Tomorrow I’m jumping on a plane for London and then Copenhagen, to begin our Sensemaking Safari in Scandinavia. I’m feeling the mix of excitement and nervousness that always bubbles up.
Am I prepared physically, mentally and emotionally?
Are my kids all organised and okay with me leaving?
I advise none of you to ask your kids this question as one of mine very casually answered me honestly… Which was hard to hear. Careful what you wish for. Nobody wants the real answer.
Which brings me to the subject of truth telling and one of my absolute bugbears about Australian culture that I just cannot get my head around. When you are passionate, moved, open-hearted and expressive about your opinion – I feel this is extra true if you’re a woman with strong opinions – invariably someone will say, with a wry, sarcastic chuckle, “Tell us what you really think!”
It’s a crushing, dismissive, avoidant thing to say. Like squashing the passion into a very small container where it can be shoved somewhere more palatable. Can anyone tell me why this is the case? And why the chuckle? My inner answer is always, “I just did. Now you tell me what you really think.” What are we doing if we aren’t moved to speak from passion and honesty?
There’s something in this about personality types and how different cultures tolerate – indeed valorise or dismiss – different voices, different modes of expression and ways that a message can be metabolised. I’ve never done a survey of people who come from passionate cultures and find themselves living in Australia, but I am sure my experience isn’t isolated.
There is something wonderful about how Australian culture is compliant and civil. It means that democracy is still functioning here. Anarchy and disarray are not the primary modus operandi. AWESOME. However, there is something sedate and compliant about how we express important opinions here: the delivery is more important than the content. Tell us what you really think implies so much – cutting down to size, moderating the energy, forcing ‘appropriateness’ and taming the potency of exchange. Who is the arbiter of these rules? Is it because of our Anglo heritage culturally? I badly want to pierce the bubble of restraint and sarcasm when real feelings emerge in public, or even private, discourse.
Last week, 10,000 Emperor Penguin chicks died because the arctic ice shelf they were on melted before they had developed the waterproof layer on their feathers. That is so unbelievably fucked I couldn’t breathe properly for days. Surely this is the moment for passionate discourse? For energetic exchange? I attended an event around the same time where tepid, compliant, moderate, comfortable discourse around climate and responsible investing were tentatively platformed. I understand that how the message is delivered, in which forums, and to whom is a vital piece of the collective sensemaking puzzle. At what point do we break with convention and insist, with feeling, on dealing with what is most potent and relevant? Polite society aside?
I feel like screaming louder when someone tells me, “Tell Us what you really think”. Firstly, who is us? There’s a presumption that the entire society agrees. That ‘tone it down’, ‘hold your horses’, ‘calm the farm’ are all valid in every situation.
I’m in danger of sounding like I’m advocating for angry, un-tethered, un-moderated discourse. Passion and anger are not the same thing. Sometimes the content is more important than the delivery.
Tell us what you really think might just save us from comfortable complacency and a perilously avoidant timeline to address the issues facing us collectively in the coming decade.
Can we tolerate a more passionate conversation about what really matters?
See you out there.
