When our possibilities seem to collapse
In recent years, I have had an increasing number of conversations with people who feel overwhelmed by world events.
They describe the world as wracked by multiple crises of a magnitude such that efforts to reform or repair what is broken is simply futile. This attitude is not confined to those who are poor, oppressed or marginalised. This particular feeling seems to be divorced from personal circumstances – with even the privileged experiencing the same grim outlook.
Especially troubling is the fact that this feeling has been building, despite all of the evidence that Earth has become, on average, a safer, more peaceful place. A decreasing percentage of people live in abject poverty. Infant mortality rates are declining. There are fewer famines and more to eat. As a whole, the ‘four horsemen of the Apocalypse’ have been left playing cards in the stable.
Of course, specific individuals and groups still suffer the full panoply of ills that can afflict the human condition. But, overall, things have been getting better at the same time that people have come to believe that the world is a place of deepening doom and gloom.
One can easily think of an explanation for the divergence between reality and perception. First, is the power of individual stories. A compelling narrative of one person’s suffering can easily be taken as representative of the whole. It’s the same general phenomenon that leads us to feel better whenever we encounter a narrative in which the ‘underdog’ triumphs over the more powerful rival. These figures are swiftly ‘universalised’ to the point that any one of us can see our own possibilities reflected in that of the protagonist. So, when our stories tilt from the positive to the negative we are likely to see our view of the world take on a pessimistic hue.
This brings us to the second reason for this negative outlook. Unfortunately, the media (in all its forms) has ‘discovered’ that ‘bad news’ sells. Or to be more precise, bad news attracts and retains an audience in a way that positive news does not. The implications of this ‘insight’ have been grossly magnified by the emergence of social media – with its insatiable drive for eyes, ears, minds, etc. One of the most depressing stories I have heard, in recent years, is of a publisher that monitors every second of a story’s online life. The moment interest begins to flag, I am reliably advised, the instruction is to ‘bait the hook’ with something that implies ‘crisis’. So, what might properly be considered ‘troubling’ is elevated to the point where it feels like an existential threat posing a risk to all. Few remember the details when (almost inevitably) the more mundane truth emerges. What remains is the feeling – and facts rarely disturb established feelings.
These factors (and a host of others – too numerous to mention here) have combined to help generate a creeping sense that one might as well disengage and let the world go to hell in the proverbial ‘handbasket’. Let’s not bring children into a failing world. Let’s limit our attention to things within our span of control (not much). Let’s not vote – it’s pointless …
The deeply disturbing thing about all of this is that the temptation to withdraw because of the perceived futility of engagement gives rise to a self-fulfilling prophecy grounded in that great enemy of democracy; despair.
The truth of democracy (and markets for that matter) is that even the least powerful individual can change the world when working with others. Remarkably, we don’t even have to plan and coordinate for collective action to have a powerful effect. Indeed, one need not be ‘heroic’ (in the ‘Nelson Mandela’ sense) to be an author of momentous events. It’s just that you are unlikely ever to know when your decision or action tilted the world on its axis. Often it just requires a person to fall just a smidgen on the right side of a question. And when enough people do the same, there is progress.
Despair is the absence of hope that this is possible. It is a deceit that makes us fail – not because we never could succeed but because it destroys our belief in the possibility that we can be effective agents for change.
If we succumb to despair, then our possibilities collapse – not because we are powerless but because we believe ourselves to be.
Australia should aspire to be one of the world’s great democracies. It’s in our bones – dating back to South Australia that, in the late nineteenth century, brought into the world the first modern democracy in which all adults could not only vote but take up public office – irrespective of sex, gender, race or creed. For years, the secret ballot was known as the “Australian Ballot’. In 1900, Australia held more patents per head of population than any other country in the world. Yes, there were all the problems of colonisation, racism, sexism and a plethora of wrongs. And yes, we went backward for a while after Federation. But that reality did not give rise to despair.
Things actually can get better. Democracy is the vehicle for doing so; not because it demands so much of us as individuals – but because it demands so little. We just need to allow ourselves a small measure of hope to defeat despair. We need to take just a small, individual step forwards. Do this together, and nothing can stop us.
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BY Simon Longstaff
After studying law in Sydney and teaching in Tasmania, Simon pursued postgraduate studies in philosophy as a Member of Magdalene College, Cambridge. In 1991, Simon commenced his work as the first Executive Director of The Ethics Centre. In 2013, he was made an officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for “distinguished service to the community through the promotion of ethical standards in governance and business, to improving corporate responsibility, and to philosophy.”
Does your body tell the truth? Apple Cider Vinegar and the warning cry of wellness
Of all the snake oil salespeople who have dominated the wellness space, few have been as destructively, unsettlingly committed to the bit as Belle Gibson.
For a while, Gibson made her name on her own alleged suffering. A social media influencer, author, and wellness personality, she claimed to have been diagnosed with a horrifying assortment of cancers, from tumours in her brain, to tumours on her liver.
More than that, she claimed that these cancers were responding not to mainstream medicine, but to a wholefood diet. Gibson, a young parent based in Melbourne, was essentially arguing that she had found one of the cures for cancer.
Of course, she hadn’t. When it became clear that Gibson was not passing on some of the money that she had made from her successful cookbook and app to charity, as she promised, her tangle of lies began to fall apart. In fact, Gibson had never been diagnosed with cancer, as she admitted in a trainwreck interview with 60 Minutes, half an hour of television so actively unsettling that it is still seared into the mind of many of the Australians who watched it.
