I have updated my Latest Short Story – Please read it – You may like It as it slags off the Faceless Men & Women in Puppetry (i.e Modern Politics).

the link is here:

https://martinantonsmithart.wordpress.com/2022/10/05/the-lucid-dream-of-marcel-smithski-just-another-poor-walter-mitty-of-the-south-seas/

Here is the first few lines to whet your appetite

Marcel Smithski age 29 was definitely a Walter Mitty type character. He was a ‘History buff’, practically spending half his life bumming around musty old urban bookshops hidden down the numerous alleyways of his hometown of Melbourne Australia. He loved the obligatory parts of second-hand book store culture: the smell of the musty books, the nerdy bespectacled & rake thin staff always reading at the cashier desk. He loved the thrill of the chase, of finding that hidden gem such as Steven J Gould, Christopher Hitchens, Bukowski, Orwell, Hawking or Bertrand Russell or any number of the numerous brilliant minds that lined those dusty tall shelves.

After a typical book hunting session, he retired to his bohemian digs in St Kilda. He lived in a weird boarding house built in Edwardian times; it was at base beautiful property but like them all – it was now simply a faded memory of its former self. He continued the second half of his creature of habit ritual -shutting himself away in his room, lying on his bed and beginning a 7-hr read-a-thon. He was perusing his latest great find called “The Great Depression: A Diary by Benjamin Roth – a blow by blow account of the great depression years from the viewpoint of a professional man.

Dear NZ & Australia: Lets Ditch Tall Poppy Syndrome (An Open Letter)

Dear NZ & Australia.

I would like to talk of that awkward subject, that horrible addiction we have, those unhealthily too comfortable mind-shackles we choose to wear:

Tall Poppy Syndrome.

The Problem with NZ & also Australia is that too people are Prisoners of their own Egos,

& they mostly choose to stay with that familiarly uncomfortable, Viper-like, very limiting cocoon.

They then choose to teach their kids how to do this to secure the next generation of misery.

And so on & so forth seemingly until the end of time.

They make this ‘deal with the devil’ to stay this way until the daisies are very much pushed skywards.

That system of blundering dunderheadedness is the basic ingredients of the famed ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome’.

I dream that one day this cycle will be broken, & NZ & Australia can embrace its own, rather bully them.

They are usually Bullied into jumping ship, suicide or the more common garden variety solution:

To take an oath of wearing a Calvinist spirit, only hold materialistic & utilitarian views.

In short, they agree to wear that well-worn mask of intellectual Lilliputianism.

Say what you like of America – for all their misgivings, they at least learnt to cut those juvenile shackles off.

NZ & Oz Love To Cut Tall Poppies

For that’s what Tall Poppy syndrome really is – ‘Shackles that Retard the Mind’.

If America did it – then so can we in NZ & Australia, & it can’t come soon enough.

I only hope that unlike America we can achieve Freedom from our shackles Peacefully –

But perhaps to kill off Tall Poppy syndrome you really do need violent revolution & civil wars.

I am a cynic, but I’m not that cynical – We can simply choose to remove our mind-shackles.

We can follow this simple process:

When the natural feeling comes over us to cut the heads off a loud annoying ‘Tall Poppy’,

We must reach into our pocket & read a laminated note that reads:

Don’t Do It.

Do this enough for ourselves & our kids & the “Don’t Do It” note becomes freely available in our heads.

Then The War is Won, & the ‘Mind Shackles’ will be a distant memory of an archaic brutal past.

Then we will have a chance to truly self-actualise.

After all – Is it really much fun being miserable? To go along with a un-reflexive crowd, baying the words ‘WHAT DO WE WANT – MORE MEDIOCRITY’? WHEN DO WE WANT IT – NOW & FOREVER’.

Nor is it joyous to carry placards through the land that say ‘STAY WITHIN YOUR LANE’?

I say to you Ladies & Gentlemen of NZ & Australia

NO IT IS NOT!.

Yours Sincerely Martin Anton Smith (a 44-year-old New Zealander and Ex Melbourne man still trying to cut his shackles – but at least I know they are there and the metal is weakening)