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Keywords: Myth

  • AUSTRALIA

    Stray thoughts: Living by make-believe

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 27 July 2022
    1 Comment

    In some ways this habit of association of ordinary personal life with the epic figures of literature or history marks a return to childhood. In it admired figures have a mythical status. I used to imagine that if, in my hand I had a Don Bradman bat, on my cap a Neil Harvey badge, or Mopsy Fraser’s number on my back, their skills would become mine. They never seemed to.

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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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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Tying off the threads of doubt

    • Brian Matthews
    • 05 August 2021
    4 Comments

    In times of unexpected or inexplicable crisis, humans all over the globe regardless of race, religion, lineage or historical evidence, will often turn to myth, the occult, each other, to their until then untested and unimpressive leaders, or to a hoped-for apparent miracle to explain what seemed otherwise beyond explanation.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Environmental movements need to critique capitalism, not overpopulation

    • Sangeetha Thanapal
    • 03 November 2020
    22 Comments

    The environmental movement in general has a serious race problem. Make no mistake, an ideology that says humans are the problem is a colonial ecology; the Malthusian fear of overpopulation is rooted in racist ideals.

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  • RELIGION

    Dawkins delusion: the legacy of New Atheism

    • Tim Robertson
    • 27 February 2020
    16 Comments

    Contrary to their claims, the New Atheists do have a creation myth. It goes something like this: emerging from darkness into the light, Enlightenment thinkers cast off the shackles of religion and, in so doing, ushered in an age of reason. For the likes of Richard Dawkins, a founding member of the movement, this is an article of faith, and he’s spent recent years casting himself not just as an heir of this tradition, but also as its modern day guardian.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A discovery of connections

    • Najma Sambul
    • 11 February 2020
    2 Comments

    The group had come together by the chance enquiry from one churchgoer who asked another if they could dedicate time to this — to us. So, we clambered into a mini van with our meagre possessions, and the myths and half-truths we knew about Australia followed suit.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Climate clues beyond the four seasons myth

    • Katherine Wilson
    • 08 November 2019
    9 Comments

    Any Australian who believes in four seasons is engaged in a form of climate denial. Spring, summer, autumn and winter are colonial constructs, not an objective truth. I recently visited a school which has the largest Indigenous student population in Melbourne. The kids made a mural depicting the eight seasons of greater Melbourne.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Myths about quiet and shouty Australians

    • John Warhurst
    • 26 August 2019
    14 Comments

    Regional and rural Australians possess many powerful voices. As well as having a political party of their own, the Nationals, they are represented by many powerful lobby groups. Language which seeks to privilege quiet over loud citizens has the effect of advantaging the strong over the weak and insiders over outsiders in our political life.

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  • ECONOMICS

    NZ's riposte to modern economic myths

    • David James
    • 02 July 2019
    5 Comments

    While money can be transacted for things that are bad — air pollution, road deaths, cigarette ads — as long as more transactions occur, it creates the illusion the economy is growing, which, ipso facto, is good. Thus, Japan's GDP rose sharply after the tsunami disaster. New Zealand's initiative will track better what is really happening in the country.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    More myths about migrants and work

    • Devana Senanayake
    • 11 April 2019
    4 Comments

    Former NSW opposition leader Michael Daley was much maligned for his remarks that 'Sydney's young children [are] being replaced by young people from typically Asia with PhDs'. The statement is symptomatic of a larger issue, reflecting the extent to which the community is misinformed and misled about these issues.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    That old Easter story

    • Paul Turley
    • 01 April 2019
    5 Comments

    What a poor showing. This collection of the desperate clinging to a dream so old it is just a tattered mumble for old men in the fading light. All myth and spittle.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    NZ shooter: The myth of Australian values

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 19 March 2019
    24 Comments

    Penny Wong dismissed Tarrant as un-Australian, a dangerous point given that Australian values have been rather flexible in their deployment. The same treatment is reserved for Anning: 'He does not represent who we are.' The painful truth is that Anning and Tarrant are representative of an aspect of Australian national identity.

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