ONE STEP FORWARD TWO STEPS BACK

All governments speak with forked tongues to please their corporate masters and collect as much ill-gotten revenue as possible.

As an example of this trade in hypocrisy we might look at Australian gamblers. The government profits massively from gambling through its taxes and then makes half-hearted attempts to warn us that gambling is a big problem or the big pharmaceutical companies who bribe doctors to prescribe opioids and then we have the health system saying we have an opioid problem. Why not just send Medicare money through to Sharp, Stick and Dome directly, buy up their product for destruction and save a million addictions to start with.

Lately a three pronged assault has been made on the alcohol industry. First the impractical 0.05 and lose your licence, secondly all the health warnings about two standard drinks in four hours is healthy but three is binge drinking, finally in a bid to get outlets closer to home the Victorian government has launched a program to help cafes, bars and school tuckshops to get a liquor licence.

Where do we go and how do we throw out these morons before they get totally consumed by taxes on vice.

‘DON’T LEAVE EXPERIMENTAL PAPERS LYING AROUND FREE-THINKERS’

The Astonisher has always had an unwritten policy that when making decisions that they should, as often as possible, be either left to sheer chance or never made at all. A decision delayed keeps ones mind busy and can’t hurt anybody unless you’re a surgeon.

I came to this conclusion a dozen or so years back when I was accidentally browsing through some papers that my ex-partner was reading then about ‘Conformity, Compliance and Acceptance.’ What caught my eye was some experimental data from tests applied to a different range of people to record their reactions under certain circumstances.

One of the tests showed that when giving electric shocks to a subject, the more distant or detached the subject the more severe the shocks could become before the person applying the treatment refused to go any further. The voltage applied was less severe when the subject was in the same room than if they were out of sight. So it was that the idea that our public servants, including politicians, don’t give a fuck about you or me is that they don’t have to come face-to-face with us and can apply as much pain as they want without consequence.

Obedience to instruction also varied depending on whether the person applying the shocks were on their own or in the presence of a ‘perceived’ superior authority. There was less compliance to instruction when it was received over a telephone. So if the Town Clerk is standing in front of you, with the power to make your life a fucking misery, then you are bound to do exactly as you are told.

Another test showed that people tend to conform to those around them, adopt the same corrupt and unethical practices and will even follow orders that under normal circumstances they would find morally repulsive. This might explain why large bureaucratic structures, with volumes of instructions on how one should act under different circumstances, will inevitably, and sometimes inadvertently force employees to follow certain procedures that may be an anathema to an individual acting alone. And so it in confrontations with local councils they will act immorally in favour of a council contractor regardless of the best interests of the ratepayers.

Other experiments showed that some people assisted in the consensus process of decision making either ‘because they didn’t want to upset their peers’ or ‘ wanted to be liked’. Extreme examples of this same phenomena can be applied to Hitler in WW2 Pol Pot in Cambodia and Australia on Nauru.

What breeds ‘obedience’? Physical and emotional distance from the ratepayer, closeness and legitimacy of authority, institutional authority by way of Acts and other instruments of control, the way the group is packaged and who is supporting who, and the liberating effect of group influence emanating from the Lunchroom all effect a persons responses.

Several experiments reveal that someone who punctures unanimity deflates its social power and observing someone else’s dissent, even if it is wrong, increases our own independence. So the Astonisher has become, in a small way, that instrument to debunk the bullshit that comes out of local council offices and other concrete-minded entities. As a result of this we hope that the readership will be more likely to make the right self-determining decisions if they feel someone is on their side.

Add to this the fact that people once publicly committed to a position, seldom yield to social pressure. Umpires and referees rarely reverse their initial judgments in footy matches, and neither do we. People conform based on desires to fulfill others’ expectations and often to gain acceptance. Conformity is greater when people respond before they can reflect. Conformity results from acceptance of evidence about reality. We conform because we want to be liked and approved, or we want to be right.

So I recommend, as I am often pulling myself up for not doing it, that if we want good things to happen or to give honest answers we need to consider who is around at the time, who holds the authority and is the balance of power between us and them equal?

Each of these tests showed, as it is applied against good practices in management, that real face-to-face involvement in decision making was most likely to create a more honest environment, more likely to happen, and thus lead to more positive outcomes.

If people don’t want to participate then we are at fault not them.

DEAR DOCTOR

DEAR DOCTOR COLUMN

Rarely asked questions, and some strange occurrences, at the Skipton Medical Centre.

When I pull out my nose hairs why do my eyebrows dissappear?

A man who accidentally bit his native tongue.

The patient who wanted to be discharged by saying he was as healthy as Elvis Presley.

A lady asking about these new revolutionary diet fads

“There is one called eat less and exercise more which doesn’t sound right to me”.

The patient admitted in an emergency who was advised that he should burn off some of his fat. The Doctor never thought that anyone could set their tongue alight.

As part of questioning to determine how a mans diet was going he was asked how his movements were going.

“Well” said the man, “ my last poo was so good that my spinal cord is still dissolving in the septic. But that’s not all Doctor, when I went the day before my dump was halfway round the bend before it left my anus.”

The patient with a dose of diahroea after eating a bowl of really hot Chilli.

“I had such a tummy upset that I spent the whole night blowing spackle all over the toilet.”

A man had to have his foreskin attended to because he got it caught in a pencil sharpener. His girlfriend had told him she couldn’t see the point.

On Thursday we had a visit from male and female Dentists. Doctors Oral and Hardy. He’s an Oral Surgeon and she just likes Oral.

A lady who had the runs so badly that she was able to pass it through her flyscreen.

A final word from our wonderful Receptionist.

“You never remember the thing that kills you”

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MENTAL HEALTH MONTHLY REPORT

There were several patients referred to the Smythesdale Clinic last month.

There was the self-loathing schitzophrenic who hated every one of his other selves too.

The man who tried to catch Disassociative Amnesia but failed. This disease causes the memory to be erased on a regular basis and he thought it would be great if he could forget who he owed money too.

The Clinic tried out a new Psychiatrist. He had nearly three weeks of experience and even treated the three personalities in his head yesterday as a demonstration.

We all sat through a training session to update us on ‘Cotard Delusion’.

It is a rare mental disorder in which a person believes he or she is either dead, do not exist, is putrifying or somehow mislaid his or her blood and internal organs. In other words they feel actually gutless.

It was probably named after a Frenchman to celebrate their courage in two World Wars.

A disabled lady who claimed her memory was so bad she had even lost one of her legs.

Then we had a referral from the Pediatrician. She brought with her a young baby who was so beautiful that she felt it should appear in Nappy Ads as a Turd. After her he mentioned he had an appointment with a Mother who wanted some tender, caring medication for her pre-teen son.

While he was here he exposed a fascinating medical fact to us all. “You know” he said “when we are concieved we all start off as just a little arsehole. It is a fact that there are many who work for our Council that never grew beyond that stage, they just grew bigger”.

The single woman from Happy Valley who believed that if she committed suicide she could collect on her life insurance and buy a husband from the Phillipines.

The short story writer from the Astonisher who said his life keeps coming to a halt every time his printer pauses.

We are looking forward to a visit from a Six Therapist from New Zealand. I remember her last visit. She was a perfect pear shape. 48, 78, 180.