Wyatt Moss-Wellington: Home

Dick Smith, making a poignantly-timed splash on Australian broadcast airwaves, is highlighting the population dilemma facing Australia, although in part ignoring Australia as a microcosm of a global demographic. Smith can take heart: although the global population is still rising, the rate at which it is accelerating is in rapid decline, so that a peak global population is now visible within our lifetime. Then, with an urbanised and developed and significantly less violent globe, we might have another problem on our hands – who will be reproducing?

I used to think that Australia was underpopulated. I bleated it from the rafters as an answer to our countless woes. I was suckered in by the Australian government’s conventionally economic call to upscale the amount of babies we produce (branded by many as another White Australia Policy). I thought: but we have so much space. (In part, that space is the problem.) I thought: we all drink bottled water and then dispose of its container; how can we be complaining of lack of fresh water, surely we just need to be more frugal? I thought: surely, to many resource-starved countries where lack of fresh water is a leading cause of death, our complaints must sound frustratingly selfish. So comparatively, are we underpopulated? To answer that we need to look at the rest of the world.

At the moment there are three factors we can certainly say are leading the decline in population acceleration: education of women and their concurrent migration into the workforce, the lifting of large numbers of people out of poverty, and mass urbanisation. In fact, urbanisation is the driving force behind the other two factors. Cities make people wealthy as they move in. Witness how the developing world is developing of its own accord, due to the resourcefulness of inhabitants seeking a better life – rural dwellers are moving to the city and building squatter towns on their outskirts, with their own self-suficient economies, which are eventually subsumed into the rest of the metropolis. Thus is the success story of most Asian nations over recent decades. It makes sense – pooling labour via proximity to others’ expertise means better access to everything which provides quality of life, including education and health. Education by turn leads to women empowered to decide whether they will have children or not.

So in order to alleviate environmental and related growth pains in the meantime, we want more of these, right? Urbanisation, lifting people out of poverty, and education?

It’s already happening. Stewart Brand alleges in the brilliant tome “What Are You Optimistic About?” that global urbanisation currently comprises about “1.3 million new city dwellers a week.”

Smith complains, presciently, of addiction to economic growth as a false god. Again, he can take heart: I truly believe we are on the precipice of a great change of values. It’s a matter of necessity, as ever. Our mass consumerism will slowly erode our habitat (the entire planet), which we will discover – surprise – is necessary to maintain a comfortable standard of living. We will realise disposable objects and other markers of consumer society haven’t improved our quality of life, and we will adjust our wants and needs accordingly.

But in the meantime, before we fully come to terms with the soiling of our own nest and before population peaks and declines, there is still the problem of managing the proliferation of people across the world.

I agree that countries like Australia now require independent commissions to be assembled, to make a realistic proposal for the distribution of people around the globe and adjust their own immigration policy accordingly. While it is not possible to devise a perfect matrix taking into account every factor from the humanitarian to the geographic, we still need a proposal based on the capabilities of each nation.

This calculation would analyse the available water and farming capacity of the nation, taking into account its ability to produce fresh water through recycling and water management. It would take into account the distance between metropolises and within metropolises as well as the amount of infrastructure present and the amount of infrastructure required. It would take into account the standard of living of the citizens as opposed to other nations, and their access to financial security… There’s more to add, and it’s already a lot to work with. But we have to do it.

Here’s the other thing: obviously we want to lift people out of poverty and urbanise as swiftly as possible, to mitigate the overpopulation the globe must endure. In this case, it makes sense to see Australia increasing humanitarian intake, as a developed and relatively secure nation capable of lifting people out of poverty. This brings us to the root tension our hypothetical population sum most seek to solve: we have to measure our capacity to aid population decline against the capability of Australia’s geography to provide an equally good life for its inhabitants.

The problem in Australia isn’t answered merely by pushing people into rural areas, as is regularly suggested. Based on the evidence of urbanisation, that could impede the time it takes to recover from population growth and be more expensive than necessary in the meantime. Nor is it (exclusively) poor infrastructure management in the major cities. At the rate the Australian population is growing, urban planning can’t keep up, as political bungling and corruption will happen and have happened – the time that takes must be taken into account.

