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Keywords: Nature

  • ENVIRONMENT

    A mystical intrusion in nature

    • Francine Crimmins
    • 20 November 2019
    4 Comments

    Johnson describes this encounter as one of grandeur, the same feeling some adherents of religion experience when they visit a sacred site or enter a holy place of worship. In this way, nature is a mystical experience. It's the closest feeling I get to an overwhelming presence that is all encompassing and all forgiving at the same time.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    On power and Koreans' American fear

    • Christine Burke
    • 04 November 2019
    4 Comments

    Anyone interested in social justice knows that structures and systems can bolster the worst tendencies of human nature, can incubate 'social sin'. Korean friends, when asked if they live in fear of North Korea, almost always tell me 'we fear America more'. To me that seemed a bit of an overstatement. Now I understand their response.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Climate science for the birds

    • Brian Matthews
    • 01 November 2019
    3 Comments

    The scene I have described was more than purely peaceful. In these iron days, to write about or seriously discuss the world of nature and its phases and complexions can be a political act, 74 years after Orwell wondered about that very same point in 'Some Thoughts on the Common Toad'.

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  • RELIGION

    The two Francises model climate justice

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 18 September 2019
    12 Comments

    Pope Francis has insisted that the urgent need to care for the natural world of which we are part is not a disputed question but a Christian duty. He has appealed to the legacy of St Francis of Assisi, whose name he took when he became Pope; that saint of the 13th century who is popularly known best for his love of nature.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Tragic absurdity on the Western Highway

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 23 August 2019
    4 Comments

    In an age where destruction of eco-systems is occurring at a fast rate and sanctioned by governments, these absurdities are lethal for collective humanity. Non-Indigenous support for the Embassy and trees reflects a desire to reverse the absurd lie that human culture and nature are not in a continual, intergenerational relationship.

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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

    The saga of zany Granny's memory box

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 31 July 2019
    6 Comments

    While this saga was going on, I read an alarming piece about the transient nature of the digital world. Mobile phones get stolen and photos not backed up are irrevocably lost; flash drives and their capacities do not last forever. 'Print out' was the author's advice. Who would have thought?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    An Orwellian view of climate change

    • Brian Matthews
    • 12 July 2019
    6 Comments

    By 'belly to earth', Orwell meant not only the uncomplicated, hands-on approach he threw himself into at Wallington. It also denoted a quality of engagement with the natural world that he saw to be threatened by the nature of what he considered to be the 'evil' times in which he lived — a feeling familiar to many in 2019.

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  • MEDIA

    The Murdoch press and the end of critique

    • Mark Jennings
    • 03 April 2019
    10 Comments

    Two recent stories in the Australian attack Murdoch University academics who supposedly described Anzacs as 'killers' and detainees on Manus Island as 'prisoners'. The stories display a poor understanding of the academic role, and the nature of 'critique', which is not to merely to present all arguments as if they had equal merit.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Blind injustice on the job hunt circuit

    • Casey Hyde
    • 02 April 2019
    4 Comments

    When I attended a rare job interview, I would put a bow tie around my guide dog's neck to deflect some of the heat off me. The interviewer would ask questions that were of a chatty, personal nature — everything except questions about my qualifications. The only thing that seems to be holding me back is my vision impairment.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Echoes of Auschwitz in Manus memoir

    • Brian Matthews
    • 27 March 2019
    6 Comments

    Like Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi in his works, Behrouz Boochani's No Friend but the Mountains exemplifies among many other things 'the possibilities of human decency' despite the Manus prison's squalor. Like George Orwell in another time and place, he is buoyed by hope in irrepressible nature.

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  • RELIGION

    Sexual abuse summit: naive no more

    • Tracey Edstein
    • 18 February 2019
    28 Comments

    My hope is that the summit will recognise that the hierarchical nature of the institutional church, and its corollary, clericalism, is the biggest stumbling block to making the church not merely a safe place for all, but the welcoming, compassionate, open community it is intended to be.

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