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Keywords: Origins

  • AUSTRALIA

    The fraught search for identity

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 13 June 2024

    The wonder of Khin Myint's Fragile Creature: A Memoir lies in his calm and magnanimous reflection on his experiences and in his attempt to understand those who treated him poorly. It also provides a lens for reflecting on the dynamic at work in public debates that touch identity.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Tidings of joy in an ebb tide

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 19 December 2023
    4 Comments

    While a time of joy and celebration for many, Christmas amplifies hardships like loneliness and poverty for others. This year, the festive season is overshadowed by global issues such as war, climate change, and ongoing conflicts, reminding us of its origins in a period of oppression and uncertainty. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A songline of the universe

    • Constant Mews
    • 25 July 2023
    6 Comments

    Simultaneously scientific and evocative, 'Origins' an oratorio by Nicholas Buc, offers a modern songline with the story of creation, evolution, and extinction. As we stand at the precipice of a referendum to recognise the first peoples in our constitution, can this musical piece remind us of the value of the stories that shape our understanding of the universe and our place within it?

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    A new Chilean constitution must remember its origins and people

    • Ramona Wadi
    • 03 November 2020

    Chile has a strong democratic tradition, which was marred by the dictatorship. The representatives tasked with writing the new constitution will need to veer away from the prevailing right-wing and centre-left influence, all of which contributed to Chile maintaining its status as one of the most unequal societies in Latin America.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Rewriting the fairy tales of disability

    • Justin Glyn
    • 07 October 2019
    7 Comments

    Beginning with the origins of the fairy story and with her own diagnosis with cerebral palsy, Leduc opens the question of why disability in fairy stories is a trope when, for many of us, it is just a fact of life. What follows is a fascinating exploration of how fairy stories socialise us into particular expectations — of ourselves and of society.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Despite census results we dismiss religion at our peril

    • Christine Burke
    • 30 June 2017
    29 Comments

    The origins of hospitals, schools and social services can be traced back to the efforts of people of faith. Much poetry, art, drama and literature grapples with the deeper meaning of life in dialogue with a larger vision found through the everyday challenges of our lives. This religious urge can re-emerge as nationalism, racism, greed, or narcissism, and these have no inherent counter force to question their authenticity. The truths at the base of great religions reorient us towards love, peace and justice.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The origins and incoherence of Australia's asylum seeker policy

    • Frank Brennan
    • 20 June 2017
    7 Comments

    I am resigned to the boats from Indonesia being stopped and staying stopped. But it is high time to stop the cruel treatment of the proven refugees on Nauru and Manus Island, and provide a permanent solution for the asylum seekers waiting inordinately in the Australian community. Their treatment is separable from the stopping of future boats setting out from Indonesia. The Commonwealth's $90 million settlement of the claim brought by asylum seekers on Manus Island should be a wake-up call to us all.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Abuse survivor reflects on Cardinal Pell's 'sad story'

    • Paul Coghlan
    • 07 March 2016
    42 Comments

    'It was a sad story and it wasn't of much interest to me.' Pell's brutal response to a question from the royal commission has provided an important point of organisational, personal and cultural reflection. As a survivor of child sexual abuse I understand the disbelief, shock and outrage that such a comment has provoked. And having conducted many organisational reviews, I know that in trying to find the origins of such responses, our understanding of how the world works expands exponentially.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Breaking the silence in the kingdom of the sick

    • Ellena Savage
    • 09 October 2015
    7 Comments

    While suffering from cancer, Susan Sontag suggested that it, like tuberculosis the previous century, was a disease shrouded in metaphor, morality, and silence. As time passed and the AIDS epidemic raged, she expanded her analysis to include that virus. What would she think of today's culture around mental illness? Like allergies, some of the origins of mental illnesses are societal. And the social and political conditions which produce illness are not generally a part of the medical project.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Should Labor break ties with the unions?

    • John Warhurst
    • 03 August 2015
    15 Comments

    The formal link between trade unions and the Labor Party is sacred in many quarters, and has sustained both sides of the relationship for 120 years. The revelations of the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption, despite its anti-Labor political origins, may eventually generate change. But the question has been around for decades, and any move to break the link would be vigorously opposed.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Thanks for nothing, Adam and Eve

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 04 September 2014
    13 Comments

    James Boyce claims that contemporary attitudes to politics, human origins, economics and human psychology can be understood only if we recognise the hidden presuppositions imported from the theology of original sin. Theories on human nature such as those proposed by Adam Smith, Sigmund Freud, Richard Dawkins and the US Founding Fathers, tried to emancipate people from religious ideas, but often unwittingly enshrined them.

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  • EDUCATION

    Soccer as a Jesuit plot

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 11 July 2014
    11 Comments

    One of the more unlikely pieces of speculation to emerge from the World Cup concerned the origins of soccer in Brazil. A historian of the game claimed that it had been introduced by the Jesuits. According to the thinking of the Jesuits at St Louis School in Itu, near São Paulo, 'all the muscles [would] work harmoniously, and the moral lessons imbibed from sportsmanship [would] be assimilated by the students.'

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