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Keywords: Myths

  • INTERNATIONAL

    El Paso shooting and the rise of eco-fascism

    • Jeff Sparrow
    • 07 August 2019
    4 Comments

    The widespread despair about climate change, and the seeming inability of progressives to offer a solution, provides fertile soil for ecofascism to grow. In a sense, given the scale of the crisis, their apocalyptic vision of an environmental race war can sound more realistic than the pallid centrist nostrums that everyone knows won't work.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Climate catastrophe and the irrational race

    • Megan Graham
    • 05 August 2019
    7 Comments

    The debate around climate change shows the danger in believing we humans are principally rational. History gives example after example of how our biases can make us do very irrational things. In the words of Dan Ariely, our species is 'predictably irrational'. It is helpful for us to know this, so that we can become better.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Check for symptoms of internalised misogyny

    • Vivienne Cowburn
    • 25 July 2019
    8 Comments

    The fight for equality is an external, social, economic and political battlefield. Sometimes the fight is in our own heads, and we can internalise some of that misogyny. In between tearing each other down, putting dinner on and exercising some self-loathing while we're at it, how can one find the time to identify all of the ways a person can internalise the patriarchy?

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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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  • ENVIRONMENT

    How Abbott still haunts climate policy

    • Greg Foyster
    • 24 April 2019
    10 Comments

    By setting the boundaries of what is considered politically acceptable, Tony Abbott has influenced the level of ambition in every party's climate policy, and has even caused environment groups to shift their positions. How has he manage to wield so much influence for so long? There are three reasons he cut through when Labor didn't.

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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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  • AUSTRALIA

    Opt-out not the answer for organ donation

    • Sandi Parsons
    • 21 March 2019
    6 Comments

    The key deciding factor for both opt-in and opt-out systems requires that next-of-kin provide consent. Without this consent, organ donation will not proceed under either an opt-in or opt-out model. As such, education and awareness, and an understanding of organ donation as a gift, is the best way to raise organ donation rates.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    The great Murray-Darling swindle

    • Greg Foyster
    • 01 March 2019
    11 Comments

    A million dead fish, floating on putrid green water. Images of this ecological catastrophe on the Darling River over summer shocked the nation. Was it the result of drought? Blue-green algae poisoning? After at least four published reports, we know the answers. It's time to state plainly what has been going on, and who is to blame.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Election year fear and loathing

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 27 February 2019
    6 Comments

    It looks certain that over the next three months before the federal election fear will dominate Australian public conversation. Even if we deplore the appeal to fear, it is worth reflecting on why politicians indulge in it, under what conditions it is successful, and how it is best responded to.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Climate indifference is an Aussie tradition

    • Greg Foyster
    • 31 January 2019
    9 Comments

    One of Australia's foundational myths is of white settlers weathering nature's worst. It's actually in our national character — the story we tell about the nation — to dismiss climatic extremes like heatwaves. Maybe one missing part of taking climate change more seriously in Australia is a shift in culture to respect the heat.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Christmas through the ages

    • Jenny Blackford
    • 19 December 2018
    5 Comments

    At twelve, halfway through too many stifling hours crammed in the Holden station wagon, three girls munch Mum's ham sandwiches in a Rotary park ... At thirty, waifs-and-strays Christmases with friends in our adopted southern city.

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  • RELIGION

    When religious language turns public

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 22 August 2018
    10 Comments

    When conversation in a community is restricted to the public language of broader society, its power to engage community members is diminished. That has happened in the development of a theology of religions within Christian churches. It often emphasises themes that unite religions and are less specifically and distinctively Christian.

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