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Anyone else hate this country due to authoritarianism and anti-intellectual culture?

Isaac98
Community Member
I know this is a weird question on a mental health organisation, but I have nowhere to turn since I'm pretty lonely due to my cultural differences. I can't even trust almost any Australian person, I only have American friends aside from one neighbour in real life and I always feel so bitter without much of an outlet.
20 Replies 20

GalahBird
Community Member
I felt this way when I was much younger too, although my views tended more to the left side of politics at the time (now I find my views are issue by issue rather than left or right). Anyway, feeling despondent about your country is something that idealistic and motivated people can feel when politics seems like a dirty and corrupt game in which people aren't placed first. But don't give up on your fellow Australians. There are great people out there, kind people, who even if they don't agree with you, will still treat you with respect and help you when you are down. And there are even good politicians, people who are trying to stop the rot. It's frustrating when we read things like "Taxpayers spent $30m on land worth only $3m for Western Sydney Airport's second runway," but back when I felt upset about my country it was because Pauline Hanson was giving innocent people a hard time, just for being culturally different. There are always things happening that disappoint us, but that's because we are idealists. Anyway, most Aussies are good people, regardless of what they believe, so take heart.

Imogen2
Community Member
Isaac98 Hi. I am an Australian, my great great grandparents came from Ireland and the UK but I have olive coloured skin and in the 1960’s in primary school in Sydney I was called a wog by some of the boys in my class but the friends that I had whom were very kind to me came from Greece and Egypt. I did have only a few Australian friends but I felt welcomed by my foreign friends they too were bullied. I was a young girl at the time and it was only the boys that called me a wog. They didn’t realise my blonde haired brother was in two grades above me. I still get asked if I am an Australian!!! I have wondered now looking back on my 60 years if I was judged by my colour. I probably was but didn’t notice later in life.

Imogen2
Community Member

Are you involved in a group with your own culture here in Australia? You mentioned America, we don’t seem to have many Americans lots of Canadians here though but you should keep your culture alive, here. Australians do appreciate culture, it would be a sad world if we didn’t have culture; it’s interesting, the food, dance, sports etc.

Technology is controlling us more now than our governments or politicians example Google, except for COVID-19 we need to stay aware. People are allowing technology to run their homes! Once you are logged into the internet it will follow you and send you what they think you need. So I see that as more dangerous than our politicians who are only doing the job to fill their own pockets.

It is good to be different - be unique.

Imogen2
Community Member
It’s upsetting to know the Howard’s and Abbots when they went to University, it was Free. Prime Minister Howard raised the price for students to attend University and so it was too expensive sad if you had the intellect to be a doctor but no money. And so Howard announced he was inviting doctors to come from overseas to work in our public hospitals as Australia does not have enough doctors (I wonder why). If it wasn’t for my daughter winning a scholarship she would never had got into university (or) it would have been delayed but thank god she graduated 2019 before covid. I feel for any University students now. Our older politicians and those retired and passed, had free University

Hi Isaac

I hope you are feeling better.

Perhaps you'd like to expand on your illness and emotional or mental struggles.
TonyWK

Isaac98
Community Member
Sorry no, I hate our culture and I don't want anything to do with it because of such different values. its fine if you love it, but I'm not being an ally of our people to preserve your culture since I wish it never existed.

Not_Batman
Blue Voices Member
Blue Voices Member

Hi isaac98.

is there anything specific you may share with us which you find backwards about the culture, and how it affects you. for example the geographic location, restrictions, etc.

Not_Batman

So much authoritarianism for a western country (especially compromising SO MUCH freedom for safety); gun owners being oppressed for "safety" when violent crime hasn't decreased faster since 1996, typical anti-intellectualism, our economy being pretty incompetent, and none of our people fighting the system but blindly complying with it regardless of how they feel. Our people tend to pathetically only care about their own jobs and families instead of the system itself, at least from what I've seen..

Sorry, I forgot to answer questions you had for me about my situation. I needed to take some time off since I was rather pretty stressed at the time.

However, an organisation I once tried to integrate into was the Liberal Democrat party which is an Australian libertarian-right party. Although it follows similar principles to mine, they still rather have pretty compromising people who don't fight enough for what they believe in (to me at least) and that most members near me didn't have time for friendship which I needed and still need. I went to a couple of their meetings, they only had 6-8 people who regularly attended meetings for the WHOLE city I live in when it has more than 300,000 people and only one person there wanted to be friends with me regularly. Though, I unfortunately couldn't connect with her well enough for that since she was much older than me in conjunction with being attracted to macho men which led her to once being abused at the time so I didn't want anything to do with that. I felt quite bad for her, but I wouldn't be able to help since she's submissive to those types of guys which is a habit only her can break.

With regards to hobbies, I don't have many nor much which I really care about enough due to being pretty narrow-minded and that I don't want to replace my passion in guns and philosophy at all. Though; I like to play guitar, video games (more like an outlet for the guns passion and socialising with my kind), doing gardening with a neighbour, and I dislike sports except for certain shooting ones which don't attract fudds (fudds are gun owners who support more gun control).

Speaking of where I live, I'm not saying where exactly but I live in NSW along the coast in a moderately sized city within a suburban area. Sorry I forgot to mention where me and my family are from, but we're born in Australia and I have English and German family routes.

Isaac98
Community Member
However Eight; I admittedly think everything should be private (not state "private" like US healthcare), but I get why you'd think that way about the liberal party since they believe in a socially corporate sort of oligarchy (neoliberalism) which also damages the economy and leads to higher costs upon privatisation in their view. True with the anti-intellectualism and police though lol, our nationalism doesn't also help.