The Flip-Side
speak truth to power … (all there is to it)
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HIDE PREAMBLE
Hallo. Kia Ora. Olá. Ni Hao. Namaste
It's a core responsibility of all citizens to be properly informed, be it politics, our health, our society. Even more than that, if we want a kinder, gentler, more compassionate society, one which, presumably, we would all benefit from, it's also incumbent upon us to refrain from taking a position on any subject by basing that position on an ideology, merely because we are not prepared to apply the intellectual rigour required to properly understand it.
With that as a foundation, it's reasonable therefore to conclude that in today's world, there is a surfeit of news coverage, and with it no shortage of opinion, on topics various - drought, bushfires, water management, the environment, climate change, economics, human rights, the welfare of others, political machinations, the list goes on. It's against this background of news saturation that a library of credible journalism from reliable sources was established. You can acess it here if you really want to wade through 3,000 + articles. It morphed into the Flip-Side, in an attempt to present information, easily accessible, that contributes to making us a better informed, gentler and kinder society. It's also incumbent upon us, if we are to have this kinder, gentler, more compassionate society, that we hold the political class to account. The price of that is vigilance.
The Flip-Side attempts to expose this and hold those guilty accountable, by shining a light into some dark corners and turning over some rocks - and - who wouldn't want that. Hover over the card for 2 seconds to flip to the associate articles. Move the cursor away from the card to flip back. Links to the articles will open in a new window. Read on.
the problem with it
Every now and then someone will begin a sentence with "I'm no expert but …" which will invariably, though not always, precede a monologue resembling little more than a passing acquaintance to the subject at hand, revealing the speaker's pre-conceived version of the truth. This is not knowledge, it's an opinion, which is, as Plato put it, the bridge between ignorance and knowledge, and which outs itself as nothing more than ideology.
Ideology is not grounded in kindness or knowledge, it's usually grounded in the preservation of power, in privilege, prejudice, in any or all its manifest forms, or in fear, or a combination of all of those things. Ideology preserves injustice, destruction of environment, marginalisation of minorities, racism, institutionalised discrimination, species extinction, preservation of privilege, and high-office graft. Ideology encourages hyper-partisan reasoning due to what psychologists call “motivated cognition,” which is the act of deciding what you want to believe and using your reasoning power, with all its might, to get you there.
The Flip-Side looks at the juxtaposition between economy and society, a distinction that political ideology fails to make. Making political decisions based solely on an Ideology starts wars, divides communities, discourages innovation, promotes secrecy and advances prejudices. And yet ideology is often based on minimal examination or appreciation of the things that make a society work. The Flip-Side makes no apology for highlighting these ideologies and exposing them for what they are because whilst having a strong economy is important, without a good society it's nothing more than wet cement.
A good way to find out if you're an idealogue, or at least commence the enquiry process to finding out, is to ask yourself this question: how do I define a good society?