We are born without prejudice. Ask a baby if he hates any particular person and he will stare at you, blink occasionally and eventually (as is the norm for someone his age) burst into tears –not because of a profound…
Due to evolution, when our enemy is hurt, we celebrate. When our enemy is killed, we chant in the streets. When many of our enemies are killed we declare: “mission accomplished” on an aircraft carrier. Survival of our ‘tribe’ mandates…
It’s becoming increasingly difficult as time progresses for humanity to have any connection to nature. And almost to solidify this, a lot of the books written on the subject seem to us to be some misguided attempt to strip away…
In the late 1950s, Frederick Herzberg conducted surveys on what we now term “The Greatest Generation,” those who fought during WWII. Selecting a group of factory workers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Herzberg asked “what do you like and dislike about your…
The argument for perspective has won. No longer can we question what is wrong with life, the world or the absurdity of a checkout line. Instead we must embrace -not the triviality of adult existence- but a new perspective on why the…
It is a simple matter to rank the empathy we feel for those around us. Consider the following: How aggrieved would you be if a family member was murdered? How about a friend? An acquaintance? A stranger? A stranger overseas?…
There is a growing trend of what I like to think of as the outsourcing of thought – where our own thoughts are subservient to those deemed “superior authorities”. Part of this collective-mind-holiday comes from the Internet: our tool to…
In 1784 Immanuel Kant answered a question, posed a year earlier by Reverend Johann Friedrich Zöllner – “What is enlightenment?” His answer was that enlightenment “was man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity”. A state of immaturity is when one allows another’s reason to guide…
There’s a long-running trend in student politics for students to shout out “shame” when their opposing political party is mentioned. I first heard this in 2012 in the heady days of the Gillard Government and Abbott Opposition. It was the…
J. R. R. Tolkein once said that myths, “At the very least… allow us to catch a fleeting, but all so powerful glimpse at the beauty that lies beyond the walls [of our material existence]. Myths show us a fleeting…