Of human bondage: let’s do it all again this year

Twenty-three years ago today, the world woke up to discover that Y2K had not wiped out civilisation, or even the increasingly uncivilised corner of it developing on the World Wide Web. On January 1, 2000, it became clear that whatever was written on the internet was to be an indelible mark.

Since then, the human race, which makes such a big deal of itself in the great histories, has discovered that a daily chronicle of human minutiae does a poor job of explaining how we get anywhere good. Chiefly it’s a jumble of inconsistency and folly.

Dressed for the occasion in military fatigues, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky meets US President Joe Biden in the Oval Office of the White House on December 21.Credit: AP

The year 2022 continued the rolling farce of humanity clustered around the tragedy of the human condition. We could hardly manage to remember from one end of the year to the other what we had believed at the outset. We were ridiculous and sometimes sublime.

It was the year in which Millennials stopped “adulting” and finally grew up. Rising interest rates broke down the childish trust in bureaucratic omnipotence. Kids brought up to believe that government planning is the answer to every social problem had accepted that night-time COVID curfews were “keeping us safe” from a sneaky virus slinking around the darkened streets. From there it was but a short leap to believing that Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe is a quasi-government guru, applying the sacred rites of economics as he seeks to placate the angry god of inflation. Instead, it turned out that he’s just an econocrat doing his darnedest to apply economic theory as a generation of Insta-addled crypto-nuts rewrite consumer psychology. Interest rates went up when he’d said they’d stay down, and the age of innocence was over.

As interest rates whizzed up over the colder months, so did power prices, meaning the former kidults were now adults in oodies. (In case you haven’t caught up, an oodie is a brightly printed wearable blanket.) “Fur babies”, as Millennials call their pets, needed oodies, too, causing further inflation. Not every journey follows a straight path to enlightenment.

David Fogarty found success selling Oodie.Credit: Ben Searcy

In 2022, younger generations were ushered into the new era of hot war by a character straight out of the playroom. Military Ken, Ukraine’s eye-candy president Volodymyr Zelensky, comes with only one outfit: the fatigues he wears everywhere from Cannes Film Festival to the Oval Office. It turns out that a just war against an autocratic bully determined to resurrect a romantic notion of empire was exactly what the self-doubting liberal order needed.

Zelensky is conferring glamour on war as a category, which will make recruiting for the next global conflict much easier and compulsory military service so chic. When US House leader Nancy Pelosi popped into Taiwan for a cuppa, it looked for a moment like that might come in handy.

China gave a masterclass in why the COVID lockdowns it pioneered and Australia copied are destructive. By the end of 2022, it had wrecked its economy and rendered its citizens mutinous.

The year was bookended by vaccine controversy. Last January, tennis player Novak Djokovic was ordered to leave the country for refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Seventy per cent of Australians agreed with the Morrison government’s decision to ban Djokovic from returning for three years.

By the end of the year, medical doctor and former independent MP Dr Kerryn Phelps had begun drawing attention to vaccine injuries, claiming the true number of people harmed by mRNA vaccines is much higher than reported.

In December, 40 per cent of Australians thought the still-unvaccinated Djokovic should be allowed back in to play and a further 30 per cent didn’t care either way.

In 2022, cancelling got efficient, but became ineffective. The mob is quick to anger, but once the fire of righteousness has passed, it’s even quicker to amnesia. Never fear, in 2023 there will be new heresies.

The past year was a rollercoaster for manners, which were out of fashion in January and back in by July. In January, when Grace Tame rebuffed then-prime minister Scott Morrison at a reception for the new Australians of the Year her manners were celebrated as those of a young woman “not socialised to shut up”. But by July, socialisation had made a comeback, with new Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declaring that voting “yes” in the Voice referendum would be “simply good manners”.

Now advocates are wishing Senator Jacinta Price, a Warlpiri-Celtic woman who argues against the Voice, had better manners.

Accountability was a key election issue. New PM Albanese finally introduced a National Anti-Corruption Commission, with widespread public support. But then he muzzled the ex-ministers who had employed former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins, rendering them unaccountable for a payout of taxpayer funds rumoured to be about $3 million.

It was the year in which professional women were finally recognised as a formidable demographic, while the definition of “woman” became the subject of a culture war. The year in which human goldfish with their short memories wigged out over “they” pronouns, as though androgyne culture hasn’t surged harmlessly in and out of fashion over centuries.

Sexual orientation was split into ever more granular definitions, including “demi-sexual” for people who just really only want to make it with someone they love and “asexual” for people who would never ever consent. The culture warriors of the right failed to recognise these for what they were – monogamy and abstinence – and missed their moment of vindication as history came full circle.

Queen Elizabeth died and for a brief moment people remembered that satisfaction comes from a life well lived, not from bossy home-decor products commanding you to “live”, “laugh” and “love”. Her grandson and his American wife proved that it’s possible to both be awful and have awful things done to you.

Albanese went into the election as a small target, promising safe change. By the end of the year, he’d gotten more reform through than the Coalition managed in two parliaments. And we haven’t seen anything yet, he says.

Next, 2023 will continue as a wild mess of history, from which our descendants will only be able to draw true wisdom when we are long gone. But with the aid of the internet, we just might be able to remember yesterday’s folly and inconsistency long enough to contain our worst impulses.

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