But even then, even when challenged, she never quite admitted the truth. In one memorable moment of the 60 Minutes episode, restaged in the recent Netflix miniseries Apple Cider Vinegar, Gibson is asked to define what “truth” is.
Her mumbly non-answer was taken as evidence that Gibson couldn’t stop lying, even when asked to respond to even the most basic of questions. But her inability to give a clean definition of truth cuts right to the heart of the wellness space – and, hopefully, teaches us how to stay clear of its worst impulses.
The whole truth
Traditional medicine and alternative therapies are constantly lobbied by the likes of Gibson and other wellness influencers, who are suspicious of the “objectivity” offered by mainstream medicine. Gibson, and other traditional medicine advocates like disgraced chef Pete Evans, point to science’s flaws – to the way that medicine messes up. This, they say, is proof that mainstream medicine can’t answer all our problems.
But these critiques of science are not just the domain of wellness influencers – they are also common in post-modern and pragmatist philosophy.
In his book Against Method, Austrian philosopher Paul Feyerabend threw chaos into the established notion of the scientific truth. According to Feyerabend, there is no such thing as the “scientific method” – no way to make the multitude of different ways to enact science appear streamlined and “correct.”
By contrast, Feyerabend advocated for an “anything goes” principle of scientific enquiry, arguing that scientists should follow whatever research paths seem particularly interesting to them.
According to him, science is not some way to get to the heart of the matter – to understand what is definitely, objectively true. Instead, he sees medicine as a way of understanding the world, an art form in the same way that painting a picture, or writing a poem, is a way of understanding the world.
In this way, Feyerabend echoes the work of pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty. Rorty argued that there is no viewpoint that exists outside of context – no way to get “more objective”. We can’t ever see past who we are and where we are in time. We are constantly mired in context. A “viewpoint outside history” does not exist. Science isn’t a mirror that can be better polished, and eventually represent the world exactly as it is. The most we can hope for is some sort of established consensus, a bunch of subjective viewpoints that align with each other, rather than an objective reality.
Rorty and Feyerabend’s arguments do have some genuine pull to them. It is correct that science is always changing – that discoveries that seemed “objectively true” ten years ago get replaced and reordered. It is also correct that medicine mucks up, and that many are disenfranchised from mainstream forms of science because of the way it uses claims of objectivity like a cudgel, silencing all dissenters. As in, “this is true, and anything that goes against this is false.”
But if we agree with the likes of Feyerabend and Rorty, and do away with the mainstream “truth” provided by science, are we stuck with the likes of Belle Gibson? Does throwing away objectivity mean that we must put up with the liars, scammers, and fraudsters? Does it mean that Gibson really does have the same claim to the “truth” – a truth she could not even name?
The healing nature of balance
The short answer is, of course, no. If questioning the scientific method really did mean that Gibson, who definitely, plainly, simply lied – and made a great deal of cash off those lies, and the perpetuated suffering of those who believed her – then that questioning would be patently dangerous.
But, as with so many things, the answer lies in the acceptance of balance. We do not have to treat medicine as a new form of religion, with iron-clad rules that we dare not ever question. Nor do we have to completely, constantly reject all of its findings, and put up absolute falsehoods in their place.
Rorty was never advocating for the likes of Gibson. Even though he undid some of the foundations of objectivity, he was not arguing that we can do whatever we like, or believe whatever we like. One of his most important and practical ideas, as mentioned above, was the idea of consensus. Even if we take the postmodern approach that “objectivity” is a shaky concept, we can create a picture of what consensus is that gives us all the things we like about objectivity.
As in, consensus can be reached by scientists and doctors. These specialists have dedicated their lives to uncovering the best ways to heal and help our bodies. When enough of these specialists find a common way to heal and help, then we have reached consensus. Consensus has the force of objectivity – it has reasons to explain itself. It’s not just random. It’s not Gibson just making things up. It’s a way of saying, “this works, and a lot of people agree that it works.”
What separates this picture of consensus from “objectivity” and its potential harms, moreover, is that consensus can change. When new discoveries are made, they can be shared around specialists, who can alter what they believe. It’s not that they were “wrong” before. It’s that consensus is malleable, changeable, and ever in-flux.
Belle Gibson couldn’t define what the truth is. She used that messiness to exploit people, and to cause harm. But we can ever-so-slightly release our hold on objectivity, without becoming Gibson. And in doing so, we can embrace a modern medicine that does what it was meant to do: help people.
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BY Joseph Earp
Joseph Earp is a poet, journalist and philosophy student. He is currently undertaking his PhD at the University of Sydney, studying the work of David Hume.
The right to connect
Gen Zs are terrifying: we are the wizards of the digital world that is increasingly alien to the older generations.
We are hooked up by the veins to the ever flowing current of information and all of its chaos and simulacra, often seen as being emblematic of technology gone too far; escapists subsumed to a Matrix-like existence.
The other terrifying thing about us: we’re all mentally ill, apparently. So much so that Jonathan Haidt released a book about us called “The Anxious Generation”, expanding on the most popular explanation for rising mental illness in youth: the infamous ‘phone bad’ argument.
This claim has undeniable legitimacy: studies correlate social media usage with mental illness, including rising self-harm ER admissions for American teenage girls. There is no world in which a teen scrolling TikTok in their bed after a long day at school can defend their attention from a trillion-dollar organisation of world-class optimisers. Our generational psyche has been crafted into a consumer mind by a minority of technocrats.
