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
Are we just selfish brutes who need to be civilised into social, moral behaviour? If not, where do our decency and altruism come from? Can we resist the tides of fear and control rolling over us and cultivate more compassionate and peaceable societies? [Published by Pearls & Irritations 10 July 2025] Elon Musk reckons ‘the… Read More Empathy, morality, civilisation, and resisting tyrants
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
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
I expect to resume more frequent commentary, though not on a regular schedule.… Read More Resuming
War traumatises people, who then become fearful. Their response to conflicting needs or wants is to fight. Thus war perpetuates itself. Perhaps that is why written history, the kind that tells the stories of cities and empires, is such mayhem. Perhaps it is why many people claim we are innately evil, even though most of us usually live peaceably in our neighbourhoods.… Read More The Spiral of Conflict and Trauma
Thrival Economics 