AUSTRALIA – MYTHOLOGY
MAINTENANCE — DO WE UNDERSTAND THE RESPONSIBILITY?
To survive, people need shelter, food and water. These are necessities of existence.
Before a home becomes a place of comfort, it provides shelter: protection from the conditions around us.
Society depends on the everyday work of people who grow, build, repair, transport, clean and care. Reymont’s peasants represent one essential part of this foundation. Today, it extends across the many occupations that sustain our shared existence.
Individuals can be replaced. The necessary work of an entire community cannot be removed without society ceasing to function.
What, then, is the responsibility of those entrusted with maintaining that society?
This responsibility extends from the highest public office to everyday administration, education, justice and healthcare. Teachers, lawyers and doctors are not all government employees, but their work carries responsibilities on which other people depend.
This is what I mean by MAINTENANCE: maintaining the conditions that allow society and its people to function.
The clock face illustrates our limitation. Each of us observes from a particular position, shaped by knowledge, experience and convictions. Someone speaking from one minute does not automatically understand the other fifty-nine. Yet their decisions may affect the entire clock.
Responsibility therefore requires listening beyond our own position, examining consequences and correcting mistakes. Attachment to a belief must not prevent us from recognising the experiences of people affected by our decisions.
Access to shelter is one practical test.
My grandmother once explained the relationship between money and lasting assets through an example: a house might cost a kilogram of gold in one period and a similar amount in another, while its price in money changes. This is an illustration, not a universal historical ratio. Neither gold nor property has a guaranteed constant value.
For the working person, the essential question remains: how much work is required to obtain shelter?
When a modest home becomes increasingly inaccessible to the people whose work sustains society, its cost in relation to their earnings is a warning that something requires repair.
Those responsible must investigate the causes and address them. Decisions affecting population, housing, infrastructure and public services must be considered together.
Harm may result from poor understanding, neglect or deliberate choices. The outcome alone does not establish the intention. But a lack of harmful intention does not remove the consequences—or the responsibility to correct them.
An electoral mandate carries obligations throughout its term. It cannot serve as an excuse for neglect until the next election. People need effective, peaceful and democratic ways to demand correction and replace those who fail to fulfil their duties.
When people describe hardship, they are reporting experiences that deserve to be heard and examined. My Milk Bottle idea begins there: people record what has happened to them, bring those experiences together and seek constructive change.
When distress becomes protest, calling people hooligans does not answer why they have reached desperation. Destruction causes further harm, but condemning it does not discharge the responsibility to address the conditions behind it.
We can destroy or build. We can deepen suffering or respond with respect.
The purpose of maintenance is to recognise warning signs, repair failures and protect the foundations of everyday life before they break down.
A position of responsibility is a duty of service. Its effectiveness must be judged by what people actually experience.
Do we understand that responsibility—and are we fulfilling it?