Consider the fact that Anna Bligh’s government is now funneling 33 million litres of recycled water into the Brisbane River every day. We really have to hurry up and get over our irrational fear of recycled water – how can we be broadcasting our “lack of fresh water” but failing to address our own entitlement to reactionary rather than rational solutions to water management?

Looking at the rest of the globe tells us there are other nations capable of handling greater populations in coming years. Obviously places like Russia and Japan could be in another kind of population trouble soon, and need to be be taking more people. But I have a feeling Australia might have to bare some of the burden and accept the dues for living in such a geographically difficult area of the globe. Yet first it makes sense to sort out water, food and infrastructure problems or we won’t be offering much to elevate anyone. It is obvious that the Australian population is growing too fast and our resource management can’t keep up – but this doesn’t mean we won’t be able to manage our resources or that we won’t have an obligation to take more people over coming decades while the population storm passes. Before anyone does mount an independent commission, we cannot definitively know the answer for Australia.

Dick Smith is offering a young Australian a million dollars to come up with a solution (really he’s using the dosh to spotlight the issue). Okay, as a means-based response, I will offer $2 – that’s three games of pinball – to any old citizen who can come up with a realistic algorithm to let us know how many people Australia should be taking over the next term of government.

The current Australian federal election is such a depressing race to the bottom, such an abandonment of any interest in the wellbeing of others stuffed full with such colossal missings-of-the-point that I haven’t wanted to write about it.

But I will take time off from recording my latest studio album (2 weeks to go!) to say one thing: whoever came up with the now ubiquitous media and marketing policy that “if it can’t be reduced to a soundbite, it is too complicated to publish or promote” has doomed us to an extended political wilderness and lack of intellectual fulfillment. They have taken the truth and our hope for a sense realism about our world, and thrown it right out of the field.

The explanation was always an appeal to the ADHD info-skimming jumpiness of internet-revved generations y and under. But that’s BS. The real reason is that it makes the job of media and their bed-buddy marketeers easier and cheaper. Complex stories covered with complexity are expensive. Politicians, in an era of believing the less their constituent knows the better, are so pleased to be let off the hook they are certainly not going to be doing anything about it. So are all of the subjects of media scrutiny, most especially the corporate sector who rely on our awareness of their self-interest rather than public interest to stay in check, and not exploit our easily bought trust. So we end up with an election based on nothing, and we complain about it.

What a horrid excuse this soundbite is – it amounts to, “you won’t understand so we won’t bother telling you.” But judging from the amount of people I see on the train home from work reading MX every day, we just may have bought it. Perhaps we truly believe we are attention spanless and defend our right to choosing this distractedly vacuous identity, because questioning it would be hard work. Then we complain about the election.

But it is simply not true that we prefer to be treated like idiots, and I’m certain the days of hush hush reductionist communications strategy are numbered. Ironically we can look toward the entertainment industry for a recent example. The nihilist-flirting of-the-moment director superstar of Hollywood, Christopher Nolan’s latest feature Inception is a prime example. The film treats its audience as if they were – get this – actually smart. While it may be dogeared narrative formula disguised beneath four layers of deamworld fantasy setup, and deep inside the conscious mind of Nolan may be a derivative action sequence, at the very least the film treats its audience like they are capable of following complex patterns of thought, like they will be inquisitive rather than passive, like they won’t mind doing the work to understand. And young audiences especially are rewarding the endeavour.

My time as a professional manny also taught me a Golden Rule about young people: even on the rare occasion when they don’t understand, if we treat them like they are capable of understanding, they will reward us. And they will try to understand, even if it takes a while. Assuming someone is intelligent makes someone proud to be intelligent.

It would be nice to have a media who wants us to be intelligent again. All we need to do is ask for it.

I've been hearing it everywhere, from friends and relations, critics, the blogosphere, newspapers, even the Guardian: TV has surpassed film as a storytelling medium. Everyone from Newsweek to the Encyclopedia Britannica blog has circulated the opinion.

What's going on here? Why are we choosing to value television above film? By what measure?

