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Keywords: Kindness

  • ENVIRONMENT

    Burning truths

    • Julie Perrin
    • 12 July 2024

    In her new Quarterly Essay Highway to Hell, Australian climate scientist Joëlle Gergis pleads in language beyond the careful neutrality of traditional science-speak: ‘We need you to stare into the abyss with us and not turn away.’

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  • AUSTRALIA

    When a friend writes a controversial post, how should you respond?

    • Barry Gittins
    • 10 July 2024

    How do you respond, when members of your own tribe share their distaste towards those who rub them up the wrong way? Do you ‘unfollow’? Do you engage? And if you vent against those who who offend with their own dearth of tolerance, are you guilty of doing the same?  

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  • AUSTRALIA

    What does it mean to be complicit?

    • Warwick McFadyen
    • 27 June 2024

    To be complicit, must you share the same intent? If one says nothing, does nothing, does this signify complicity? Is there then such a thing as an innocent bystander? 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Hanging in with refugees

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 17 June 2024

    Like all other persons, refugees  cannot be defined in numbers. Nor can they be defined by their condition as refugees. They are human beings like us who belong to families, their hearts are free, and they long for the freedom to live human lives, to work and follow their dreams.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    In praise of the human kind

    • Ken Haley
    • 31 May 2024

    Social psychologist Hugh Mackay has been people-watching for more than 60 years. At 86 he has published The Way We Are: Lessons from a lifetime of listening, a compendium of his choicest insights on Australian life quarter-way through the new century.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    When the wheels come off

    • David Halliday
    • 22 January 2024
    1 Comment

    After a minor accident, in the face of institutional apathy, we were treated to a picture of human kindness. It highlighted that, even in a politically divided country, there exists an undercurrent of unity and empathy, often overlooked but ever-present.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    #Kindness

    • Cherie Gilmour
    • 02 August 2022
    6 Comments

    We all know the Internet can be a seething cesspool of vitriol, so the presence of heart-warming videos of people slipping $20 into someone’s coat pocket or randomly complimenting a stranger, even the ubiquitous handing out of flowers, is largely welcome. But is this actually kindness? If an act of kindness happens and no one is there to film it, did it really happen?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Hoping for hope

    • Barry Gittins
    • 09 September 2021
    1 Comment

    What does it take to lose hope? For the 4,000 people who attended the anti-lockdown protests in Melbourne last month, an odd coalition of the frustrated, the scared, the angry and the hurt, it takes 18 months of pain and the ensuing changes in employment status, isolation from family and friends, and losses in lifestyle and individual liberties.

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  • 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.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Remember to be kind to yourself, too

    • Marnie Vinall
    • 27 April 2020
    2 Comments

    The notion that we’re stronger together and we all just need to be kind to each other is reinforced by our leaders, from celebrities and public figures, and broadcast widely across social media. Yet something is missing from this encouraging messaging set to keep our spirits up and that’s the need to offer kindness within, too.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Social connectivity in a pandemic

    • Jane Britt
    • 30 March 2020
    5 Comments

    It’s a stressful and anxious time for many people. Yet, the expression to ‘look for the helpers’ whenever a crisis occurs is an apt one in this situation. People are looking for social connectivity and ways to express kindness to others in practising social distancing under direction of medical experts.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Dickens and Christmas as we grow older

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 13 December 2019
    5 Comments

    Dickens was a prolific writer, and one of patchy quality: the threat of sentimentality was never far away, so that this brief work is not one of his best. But in this consumer age it is salutary to have his definition of the Christmas spirit, which is one 'of active usefulness, perseverance, cheerful discharge of duty, kindness and forbearance'.

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