In short, our generation has been raised into addiction. Understandably, this problem is now starting to drive policy, underlying a social media blanket ban for youth, as is being proposed by the Australian government.
I don’t think I would miss social media necessarily. But when I entertain what it would look like to close the portal to that void world, I do wonder: what then would I build on that empty plot?
My addict attention-span, whittled down to the duration of a good reel, attempts to ground itself firmly into the real world: OK, I’ve wasted so much time. I should focus on work — earning money. Money for what? Perpetual rent, until I can double my salary to buy a house. A house for what? My future family. But it feels unfair to have kids in this future, anticipating worsening climate disaster. Can I even manage a family when I can barely manage my own life? Or, well, this is kind of exhausting… I should relax… I’ll just quickly check Instagram to see if my friend sent something funny…
The checking is an itch. I scratch it compulsively when distracted, anxious, bored, or depressed, thereby gaining short-term relief. But like other types of addiction, while the object of addiction makes it worse, it is not the same as the source. Psychiatrist Gabor Mate’s mantra is: “Don’t ask why the addiction, ask why the pain.”
Perhaps my train of thought seems overly catastrophic — the kind of hysteria to be expected from the ‘anxious generation’. But the content of these anxieties driving addiction has real, material legitimacy, and they are not arbitrary. A home, a community, and a safe climate: these are frequently cited themes driving Gen Z’s anxieties.
They are recurring themes because they are how we connect to the outside world. Johann Hari wrote that the opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety: it’s connection. A physical home is the cradle of our connection to a place; a safe base. A community and friends who know and care for us is our connection to people, allowing us to develop fluid and dynamic social identities. A safe climate represents the connection to any foundational future; a promise that our actions today are and will continue to be meaningful. Therefore, these basics are also our critical defences against addiction — or more precisely, they are the salve for the part of us that is drawn to the escape it offers.
When basic needs for connection have become unattainable fantasies, it is less mysterious why mental illness in youth may not be easily solved by unplugging.
Home ownership is a pipe dream rather than a mundane right in an absurdly land-rich city like Sydney. Neoliberal market logic reigns supreme over the provision of basic needs, treating houses as a class of speculative investment assets over functional shelter. Alan Kohler notes house prices have increased from four to eight times annual income in one generation. This is not just an aberrant property of Australia, but a global crisis as pointed out by the World Economic Forum.
This alienation is worsened by looming climate disasters which can uproot entire homes, as it does so for many people in rural communities and the global south, with its reach to the rest of the world only being a matter of time. Yet while three-quarters of Australians aged 18-29 believe climate change is a pressing problem, only ~50% of Australians aged over 50 do.
The epidemic of loneliness is also a global epidemic, according to the World Health Organisation. The average person has fewer and fewer friends, with Gen Zs feeling more lonely than other generations, including those aged 65 and over. On the flipside, young people increasingly engage in unsatisfying forms of intimacy like non-committal relationships (situationships) and AI personas such as Character.AI — forms of commoditised connection which, similar to social media, are exacerbating symptoms of disconnection rather than drivers.
There is a clear inequality in the opportunities to build physical, social and lasting connections between young people now and the older generations who also comprise most positions of power. Without recognising this structural unfairness, it is too easy to imagine mental illness as a linear consequence of technology, which incidentally has the unfortunate side effect of hysterical social complaints.
But our ‘hysteria’ is Janus-faced: yes, young people may be ungrounded, overstimulated and sensitive — but we are also flexible, intensely curious, and sensitive. Behind our grief is a quiet hope that needs to be understood and nurtured — never belittled. It is correct but incomplete to say that our generation is overly anxious and negative: many Gen Zs often through social media write letters to MPs, courageously reaching for environmental justice. When understood and armed with the right tools for connection and change, our sensitivity is a source of strength.
Fixing ‘phone bad’ with a blanket ban will not fix the root causes of mental illness, particularly for a generation with so few existing tools for coping and connection. Experts on digital media fear that a social media ban will further isolate already-isolated youth, and with social media being a nexus for youth activism, it will only serve to silence youth voices further. Practically speaking, this legislation has also failed to work in other countries. Fundamentally, the escapism of the digital world is driven by the hostility of the real world towards youth.
What the older generations owe us, then, is to form solutions that sincerely integrate the experiences of youth to treat the structural sources of illness: the lack of Gen Z’s physical security, social connection and a future. Technology should be regulated through a framework of harm reduction, recognising its role as an object of addiction.
Lastly, they should recognise that our visible vulnerability is not the sole problem but reflective of the system’s failures; in the age of climate collapse, we are canaries in a coal mine. That does not make us weak, but protectors of what is soft. And if we are no longer willing to create structures to protect the soft, then what, exactly, do we create our society for?
This is one of the Highly Commended essays in our 2025 Young Writers’ Competition over 18s category.
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BY Marlene Jo Baquiran
Marlene Jo Baquiran is a writer and activist from Western Sydney (Dharug land), Australia. Her writing focuses on culture, politics and climate, and is also featured in the book 'On This Ground: Best Australian Nature Writing'. She has worked on various climate technologies and currently runs the grassroots group 'Climate Writers' (Instagram: @climatewriters), which won the Edna Ryan Award for Community Activism.
Big Thinker: Epicurus
Epicurus (341–270 BCE) was an ancient Greek philosopher and founder of the highly influential school of philosophy, Epicureanism.
