I'm impotently enraged. There's a poison well of apathy running through Australian society; the spectre of conservatism. We've had 9 years of conservative Coalition government in this country, and it seems like the defenders of the status quo has prevailed all too easily. Conservatism is rife throughout every major fundamental institution - education discourages different streams of ideas by insisting upon arguments be positioned within already established norms. They may as well be reaching for an independent thought supressant any time someone has a new idea. And no one does - the right has condemned the left to take up a contrary position till the end of time. So much for the end of ideology. Even art has conceded that originality is dead, the advocates of postmodernism believing simulation is better than reality. Politics is irrevocably backward, art, music, fashion, major services and the media. What's happened to this society of mine? What happened to the age of enlightenment? What can I do about it, apart from sit on my arse and stagnate in my own stew of simmering hatred and contempt? It doesn't look like much from out here...