The Cruellest Season

For many Australians now is the Cruel season, when the disassociation, projection and splitting which underlies secular Christendom is amplified. Now is the season for the increased industrialised slaughter of factory farmed animals, the manic consumption of material goods that will be discarded soon in the "new year", the loneliness that comes along with the pretend togetherness of family and friends where people play out their respective roles instead of really encountering each other simply as being, the imbibing of vast quantities of alcohol, and the consequent increased road accidents, domestic violence and general despair

Now is the time of endless vacuous adverts, of sickening platitudes, of forced and false gaiety, of do it by numbers joy, of made to order seasonal films full of fake cheer and maudlin synthetic emotion pumped out by film makers. Now is the season of omnipresent piped Christmas carols in shopping centres which seem to begin earlier and earlier each year ( can we organise a guerrilla raid so that centre management plays some Hanukah songs, or some songs connected to Diwali?). Now is the indignity of Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan cashiers at Coles (who are presumably mostly Moslem and Hindu) being forced to wear ridiculous Merry Christmas tshirts and wish all their customers “Merry Christmas”, irrespective of their or the customer’s cultural orientation.

Now is the time of pseudo altruism, where people give things and money because its a way of avoiding giving of themselves. Now is a time of overwhelming cultural coercion, where no matter what faith or creed or culture you belong to, it is assumed that you are in some way a willing participant in the general madness and mayhem - which indeed you are ( a participant, if not willing), as it inescapably in your face unless you stay indoors, and do not turn on the radio or tv or glance out of your window.

A cruel season indeed.

See also australia-christmas-time