Over the last four centuries Western Societies have evolved to more liberal and more inclusive democracies. Democracy was famously defined in Lincoln’s Gettysburg address as: ……government of the people, by the people, for the people. Notwithstanding the fact that Lincoln seems to have plagiarised the words of American Unitary minister and abolitionist, Theodore Parker, it […]
There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families. Margaret Thatcher Modern Western nations seem to be obsessed with consumerism. This is attested to by the fact that the principal measure of progress seems to be Gross Domestic Product (GDP). I have in other essays explained the […]
In Buddhist philosophy we are warned to counter and avoid “afflictive emotions”. Such emotions are unhelpful because they result in no useful outcomes but have deleterious effects on those who experience them. The sages maintain that the worst of such emotions is guilt. Guilt helps no one and yet can be quite debilitating to those […]
I take up this topic with some trepidation. It will more than likely cause me to be labelled racist or xenophobic, but there are a few concerning issues here that we cannot continue to ignore. With respect to migration Australia has been a generous country. After the Second World War we opened our gates to […]
In the history of Western civilisation, the notion of undertaking paid work for a living is a relatively modern idea. Hunter/gatherers worked somewhat cooperatively in their various tribes and to a certain degree shared the fruits of the hunt, the catch and the various gatherings. But these were subsistence societies who only occasionally traded and […]
I titled my previous blog essay Towards a More Civil Society. In that essay, among other things, I deplored the curtailment of free speech in our universities. There have been many instances in recent years of Universities avoiding confronting students with opinions counter to the conventional wisdom of the students and faculty members. Students are […]
I have a concept I would like to discuss. The general premise is this – if I feel bad and I have no discernible physical ailment, it must be someone’s fault! Not mine, of course, because it would be totally irrational to believe that I would willingly undermine my own sense of personal well-being. Someone […]
I have growing concerns about some aspects of our society. There are a number of worrying trends but at this stage I will try to elucidate only four of these. I wonder if it might be my aging that makes me more disgruntled and dissatisfied. Have I become more conservative? Well that is probably true, […]
“But Jesus said, suffer the little children, and forbid them not to come unto me: for to such belongeth the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 19:4 In the archaic language used in older translations of the Bible, the word “suffer” means to “allow”. In our remote indigenous communities we seem unable to make this translation and […]
Our lives are plagued with emotions. Our positive emotions, such as joy, hope, love, kindness and so on, provide a platform for a meaningful and fulfilling existence. But they are countered and often outweighed by our negative emotions – fear, hate, anxiety, anger and so on – which contrive to submerge us in misery and […]