In a time dominated by Platonism, Epicurus established a competing school in Athens known as “the Garden”. Many of his teachings were direct contradictions of the teachings of Plato, other schools of thought and generally accepted ideas in areas like theology and politics. He also flouted norms of the time by openly allowing women and slaves to join and participate in the school.
Though he strongly insisted otherwise, dubbing himself “self-taught”, records indicate Epicurus was greatly influenced by many philosophers of and before his time such as Democritus, Pyrrho and Plato.
Theology and Ethics
Two significant departures from the popular ancient Greek thought involved Epicurus’ ideas about theology. In general, he was critical of popular religion, though in a much more restrained way than his later followers.
One departure was his thoughts on the afterlife. Epicurus believed that there was no afterlife, and that any belief in it, especially the idea that the afterlife could involve punishment and suffering, was a harmful superstition that prevented people from living a good life.
“Accustom thyself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply sentience, and death is the privation of all sentience; . . . Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.”
From Letter to Menoeceus
Another departure was his thoughts on the gods, and specifically their involvement in human affairs, also known as divine providence. Unlike most, Epicurus believed in the gods while simultaneously believing that they were completely removed from the mortal realm and uninvolved in human affairs.
The Epicurean view of the gods was that they were perfect beings, and involvement in anything outside their perfection would tarnish that perfection. The view denies that they exhibit any control over humans or the world, and that they instead function mainly as aspirational figures – beings to admire and emulate.
Both of these departures from popular ancient Greek religion came from his unique hedonistic philosophy. Epicurus believed that the ultimate purpose of philosophy was to achieve, and help others to achieve, certain states of being that characterise the eudaimonic (happy, flourishing) life.
Specifically, he thought that eudaimonia was attained through internal peace (ataraxia), an absence of pain (aponia) and a life of friendship.
This was the basis of his hedonism – unique in that he defined pleasure as an absence of suffering and so had a far greater focus on moderation than what is typically associated with hedonism.
In fact, Epicurus was disapproving of excessiveness generally:
“…the pleasant life is produced not by a string of drinking bouts and revelries, nor by the enjoyment of boys and women, nor by fish and the other items on an expensive menu, but by sober reasoning.”
These ideas informed his theological thoughts. He believed that a belief in the afterlife was superstitious and bad because it was most often a source of fear. Instead of acting morally to avoid the risk of punishment in the afterlife, which causes suffering in the current life, Epicurus taught that we should instead act morally because we will inevitably suffer from guilt or the fear of being discovered if we do not.
Likewise, he taught that while the gods had no interest in the affairs of humans, we should still act morally and kindly because those who do will have no fear, leading to ataraxia.
“…it is not possible to live pleasurably without living sensibly and nobly and justly.”
Pleasure and Desire
As part of his ethical teachings, Epicurus noted different types of pleasures and desires that prevent us from achieving a life free from suffering and trouble.
He was particularly focused on desire because he saw it, like fear, as a ubiquitous source of suffering. He taught that there are three kinds of desires: two natural, and one empty. Natural desires can be necessary (like food or shelter) or unnecessary (like luxury food or recreational sex). Empty desires on the other hand correspond to no genuine, natural need and often can never be satisfied (wealth, fame, immortality), leading to continuous pain of unfulfilled desire.
Unfortunately, like many Hellenistic philosophers, the vast majority of Epicurus’ writings have remained undiscovered, instead pulled together largely through the writings of contemporaries, followers and later historians. Despite this, his ideas have resurfaced throughout the centuries since and influenced the thinking of ancient and modern philosophers alike.
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BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
David Lynch’s most surprising, important quality? His hope
David Lynch’s Blue Velvet – the film that turned an outsider auteur into something approaching a genuine cultural sensation – is, even after all these years, a hard watch.
The film sets up its thesis almost immediately. A montage of quaint images of small-town life, all blue skies and white picket fences, is disrupted by tragedy – the father of the film’s hero, Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) collapses in his yard, killed by a heart attack. The man’s dog laps at the hose clung in his dead, tight hands. And then Lynch’s camera, still exploring, does something both beautiful and terrible: it burrows under the soil, where a nightmarish cacophony of insects forage.
So there it is, Blue Velvet’s message – that beneath Americana, with its bright smiles and cups of coffee, lies horror. From that starting point, rape, torture and abuse abound, as Jeffrey’s voyeurism sends his path crashing into the orbit of Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper, in one of cinema’s most terrifying performances, all gritted teeth and mummy issues). We watch Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) get tortured in various ways; we see Jeffrey beaten and humiliated. And perhaps most unsettlingly of all, we come to realise that the likes of Frank, a personification of pure evil, are more plentiful than we might ever want to believe. Even, if not especially, here, where the skies are blue.
The world is wild at heart and weird on top
Much has been made of this quality found in the films of Lynch, who died today after a battle with emphysema – the contrast between ethical virtue, and deep ethical horror. Throwing up these two disparate forces – good and evil – was the modus operandi of Lynch’s one-of-a-kind career.
Twin Peaks, his hit television show, unraveled the angelic exterior of murdered teenager Laura Palmer, and pit her against another of Lynch’s satanic figures, the supernatural drifter Bob. Wild at Heart, one of the more underrated films he ever made, plunged a loving young couple, Sailor and Lula, into an impossibly evil world. And The Elephant Man, a black-and-white muted howl of pain, saw a man with disabilities try to find hope amongst objectification and cruelty.
