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Keywords: Dystopia

  • MEDIA

    Two cheers for complaint

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 20 April 2023

    Defending the rights of individuals and apportioning blame for failure to respect them are an important part of the human story, but they are not the whole story. Is there a path to a more just and compassionate society that goes beyond blame and focuses on solidarity?

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  • FAITH DOING JUSTICE

    Best of 2021: The hollow meritocracy

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 11 January 2022
    3 Comments

    The debate about quotas based on gender has been well canvassed. The wider issues raised about merit and meritocracy, however, merit further reflection. Far in the background to both conversations lies a sophisticated body of reflection on merit among Christian theologians. 

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  • FAITH DOING JUSTICE

    The hollow meritocracy

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 08 April 2021
    19 Comments

    The debate about quotas based on gender has been well canvassed. The wider issues raised about merit and meritocracy, however, merit further reflection. Far in the background to both conversations lies a sophisticated body of reflection on merit among Christian theologians. 

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Reflecting on this Refugee Week

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 11 June 2020
    10 Comments

    This year Refugee Week has been swallowed by the disruption caused by COVID-19, and by the fracturing of society in the United States. In a world where people naturally turn inwards, those who seek protection from persecution receive little public attention or sympathy. It becomes all the more important to reflect on the world of which refugees are part and why their lives matter to us.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    After eyes tight shut

    • Tony London
    • 12 May 2020
    1 Comment

    We have always lived thus, in our heads. Bone domes, impenetrable to others, we might project animus, animation, add to Duncan’s questioning. The mind’s construction in the face, enigmatic, Rubik cube with sixteen squares on each face, so any signs I give are laced, graced with ambiguity.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Learning in a time of pestilence

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 04 May 2020
    15 Comments

    What turned out to be extraordinary was the familiarity of the subject matter, and the routines that Camus makes the authorities of the plague-ridden Algerian town Oran put in place: the quarantine, the isolation hospitals, the attempts to develop a vaccine, the volunteer health workers, and the way in which funerals were conducted in haste.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The discomfort of apartness

    • Georgia White
    • 28 April 2020
    5 Comments

    I keep going back to a short story, by Carmen Maria Machado in her book Her Body and Other Parties, called ‘Inventory’. In its simplest terms, the story is a narrator’s list of her lovers loved: boyfriends, girlfriends, neighbours, strangers. From this inventory emerges, bit by bit, the story that has made the list necessary: an epidemic is ravaging the world’s population.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Living in Australia's social credit dystopia

    • Kate Galloway
    • 08 October 2019
    6 Comments

    If government is concerned for citizens' wellbeing, it should properly resource services — drug and alcohol support, parenting support, subsidised childcare, education and so on. Instead, it is generating a system of social credit: rewarding those who toe the line and punishing those whose 'score' falls below that of the 'good citizen'.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A little more jaded but still valuing my vote

    • Neve Mahoney
    • 16 May 2019
    5 Comments

    In 2016, when some of my friends told me they weren't going to vote, I was aghast. I was so keen to get voting that the night before the election, I made a Word document to practise the order of my preferences. Fast forward to last week, when I couldn't remember which Saturday the election was on and feared I had accidentally missed it.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Living with dystopia

    • Cristy Clark
    • 09 May 2019
    7 Comments

    Researchers have been documenting the rise of 'eco-anxiety' or 'eco-angst' for some time, and these feelings of despair and powerlessness are common. But we need to become the heroes of this dystopic film plot. Somehow, in the face of all our anxiety and despair, we need to locate our capacity for hope and our courage to take action.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    On first reading Boochani on Manus

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 07 May 2019
    10 Comments

    No Friend But the Mountains deservedly won an Australian prize but was considered ineligible for others because the writer was not Australian. The book itself mocks that exclusion. Boochani's years on Manus Island branded him as Australian in the same way African slaves became American by the brand American owners burned on to them.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Law works within darkened understanding

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 22 November 2018
    5 Comments

    Debate about the independence and the dignity of the law has always been present. Nevertheless most societies take pains to reinforce trust in those who administer justice. Some elements in our culture, however, put that trust at risk. They deserve reflection.  

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