Australian Humanist , Issue #79, Spring 2005

 

Generosity of Spirit

Dr. Tim Flannery, Australian Humanist of the Year 2005 - Acceptance speech, given 19 April 2005 in Adelaide.

I am deeply humbled to be joining this list of extraordinary people. People like Lionel Murphy – my hero when I was at university – Phillip Adams, Gareth Evans, Fred Hollows – what an amazing person. The one thing all of these people have in common is a great generosity of spirit, and when you look at the politics of fear and how elections are held now; where people are scared into losing their generosity, you see how much Humanism is under siege.

The Honourable Chris Schacht and Dr. Tim Flannery AHOY 2005 at

Presentation dinner, 19 April 2005, Adelaide, SA. [Photo: Victor Bien]

So how do we keep that generosity of spirit going? What do we do in our own lives that allows us the confidence and quiet generosity to be good Humanists? I’m very pleased that there are a few people around the table this evening who have helped me do it.

I’m very proud to be a Director of a museum that’s free to the public, which means that school kids from Elizabeth (Adelaide suburb), can come in and see some of the world’s great treasures – the second largest gold nugget, the only surviving Aboriginal artifact from the first fleet period and other amazing things – without having to pay. Even a one dollar entry fee for such kids is a huge barrier, and keeping the SA Museum free has been a bloody hard fight. Every other major museum in Australia charges, except in Canberra where money seem to flow from every crack and crevice. There are people who have helped me keep it free – Steve Reilly my General Manager at the Museum has stood by me through thick and thin. Every time we considered putting a charge on the door, Steve has said no bugger it, let’s raise some money from outside. Then there’s Andrew Stott one of the great supporters of the Museum from Origin Energy, who has the generosity to give and help us. People like Andrew give in so many capacities, not just to the Museum. He’s a true humanist in terms of giving to society, and nothing is more important. Also my spouse, Alexandra Szalay, who is always my better half; whenever I start getting a bit crotchety and mean, and say ‘we should do it this way’, she’s the one who always stands out and says ‘no there’s always someone with a different point of view you need to listen to.’

Receiving this award tonight has made me feel more strongly than ever that that generosity of spirit is all that counts in the world. If we don’t have that, if we can’t maintain that, then we don’t have the capacity to be true humanists. I’d like to go away from this evening just strengthened in all of those beliefs and with the confidence that though there’s only a few of us around the table, and humanists seem to be a dying breed, that we can somehow continue to make a difference, and we must, because a society without humanist values is a society doomed to collapse, as Jared Diamond would have it.  

Without humanist values what we find is a society in which the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and no one gives a damn; where people can’t fulfill their full capacity to contribute to that society, where people become evermore alienated, and that’s a society that is doomed to failure. So a lot rests on us and our humanist beliefs and somehow we have to find the strength to continue being generous, being confident and reaching out to people who often don’t initially want to be reached out to, but we need to keep those beliefs going.

I was going to start my speech with a little bit about my early Catholicism, and I thought, ‘I don’t know how that will go down, so I was very pleased to see the green ribbon on the table. With a name like Timothy Flannery, who was born on St Timothy’s Day, you can imagine what my early life was like.  It was very much Catholicism all over the place.

‘Money is the root of all evil’

St Timothy had a few things to say about the world, and one of his perhaps great comments, was that ‘money is the root of all evil’. I’ve done a bit of thinking about money in my time I must say I tend to agree with him. Money is a genuine problem for us because it allows us to be very selfish. This was first pointed out to me by a Tongan who lived 200 years ago. He came to visit Sydney in 1806 and observed the early settlement and reported his experiences back to his King Finow, who was the first of the royal lineage in Tonga. It's extraordinary that we even have his thoughts on record, as this wonderful man Páloo Máta Moigna was not from a literate society. He heard about the establishment of Sydney, because word travelled about the Pacific very quickly once the settlement was established in 1788. His King had sent him out to just find out what was Sydney about. Páloo is a member of the Tongan nobility he’d never worked a day in his life and he goes to Sydney, and has these amazing adventures. The reason his account of Sydney survived was that at the court of King Finow in 1806 there was a ship wrecked cabin boy, whose was a confidant of Finow, and who was rescued some years later from the ‘cannibals’ of Tonga back to the great comfort for the working man in early 19th century England – which must have been wonderful! – and who lived to tell his story.

[ Editor’s comment. Tim Flannery then read an account of Páloo and his wife’s experiences when they visited Sydney in 1806, recorded from the cabin boy’s recollections. Flannery’s comments are in bold.]

 

Account by the cabin boy

(William Mariner) 1

The account they (Páloo and his wife) gave of English customs of this place, and the treatment they first met with, it may well be worth while to relate. The first thing that he and his wife had to do when they arrived at the governor’s house, where they went to reside, was to sweep out a large courtyard and clean down a great pair of stairs. – So here’s a royal visit to Australia. You can see Governor Bligh saying about the black bastards from the Pacific, give them the broom and let them sweep out the court yard! – In vain they endeavoured to explain that in their own country they were chiefs and, being accustom to be waited on, were quite unused to such employments.

