Ian Warden: If Australia votes 'no', will we ever forgive ourselves?

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." Oscar Wilde

Passionately pro-"yes" readers, when and if Australia votes "no" to the Voice, are you going to be able to forgive your Australia, your fellow (but unlike you, terribly flawed) Australians?

If you love Australia will you be able to go on loving it after it disappoints and dismays you with its "no"?

Will Australia still be lovable when it reveals unto you with its "no" its mean and racist streaks?

When you find from its "no" that it is not after all the land of the "fair go" (the Prime Minister keeps clichéing to his interviewers that ours is the land "of the fair go" and so is certain to vote "yes") how will you cope with that revelation?

To try to clarify my mind on the subject of forgiveness I have plunged into the scholarly thicket of the long and promiscuously footnoted Forgiveness entry of the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

I have been hacking my way through that thicket with the machete of my tertiary-educated intellect. All pollsters testify that there is a strong correlation (irrespective of one's generation) between having a university degree and being a "yes' voter. Your columnist has an old-fashioned BA from the olden days when universities bade us read books, even books of Chaucer, Shakespeare and Plato.

One point of view of philosophers in the Stanford thicket is that one is only qualified to choose to feel resentment, to opt to forgive or not to forgive if one has been directly harmed.

One has no business, some philosophers say, forgiving or not forgiving harms done to others.

So, will the "no" vote really hurt bourgeois non-Aboriginal Australians, or will it only hurt our feelings?

But wait! Only hurt our feelings? If "no" voters dash the hopes and break the hearts of those of us who deeply, truly love our sunburnt country and who have dreamed of it becoming better, more decent, more tolerant, less and less racist, then won't we have a right to feel wronged, harmed, bruised by them, the "no" voters?

Then, some philosophers say, it is morally wrong and shows a lack of self-worth to feebly forgive truly awful people for truly awful things they have done to us. Some wicked people and the wickedness they do deserve the burning, everlasting (and in a way invigorating and cleansing) resentment of their victims.

Then, though it would be malicious fun to imitate Oscar Wilde's idea of forgiving the "no" voters so as to annoy them, one doubts that "no" voters are sensitive enough to feel annoyance at something so nuanced.

For the thinking citizen, love of one's country feels very like and at the same time feels quite different from love of a significant other person.

In a way the sudden, shock discovery (after all these years) that Australia is not the land of the fair go resembles the sudden discovery that one's partner is not the person we always thought (perhaps blinded by love) he/she was.

But even as I scribble that last sentence I can see that the analogy lacks the intellectual lustre my analogies usually have.

For instance, a hitherto-beloved nation cannot let us down by being unfaithful to us in the way that humans can cheat on us by being secretively adulterous. Australia does nothing secretively, behind our backs. Her warts, vices, virtues, everything are openly on display to us all of the time. Australia never cuckolds its Australians.

So if we have chosen to deceive ourselves by imagining our Australia to be wholly pure, decent, intelligent and true then we have no one else, not even the "no" camp, to blame for our delusions.

READ MORE IAN WARDEN

But perhaps our naive child-like idealism (about Australia) has been to our credit, even though it has given us breakable hearts the "no" vote is going to break.

One of those breakable hearts belongs to this columnist and another belongs to Nick Bryant, commentator and writer (author of The Rise and Fall of Australia - How a Great Nation Lost Its Way) and like this columnist an English migrant passionately fond of Australia and feeling blessed to live here.

In a recent ABC radio interview, Bryant grieved that "it almost breaks my heart" to see how the nation is being polarised by an embittered referendum debate, how the referendum seems certain to be lost.

He had dared to dream that "this was a moment Australia could really show itself a global exemplar on something like this, on such a small ask that could lead to such a giant step in reconciliation".

Bryant believes this referendum has mattered so much because it has been about our beloved country's "most emblematic issue [which is] to what extent if any modern Australia should make amends for the manner of its 18th-century colonisation [and continuing colonialism]".

Nick Bryant wasn't asked whether or not he will forgive Australia and Australians for its heartbreaking "no".

This columnist's palely loitering and lapsed inner-Christian (thinking of the C.S. Lewis quote at the head of this column) will do his best to excuse-forgive Australians their inexcusable "no" while fearing he is a poor, weak sinner not up to that task.

We've made it a whole lot easier for you to have your say. Our new comment platform requires only one log-in to access articles and to join the discussion on The Canberra Times website. Find out how to register so you can enjoy civil, friendly and engaging discussions. See our moderation policy here.