Usually the discussion is introduced via the dubious assertion that escalated television production values have bolstered its worth. This echoes our assumption that slicker production values correlate with greater work. Not necessarily - as the old adage goes, you can polish a turd, but it's still a turd. No matter how much money you throw at a project, no matter how large a crew you employ to frame its beautiful imagery, you cannot insure against an ineffectual piece of storytelling.

As everyone in the business knows, it starts with the script. Director Ken Loach once said, "The most important person in the whole process is, I would suggest, the writer. The word that appear on that blank sheet of paper are the creative heart of everything that follows. No writer - no film and certainly no director."

So it is subject matter we must be talking about when we compare the value of TV and film, and indeed, the superior scriptwriting is the point that always follows.

When we say we value television more than film, we usually mean we derive more entertainment from it. I read the argument as: we spend more time engaged with television than we do film, it keeps us engrossed for longer, so therefore it is better at doing its job.

This assumes that being engrossed for longer is a good thing. "Wow, I'm so entertained" could in fact be, "Wow, I'm so addicted to this story." Addiction would mean that the TV show has achieved its objective, but to assign value to our televisual dependency assumes that TV programming objectives should be our own, and simultaneously misinterprets the reason for storytelling.

Storytelling exists for societal cohesion. It is likely that the true value of storytelling is to promote empathy for those in different circumstances, a fair reason for us to evolve with such an appetite for it. However, on the flip side, if we stay too long in a ceaseless story, do we mitigate our chances at applying this empathy to reality, possibly even expecting our lives to replicate our small-screen experience?

The TV over film argument is specific to serialised television. Serials are what pro-TVists are invariably talking about - I have yet to hear a claim that sitcoms are the height of media value (although I find a lot more to enjoy in, say, "Roseanne" or "Frasier" than any interminable serial broadcast). Serialised television exists to keep us baited, hooked, but not satiated. By never reaching a conclusion, it is powerless to do anything but hold us aloft from true understanding or revelation. TV is limited in the truths of life it can reveal - the characters must remain as unenlightened as we to continue their torturous journey, so it never gets round to saying anything of value.

Watching slick productions like current highbrow favourites "Mad Men" or "True Blood", we are consuming nothing more than glorified soaps. Many people have done beautiful work on these programs to make them deliciously appealing, but the beauty has one pivotal objective to which all other narrative meanings must bow: serialised television does not exist to teach us anything, challenge us too deeply or offer ideas on how else we could live our lives - indeed, most of the time that would contradict its objective. The aim is merely to keep us wanting more, forever mystified, as if the non-existent answers we sought were only around the corner. Just like advertising.

It is absurd to say TV's value has surpassed film, as we are misjudging our addiction as value. TV can be a great means to play out our very human need for storytelling, but we are misinterpreting its power, too trusting of its inbuilt self-advertising.

Buying into this - the cliffhangers and self-perpetuating dramas - the balance of our real lives to our fantasy lives comes askew. We are still watching way too much television, and submitting our children's developing brains to the potential damage it can do - whatever happened to the anti-TV campaign? It's gone awfully silent.

The internet did not kill our appetite for inactive vegetation in front of television screens. A small amount is healthy, but TV is consistently invested in offering us the opportunity to be stuck there, and thus avoid reality.

Let us not forget the true value of television: it is common ground for communities who may otherwise be strangers. Most of us know about these shows and these characters, so we can chat with strangers about them, or acquaintances - with TV, we are never too far from the village community still lingering in the collective subconscious, an echo of longing from our history together, when we knew every face we would pass in the street. We want to be able to know the same people everyone else knows.

Meanwhile, film offers a different experience. Film is obliged to help us understand the world as it requires conclusion, and if the conclusion yields no revelation, we feel cheated. Film is not obliged to be didactic or prescriptive - this can be equally irksome - but it is obliged to come up with an end which satisfies our longing for meaning. No such pressures are placed on television.

Film by comparison offers a chance to receive our storytelling fix over a couple of hours, after which it often feels unpleasant to remain in a fantasy world (slumber party movie nights aside).

There is still some truth to the inflammatory old saying: TV is the ass end of the film industry.