Their expostulations were taken no notice of, and work they must. At first their life was so uncomfortable they wished to die. No one seemed to protect them; all the houses were shut against them; if they saw anybody eating they were not invited to partake. – What a barbarous society they entered into! –  Nothing was to be got without money, of which they could not comprehend the value, nor how this same money was to be obtained in any quantity. If they asked for it, nobody would give them any, unless they worked for it; and then it was so small in quantity that they could not get one-tenth of what they really wanted.

One day, while sauntering about, the chief fixed his eyes upon a cook’s shop and, seeing several people enter and others again coming out with victuals, he made sure they were sharing out food according to the old Tonga fashion; and in he went, glad enough of the occasion. After waiting for some time with anxiety to be helped to his share, the master of the shop asked him what he wanted and, being answered in an unknown language, straightaway kicked him out, taking him to be a thief that only wanted an opportunity to steal.

Thus, he said, even being a chief did not prevent him from being used ill, for when he told them he was a chief they gave him to understand that money made man a chief.

After a time, however, he acknowledged that he got better used, in proportion as he became acquainted with the customs and language. He expressed his astonishment at the perseverance with which white people worked, from morning till night, to get money; nor could he conceive how they were able to endure so much labour.

After having heard this account, Finow asked several questions respecting the nature of money. What is it made of? Is it like iron? Can it be fashioned like iron, into various useful instruments? If not, why cannot people procure what they want by the way of barter? But where is money to be got? If it is to be made, then every man ought to spend all his time making money, that when he had got plenty afterwards he would be able to obtain everything else he wants.

In answer to the last observation, Mr Mariner, replied that the material of which money is made is very scarce and difficult to be got and that only chiefs and great men could procure readily a large quantity of it; and this either by being inheritors of plantations or houses which they allowed others to have for paying them so much tribute in money every year; or by their public services; or by paying small sums of money for things when they were in plenty and afterwards letting others have them for larger sums when they were scarce; and, as to the lower classes of people, they worked hard and got paid by their employers in small quantities of money as a reward of their labour etc. That the King was the only person that was allowed to make (to coin) money and that he put his mark on all he made, that it might be known to be true; that no person might readily procure the material of which it made of without paying money for it; and if, contrary to the taboo of the king, he turned this material into money he would scarcely have made much as he given for it.

Mr Mariner was then going to go on to show the convenience of money as a medium of exchange, when Filimóëátoo interrupted him, saying to Finow, I understand how it is: money is less cumbersome than goods and it’s very convenient for a man to exchange away his goods for money which, at any other time, he can exchange again for the same or any other goods he may want; whereas the goods themselves may perhaps spoil by keeping (particularly if provisions), but the money, he supposed, wouldn’t spoil; and although it was of no true value in itself, yet in being scarce and difficult to be got without giving something useful and really valuable for it, it was imagined to be of value; and if everybody considered it so and would readily give their goods for it, he did not see but what it was of a sort real value to all who possessed it, as long as their neighbours choose to take it the same that way. – What an exposition of money worthy of Adam Smith!

Mr Mariner, found that he could not give a better explanation; he therefore told Filimóëátoo that his notion of the nature of money was a just one.  

After a pause of some length, Finow replied that the explanation did not satisfy him. He said, ‘If a man has more yams than he wants let him exchange them for something else, like pork or gnatoo (bark cloth), certainly money is much handier and more convenient, but then, as it will not spoil by being kept, people will store it up, instead of sharing it out, as chief's ought to do, and thus they will become selfish; whereas, if provisions were the principle property of a man, and it ought to be, as being the most useful and the most necessary, he could not store it up, for it would spoil, and so he’d be obliged to either exchange it away for something else useful, or share it out to his neighbours and inferior chiefs and dependents for nothing.’  

He concluded by saying, ‘I understand now very well what it is that makes the Papalangiis (the white people) so selfish – it is this money!’

Concluding comments

What a wonderful view of our society by an early ‘anthropologist’ from the Tongan Islands, who came to Sydney in 1806, and analyses us so acutely. I don’t know whether it’s being named after the saint or not, but I tend to agree with Finow that money makes us selfish. Living in this society and seeing over my lifetime that the richest have just become richer in a very significant way, the poorer have really had no hope. People were a little bit better off now than they were thirty years ago, and perhaps financially that’s so, the distance between the rich and poor has increased so much that perceptions of wealth, perceptions of money which as we know are everything, have made this situation of our society worse. I despair when I hear Treasurers talk about just increasing the wealth of our society without addressing that issue, of distribution. Distribution is the most important thing and somehow that fits in with the humanist philosophy, it the fundamental underpinnings of a certain generosity.

I don’t know how we turn that great ship around, for we’ve all bought into the idea that all that’s important is just increasing the natural wealth of our society and everything will flow from that. It’s a falsehood, and as Finow’s advisor said it’s what all believe that really counts. If we believe money’s the most important thing then we will be captives of it, and we’ll be unable to escape that system. If we believe something different, if we believe that generosity of spirit and other people are the most important things, then perhaps we can live in a different sort of world.

Thank you all for strengthening my sense that humanism is the foundation stone upon which our society and our individual lives have to be based. I couldn’t have accepted a greater honour it’s the most important thing that has ever been bestowed upon me, so thank you very much.

Transcribed and edited by Rosslyn Ives.