Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site

Search Results: cults

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Cults, crimes and coercive control: The Running Grave

    • Juliette Hughes
    • 13 October 2023
    1 Comment

    An intricate tale that delves deep into the realm of cults, deception, and the human psyche, The Running Grave goes beyond a mere detective yarn, with a narrative that confronts society's susceptibility to manipulation and questions the very fabric of our beliefs. 

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    In love, prefer one another

    • Barry Gittins
    • 30 March 2023
    5 Comments

    In a world of differing opinions and clashing worldviews, finding common ground can be a challenge. But by staying curious and open-minded about others' experience and practicing patience and compassion, we can learn to work alongside others with different viewpoints. 

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    The fable of the frog and the federal election

    • Barry Gittins
    • 21 March 2022
    6 Comments

    Like the trusting frog, voters have in the backs of their minds the inkling that when a government achieves power, they lavish time, energy and resources on staying in power. Promises are non-core, or open to interpretation, or de-prioritised as new issues bob up to the surface.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Franzen and faith at the crossroads

    • Paul Mitchell
    • 10 February 2022
    6 Comments

    American novelist Jonathan Franzen has in his last three fictional works taken words that loom large in the collective consciousness and built worlds around them. First, it was Freedom (2010), then Purity (2015), and now Crossroads (2021). The latter title, of course, refers to a literal and figurative decision-making moment, but also the mythic locale where blues singers, notably Robert Johnson, made their pacts with the devil. 

    READ MORE
  • 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.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Penetrating the cult of secrecy and abuse

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 15 March 2017
    1 Comment

    The power of Jones' film comes from bringing us the faces and voices of the victims in the present day; to hear in their words and see in their manner the ongoing trauma of those experiences. It is a timely and illuminating exploration of the impacts of child abuse, arriving during a period when many of our Australian institutions, religious and otherwise, have been facing the probing spotlight of a royal commission for behaviour that was at times equally as secretive, and traumatic.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    2015 in review: Contemplating war in France

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 14 January 2016
    3 Comments

    As I marched for Remembrance Day in our small village in France, I wondered, 'How long will these villages keep these ceremonies? When will someone decide these wars are too long ago or too far away?' Two days later, Paris was attacked. The news came like war does: sudden and violent. Then came declarations of a state of emergency and the closing of borders. My eldest daughter was over the border in Switzerland without a passport. War starts in increments, in the small ordinary worries of families.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    Contemplating war in ordinary France

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 16 November 2015
    16 Comments

    As I marched for Remembrance Day in our small village in France, I wondered, 'How long will these villages keep these ceremonies? When will someone decide these wars are too long ago or too far away?' Two days later, Paris was attacked. The news came like war does: sudden and violent. Then came declarations of a state of emergency and the closing of borders. My eldest daughter was over the border in Switzerland without a passport. War starts in increments, in the small ordinary worries of families.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Sex, addicts and religious cults

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 01 November 2012
    4 Comments

    I've never been a member of a cult, but I do have limited fringe experience of one fervent pentecostal church. The Master's portrayal of cult life chimes disturbingly with that experience. The cult members are attracted not just to the promise of meaning and belonging, but also to the eerie comfort of having someone else do their thinking.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Teen sexuality at the apocalypse

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 17 March 2011

    New Queer Cinema is a genre marked by its robust portrayal of gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender protagonists, usually as outsiders or renegades from conventional society. Alienation and otherness drive the characters into each other's orbits with the force of a familial bond.

    READ MORE
  • MEDIA

    Raising Julian Assange

    • Lyn Bender
    • 09 December 2010
    10 Comments

    Who is this Assange? Is he a messianic hero, larrikin, renegade, terrorist, or just a very naughty boy? As a psychologist my interest lies in history, as this is frequently re-enacted in our lives. And Julian Assange had a very unusual childhood.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Hitchens returns to bosom of Left to denounce God

    • Scott Stephens
    • 13 June 2007
    5 Comments

    In God is not Great, Christopher Hitchens dismisses religion as the invention of hucksters and frauds. Although he has abandoned his leftist position, this is a straightforward reiteration of Marx’s own critique of religion.

    READ MORE