The Upanishads, which underlie Vedanta and early Hinduism, begin, “Thus we have heard….”. And it is well to remember that virtually all our knowledge and most of our thoughts are at best second-hand. I suppose this is what sets the Gnostics apart who claim not to have faith but knowledge, knowledge born of personal experience. […]
When you peruse the history of human civilisation, our progress has been driven by innovation, discovery and invention. There can be no doubt that many of us and our forebears have benefited from the serendipitous distribution of the earth’s resources. We benefitted because we were in close proximity to fertile land, abundant wildlife, reliable water […]
When my children were young we lived in a small country town. We travelled regularly to visit family and friends and for our holidays. Our trips normally took us through a larger town where it was often convenient to stop to have something to eat and allow the children to play awhile after being cooped […]
This week’s essay has connections with my previous two blogs in different ways. I suspect you will easily make those connections as you read on. I was reading some material that I had archived and stumbled across a quote from James Autry. Autry, an American Fortune 500 CEO (and poet) published a book in 1992 […]
I often venture off into my blog essays pursuing some ideal or espousing arguments that I often feel I am poorly qualified to make. But this week I am going to propound on something I based my career on, and probably egotistically believe I have at least a few insights into. I spent at least […]
With the recent passing of Steve Jobs there has been a lot in the press about his life. He was in many ways a remarkable man. I don’t know much about him and I have no desire to deify him. But in celebrating his life one of the papers published an edited text of an […]
Suppose I am driving in the city and have decided it would be useful to merge in to the outside lane of traffic. Just as I am about to do so the car behind and to my right seems to accelerate to prevent me from taking advantage of the gap in the traffic. I brake […]
Because of its implications on our rights to free speech, I have been following with some interest the Andrew Bolt case. He was recently convicted under the Racial Discrimination Act of racial vilification. In his judgment against Bolt on Wednesday, Judge Mordecai Bromberg stated, “I am satisfied that fair skinned aboriginal people, or some of […]
I am an inveterate reader of the religious historian, Karen Armstrong. Her writing is largely very readable, intelligent and well-informed by prodigious research. In one of her books I recall her pointing out that Heaven was largely unknown to the characters of the Old Testament. They did not seem to aspire to eternal life in […]
I have written before about the conundrum that the universe poses us. Its history commenced spectacularly fourteen billion years ago with the big bang and out of that history evolved our own, the history of humankind. And of course the story of humankind and its earlier hominid relatives is a very recent one. Creatures somewhat […]