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Keywords: Humanity

There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.

  • RELIGION

    Best of 2021: Atheists and God cancellers

    • Michael McGirr
    • 11 January 2022
    1 Comment

    I must have time on my hands. I have been thinking about the difference between atheists and God cancellers. I love my atheist friends, of whom I am blessed with many. I relish the existential grist of our talks, the deep sense of substance and mutual respect. I also love the constant jokes. We keep each other honest. I enjoy a rich engagement with the history of thought and I believe we ennoble each other through the kind of trust that is prepared to talk about things that are off limits to others.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    There will be a next time. We must do better.

    • Cristy Clark
    • 16 December 2021

    Under Victoria’s Border Directions after 23 July, people in NSW, including Victorian residents, were effectively prevented from entering the state. Their only option was to request an exemption for a number of specified reasons including ‘attending a funeral or end of life event or returning home for health, wellbeing, care or compassionate reasons or for any other reason under a general discretion’.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    I remember, I remember

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 02 December 2021
    13 Comments

    Nostalgia is the sweet and sentimental ache that we might feel for an imagined past. It distracts from the present demands of life’s journey. Despite its association with self-indulgence, however, the place of nostalgia in personal and in political life is worth revisiting.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Outgrowing apartheid: FW de Klerk

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 23 November 2021
    29 Comments

    The passing of South Africa’s last apartheid president, FW de Klerk, raises pressing questions about a complex historical character who, according to his brother, Willem de Klerk, slowly outgrew apartheid. In a critical sense, he was bound, understandably, by both time and context: race, the need to defend a racial hierarchy, the historical role of a segregationist system that saw his all-white National Party retain power for decades. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Disciplining delinquent words

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 28 October 2021
    2 Comments

    Sins have often been divided into those of thought, word and deed, with deed regarded as the worst. Today we pay more attention to sinful words, realising the harm that they can do. Bad words can bring social exclusion. Yet complex questions surrounding the use of words remain. 

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    The right to a healthy environment

    • Cristy Clark
    • 21 October 2021
    2 Comments

    On 8 October, at its 48th session, the United Nations Human Rights Council formally adopted a resolution recognising the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. It emphasises that ‘environmental degradation, climate change and unsustainable development constitute some of the most pressing and serious threats to the ability of present and future generations to enjoy human rights, including the right to life’.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The problem of new nihilism

    • Joel Hodge
    • 05 October 2021
    55 Comments

    Does life have meaning? Or, as the new nihilists suggest, is life meaningless? A new book, The Sunny Nihilist, by writer and journalist, Wendy Syfret, puts the case for nihilism as an antidote to the obsessive search for meaning and purpose that many modern people experience.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    New Yorkers remember 9/11 twenty years later

    • Jim McDermott
    • 14 September 2021
    3 Comments

    Giovanna Slon was just beginning her third year at Fordham University in the Bronx when a plane hit the World Trade Center on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. ‘At 8:47am, my R.A. bangs on my door and tells me “You have to get up. There’s something happening.”’   

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Why Afghanistan matters

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 24 August 2021
    14 Comments

    Most early commentary on the swift coming to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan has focused on how it happened and who was to blame for it. Much of the blame has been focused on United States President Biden and former President Trump. Increasingly attention has turned to the plight of people in Afghanistan, particularly women and those who helped the occupation forces and women. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Humility, kindness lead to strength

    • Barry Gittins
    • 17 August 2021
    10 Comments

    In his 83 years, social psychologist, researcher and author Hugh Mackay has seen the sun rise and set on regimes, ideologies, cults, fads, movements and manias. He has also seen language used to clarify and build common ground, or to confuse and demoralise. One constant throughout these years has been his fascination with how human beings treat each other and their planet, and why.

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  • RELIGION

    Atheists and God cancellers

    • Michael McGirr
    • 10 August 2021
    28 Comments

    I must have time on my hands. I have been thinking about the difference between atheists and God cancellers. I love my atheist friends, of whom I am blessed with many. I relish the existential grist of our talks, the deep sense of substance and mutual respect. I also love the constant jokes. We keep each other honest. I enjoy a rich engagement with the history of thought and I believe we ennoble each other through the kind of trust that is prepared to talk about things that are off limits to others.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    The ebbtide of responsibility

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 28 July 2021
    9 Comments

    The tidal movement from treating children as persons each with their own dignity, and worthy of respect and of encouragement to a good future, to treating them as adult and incorrigible criminals worthy only of punishment is both irrational and injurious of society as well as of the children themselves. Yet it is deeply rooted in the mindset of all Australian Governments.

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