Wowsers

An American may well think that 'wowsers' is another way of saying 'wow' but in Australia this old word refers to judgemental morality campaigners who wish to restrict the recreational activity of others. A wowser was defined by writer C J Dennis as someone who "mistakes this world for a penitentiary and himself for a warder" but I will try to be more open-minded in examining them here.

Concerned Citizens

The stated motivation of wowsers is concern for the welfare of individuals and society as a whole and I will take them at face value. Many issues that wowsers focus on are cause for concern. The toxin that is alcohol can result in both street and domestic violence. Problem gambling can impoverish households. Prostitutes are prone to abuse and victimization. Recognition of such problems is close to a consensus these days. But wowsers are mistaken in a few key ways. One is to think that criminalizing things many enjoy can be effectively enforced. The other is to deny that making judgements for oneself is a vital characteristic of adulthood that deserves to be exercised.

Prohibition provokes a number of responses born of diverse personal characteristics that occur in every generation. Many will conform. Some however will defy restictions as an affront to personal autonomy. More will simply find the forbidden enticing. And yet others will persist in a behaviour that for them is addictive. Then there will be those who aggressively profit from a ban by engaging in organized crime. History has shown the flaws of zero tolerance and so harm minimization solutions are now more well-regarded. Today the classic wowser is relatively rare. And yet many others behave in ways that seem wowserish.

Behaviour Managers

A mindset of experts and policy advisers is to regard society as a kind of machine that can be managed statistically. Reduce smoking by X and improve the budget bottom line by Y. I suspect it is this technocratic tendency rather than wowserism that has driven Australian governments to curb tobacco consumption. A whole raft of regulations and taxes has bit-by-bit succeeded in turning smoking into a minority activity. As a non-smoker I'm happy to live an almost entirely smoke-free life. But I wonder exactly what the line is between harm minimization and zero tolerance.

A new intergovernmental plan in Australia will only allow vapes as a prescription medicine. This is following a decade or more of vaping as something that is done recreationally. How well will this work? I suspect its suddenness will be a problem. Contrast that with how we gradually altered the incentives and disincentives of tobacco smoking at a speed Australians could work with. I worry that more rapid reform could backfire. Those it seeks to help - in particular the young - may well just be driven to resent those in power.

Propagandists

A populist trend across the political landscape is to politicize everything. This includes creative content which cannot simply be itself anymore. Every game or movie or album can be perceived as propaganda for one side or another. And whether someone approves or disapproves of that content will depend on whether they think it promotes whatever conception of culture they value. This will then motivate them to promote some content while hindering the rest.

A pedantic definition of censorship says that it can only be imposed by governments (and only some political actors have control of the state). But corporations, organizations and movements still have power and can enact what some euphemistically call 'consequences'. Rival crowds deploy such consequences back-and-forth and tit-for-tat. Taken all together such actions can hamper creative expression or just drive communication 'underground' to distort and fester.

Killjoys

Both bonafide wowsers and those who behave like them overstate the existence of conditioning. In some cases that is because they themselves would love nothing more than to condition others. But for conditioning to exist everything in our lives must be deliberately pushing us in the same direction. In reality we are faced by a host of contrasting influences that pull us in many directions. And one of those influences is our own self. By the time we are adults we can make our own decisions and express our own preferences. But wowserish dogma imagines we are empty vessels to be possessed by any passing spirit. Then any depiction of flawed behaviour we witness is like the Necronomicon of horror fiction - merely reading it will seduce and corrupt. But personal experience says otherwise.

I have seen plenty of fashion advertisements but never been attracted to super-models. I have enjoyed action movies but never taken the law into my own hands. I have been amused by dodgy old comedy sketches but never been a flasher. This surely cannot be that unusual. How did I get to be this way? If anything I was exposed to more influences rather than less and got a chance to develop skills of discernment. But for that variety to occur nothing could be too dominant. However mobile Internet can result in over-exposure to a narrow band of addictive influences. If so then I may have to share some non-alcoholic drinks at a milkbar for killjoys and curmudgeons. I wonder how fun that would be.