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Keywords: Despair

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

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Justice as fairness: Why we need to revisit the work of John Rawls

    • Matt Gaughwin
    • 27 October 2022
    3 Comments

    Liberal democracies seem increasingly threadbare, insufficiently creating just outcomes for vulnerable people. We need a rejuvenation of stable and fair democracies in which integrity and trust are evident. To that end, I suggest we revisit the liberal egalitarianism of 20th century American philosopher John Rawls.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Blowback to Russia sanctions in Europe as gas crisis looms

    • David James
    • 03 October 2022
    5 Comments

    For Europe, especially Germany, there should be enough gas in storage to limp through winter but by next spring there may be severe trouble. The leaders of Europe and the United States expected that they would win the economic war against Russia and force the invader to withdraw. Not only did that not happen, it is likely to lead to severe unintended economic consequences.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The thing with feathers

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 29 September 2022
    5 Comments

    Humans depend greatly on hope. In a recent interview, Tova Friedman discusses her book The Daughter of Auschwitz, the memoir of the part of her childhood spent in the eponymous and notorious concentration camp. Can someone who has seen first hand the depths of human depravity be at all hopeful about the future?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Turning back Australia’s refugee policy

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 21 September 2022
    1 Comment

    July marked the tenth anniversary since offshore refugee processing was introduced in Australia, a step that marked a change in Australian policy from an uneasy balance between respect for people in need and the pressure to deter further arrivals. The principle of deterrence is deeply corrupting because it is based on the conviction that it is acceptable to punish one group of people in order to deter others.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The book corner: Reappropriating stolen memory

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 16 September 2022
    1 Comment

    Joel Birnie’s short and admirable book provokes reflection both on what should have mattered in the relationships between colonial invaders and Indigenous peoples in the nineteenth century and on what matters in the relationships that constitute Australia today. 

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The generation of 1926

    • Michael McGirr
    • 12 September 2022
    13 Comments

    My mother often reminded us that she was the same age as the queen. They were both stoic to the point of being difficult to understand. There was never any doubt that, living by their lights, they would spend every breath doing what they felt called to do. Self-indulgence was hardly part of their vocabulary; along with that, they didn’t indulge others much either. The generation of 1926 was made of sturdy timber.   

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The war in Ukraine: A Roundtable

    • Andrew Hamilton, David Halliday, Michele Frankeni, Stewart Braun
    • 19 May 2022
    5 Comments

    We are now three months into the Ukraine war. From an invasion it has turned into a war of attrition that has cost many lives, displaced civilians, destroyed cities, and led to sanctions and the making of alliances with effects that have spread suffering far beyond Ukraine. In this Roundtable, Andrew Hamilton SJ, David Halliday, Michele Frankeni and Dr Stewart Braun explore the ethics of the war and likely paths to peace.  

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Deep calling on deep

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 13 April 2022
    11 Comments

    In our culture, Easter celebrates the benignity of the ordinary. It is a time for getting together with family, for going away to bush or beach, and in southern states a time of mild weather ideal for watching big football matches and other sport. The important question raised now by Easter is whether the meanings of Australian Easter, and indeed those available to our secular society, have the depth needed to handle our present predicaments. 

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Hope against hope

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 17 March 2022
    12 Comments

    Taken together the events of recent years suggest that we face a crisis, a time in which the working assumptions that have guided our personal and collective lives no longer hold. If we do not change we face increasing threats to the world that we shall hand on to our children. 

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  • 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. 

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  • RELIGION

    The final form of love

    • Simon Smart
    • 04 February 2022
    10 Comments

    How are your New Year’s resolutions going? One that probably didn’t make the list was: forgive more. But maybe it should have. I recently met a couple, Danny and Leila Abdallah, who have a compelling story to illustrate that, while challenging, forgiveness offers unexpected rewards. I interviewed them for a podcast and can’t stop thinking about them.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The promise of alchemy

    • David Rowland
    • 01 November 2021
    8 Comments

    Ben Jonson is one of the great English Renaissance playwrights but he can also be challenging for the modern reader. When I first came to Jonson some years ago, I attempted a comedy from 1610, The Alchemist. I soon felt out of my depth. Conceding defeat, I put the book aside and told myself that there would be some ‘other time’. This year in Melbourne, with the theatres closed, the streets largely deserted, and travel restrictions firmly in place, that ‘other time’ arrived.

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