But what is not often discussed about Lynch is that he did find beauty, time and time again. Contrary to what some have written, Lynch’s veneer of smiles and blue skies wasn’t some ironic posturing, established merely to make the horror more horrifying. Other filmmakers have untangled the way that evil thrives in darkness, out of sight – that’s not what made Lynch special.
Lynch’s power – his genius, even – is that he believed fully in both of the forces that make the world what it is, the darkness and the light.
This is a rare sort of ethical dialectics: rare both in art, and in our personal lives. Believe too deeply in the evil of the world, and you will simply never get out of bed. Ignore that evil, and strive forward as though it isn’t there, and you will fall prey to an ignorance that will make you a poor ethical actor. The real trick in all things is to understand that truth, if we ever find it, exists in the middle of extremes.
Hence the model of the archetypal Lynch hero: Dale Cooper (MacLachlan, again), the handsome, profoundly odd detective hero of Twin Peaks. Dale has a goofy, almost unrepentant enthusiasm. He loves coffee; he loves pie; he loves the town of Twin Peaks. He’s all broad smiles, and dorky thumbs up, perpetually grinning to the small town residents that come to love him. But this optimism doesn’t exist in spite of the darkness of the world – it exists because of it.
That understanding is expressed through his deep affection for Laura Palmer, the dead young woman he never met. The more he learns about Laura, believed by the town to be the perfect all-American girl, the more he loves her, even as he comes to see the precise shape of her demons.
Lynch’s lesson is contained here. Cooper doesn’t choose to believe in the goodness of people at the expense of acknowledging their capacity for great harm. He understands that the world is built, in many ways, for cruelty to flourish; for abusers to thrive, for casual unkindness to go unremarked upon. And he also understands that, surprisingly, time and time again, human beings will decide to love each other.
The art life
This complicated optimism was also at the heart of Lynch’s deeply inspiring life outside of filmmaking. Like Cooper, Lynch was a famous lover of little treats, the kind of tiny slithers of goodness that aren’t just a distraction from the world – they are the world. There are countless memes of Lynch expounding the beauty of a good cup of coffee; enjoying two cookies and a Coke in the back seat of a car; and, perhaps most movingly of all, speaking lovingly of the importance of what he called “the art life.”
For Lynch, the art life was painting, thinking, and making things with your hands. “I had this idea that you drink coffee, you smoke cigarettes, and you paint, and that’s it”, Lynch said once, happily. There is horror in this world, but being an artist isn’t just an aesthetic choice – it’s an ethical one. Being an artist means being curious; looking; creating.
Rather than being swamped by the inexorable downward slide of humanity, the artistic life allows one to see the things that make us, at the end of the day, so blessed. So loved.
Blue Velvet contains that hope in its final scene. After taking a long drive through hell, the film wraps up not with an image of suffering or pain. Instead, one of its last shots is a robin sitting on a branch. A robin – that most ordinary of birds, so small as to be invisible, but a symbol, built up over the course of the film, representing love itself. “Maybe the robins are here,” Jeffrey says, cautiously. But, despite it all, they are.
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BY Joseph Earp
Joseph Earp is a poet, journalist and philosophy student. He is currently undertaking his PhD at the University of Sydney, studying the work of David Hume.
Discomfort isn’t dangerous, but avoiding it could be
If I were a reviewer at a writers’ festival and I spotted an author whose work I’d praised – but also criticised – I’d be tempted to look the other way.
But, far from avoiding Christos Tsiolkas at last year’s Canberra Writers’ Festival, literary critic and Festival Artistic Director, Beejay Silcox chose to share the stage with him.
When asked if she felt uncomfortable, Silcox said that because she felt she’d done her job well – reflecting on the work, dealing with it on its own terms, choosing her words carefully – she didn’t. If she couldn’t be honest about “the loveliest man in Australian literature”, she didn’t deserve her job.
She did, however, describe that job as “inherently uncomfortable”. It’s the reason people often call her “brave”. But Silcox doesn’t share their view. “If what I do counts for bravery in our culture, we are f*cked,” she told the audience. “I know what bravery looks like; I’ve seen brave people. I’m just being honest.”
Point taken. There’s a difference between being honest and being brave. Honesty might require bravery, but the words aren’t interchangeable. If we use words like “bravery” too readily, we broaden its definition and reduce its potency.
It was the expanded application of certain words, that led psychology professor Nick Haslam to coin the term “concept creep”. More than a decade ago, he started noticing the widespread adoption of certain psychological terms in non-clinical settings was broadening people’s conceptions of harm. In a recent ABC interview, he said more expansive definitions of terms like “abuse” and “bullying” have had clear advantages, such as making it easier to call out bad behaviour. But mistakenly framing an unpleasant experience as “trauma”, or speaking as if ordinary worries constitute anxiety disorders, can make people feel, and become, more fragile.
This year, Australia introduced legislation that gives employers a positive duty to protect workers from psychosocial hazards and risks. It’s right to recognise that psychosocial harm can be as damaging as physical harm, but it’s important to understand what psychological safety isn’t. As Harvard business school professor Amy Edmondson stresses, it isn’t “feeling comfortable all the time”. It isn’t simply safety from discomfort, it’s safety to engage in conversations that might be uncomfortable. A manager should be able to gently raise an issue with an employee that might make them feel uncomfortable, without being accused of deliberately “violating” their safety – and vice versa. But I’ve heard managers, and educators, express concern that even well-intentioned, carefully delivered, feedback, could be perceived as an attack.
