I stink therefore I am
Professor Milfull developed his 'sermon' on creative human work and togetherness from two graffiti detected on the toilet doors of the Morven Brown Buildings: Paul Keating is a sado-machoist and (by "Morven" Descartes) I stink, therefore I am. He pointed out a modern paradox: while Australian teachers repeatedly enjoin schoolchildren to love themselves and to nurture their egos, the nation's "sado-machoistic" leaders measure their success in pain and practise social Darwinism. The ideals of the 1970s and early 1980s, when society questioned the whole idea of a personality structure based on power and domination instead of gentleness and interaction, have now been submerged in the "male mystique" of Labor right. Professor Milfull said it may be time to accept our "human stink", to regard ourselves as fallible, not clever or strong, but capable of working together with other fallible people for the kind of progress we need.
He recalled telling East German students during the period of optimism which briefly swept Europe in Novemeber 1989, that" in our fear and dismissal of ideologies that promise Utopia and deliver the labor camp, we risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater".
Professor Milfull concluded his address with a poem by Volker Braun, the East German Writer, about how "togetherness" rather than atomization, might be achieved.