Here Come the Tigers
The winds have changed. Every 15-20 years there is an earthly shift, marked by a modern phenomena, the Tigers (Balmain/Wests) win (or are robbed of) one or many premierships over a short burst. There’s a fashion rule that says trends can repeat every 20 years. Don’t be distracted by the result last weekend, this is much deeper, it’s about the tension between human drives for efficiency, and the desire for freedom, play and expression, it’s a planetary rhythm, astrological in its essence.
The first wave of the Tigers burst, happened from 1911-24 with 10 premierships being cleaned up, in parallel during this period the First World War occurred; “the War to end all Wars” featuring amongst many waves of human destruction, the 1916 Battle of the Somme with over a million casualties and 300,000 dead, the first day of the battle remaining one of the deadliest single days in human history.
World War 1 ended and the Spanish Flu arrived, with another 2 years of huge waves of destruction, this time virally, with between 25-50 million lives lost. And then we entered the roaring 20s where the world threw itself into an age of Jazz, of improv, of moving with each other, by the mid 20s, the Tigers stopped their run of winning Premierships, and the next 15 years saw a great depression, the rise of some of our earth’s most sickening dictators, mass shifts in automation, and the emergence of a Second World War.
As the Second World War opened, the Tigers won again and between 1939-47 they won 4 premierships, the Second World War skyrocketed technological advancement with movement by air becoming normalised, and weaponry moving to a scale where we could now wipe ourselves out as a species with the invention and destructive deployment of the Atomic bom.
It would be another 22 years until the Tigers would win again, after World War 2, Alan Turing (who helped cracked the code and win the war for the Allies - told in the modern film The Imitation Game), and his mates in Building 20 at MIT Media Labs set the foundations over this 20 year period for Building 20 to unearth some of the world’s largest breakthrough’s in design, Amar Bose did his early research into loudspeakers in the building, early hacker culture evolved in the space via the Tech Model Railroad Club, microwaves originated out of the same building, and in total 9 Nobel prize winners would spend time in Building 20.
The waves of conservatism and governed exclusion started to erode in the 20 years before the Tigers won again in 1969. By 1969 My mum and Grandad had for 2 years being included as citizens in Australia. In 1969 Woodstock lit up our collective imaginations to symbolise the global movement for peace and unity. To remind us as Harry Belafonte says “When the music is strong, the movement is Strong”. And by 1969 Mandela had been in Prison on Robben Island for 5 years.
Almost 20 years later the Tigers were robbed of two premierships, the first in 1988 when Terry Lamb illegally whacked Ellery “eats celery” Hanley, the tigers star, in the first play of the game, and when Ellery was stretchered off that was the match. And the second when the wind changed again and a wobbly drop kick couldn’t find the way, and I saw my Dad break down for the first time wailing “why oh why” at the TV screen, as I watched on as a four year old.
In those 20 years leading into the 80s, we as a species emerged socially with rich weaves appearing; we ended the Vietnam war, Singapore solved homelessness with a rich complex inclusive public housing program, Japan exploded as a storytelling and design with Studio Ghilbi becoming a global beacon of imaginative storytelling, born in the same year as me.
In 1988 Bicentenary protest took place in Australia on the 26th of January sparking a 30 year movement that is still running for the most basic of human decency in our Australian narrative, that we as Indigenous people exist, have value, and intelligence, and should have our place respected in the Australian story, now, before and beyond.
It would be almost another 20 years until the Tigers, now merged with the Magpies, would find their way into a grand final, this time to raise the trophy. In that time Mandela walked out of Prison and united a nation in a rainbow. Rudd apologised. The US had got ready to begin to usher in it’s first Black president and Technology was on the march. From personal video games, to the mobile phone, Google was founded in 1998, Facebook in 2004 and YouTube in 2005, and the iPhone in 2007. From Woodstock to Silicon Valley. We were about to wade into 20 years of the most dangerous intrusive network design, on a scale never before seen. With human being giving up our freedom, for ease of distraction, and opening up advertisers into our pockets, our homes, our memories, and our minds.
And now almost 20 years on, we emerge into the 2023 NRL season. At another critical juncture in human history, the plates are shifting, we are experiencing the end of another pandemic, just like after the Tigers first wave of wins in the early 20th century, we are experiencing climate inequity and impending disaster like we haven’t seen before, and the answer is where we were in 1969, with peace and love and kindness at the core of our species. A coming together. We are experiencing a wave of automation that have never seen before, Chat GBT can now do the assignments of kids, up to 40% of jobs are at risk of being automated in the next 20 years, and in this time, in this space, over the last 20 years the Rugby League game, alongside all other professional sport has followed the Henry ford efficiency playbook. Find the code, train the code, apply the code, robot not human, glorify those that have discipline and work hard. Remove imagination. Remove play. As the robots do our homework and take our jobs, we must find another way for the next 20 years to move as a species, and that is by finding the joy in our life, the love in our soul, the kindness with each other, and the ability to tell big stories, to entertain and dazzle, to surprise and wonder.
Enter the Tigers, to the untrained eye yesterday’s loss would look like a team that didn’t know how to catch a ball, but with a historical context and understanding of galactic patterns it becomes clear that the Tiger Moon is rising, the winds have changed, and what we witnessed last weekend as the players stared down at their hands in disbelief was akin to the Hulk trying to understand what had happened the first time he transformed. They are now running down hill. The best of us would struggle to adjust immediately to suddenly running downhill with more power than ever before. Mark my words, this is the epoch of the Tiger, they’ll win the comp this year or the next and in the next 20 years we’ll see a shift from social to relational networks, we’ll see a shift from automation to imagination, we’ll reward joy, and reclaim our role as a species as the custodians of planet earth, from nature to nature.
It’s as inevitable as the earth rotating the Sun. Here come the tigers, the change is afoot.
