In an ABC radio interview this morning a psychologist from Mindworks
discussed the problems surrounding those who create a public "face" or image that is
different to their inner self.
Close to the end of the discussion he mentioned
working with local governments where the CEO and Council have created public statements
about their shire that are not truly reflecting the communities they are
supposed to be serving. The authority figures cannot admit they have done this
without losing face.
Local authorities have created aspirations that are not sustainable - but
they cannot admit this without losing face? Pause for a moment to consider the damage this can cause.
For any of us it is exhausting to live with conflict between our inner
and outer selves. Psychopaths can achieve this with less pain than most, but
even they will struggle at times. If the face we offer to society, to the wider
world, does not honestly reflect the inner self then there will be significant
cognitive effort required just to maintain the public fiction. At times the
effort will become too great and the individual will slump into depression, or lash out physically at anyone who passes comment or offers rejection to their pretend persona. The rejection or comment may not even be deliberate, may not in fact be real, it is enough for the troubled self to perceive rejection or criticism.
So how does a whole community cope when their public persona is no longer a comfortable fit with who they really are?
Here is a quote from a report the Syme Marmion consultancy were commissioned to produce by our Council, the Report on Creating a World Class Main Street
Tourist Precinct for Margaret River;
"Look and feel of the Margaret
River Town Centre currently out of sync with the brand’s premium image"
Our reality is out of sync with the marketing men's concept of who we should be.
The branding of a town is purely a concept created on the desk of a
marketing man, politician or other business person. It is not reality. When
reality and aspirational concept do not match what does the wise person do? This
is important for us to reflect on at a time when escalating growth of absentee owners is
causing problems for our volunteer community, for our safety and comfort as
dependency ratios rise. As our rate burden to support costly innovations to
attract tourists increases, and our young people can see few employment
prospects and little chance of owning property here, is it time to re-think how
we align reality with aspirations?
Time to re-think whose aspirations they were
in the first place perhaps?
Did we really own these aspirations to be an international glitzty star,
an iconic destination on the world stage, with a lifestyle others envied? Or were we actually proud of our self-reliance, down to earth values, were we a community based on
trust and reciprocity until some clever manipulators moved in? Are we living a
life similar to the sad woman who is told that she would be loved if only her
breasts were bigger, her nose straighter and shorter, her frown lines removed
and her lips botoxed?
She would be loved if only she lived up to the imagined lover the man wants,
but as the dowdy little mouse she is he cannot be satisfied. Whenever we are
asked to adjust reality we must exercise our critical faculties, ask some tough questions. Who really benefits from the changes?
For this shire the brand's image
arrived with the men from Fremantle, and the die was cast when a landslide
victory returned three new councillors in 2005.
Hansard records the fears that were expressed regarding the manipulation
of councils in the SW as soon as the attempted stacking of Busselton Shire
Council was exposed by the CCC inquiry.
The fears that arose from the many CCC inquiries into vote stacking to
produce pro-development councils were genuine, but they appear to have been
suppressed as far as this shire goes by reassuring words from Liberal Member
Barry House.
As I have mentioned before when commenting on the actions of Barry House
he is a very likeable man and I have no wish to cast doubts over his wisdom. However,
the fulsome praise he is extending to the new councillors does seem to be
rather premature. The elections were held in May 2005 and these words of
support were presented in parliament in June of that same year. Hardly time to
prove their worth unless the “gang of
three” had already formed an alliance prior to their election?
During the years preceding the landslide victory in Augusta Margare
River the ex Busselton Shire CEO, Michael Swift, left his post in disgrace under a cloud of corruption allegations, and
around the same time Bernie Masters was suddenly ousted from his position as
Liberal candidate, for no publicly acknowledged reason. Bernie was replaced by
Troy Buswell, who had been shire president at Busselton Shire Council. Troy Buswell
was himself accused of clandestine meetings in car parks. All very suspect, but
nebulous and equivocal stuff, certainly not beyond reasonable doubt, which is
the test for any criminal action.
Although the landslide victory in Augusta-Margaret River apparently
attracted nothing but praise from Barry House, within the community there were
a few rumbles of discontent as the new councillors scrapped all reference to
the CSIRO $500K Sustainable Futures research project, that local people had
expended many hours of their time on, the Margaret River EBD results were also
scrapped even though they are still available for you to download from the WAPC
website; if you
look at the EBD document and compare it to the 2011 Syme Marmion report
you will note a number of similarities,
most notable to this reader was the need for a pedestrian area, a town square,
but whereas the original plan was organic and built on what we already had here
the new order swept away this idea and replaced it with a much grander and
more “internationally iconic” concept. This new option is also considerably
more expensive. It is the expensive tastes of the Fremantle few that continue to impose much of the pain on the resident population.
There is
much more to be said about who were are and how we adjust reality to suit
others, and whether that is the direction to take for our residents to flourish
as self-reliant individuals comfortable with who they are. But for now we need to try and unravel the past as we seek answers to the question "Were we all manipulated or do we genuinely have a need to be iconic?"
As a footnote it is worth reading about the young couple leading a trip to Italy to give visitors that -
"Amazing Italian cultural experience ......The farming families of Italy have spent so many generations on their land that they have such a thorough understanding of it"
Of course our farming families cannot claim as many generations, but with this shire determined to have policies for Art and Tourism but no policies for Farming or Added Value Food we never will retain our family farms. A couple who visited me, ad-hoc, sent here from the Tavern because they were sad at only seeing kangaroos in the dead state by the highway were totally enchanted to be able to see the natural environment as the residents do. That is what draws people to the SW of England, to rural France, Italy, Greece, and so many other destinations where authentic lives are lived.
