Many of those I speak to decry the fact that in modern society everyone seems to be a victim. No matter how dysfunctional our behaviour we are seemingly excused by our circumstances. Sure there are people living in difficult circumstances and this has an impact on their behaviour, but we now seem to believe that […]
Some years ago I was invited to be the guest speaker and to make presentations at a graduation ceremony at the Central Queensland University. When I commenced my address I stated that I had come to address a deficiency in the university’s curriculum. The Vice-Chancellor seemed a little startled at this suggestion and there were […]
Well, what a week it’s been – riots in London, the USA losing its AAA rating, financial crisis in the Eurozone and our own share market taking another plunge and then recovering. What has gone wrong with our modern democratic capitalist societies? To begin with, I suppose, one of the downsides of democracies is that […]
Our society seems increasingly permeated by polarising issues. Issues such as climate change (and subsequently the carbon tax), the issue of refugees arriving by boats, the government intervention into remote indigenous communities, the threat of terrorism (particularly by Muslim Jihadists) and so on seem to rapidly polarize our society making meaningful debate quite problematic. It […]
I felt compelled to write about the tragedy in Norway this week, but I scarcely know where to begin. In the face of such a repugnant act I am left bewildered and struggle to make sense of it. Norway is a socially progressive country with one of the highest standards of living in the world. […]
I remember in the sixties hearing Pete Seeger singing his composition “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” All five verses of the song finished with the plaintive question; “When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?” It is a very good question. In this essay I want to explore learning in an organizational […]
“All the efforts of the human mind cannot exhaust the essence of a single fly.” Thomas Aquinas In far off Moladavia there was a village called Climatesan. Now Moladavia was a poor country and most of its citizens struggled in a subsistence economy. But Climatesan was more fortunate than most. Whereas most of the land […]
Eventually all of us have to contend with the question, “Does God exist?” and if we answer in the affirmative we then have to ask ourselves, “What is the Nature of God.” Let me confess at the very beginning of this essay that I believe that God exists, or at least my interpretation of a […]
In “As You Like It” William Shakespeare wrote the famous lines: “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts…” We all have multiple roles. We can at any time be for example, a father, […]
The minds of those of us who have an enduring sense of well-being are like deep oceans. Sometimes on the surface the elements may occasionally whip up a few waves, but they can not touch the depths which remain in deep abiding tranquility. Neuroscientists have shown that such people have more activity in the right […]