Memo for a Saner World

Bob Brown
Penguin, $24.95 PB

As an active member of the Australian Greens, I cannot claim to give an unbiased review of Bob Brown's new book, Memo for a Saner World. There were a few things I really didn't like about the book, but in broader terms it has added to my sense of hope about the world in which I live. This indeed is Brown's proclaimed goal, for he describes the Greens as a 'political anti-depressant'.

In recent interviews, Brown has alluded to a serious 'personal crisis' he experience in his younger years, and I suspect that this may be partly behind his anti-depressant metaphor. I imagine a young man disillusioned by the greed, corruption and inhumanity that characterise political power, and I imagine a deep trough of depression, where all action is futile and nothing is worthwhile, since the world itself is a cruel and insidious machine. Depression is fundamentally linked to inactivity, or lack of volition, and it is no exaggeration to say that our emotional states are closely tied to the wider society in which we live. How to feel hope and happiness when your very life is bound in a web of money and power?

So Bob Brown, it seems, took action. As I have recreated his life-story in my imagination, he one day (well maybe not all in one day, but perhaps rather suddenly) snapped out of despair, and decided to take action. Where loggers threatened his beloved Tasmanian forests, he put his body on the line to force them back; after all, in an otherwise vicious and destructive world, what did he have to lose? Brown created for himself a non-pharmaceutical cure by deciding that actually there were things he could do in defiance of the powers that be. The rest, of course, is history - the history of the Australian Greens, who I like to think are now growing from a minor 'special interest' Party into a significant political force.

And what of the 'things I didn't like' about Memo for a Saner World? It is half memoir and half manifesto, and this particular combination should be infamous for generating grandiose self-portraits. The golden light in which Bob presents himself occasionally made me squirm. The arguments involved in the discussion of issues also sometimes had the cloying glint of fool's gold: complex global problems were at times reduced to simple, easy-to-follow solutions, while the support for these cases was more rhetorical than informative.

While these criticisms may sound quite grave, I was not too deeply bothered by the flaws in objectivity. After all, with a Federal election coming up this book must be regarded as a political manifesto, and such documents have never been a haven of balanced argument. At least the one-sidedness was blatant, and therefore not as insidious as the more sneaky distortions that are frequently slipped into print.

In a certain sense, the victory of action over despair may be aided by the momentum of unbalanced opinion. Taking into account all possible perspectives, and worrying about all the limitations and difficulties that can damage every good intention, may just be enough to send the depressed young man or woman back to her bottle of Zoloft. People can talk themselves out of almost anything by dwelling on counter-arguments. So I would rather read the Bob Brown who feels hopeful enough to try and do some good, than a person who has weighed up all the possibilities and decided to do nothing.

Review by Anonymous Radish