We can be uncomfortable and still be safe. If we lose this distinction, if managers in workplaces and teachers in schools, parents in the home and politicians in parliament, feel obliged to keep everyone comfortable all the time, we’ll end up in dangerous territory. We’ll be less able to express our views, and less able to hear each other out, less able to learn from each other.
Honest, measured, criticism plays an important role in society. We need to value it; even (perhaps especially) if it’s hard to hear. We also need to recognise that avoiding exposure to any and all discomfort will only heighten the sensation; and consider the merit, case by case, of facing it.
So, what might this look like?
C.S Lewis said that if you look for truth, “you may find comfort in the end”, but if you look for comfort, “you will not get either comfort or truth”. He wasn’t talking about performance reviews or reports or assignments, but the principle is still relevant.
If I seek the truth about my performance at work, I might find ways to improve it, gaining competence and confidence. A by-product will be a broader comfort zone. If I only want to hear praise, I can look for people who will only give it or find ways to only get it. I can avoid trying if I think I’ll fail, or I can start cheating to ensure success. In the short-term I might feel better, but over time, I’ll be progressively worse off.
We need more expansive conversations – more discomfort which, through exposure, will expand our comfort zones and increase our resilience. Silcox talks about how we need fewer “gatekeepers” – those who close doors and shut down important conversations – and more “locksmiths” – those who open them.
We can start by considering the way we speak, and think, and act. Are we using words that make others more cautious, risk averse, fearful, fragile, than they need to be? What about when talking to ourselves? Are we so focussed on staying safe from risk, that we forget about how many risks are safe to take? With this in mind, we can resolve to sit with discomfort, to recognise the doors that it can open, that comfort can’t. We can welcome feedback, even ask for it; embrace challenges, even set them for ourselves; replace complete avoidance, with strategic exposure. And if we’re in positions of authority, we can give those we oversee genuine permission to try and fail and try again.
It’s natural to avoid discomfort. But if we continually avoid what’s hard, it will feel harder still. If we want to talk about what matters and do it well; exercise moral courage; make a difference in the world – we’ll have to expand our comfort zones, not narrow them. We’ll have to take some risks. But do you know what else is risky? Sitting still.
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BY Emma Wilkins
Emma Wilkins is a journalist and freelance writer with a particular interest in exploring meaning and value through the lenses of literature and life. You can find her at: https://emmahwilkins.com/
The ethics of pets: Ownership, abolitionism and the free-roaming model
“If there are no dogs in heaven, I want to go where they go”, said the American performer, Will Rogers.
It is no secret that we are deeply connected to the animals we keep as pets. In Australia, most pet owners would like to think they treat their animals well. 52% of Australians consider their pets to be family members, and in 2021 Australians spent $30.7 billion on food, healthcare, and enrichment for their cats and dogs.
Studying animal ethics, I used to believe that pet ownership was a good thing. Following the arguments of moral philosopher Christine Korsgaard and many others, I saw it as a mutually beneficial situation. We provide our animals with the necessary conditions for a good life, such as food, shelter, healthcare, love and attention. In return, they provide us with companionship and countless other life-affirming benefits.
As long as we can provide our pets with the kind of life that is good for them, then having pets is a good thing, I reasoned. After all, how could I deny that my family’s Golden Retriever, Ruby, lived a charmed life full of play, food, and affection? As I would soon find out, the ethics of pet-keeping is far more complicated than ensuring our furry friends are ‘well taken care of’.
My view about pets was turned upside down after listening to a podcast with legal scholar and animal ethicist Gary Francione. Francione is an abolitionist, meaning that he believes that we should abolish all use and ownership of nonhuman animals, including pets. To understand this view, it is first important to understand the history of domesticated animals and pets.
Domesticated animals are those animals like dogs, cats, or sheep who have adapted or ‘tamed’ because of or by humans. While the jury is still out on how wolves initially interacted with humans to become dogs, humans have subsequently spent millennia forcibly breeding dogs to make them less aggressive, ‘cuter’, or specialised in some activity like cattle herding. Or, in the case of my family’s Golden Retriever, Ruby, it seems she has been bred to chew up sofas and love carrots (don’t ask).
As Francione puts it, we have domesticated dogs and cats into a state of perpetual childhood where they are dependent on us for basic care. Yet, unlike children, cats and dogs don’t grow up and become independent; they remain in a state of dependency for their entire lives.
The animals we keep as pets are a subset of domesticated animals. The concept of pet ownership in Western countries is surprisingly recent, beginning in the Victorian era. Our entitlement to owning pets has not existed throughout history, meaning we should be critical of current ethical attitudes towards pets.
For abolitionists like Francione, the problem of pet ownership is twofold. One, the state of dependency is problematic because we have bred animals to become dependent on us. Imagine if someone raised their child to be completely dependent on them and to never reach true adulthood; we would likely call it emotional abuse. Yet in the case of pets, it is considered ‘proper training’.
Second is the problem of ownership and possession. Animals (including pets) are treated as property in the law. It’s even in the name: ‘pet ownership’. Most of us know that animals are sentient, and perhaps even that they are individuals with rights. However, if this was truly the case, then it would be nonsensical that an animal could be ‘owned’ as property in the same way it is morally outrageous for a human to be owned.
For these two reasons, abolitionists like Francione think that if we could wave a magic wand, we should remove all domesticated animals like cats and dogs who depend on us from existence. While we should adopt and care for the current animals that are already alive, we should also aim to abolish the institution of owning pets.
