When Europeans settled in Australia in the late eighteenth century they had little knowledge of its prior occupants. Some of the Dutch and English seamen who had chanced by the shores of the Great Southern Land had encountered the indigenous inhabitants. Some of those encounters were amiable and some were hostile. But, by and large, […]
Most of us baby-boomers will remember that in the 1960’s a Canadian academic, Marshall McLuhan, whom we’d never heard of, famously declared “The medium is the message!” It was one of those iconic statements that few of us understood but seemed so right we could not help but applaud it. What did it mean? Some […]
It seems innate in human beings to have a sense of wonder. Being confronted with mystery however brings out different responses in people. The left-brain dominant determinists and materialists are uncomfortable when they can’t answer the questions of “why” and “how”. For that we probably should be grateful because such people have done the legwork […]
Malcolm Turnbull is no doubt justified in initiating a Royal Commission into the treatment of young people in the Northern Territory’s detention centres. The inmates of these facilities have been treated appallingly and we need to see that the welfare of the young men incarcerated in these institutions is protected. No civilised society should condone […]
In last week’s essay, Religion in the Modern World, I cited the works of John Locke who argued for religious tolerance and played an important role in promoting the basic freedoms that our modern democratic society is based upon. I thought this week I might expand on that theme a little more. Inevitably, in such […]
As you who read my blogs regularly would have ascertained, (both of you) I am not a religious person in the conventional sense of the word. I am however deeply spiritual. My spiritual needs, just like those of most people, demand attention. If our spiritual needs are so demanding let us just spend a moment […]
It is claimed by some that the 18th century, Dutch enlightenment philosopher, Baruch Spinoza was the pre-eminent writer on eternity. He was certainly one of the initial philosophers in the West to try to come to grips with the notion of Self. His work is credited with initiating biblical criticism. Spinoza proclaimed, “Only intense […]
When we step back to analyse what is going on socially and politically in the world it is hard not to be dismayed by the contradictory trends. On the one hand we have the seemingly inexorable move to globalisation. Both the world’s capital markets and labour markets are seemingly growing more encompassing, demolishing national borders […]
This is an era when the rarest commodity is a person who says what they think and thinks about what they say. There is a sense that we are being deafened by a cacophony of multimedia noise at the same time we are being crushed into conformity. Chris Kenny, Associate Editor, The Australian The good […]
Well the USA has just suffered another radical Islamist inspired atrocity. The appalling loss of life in the Orlando club massacre at the hands of a gunman who swore allegiance to the Islamic State, reminds us again of the terrible danger we face at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists. Rather than analyse this specific case, […]