14 December

One of the profound changes those who lived through the 1970s into the present day will have noticed, is the collapse of community service organisations. Lions, Rotary, Apex. It was organisations like this, and community sporting clubs, that taught Australians skills in how to live together as communities, around practical work targeted at community need. Fast forward to 2025 and they’ve been replaced with GoFundMe culture. Let shit happen, then fundraise for the victims. Normalising systemic failure. It’s far too easy to blame this on shifting attitudes of generations. The community service movement grew out of the almost total social collapse of WW1, WW2, the Great Depression and the Spanish Flu pandemic. Communities had to be re-built, almost from scratch. Only catastrophe brings people together. Without it they each fight for their own status. The absence of catastrophic threat to societies is what killed community service movements. Social media society is generating the next catastrophic disruption now, with uncontrolled social status games.