Submitted to Pearls & Irritations 26 Aug 2025. Without civilisation, claimed Thomas Hobbes in 1651, life was, and would be, ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’. Given how nasty and brutish much of our world is at present, and how many people’s lives are shortened by our brutishness, and how many people are extremely poor,… Read More Origins of our collective brutishness
This was provoked by a well-meaning but needlessly inflammatory Facebook post on a local page. I thought a more considered comment would be better. To those who find the flying of three flags divisive – they are not, they merely reflect our history of division. If we want to be united, we need to acknowledge… Read More Three flags?
Climate, AI, plastics: we are either tipping or are blundering blindly towards tipping into irreversible damage from our own activities. As well, nuclear weapons lurk, ready to kill off most of who or what might be left. Either we pay attention to why we are engaging in this collective insanity, and act on it, or we… Read More Tipping into the approaching dark age
Let us cultivate our strength of character, so we have the gumption to go our own way in the world, being a constructive presence among nations, as we were briefly after WWII, when Australia was a prime mover in the formation of the United Nations.… Read More ANZAC: Honour the Dead, Spurn the Myths and Militarism
Its purpose is to hold, impart and add to knowledge. Some of the knowledge is not popular with authorities or vested interests, such as pollution created by mining or the difference between antisemitism and objections to the actions of the state of Israel. Indeed to many politicians these days any knowledge seems to be a threat.… Read More Universities: dead, buried and cremated?
The tech world is oblivious to the foundations of our being. We are, still, intimately and intricately a part of the organic biosphere that embraces this miracle planet of ours.… Read More Artificial cleverness is polluting the essence of our humanity
To properly stop the machine we need to look more carefully, to find the off-switch. Only turning the machine’s engine off will finally stop the destruction. Where is the engine, the beating heart of this global materialist-consumerist-industrial civilisation?… Read More Unconstrained competitive markets are the heart of the planetary problem
These are men. Most men could be like this. Not everyone can sing like this, but we can all can care for each other and the world as they do. And threaten no-one. I want to put them in charge of the world. Not doing all the work, but as Wise Elders, guiding those who… Read More Wise Elders
I have used this blog mainly to post articles I have written for publishing. As my outlets have dwindled basically to one site (Pearls and Irritations), and that only sometimes, and as I have thoughts most days of comments I might make about the absurd state of the world, I will use this site to… Read More Less formal blog
Many people are not happy with the way Australia is going. Many people say we need to be less materialistic, more compassionate, more tolerant of difference, though less tolerant of divisiveness. That’s all true, I would agree. But the great global industrial behemoth rolls on, carrying us inexorably along, it seems. Our wishes and fine… Read More Author’s remarks on the launch of A New Australia
Thrival Economics 