Wild West Meets East (Beware: long post)
The Europeans who travelled to the New World to start a new life had various motivations: religious freedom, escape from class-based restrictions on status or prosperity, the accumulation of wealth, and so forth. From the very earliest days of settlement, the country was built up into a land of opportunity, but for the most part emigration was restricted from the Old World, so few enough were able to make the trip anyway, not to mention that immigration has never been without restrictions of its own, a condition that began to change as the full scope of the resources available came to be understood. Of the 13 original English colonies, Georgia stayed in the game longest as a settlement purposed toward indentured servitude, but the overall population of what became the U.S. Eastern seaboard was never particularly devoted to being a “dumping ground,” a place where the undesirables of the Empire could be relocated to relieve the homeland of poverty, criminality, and political insurgents, not to mention its responsibilities in those regards. The far reach and daring of the English on the high seas soon provided a place sufficiently removed from commercial traffic to serve these purposes: Australia. Even with the development of high-speed clipper ships, Australia was so far away, that those relocated appear to have been more inclined to maintain their connection to the home isles, and their “administrators” sufficiently empowered to ensure the maintenance of a kind of status quo, even while allowing colonization and exploration to proceed. It also turned out that environmentally the new continent was encouraging of such attitudes, the vast interior being largely inhospitable, forcing the new residents to cling to the outer edges even as they clung to their support lines back up across the equator. There are points of divergence as well as convergence therefore between the two former colonies as their histories have respectively played out ever since. America, settled earlier, and having achieved revolutionary independence, was able to easily tap its natural resources and favored geographical position to grow into a commercial empire of considerable strength. The entrepreneurial spirit that drove its population could upon necessity be engaged in a collective effort that eventually gave it miliary pre-eminence as well. Although Australia followed a similar developmental pattern, its isolation as a western state in the Asian region, its inhospitable interior, and the dominance of Empire over it politically conspired to nurture a culture distinct from Britain’s and from America’s in ways the Australian’s have been contending with for the last hundred years as a matter of psychology to be overcome, a kind of middle-child syndrome. The U.S. struggled with a similar problem for many decades, and still does to some extent, but insofar as it attempts to distinguish itself, to be the first among equals. America seeks to reconcile its composite parts into a whole, to define a culture and achieve the recognition of its parents for its accomplishments, but like any eldest child, those distinctions it wins do not come without some admonishment for being too proud and even some resentment for being too successful. The struggle has, however, produced a remarkable character, worthy of admiration and emulation, and this is evidenced in America’s continuing status as a destination from which to launch oneself into grand dreams and glories. This is the sensibility that drives many millions in the U.S., and they have much to thank that it can be so, not least all those who came before them and that the land itself is so supportive of them. Australia has not been without political will, enterprise, or resources, of course, although a number of factors have together forged a different character from that of the U.S., some of which I’ve already mentioned. Being as remote as Australia has been in its development, confronted with the East as “other,” a condition which by-and-large prevails even now, its settlements encircling a vast, blank desert, the country has been inclined and supported in its inclination to rely on an ever-less tenuous technological while ever-increasingly febrile political connection to the social mores that populated the land in the first place. Non-Anglo immigration was not a source of diversity for Australia for the majority of its early life, World War II putting a final end to that, as it did for much of the rest of the world for that matter. Now, Africa, Asia, South America, Southern and Eastern Europe, and the Middle East, as well as the more usual WASPish immigrants of the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain, stream in as best they can. Australia’s immigration policy has always been very strict – I couldn’t have gotten in without having married M. – but that doesn’t stop them, and the society’s liberal core is finally very open indeed to the plight of refugees (despite the Howard government’s disreputable exclusion zones and detention camps). Still, this has all come a bit late here, and the society of Australia grew up more in line with its paternity than did the U.S., again the classic pattern of eldest vs. middle child. Modern Australia moves further away from its European origins and further towards the path taken by the U.S., but having taken these steps more in the post-industrial age, has been able to stand apart from the perceived flaws of that capitalist society to pursue a more egalitarian result. The Menzies and Whitlam governments have done more to create a sustainable socialism than France, Canada, or Britain, while maintaining the economic opportunism characteristic of the best vitalism in the U.S. It’s a very difficult balance to maintain, and various pressures have been brought to bear in this era of globalization that could end in having seriously undermined Australia’s ability to continue in this line (not least is the continued military and economic dominance of the U.S., now thoroughly unbalanced following the end of the Cold War and the “someday all this will be mine” mentality of the present Bush administration), but the country continues to do so, and this is because of the Australian character, forged across its history. These are tough people. They carry with them a spirit similar to that which populated America’s western states, not so much pioneering, though, as homesteading. These are people who land and stick, who fight to hold on and make it work come hail or no water. This has its paradoxes. Australians are committed to the “fair go,” the idea that everyone deserves a chance to make their way in the world, but they can also be strangely taciturn about it, at least until someone comes along who takes things a little too far, who takes advantage – an unfair go, if you will – which sets them out as a “tall poppy” whose head needs shortening. Sometimes this gets taken a bit far, which causes some resentment, Germaine Greer offering a recent example, Robert Hughes as well, and generally a number of others among the intellectual ex-pats. This may not be surprising in the comparison between Australia and the U.S., insofar as the states most like in character to Australia are those of the middle and far west, where the U.S. often exhibits its most conservative character as well as its most desperate strivers, those whose sense of difference drives them to the margins: NY, L.A., etc., where they can, strangely, have less room but more chances. Australia exerts a similar push, but its population is largely already out at the edges, so the noisier ones tend to head overseas. Somehow, Australia being so far “out there” makes it seem that the best place to achieve the most is itself “out there,” so the country as a whole ends up pushing its developmental boundaries socially, culturally, politically, scientifically . . . even while it suffers from a perpetual sense of undeserved inadequacy. I understand this feeling, a middle child myself. Nothing delights me more than the achievements of my older brother, unless its seeing his pride take an occasional licking, but my own success is forever overshadowed by the sense I am never successful enough. I am carried forward with my sibling, even while a chafe to break away on my own. Well, moving to Australia ought to help in that respect, someday.