Understanding Australia

I think that one of the things I found hard to understand, returning to Australia from Asia is this: So much of Asia is preparing for and dealing with huge populations and diverse economies but Australia isn't; and it won't need to.

There is enough stuff to dig up, export, basic unimproved minerals etc, for decades to come. The problems here more relate to an ageing basically homogenous population and, as always, the huge costs of the distances between cities/settlements. No great problems, no great challenges, no great pressure to innovate or pursue a new definition; no population pressures, not much suffering...and it won't change. It's understandable.

I was surprised, upon returning here, how many old people there were...people my age and older, compared to anywhere in Asia...and how many very large, fat people; but this is what happens in all First World countries I think. Mildly overweight people generally live longer than slim people anyway.

It's an uncrowded country and no one here much wants that to change. There is great anger whenever anyone suggests Australia should have a larger population now or in 30 years time, and there is the usual xenophobia about Asians and Arabs in particular. This great fear; as always unfounded, yet persistent now for more than 150 years does not vary. I think it's because Australia doesn't have any neighbours on the border...there is just the ocean. The Ocean Continent...so there has never been any need to interact much with anyone, or to solve problems...because there have been no problems with the ocean.

You can see the same kind of Mentality with the UK...and also with the USA who only have Canada and Mexico to have 'issues' with. None of these cultures know much about resolving problems with neighbours, per se.

It may well be a defining thing about UK and USA culture...the absence of negotiation in so many areas over so many  hundreds of years, so there is no particular skill development; thus in its absence is an odd chimera of 'Independence' and what is defined 'Freedom'...not by any struggle, innovation and effort but just conferred by geographical reality.

It can't be a criticism, and it's not. At the same time a city like Sydney has just about the most ethnically diverse 4-million-people-urban population on earth, and all or most doing reasonably well.