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Keywords: Despair

There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.

  • AUSTRALIA

    Race Mathews: A Life in Politics

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 08 November 2024

      The story of Race Mathews’ career will be an antidote to despair about politics and politicians. It underlines the possibilities of politics, showing how it can be more than a job or a career. It can be a calling to imagine a more just society and ways of building it.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Anxious and depressed about the state of the world? Good for you

    • Mark Beeson
    • 04 November 2024

    The Doomsday Clock remains at 90 seconds to midnight, the closest it’s ever been to calamity. In addition to the atomic scientists’ original concern about nuclear war, now climate change and the possible dangers of AI are parts of a potentially combustible mix. In short, there is much to fret about for anyone paying attention. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    When poetry became war reporting

    • Warwick McFadyen
    • 16 October 2024

    If only those who send their nation’s youth to war would read Muse of Fire, World War I as seen Through the Lives of the Soldier Poets. It is both homage and horror story. It carries the reader across several fronts – the disparate journeys that led these men to the killing fields of Europe, the blood-soaked chrysalis from which the words of the war poets arose.

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  • MEDIA

    On lying

    • Michele Frankeni
    • 15 October 2024

    Two years ago to the month, I wrote in this column of my despair and disgust of the impunity with which society leaders and politicians didn’t just shade the truth, but buried it six-feet deep and then gleefully stomped on it. In the past week, a couple of things reminded me of that piece and about the role truth plays in our public discourse. It reminded me how fragile our grasp on reality has become, and why that matters.   

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The contours of exile: The poetry of Derek Walcott

    • Peter Steele
    • 29 August 2024

      Good poetry stops us in our tracks, visited as we are by whatever it is that has stopped the poet in his tracks. This agency may properly be, as in Walcott's case, something stemming from cultural marginality, from a fascination with the dramatic, from an equipoise between the lyrical and the epical, or from the interweaving of all these. (From the Eureka Street archives)

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Did lawyers fail to stand on principle?

    • Frank Brennan
    • 20 August 2024

    In the aftermath of the failed Voice referendum, questions arise about the legal profession’s role in public discourse. Was this a missed opportunity for legal experts to provide critical analysis and guidance on such a significant constitutional matter?

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  • RELIGION

    When does news become a distraction?

    • Julian Butler
    • 17 June 2024

    There's a fine line between consuming news as a numbing distraction, and engaging with news that reminds me of human community. Even with the best of intentions to be informed and engaged, too often I find myself if not despairing, then at least lost in the volume. 

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Raining on Environment Day

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 05 June 2024

    Days like World Environment Day aim to combat apathy, urging action against the grim realities of climate change. Despite dire headlines, there are grounds for hope, if not for optimism. Any change in environment for the better must be grounded in a change of heart.

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  • RELIGION

    Pope against the machine

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 23 May 2024

    When Pope Francis delivered a message for the World Day of Social Communications, he focused on AI. The pope posed a wide range of questions including how to regulate its development and use in order to avoid the manipulation of truth and the inevitable centralisation of wealth and power.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Requiem in a dawn light

    • Peter Craven
    • 24 April 2024

    For those born in the wake of World War II, war stories seemed the greatest fun on earth. But the pity of it is monumental and we come to take it – if not for granted – then at least as part of the fabric of minds that had met with all that was terrible in human experience and all that called out for reverence.  

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Trying to make sense of Joel Cauchi

    • Bill Farrelly
    • 22 April 2024

    It will never be possible to protect the community from a repetition of the horror of April 13. But we can reduce the risk. To begin, we can reassess some of our collective and individual priorities, be more compassionate, less judgemental, more aware of those around us.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    40 Days: Unbounded love

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 27 March 2024

    Love is a much-used word, and, like domestic cutlery, it tends to lose its shine. Its boundaries then shrink to the average rather than to the inspiring. For that reason we need stories that stretch the ceiling of love beyond anything we could imagine. Not because we think that we could reach such far places, but because it enlarges the horizon of our lives.

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