are the problem). Deidre Macken gave a first world example of globalisation's excess in the discussion of 'Affluenza - The Fat and the Lean'. When asking her teenage daughter if she should wash a new top of hers, the daughter replied, 'nah, just throw it out".
'Philanthropy: Giving It Away' seemed like a reasonable answer to these problems, though this session also showed that there are some difficulties in giving the titular It - money - away. Ross Adler posited the intense performance culture of corporations as one reason companies cannot spend the time required to develop and maintain philanthropic relationships designed to give back to communities. This theme of time and its changing dimensions in the modern world is an undercurrent of the Festival. David Bodanis stated time and calm are required to develop ideas and are essential to any kind of full investigation into an idea or program. Bob Ellis, raconteur and mainstay of this kind of event, told a fantastic tale of changes in people's lives due to technological advance in the twentieth century, ending in a tirade against the mobile phone and the endless interruption it creates and is symbolic of: and right on cue, a series of beeps piped up out of the audience. Endless interruption causes a kind of madness, he declared, and there is so much of it in the modern world that we are not entirely well. The rest of the weekend promises remedies to our malaise, imagined and real.
Narelle Walker
 |
The Festival Of Ideas ran from Thurs 7 July to Sun 10 July.
|
|
|
The latest issue
available now!
|
