engineers versus lawyers, page-15

The title of the thread is engineers versus lawyers. Post-industrial countries moved from the leadership of engineers to the leadership of social scientist, China will follow the same progress.

As for Abbott - there are many 'guides' to his personality and events that shaped him, here is a short quote from one:

He arrived in a state of great excitement. Oxford, for Abbott, was the ultimate university. It was a bastion of tradition, educational achievement and the embodiment of all that was good about England. As he has often said, he is an “incorrigible Anglophile”. He flourished there, studying philosophy and politics, and immersing himself in the works of eighteenth-century conservative philosopher Edmund Burke.

Commentators have overlooked Burke’s influence on Abbott, as they’ve attempted to find religious underpinnings to his ideas. Yet Burke’s theories embedded themselves deeply in Abbott’s mind. He took especial note of Burke’s notion that “We fear God, we look up with awe to kings: with affection to parliaments; with duty to magistrates; with reverence to priests; and with respect to nobility”. He was also profoundly influenced by Burke’s idea that society is a “partnership” not only between those who are living, but “between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born”. Even now, as leader of the Opposition, these two ideas guide Abbott in the way he sees not only the responsibilities of politicians but also the responsibilities people must have towards their own communities. His dislike of what he perceives as laziness, welfare dependency, anti-social behaviour and loose morals derives from the idea that citizens thereby break this vital partnership; he sees it as his duty to restore it.

While at Oxford, Abbott found another mentor in an American trainee Jesuit priest, Paul Mankowski, whom he calls the finest man he has ever met. Deeply religious and keeping to a vow of poverty, Mankowski wore the clothes of dead priests. He was intelligent and a boxer. He fully endorsed the idea that “a healthy body means a healthy mind”, which was not so much a strand of Irish Catholicism but its English and American forms. The notion of “muscular Christianity” was especially important for Catholics, who emphasised sexual chastity before marriage and celibacy in priests. Physical activity was a way of finding a physical outlet for sexual frustration.

Boxing is called the ultimate sport and no wonder. It is two men pitted against each other, with no protection other than their gloves and sometimes a helmet. It is a profound act of bravery to face an opponent who is out to hurt you and could possibly kill you. There is nowhere to hide, and any momentary act of perceived cowardice is magnified. Boxing is, however, more than just punching: one has to duck, weave, guard, counterattack, parry blows and, of course, conquer fear.

Whenever Abbott entered the ring he was, as he once said, “terrified. It’s one of those things you make yourself do.” In his first bout – against Cambridge in March 1982 – he knocked out his opponent within the opening minute, and his three other fights were equally successful. He had little technique but a brutal sense of attack, which he called “the whirling dervisher”.

source: http://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2010/january/1347590202/louis-nowra/whirling-dervish