AFTER spending a week on a tropical island in the Torres Strait, you see some very primitive cultural habits. Some of them are really dumb and very costly.
It’s no good saying you have to respect culture no matter what. These things have to be questioned.
I’m not talking about the cultural habits I saw on the island, of course. No; I refer to the ones I saw among white fellas with a fresh eye on my return.
It was extremely cold in Canberra after spending a week in shorts and thongs. So I rugged up and went in to The Canberra Times office. There I sweated because the air-conditioning was set at the ritual 21 degrees. The air-conditioning ritual in western industrial societies means that no matter what the temperature outside, inside it stays the same. Thus in winter it is invariably too hot and in summer too cold.
And the captains of industry, who talk about competitiveness and cost cutting and who lay off staff on the altar of efficiency, allow their buildings to be over-heated or over-cooled at vast expense all year round.
Why is this so? It is because of another cultural rite. The rite is based upon a small piece of cloth that white fellas put around their necks. The bit of cloth serves no useful purpose; it is purely ceremonial dress _ a bit like the feather headgear of the American Indians or the ochre body-painting of Australian Aborigines.
In some parts of white fella society they will not let you in to a building unless you wear the ceremonial dress. And even if you are allowed in without it, you will be frowned upon, ignored or at best listened to with tolerance but without respect.
The white fella piece of cloth also requires a shirt and collar, which has to be spread out on a ritual board and pressed with an iron implement. Because white fellas have to wear these items of ritual clothing, they are exposed to the cold at the top of the chest in winter, and in summer the hot air from their body cannot rise and escape so it can be replaced from cool air coming from underneath. Also white fellas wear a ritual coat of pin-stripe material. It, too is exposed at the front to let the cold air in during winter. Because the white fellas are so vulnerable to the elements when wearing their ritual clothing in their offices, the air-conditioning has to work over-time at great expense, even at a time when the captains of industry are saying they are cutting down on overtime as an efficiency measure.
Now, the black fellas on the Torres Strait island did not have air-conditioning. Nor did they need it. They wisely wore clothes for their environment: sandals and sarongs. In Lapland, they wear fur jackets that come right up to the neck.
Yes; these are extremes. But the cool season in Torres Strait is cooler than the hottest days in Canberra and the hot season in Lapland is far hotter than the coolest days in Canberra; yet in Torres Strait and Lapland, they wear clothing for their environment all year round.
The main reasons for wearing this ceremonial and ritual clothing in white society is to attract status and the opposite sex. It is deeply culturally ingrained without any rational basis.
On my return from Torres Strait, I saw Premiers Richard Court and Jeff Kennett on the television. Both were wearing ceremonial dress. Kennett was talking on a cold Melbourne day.
The most vulnerable part of his body _ that just below the neck _ was protected by only one thin layer of the ceremonial shirt. He was doing a ritual in front of television cameras and therefore must have thought it necessary to wear the ceremonial clothes. Even his jacket was cut in such a way that it could no longer be buttoned up to the neck. But it was a ceremonial jacket, designed to create an image, not as clothing to keep warm. I have never seen a white fella try to button up one of those jackets to keep out the cold.
Clearly, there was some sort of social taboo stopping the Premier from wearing something to shelter himself from the cold. It must be hard being a tribal chief.
I thought his ceremonial dress was ridiculous in the circumstances _ so ridiculous indeed that I only half caught was he was saying.
I think it was something to do with Aboriginal cultural attachment to the land or something, but that need not trouble us here; it has nothing to do with the argument.