The abolitionist position is confronting and uncomfortable. I love my dog Ruby, and I was initially defensive against Francione’s argument. Has my family really been doing something wrong by pouring hours of our lives and thousands of our (my parents’) dollars into caring for a dog who we treat as a member of a family? Even if we have not personally been doing anything wrong, the world without cats and dogs that Francione envisages seems like a slightly less happy world.
I was struggling with this dilemma when my partner and I met a cat at a guesthouse in Malaysia’s Cameron Highlands, curled up in a box in the corner of the reception. When we asked the guesthouse owners what his name was, they said that he didn’t have a name yet because he only arrived three weeks earlier.
He, the cat, had picked them. In return for his company, the guesthouse owners gave him as much kibble as he would like and took him to the vet. On the same trip, I also learned that in Türkiye, many people have a ‘tab’ at the vet they use for vagabond cats who choose to live with them. This framework of domesticated animals without ‘owners’ is what I call the ‘free roaming’ model, an idea tentatively welcomed by animal studies scholar Claudia Hirtenfelder that, as Eva Meijer argues, acknowledges the agency of nonhuman animals.
Perhaps a more familiar example of a free-roaming animal is the life of the eponymous dog from the beloved Australian film, Red Dog. In the film, Red Dog is no one’s pet. Rather, he is cared for by the employees of a mine in Western Australia’s Pilbara and eventually decides to live with an American man named John Grant. Red Dog has agency, and [spoiler alert] uses that agency to travel across Australia in search of John after his premature death.
The key difference between free-roaming domesticated animals and pets is that these animals are not owned. Yes, many free-roaming cats and dogs may still depend on some human care, but they have a choice in how and from whom they receive that care.
The free-roaming model is not perfect, however. According to the Humane Society, 25% of outdoor (commonly referred to as ‘feral’) kittens do not survive past 6 months. This is not the case for kittens bred in captivity. And while some cats are lucky, like the one we met in Malaysia, many endure lives of illness and famine. And, as Korsgaard points out, domesticated cats are a predatorial threat to native wildlife, which is why, for example, they are not allowed outside without a leash in the Australian Capital Territory.
For the free-roaming model of animal companionship to work, we would have to make our urban spaces more hospitable to other animals. There would have to be a significant attitude shift in our tolerance of animals in public spaces where we usually don’t see them.
Until that day, perhaps the best thing we can do is adopt pets from shelters like the RSPCA, rather than breeders who perpetuate the institution of animal dependency and pet ownership. However, the free-roaming model gives hope for a post-pet world. As Korsgaard puts it:
“There is something about the naked, unfiltered joy that animals take in little things—a food treat, an uninhibited romp, a patch of sunlight, a belly rub from a friendly human—that reawakens our sense of the all-important thing that we share with them: the sheer joy and terror of conscious existence.”
This article won the 2024 Young Writers’ Competition 18-29 category.
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BY William Salkeld
William Salkeld is a PhD candidate with the school of Politics and International Relations at the Australian National University, researching interspecies democratic theory. He is interested in animal and environmental ethics, political philosophy, animal minds and cognition, and moral philosophy.
Rethinking the way we give
Whether it’s helping out a neighbour in need, assisting a stranger living rough on the streets or being asked at the checkout to donate $2 to charity, we are all, at some point, involved in the action of giving.
The giving of service. The giving of time. The giving of money. We often find ourselves giving from a place of good intention, but not fully understanding the consequences of our actions.
Away from home, when travelling in a developing country, it’s especially difficult to ignore the begging children on the streets, families living in overcrowded homes and poverty, the absence of healthcare and the poor state of schools.
In 2006, Australian philanthropist Tara Winkler witnessed the distressing realities of children living in poverty whilst visiting a Cambodian orphanage. She was so moved that she returned a year later with money she had fundraised, ready to work hard to improve the children’s quality of life. During her time as a volunteer, she discovered that the orphanage’s director was abusive and misappropriating donations, an occurrence not unheard of in the industry. Winkler also learnt that most ‘orphans’ still had their families but were living in these institutions to escape the poverty cycle.
Attempting to save these children, Winkler established her own orphanage in 2007, only to realise it was further fueling Cambodia’s widespread misuse and exploitation of orphanages, causing harm to children and separating families. She has since developed the Cambodia Children’s Trust, an organisation that aims to address root causes of poverty and family unit breakdown through social work and locally based initiatives involving education and healthcare, providing sustainable and positive futures for at-risk communities.
By spotlighting this story, I am not aiming to discourage the act of giving but rather to motivate individuals to have a more considered approach on how we give and to whom. As highlighted in philosopher Peter Singer’s book, The Life You Can Save, ‘perhaps those who do not research think that it will be too difficult to find out what charities offer better value, so they may as well give to whatever charity last caught their eye’. This is reflected in Australia’s Giving Report from 2019, when it was recorded that 41% of Australians would donate more money in the next 12 months if they better understood where their money would be spent, whilst 23% hoped for more transparency about the cause and its regulations.
So, how can we shift these figures and guide people toward more impactful giving choices?
Let’s take a look at UNICEF. According to their Donate Where Need is Greatest appeal, of each dollar donated, 80 cents is specifically directed towards helping vulnerable children, 14 cents to essential fundraising costs and six cents to administration.
