Alienation as normality – What happened to idealism?
People got busy
Electronica ate time
We got eaten up by subliminal advertising, streamlining and labels
Till individuality wasn’t a given, it was a flag wave.
We got services and rights and stopped having to be so creative to survive
We got one-size-fits-all heroes and stopped imagining anything more heroic than a turned around baseball cap, pointing finger and size six skeleton body.
We raged against politically incorrect bigotry and then legitimized a politically correct version, greedily, for ourselves.
We competitively co-opted every one and everything that could ‘reflect well’ and labeled it part of ‘our team’.
We turned our backs on the third world, imagining the number one and the number three were worlds apart until we lived in a vaccuum.
We used ‘terrorist’ like ‘communist’ to legitimise propaganda, take sides and no longer see we were all citizens of one world.
We watched death for entertainment with pie and chips as robotic drones killed ‘strangers’ and only ‘fools’ cried in their living rooms over those who weren’t in ‘our family’.
We walked past strangers certain all were killers, rapists and burglars (some were but most weren’t) and shut our doors tightly to protect what was ours against the foreign foreign them we never met playing in the street and never waved hi to when we were four.
We made corporations God and worshipped Nike with a Pepsi challice in our hand and a dead battery hen in the other stuck in a white sugar bun, feeling delicious.
We watched reality TV as reality itself was no longer real.
Somewhere in there, alienation became normal, sought after, and we began to kill idealism.
….Donna Williams *)
autistic author, artist and screenwriter.
Dear Donna,
Years and Years ago I read both ‘Nobody Nowhere’ and ‘Somebody Somewhere. I was a carer for the Department of Human Services Vic. Your books gave me an understanding, an experience that stayed with me as a carer. Thank you.
It has been so good to see you on ‘Insight’, tonight.
You truely have an insight into a world that can be so cruel yet so beautiful at the same time. Thankyou for allowing me to see you tonight, I would love to meet you, you are an inspiration to many. I was diagnosed with Depression and Anxiety, it went undiagnosed for years, I felt like ‘nobody nowhere’.
I am so happy to see things are going well for you, you are amazing, you are so strong. Thankyou for your inspiration you give to others.
Rachael Fabri
Ps. Where can I find ‘Nobody Nowhere’? I lent it to some one years ago, it was not returned. I still have ‘Somebody Somewhere’. I cant wait to reread them.
Hi Rachel,
thanks for dropping by and for the nice letter. So many people loaned Nobody Nowhere to someone who loaned it to someone who…… It sold over half a million copies but it must have been read by about 5-10 times that number because most people loaned it out many times and its usually quite a long wait to loan it at libraries… some have a waiting list months long!
Chris looked lovely on telly. I was so excited to see him on there.
He’s never been on TV and its wild as he’s a ‘real life’ guy not a TV person and there he was on the TV AND sitting next to me on the sofa!!!! Crazy world.
I’m glad Nobody Nowhere helped you. I can’t tell you how many people felt it saved their lives… the fact someone else was where they were… they just somehow felt ‘in company’ and I can understand that… I felt a bit like that about Anne Frank… that she was trapped in a hideous space but found as much light in the darkness as she could and what mattered was the moment.
You can find Nobody Nowhere through my website or Jessica Kingsley Publishers via http://www.jkp.com . It’s also sold on Amazon and many on line booksellers, but look for the one published by Jessica Kingsley Books as the other versions have been taken over by the JKP ones.
There’s FOUR autobiographical works… the third is Like Colour To The Blind (not its UK spelling of ‘Colour’) and the fourth was Everyday Heaven (which features Chris). You can read the blurbs for them on http://www.donnawilliams.net .
We run http://www.auties.org which has ‘autism friendly dinner groups’. We run 2 in Melbourne and autism-friendly faces are quite welcome.
🙂 Donna Williams *)
http://www.donnawilliams.net
Hi Donna,
I had just read your posting. What I would say is reality seems to have been privatised and the causal effect has become atomisation. At a higher level we have isolated ourselves, become less open and more cynical. Traditional pluralist structures such as trade unions and friendly societies have been stifled and castrated by governments and business interests. Communities have been isolated due to shifts in employment (or lack of), work life balance and persons having to travel further from home to their place of work or public services.
The privatised reality has resulted in a “monopoly of opinion” described as more dangerous than monopoly of ownership by Aneurin Bevan (Reference: ‘In Place of Fear’). One opinion is seen to be taken as gospel, stifling other views, an antidote to free thought.
Our loss of idealism has seen this replaced by protectionism, which leads in some way to bigotry. Rather than trying to build Utopia, we build higher walls, install CCTV and searchlights then become insular.
Stuart Vallantine
(Dreamer, Idealist, Poet)
hi there! I’m writing this just before going to class…yeah people have messed up views on TV about violence and stuff but I suppose that is to be somewhat expected of society today…..heck at least I am somewhat comforted to know that it’s not only in my country…..I’m feeling a bit cynical at the moment hence the somewhat sarcastic tone of this comment, at other times I might feel differently….bah! I better go…..class starts in 15 minutes…..cheers!
AI