Tall Poppies
I recall the quote from my great aunt Dolce ‘we didn’t ask ourselves what it meant to be Australian, we just were’.
I wish to write in favour of the tall poppy syndrome, as I understand it to have been used back when we didn’t ask what it meant to be Australian, we just were.
The tall poppy syndrome is misunderstood, misused and unfairly maligned. Without it, we have nothing to keep us grounded, level headed – real.
It is fashionable nowadays to disparage the tall poppy syndrome and we are encouraged to leave it behind as a relic of a shameful Australian past. I disagree, and believe that the tall poppy syndrome, as it was originally used, was constructive in creating an egalitarian society, rather that it being destructive, as it is currently painted. It was about cutting down the weeds, not the trees.
I am no fan of the brutish, oafish, ‘bogan’ culture that is now passed off as Australian and feel no solidarity with the ‘love it or leave’ brigade, the brigadeers I call them, who cling to a version of Australia that never existed. Nor am I threatened by the inexorable changes in our society brought about by continued immigration and expanding globilisation. But I am acutely aware of the cultural cringe and associated cultural alienation that sees us throw away anything that is different from other countries unless it has been endorsed by a celebrity from overseas. And what celebrity will ever endorse the tall poppy syndrome.
The tall poppy syndrome, as it is known nowadays, is where success itself is criticised, where attempting to be successful is criticised, or where successful people are criticised. The tall poppy syndrome is equated with animosity to success or achievement and is blamed wherever mediocrity exists. Mediocrity is said to exist because people were afraid to do better lest they be branded tall poppies or it is rolled out to guard against justified criticism. This definition is incorrect.
The tall poppy syndrome, as I observed it’s use when I was knee high to a grasshopper, was about cutting people down who were – too big for their boots. So, yes, you are right, it WAS about cutting people down, but not the people you think. It was never about cutting down people who truly were successful – a cut above the rest, rather it was about cutting people down who were full of it, who believed they were notable, acted as though they were above everyone but were no better than anyone else. It was never about cutting down the champions, the high achievers, the icons.
There is an important distinction between the two definitions of a tall poppy, between those people who merely think they are better than everyone else, and those people whose achievements suggest that maybe they actually are. A very positive human trait exists in the gap between the two different types of people …. humility.
Australian champions were expected to be humble. I ask you, after a good 20years of diminishing humility in our society, was it such a bad thing that we expected our champions to be humble? Our champions, across all fields not just sport, were lionised, not cut down. And in return, our champions were, typically, humble.
An unwillingness to cut down the ‘tall poppies’, not the truly successful, means we now live in a world where ‘celebrities’ see themselves as beyond criticism, and suggest they can act with impunity. The response to any criticism of someone of note is to smear the critic with the taint of the tall poppy syndrome: ‘you’re just engaging in the tall poppy syndrome’. I would like to remove the taint from the use of the tall poppy syndrome. The purpose of the tall poppy syndrome was to protect us from people who were up themselves. In it’s absence, we have no such protection.
The denigration of the tall poppy syndrome suggests that everyone is above criticism, and is typically undertaken by people the syndrome was aimed at: the fake, the shallow, the braggards and the wanna be’s. The suggestion is that everyone is above criticism.
Criticism of the tall poppy syndrome often requires the creation of false enemies. It allows blame to be apportioned to all those people – out there: it’s because of ‘them’ that I didn’t attempt something because if I had attempted it, and failed, they would have laughed at me. A recent example, an article in the Herald: Start-ups battle tall poppy syndrome. The article discusses the fear that people have when starting a business – the start-ups are worried they will be a target of the Tall Poppy Syndrome.
The article, and the start-ups, confuse the fear of failure and the fear of success, blaming the tall poppy syndrome for fear of success when what they really have is a fear of failure. If you read the article you will see that not one of the people associated with the business start-ups has actually received any criticism – they imply that they might.
The tall poppy syndrome existed at the same time as the phrase – ‘av a go ya mug’. They go hand in hand. How could it be that at the same time you could, supposedly, be cut down by the tall poppy syndrome, you were encouraged to have a go. It’s because the tall poppy syndrome was not about cutting down those people who had a go. It was about cutting down those people who did indeed ‘av a go’, did a fairly average job of it, and then proceeded to tell everyone how good they were.
Australians’ have never been against success, or against those who attempt to succeed, we were against those who told us they were successful when they weren’t, and then expected us to treat them as though they were successful and therefore better than the rest of us, when they weren’t.
How did I learn all this? Oral tradition. When I was much younger, and I was dragged along to the semi-regular family gatherings, I would hang around my many uncles and aunties and listen to them argue, yarn, and then argue some more. Piping up when I dared in an attempt to appear worldly, to be encouraged sometimes, and smited – verbally, at other times. For this generation, born between the wars, fame was a by-product of talent. I gleaned from listening in to these conversations a sense that you had to ‘prove yourself’: maybe that is what people fear nowadays, not the callow words of the critic, but the onus of proving oneself in order to be judged the best.
I never once heard these people tear down what we could now call a ‘high achiever’. If you were good you were good, and if you weren’t, then you were expected to be trying to be: all the time treating everyone else with respect – which requires amongst other things, a degree of humility. I don’t recall a time when you were criticised for trying something.
The tall poppy syndrome = egalitarianism: it does not equal mediocrity. It is not possible to combine all the positive human traits into a single society, so we must choose those we prefer. We are so desperate to be recognised for our individuality, our specialness, nay our preciousness, that we have forgotten or are ignoring the traits that are required for us to be a community of equals.
Have we spent so much time thinking about, worrying about, what it means to be Australian, that we have forgotten to be, Australian? I think so. Let’s return to a time when you could feel free issuing the occasional mild rebuke, to someone who thoroughly deserved it.
