So, new year was traditionally a time to reflect on the year that passed and look forward to the opportunities of another year. Would it be too pessimistic of me to suggest that it has become a time to pat ourselves on the back for surviving another year, and to take a deep […]

Whilst gender may be the issue around which the idea of non-binariness is becoming familiar, (an overdue recognition of the variety of individual experience) it is worth pondering just how much more non-binary we could all be, in relation to every issue.

Resilience means more than our ability to return to a previous state after disruption. It means being able to respond and adapt in meaningful ways that take a new set of conditions into account.

The climate crisis is upon us, and already in Australia we are witnessing displacement as a result of increasingly […]

As a deep green myself, but also a democratic communitarian I have often found myself arguing against banning things. Our real environmental enemies are the huge corporations, not the working class fishermen, the 4 wders, the campers. These people, whether we think they are doing harm or not, are part of our community and we need to win their hearts and minds. Similarly, if we care about animal rights, we need to win hearts and minds not generate resentment by seeing how many types of racing we can ban.

These are frightening and most of all uncertain times. The big question, for true sceptics, is can you really sit with uncertainty? Can you simply not have the answer? Can it simply be beyond your expertise? Is it really you who has to solve it?

The word democracy is derived from the Greek root ‘demos’ which refers to the common people. It may sound trite to say that common people are humans and that humans necessarily have bodies but that is exactly where I want to start this.

The fact that we have a body is how we […]

The world will never be perfect and some social problems may remain seemingly intractable for a very long time, but there is no reward at the end of a purity spiral, it is like an ideological pyramid scheme that only produces victims.

Even in our so-called spiritual communities there is an abundance of mind over matter ideologies on offer. How often do you see statements like ‘everything that we are arises in our minds’, ‘our minds create our reality’ and so on. It’s time to call bullshit on these bypasses.

Outside of government and politics, corporations are a major threat to our liberty and privacy as they use the internet and our personal devices to surveil our lives, largely with our willing participation and build profiles on our consumption patterns, social lives and preferences.

Normally we hope that crisis brings the best out in people: cooperation, mutual aid and empathy. This seems to be true of bushfires and floods but something about this pandemic is driving a divisiveness that is making our lives feel more unhinged and conflicted than ever.

Social media has begun to feel like […]

What is ironic about these so-called sovereign citizen raves is that they actually hold the legal system in naively high regard. Despite appearing to challenge the system, they are actually predicated on the assumption that the legal system has such immutable internal logic and moral integrity that the mere revealing of a fundamental flaw will cause it to voluntarily disband itself. This is the fantasy novel aspect.

Oh dear, it’s become very strange of late. Lock down, isolation, social media and fear have provided  fertile ground for all manner of weird theories about the state of the world.

Now let’s be clear. The world is not in good shape. For a start we have a massive problem with climate change, […]

Just like the droughts and bushfires have confirmed the dire warnings scientists have been issuing for decades about what to expect from climate chaos, so too does the emergence of a potential anthropandemic virus whether coronavirus or any number of later anthropandemics serve as a warning of the future we are approaching.

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Climate chaos would be problematic enough if we were able to stand and face it with intact systems of democratic governance and an economic system capable of adaptive resilience. Unfortunately we are instead faced with a truly dysfunctional trilemma of climate chaos, rising global fascism, and an economic system that continues to defy […]