I’ll never forgot the republic referendum held in Australia in 1999.

The polls had looked bad in the weeks leading up to the vote, with the combination of those genuinely in favour of us continuing to be a constitutional monarchy and those unwilling to vote in favour of the specific republican model on offer holding a modest but firm majority but I never lost my optimism. It just seemed too ridiculous that we’d turn down the chance to take the final step of legal independence from Britain. Yes, it’s symbolic, but that’s precisely why it was an important step. And as the day arrived the polls were tightening right on cue.

The day of the vote was sunny in Sydney and I had a great time handing out how to vote cards for the Yes campaign. At the time I lived in an electorate that generally voted conservative, being older and wealthier than the average, but it felt clear that the majority were voting the way I wanted that day. The energy from those taking out how to vote cards was very positive and they clearly outnumbered those taking the cards from the No campaigners. We’ve got this! I thought.

I was at a party when the results came in. It was relatively early in the evening when the outcome became clear. It wasn’t even that close. We’d lost, 55 to 45, and didn’t carry a single state.

I was stunned. Mortified. Outraged. I couldn’t understand how this could have happened. Almost everyone I knew was voting Yes. My family, my friends. Even in the moderately conservative seat of North Sydney the vote had clearly favoured us. How had we lost? How could the rest of Australia have made this appalling error? The emotional hit was worse than anything I’ve experienced after an election. I was confused, angry and sad.

And I wasn’t the only one. The mood of the party went sour quickly. Someone admitted to voting No and was set upon (verbally) by a couple of people. More arguments broke out. I wasn’t even in the mood to drown my sorrows or ramble philosophically and so left. It turns out that North Sydney was something like the second highest Yes vote in NSW. And my friends and family were nowhere near representative of the feelings of the population overall. I was living inside a bubble, and was disorientated when it burst.

I was reminded of all of this today when I read “Hashtag Feminism” in The Monthly, a review of a recently released collection of feminist writings from the Destroy the Joint organisers called Destroying the Joint: Why Women have to Change the World. The author notes a disjunction between the feeling expressed in the writings that Destroy the Joint had been an establishment-shaking, world-changing movement of real social significance and that fact that she herself had never heard of them before, and nor had anyone she knows.

This is what most of politics is like most of the time. We all exist within our bubbles. There is no neutral ground upon which to stand and assess “mainstream opinion.” Those who claim to speak on its behalf rarely resemble the masses they pretend to be one of.

The reviewer of the Destroy the Joint book felt that “many of the contributions to this book highlight, for me, the insularity of hashtag activism: social media as echo chamber.”

But life is an echo chamber. We live in a particular place, surrounded by other people who live in that place. We interact with others in a particular industry or cultural community. We seek out those who share our interests and values. And, yes, social media reflects these general barriers to infinite understanding which exist in human societies.

As is so often the case the new thing being discussed, in this instance social media, is being pointed to as a reason for our insularity when in fact it merely reflects it. It takes effort to seek out and understand the viewpoints of those unlike us. Few of us do it enough. It’s easier to consume content I mostly agree with or about things I am already interested in.

However in identifying this shortcoming of social media, and of the Destroy the Joint movement, but really of humans in general, it’s easy to miss the real story here. We’ve always been insulated from the full spectrum of human experience and opinion but before social media our isolation could very well be an entirely individual experience. In so many domains people previously believed that they were “the only ones,” whether it was gay kids in the country or women frustrated with the general level of misogyny in our society or someone obsessed with blues in the suburbs.

Now for whatever it is is you’re into there’s others like you forming communities online. And yes, deep engagement with a community is perspective-skewing, but so too is watching the commercial TV news each night (you might think, for example, that we are suffering from a crime wave or a weak economy).

For those who have become involved in feminist activism as a result of Destroy the Joint I have no doubt the experience has been genuinely world-changing, discovering a community of others who feel strongly about the same issues as them and are prepared to do something about it would be incredible empowering and exciting. Have they won the battle against misogyny in the last nine months? Of course not. But they are active and involved and speaking up and changing lives and inspiring active citizenship and that's actually pretty awesome.

This is how it works in a democracy. We find others who care about the things we do and we work together to convince others and affect the changes we feel are needed in our community. And social media has given us a powerful new set of tools to do this convincing and connecting, to learn from and to share our experiences and to support and sustain each other in the long-term effort to create a better future.

Image by zzub nik on Flickr made available on a creative commons license.

So this Saturday is Earth Hour. For the uninitiated Earth Hour is call to action that asks people to turn of their electricity for one hour in recognition of climate change. Earth Hour was started in Sydney, Australia, in 2007 and has since been taken global by WWF.

Their website says:

In 2009 hundreds of millions of people around the world showed their support by turning off their lights for one hour.

Earth Hour 2010 will continue to be a global call to action to every individual, every business and every community. A call to stand up, to show leadership and be responsible for our future.

Pledge your support here and turn off your lights for one hour, Earth Hour, 8.30pm, Saturday 27th March 2010.

Now turning off your lights is a good idea and I encourage people to take part but the framing of Earth Hour has always bothered me.

Much of the language around the initiative is about 'taking responsibility', 'taking action' and 'showing leadership' but it seems enough to demonstrate this responsibility, action and leadership for one hour, once a year. If Earth Hour were framed as an opportunity to reflect on the immense challenge facing the human race, the need to alter our relationship with the planet and pursue a more sustainable path it would make a great deal of sense to me. It could be an environmental May Day, a chance to come together and prepare for the great work ahead.

Or if it were linked to political action and clearly identifying the necessary policy steps and roadblocks to action, inspiring people to increase the pressure on their leaders for reform, that would make a lot of sense to me.

Instead Earth Hour is framed as actually doing something about climate change. This is completely false conception, and very dangerous. False action which allows us to feel we are making a difference, that we are doing our part, makes it less likely that we will make a real difference, or give up anything beyond an hour of electricity.

Earth Hour is the perfect corporate-friendly initiative: many of the businesses in the Sydney CBD and other cities turn off the lights of their office towers for the hour. On 8.30pm on a Saturday. In return they get to claim a little bit of green cred. But the real issue is why are office lights on at 8.30pm on Saturday night in order to be turned off? Why do they need to be turned on again at 9.30pm? And after this completely harmless non-threatening non-disruptive event business continues as usual.

In 2008 we spent Earth Hour at a participating restaurant. The kitchen power remained on, I assume, as meals continued to arrive in the candle-lit restaurant. It was really nice, a treat. After an hour of enjoyable and romantic dimness the lights came up again. Immediately following the completion of the Hour a fireworks display unexpectedly began, to celebrate this wonderful city-wide event. Environmental protest as dining occasion, as public celebration, as symbolic feelgood vibes, man. Well done on going an hour without electricity - let's blow up some carbon! Woo!

Hard to reflect on our unsustainable culture, the sacrifices and adaptions we will need to make and the difficult road again when fireworks are busting overhead. Ooooh. Aaahhh.

So turn off your lights at 8.30pm this Saturday, but don't kid yourself that you've made a difference when you do so. Instead sit in the dark, or in a park on a rug with friends, or in your backyard staring at the stars, and know that we have huge challenges and changes ahead, and so much work to be done to sweep away the forces that would lead us to disaster if they can make a dollar more. And think about how your actions can lead us towards a better, more sustainable tomorrow. Then act.