Conspiracies...

June 19, 2023

Wrestling with real life and the lives of my characters is an interesting political, social and psychological experience. The massive spread of conspiracy theories via social media in the past fifteen years, the election of the Trumps and Morrisons in so-called democratic governments, the rise of fascists, the cult of the individual are grist to the mill for writing. We have always lived in a world divided between the exceptionally wealthy (and often powerful) and everyone else. There is really only ONE ‘conspiracy’ that operates – how the powerful rich manipulate everyone else so they retain their wealth and power. And let’s be honest – it’s not a conspiracy: it’s blatantly obvious. Plenty of studies show that in Australia, for example, ten percent of our population controls half the country’s wealth, and one percent of the population has nearly fifty times the wealth of sixty percent of the population: (example reports: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/australians-are-the-fourth-richest-people-in-the-world-so-how-is-60-per-cent-of-the-population-living-in/kpwzndngn
and
https://mccrindle.com.au/article/topic/demographics/australias-household-income-and-wealth-distribution-2/).
​The gap between the exceptionally wealthy and those struggling to pay mortgages etc is massive. But the wealthy, with Government complicity, are left alone because enough middle-class Australians have enough comfort not to complain too loudly. The rich and the governments ensure sufficient ‘bread and circuses’ satiate the masses. Ironically, Australia’s average middle class individual is still in the world’s top ten percent of wealthy people!
 
After that, the little conspiracies are those perpetrated by the ambitious and selfish – those members of the comfortable middle class who do whatever they have to do to leap across the chasm from ‘well-off/comfortable’ to wealthy. Hardly anyone bridges that gap.
 
Behind all of this economic and social inequality is one simple human flaw – greed – frequently expressed in individualism and the demand for individual freedom. “I want what I want and no one else should be allowed to stop me. I shouldn’t have to pay taxes to support others. Government should not interfere with my ambitions and needs. Users of things should pay and non-users shouldn’t have to pay. I shouldn’t have to follow regulations I didn’t create. Why should I obey a government I didn’t vote for?” The list is almost endless of the complaints and cries for the rights of the individual over the basic needs of the community. And the same people who call the majority of Australians ‘sheep’ are themselves ‘sheep’ as well, caught in apparently alternative ideological frameworks that still play into the hands of greedy people seeking power for themselves. The conspiracists are, themselves, victims of conspiracies.

Okay, I rant, and this could go on for a very long time. The point is, while I might write fantasy novels, the characters and struggles within them are complex reflections of what we see and face every day – the rich doing whatever it takes to stay rich and get richer; the ambitious, greedy, selfish individuals who want to cross the gap between everyone else and the rich to be wealthy and powerful too; the ordinary folk whose only possible hopes of wealth and pleasure reside in alcohol, drugs and gambling, all managed by the rich to get hold of the ordinary folk’s money; the poor – refugees, unemployed, uneducated, disabled, abused – who everyone else ignores or avoids because there’s no ‘value’ in helping them not be poor. Yes, the plots follow specific individuals driven by their own motivations – power, revenge, rebellion, wealth, love etc – but the events play out against backgrounds that we all are familiar with if we choose to peer into them.
 
I have always been heavily influenced by thinkers and observers like Orwell, Shakespeare, Dickens, Bradbury, Dick (and many, many others), people who give powerful insights into the ‘wrongs’ and ‘facades’ of human society and behaviours, especially selfish greed and misguided individualism. At university, one of my studies was the universal struggle between egoism and altruism, the self and society, the role and rights of me in relation to all of you: the balance between selfish and service, or what do I get if I give? We live that conundrum perpetually. It permeates my writing and drives my characters. Maybe it’s my therapy to explore why humans persist in being greedy.