According to new research, by the year 2090 the principle cause of death in Australia will be boredom.
The cumulative effect of ten decades of social engineering will have turned us into a nation of risk-averse robots who enjoy brisk walks and pepitas and have never done anything foolish or dangerous.
We will be so permanently alive that we will wish we were dead. The days will merge into one, free of fortnightly hangovers, monthly food binges and occasional days spent entirely on the couch, nothing but clear-eyed wellness and crisp outside air.
Despite the ravages of the GFC, being worried about pretty much everything has become one of the biggest growth industries in Australia.
The extent to which life in this supposedly knockabout laissez-faire nation has changed was underscored a few weeks ago during a brief holiday in Thailand. There was an excellent little business near our hotel which, if replicated in Australia, would contravene about seven thousand different laws.
Some enterprising Thai fellow had painted an old Kombi neon pink, cut the roof out of it, decorated it with disco balls, installed a pumping sound system, and turned it into a fully-functioning bar which was groaning under the weight of every spirit known to man. There were about 80 cocktails on the menu. The barman pirouetted about inside the van, free-pouring delicious and deadly drinks which cost a very reasonable $3 a glass and, for the thirstier patron, $9 a bucket.
The Kombi didn’t have a street address – it had just parked itself on the footpath in front of a bunch of tailoring businesses and, at night, they would put out little wooden stools, which after a short while appeared to be spinning around a bit. There was no bathroom. If you asked the barman where you could wee he pointed helpfully over the esplanade in the direction of the Andaman Sea. The kombi had a pet as a mascot, a lactating Labrador which had two puppies, and possibly rabies.
If you tried this sort of stuff on here you’d be prosecuted under statutes covering zoning, noise, the improper use of motor vehicles, failure to provide amenities, the irresponsible service of alcohol, not to mention reckless endangerment from rabid lactating dogs.
At the same time I was holding onto my stool with both hands, the various cancer organisations in Australia were banding together to launch a final, all-out assault on the scourge of alcohol.
The scourge has now ballooned to such an extent that, according to these cancer people, it’s no longer enough to run valid and important campaigns against alcoholism or to target the kind of appalling alcohol-related violence which saw the arrest last weekend of some 1600 drunken morons who give grog a bad name.
Alcohol itself, in any form and any quantity, has now been deemed off limits. The message from the cancer folks now is that you should limit or ideally avoid alcohol altogether, and if you don’t drink, don’t start drinking.
These are the two opening two lines from last month’s position paper from the Cancer Council of Australia on alcohol and cancer risk.
“Any level of alcohol consumption increases the risk of developing an alcohol-related cancer; the level of risk increases in line with the level of consumption,” it reads. “It is estimated that 5070 cases of cancer (or 5 per cent of all cancers) are attributable to long-term, chronic use of alcohol each year in Australia.”
Clearly I am not an oncologist, but as a journalist I’d politely submit that these two paragraphs are what are known in our trade as a non-sequitur. The fact that there are 5070 full-blown raging pissheads who die tragically every year does not mean that everyone who has a glass of white with dinner – or, God forbid, six glasses of wine and a snifter of tokay every couple of weeks - is destined for the gurney.
And here’s a very serious question – has anyone in healthy industry ever sat down and done some proper research on the health benefits of relaxing with family and friends, laughing uproariously, having slightly too much fun, while slightly or even significantly under the influence of the demon drink? Obviously you can do all those things without drinking too, but the solemn message should be that you simply don’t have to.
The research as presented by the Cancer Council also jars with those other surveys we hear about from overseas about the health and wellness benefits of having a couple of glasses of red a day. Unless the Cancer Council and its compatriots have now established that all such past research is incorrect, the public has every right to seek solace in the confusion by purchasing another slab.
As the health industry has exploded in its size and reach it will be interesting to see whether it simply fades away as we all abandon our filthy habits, or whether it keeps itself flushed with cash by finding new dangers, be it the excessive consumption of plums or tabouleh, or the carcinogenic risks from nibbling the end of your biro.
The message that every teat-pipette of alcohol is doing you damage suggests to me that these people have either thrown in their lot with the Salem witch-burners, or have got too much time on their hands and have run out of more serious stuff to warn people about. There may well be a happy medium between the Thai model and the Australian model but I was pretty darned happy at that neon pink Kombi van.
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