Given these figures alone, it’s difficult to assess the lasting impression of this particular campaign, so we have to look further. We discover their main goal is to break the vicious cycle of poverty by providing small initiatives that will have beneficial, long-term effects. A donation of 84 dollars equates to 84,000L of clean drinking water made accessible to some of the most at-risk children and their communities around the world. This small change results in the difference between a safe and healthy child to one who might face life-threatening illnesses through contaminated water supplies. At this point, we can gauge that donations will be properly utilised by this cause and will be incredibly significant to the lives of these children, stressing the importance of who we give to rather than a quantitative measure.
However, it’s a big ask for everyday people, simply trying to do their part, to pause and assess how their time and money could best be spent. Sometimes, it is just simpler and seems just as effective to donate to any charity that loosely relates to an ethical issue that matters most to us. To make better decisions when it comes to giving, online organisations such as The Life You Can Save and GiveWell can help evaluate and recommend high-impact, cost-effective and evidence-based charities, proving that everyone has the potential to make a meaningful impact.
By taking a few extra measures to reflect and consider where and how we direct our intentions, we can make more ethical choices that result in sustainable outcomes and give to others in a way that transforms their lives for the better.
This article won the 2024 Young Writers’ Competition Under 18s category.
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BY Serei Bayley
Serei is a 15-year-old high school student currently attending Redlands. Interested in commerce and history subjects, she has aspirations to study law or business at a university overseas. She loves travelling and spending summer days at the beach. Earlier in 2024, Serei visited Cambodia, where she was inspired by her interactions with various NGOs, which motivated her to write this piece.
Ethics Explainer: Just Punishment
In 2001, Marcellus Williams was convicted of killing Felicia Gayle, found stabbed to death in her home in 1998.
Over two decades later, he was given the death penalty, directly against the wishes of the prosecutor, the jury and, notably, Gayle’s family.
Cases like this draw our attention to the nature of punishment and its role in delivering justice. We can think about justice, and hence what is just punishment, as a question about what we deserve. But who decides what we deserve, and on what basis?
There are many ways that people think about punishment, but generally it’s justified in some variation of the following: retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, and/or restoration. These are not all mutually exclusive ideas either, but rather different arguments about what should be the primary purpose and mode of punishment
Purposeful Punishment
Punishment is often viewed through the lens of retribution, where wrongdoers are punished in proportion to their offenses. The concept of retributive justice is grounded in the idea that punishment restores balance in society by making offenders ‘pay’ in various ways, like prison time or fines, for their transgressions.
This perspective is somewhat intuitive for most people, as it’s reflected in our moral psychology. When we feel wronged, we often become outraged. Outrage is a moral emotion that often inspires thoughts of harming the wrongdoer, so retributive punishment can feel intuitively justified for many. And while it has roots in our evolutionary psychology, it can also be a harmful disposition to have in a modern context.
The 18th-century philosopher Immanuel Kant strongly defended retributive justice as a matter of principle, much like his general deontological moral convictions. Kant believed that people who commit crimes deserve to be punished simply because they have done wrong, irrespective of whether it leads to positive social outcomes. In his view, punishment must fit the crime, upholding the dignity of the law and ensuring that justice is served.
However, there are many modern critics of retributivism. Some argue that focusing solely on punishment in a retributive way overlooks the possibility of rehabilitation and societal reintegration. These criticisms often come from a consequentialist approach, focusing on how to create positive outcomes.
One of these is an ongoing ethical debate about the role of punishment as a deterrent. This is a consequentialist perspective that suggests punishment should aim to maximise social benefits by deterring future crimes. This view is often criticised because of its implications on proportionality. If punishment is used primarily as a deterrent, there is a high risk that people will be punished more harshly than their crimes warrant, merely to serve as an example. This approach can conflict with principles of fairness and proportionality that are central to most conceptions of justice. Some also consider it to be a view that misunderstands the motives and conditions that surround and cause common crime.
Other, more contemporary, consequentialist views on punishment focus on rehabilitation and restoration. Feminist philosophers, such as Martha Nussbaum, have proposed a broader, more compassionate view of justice that emphasises human dignity. Nussbaum suggests that a purely punitive system dehumanises offenders, treating them merely as vessels for punishment rather than as individuals with the capacity for moral growth and change.
They argue that this dehumanisation is a primary factor in high rates of recidivism, as it perpetuates the cycle of disadvantage that often underpins crime. Hence, an ability for change and reintegration is seen by some as crucial to developing pro-social methods of justice that decrease recidivism.
Importantly, these views are not inherently at odds with traditional punishment, like prison. However, they are critical of the way that punishment is enacted. To be in line with rehabilitative methods, prisons in most countries worldwide would need to see a significant shift towards models that respect the dignity of prisoners through higher quality amenities, vocations, education, exercise and social opportunities.
One unintuitive and hence potentially difficult aspect of these consequentialist perspectives is that in some cases punishment will be deemed altogether unnecessary. For example, if a wrongdoer is found to be impaired significantly by mental illness (e.g. dementia) to the extent that they have no memory or awareness of their wrongdoing, some would claim that any type of retributive punishment is wrong, as it serves no purpose aside from satisfying outrage. This can be a difficult outcome to accept for those who see punishment as needing to “even the scales”.
Justice and Punishment
The ethical implications of punishment become even more complex when considering factors like bias and the reality of disproportionate sentencing. For example, marginalised groups face more scrutiny and harsher sentences for similar crimes, both in Australia and globally. This disparity is often unconscious, resulting in a denial of responsibility at many steps in the system and a resistance to progress.
If punishment is disproportionately applied to disadvantaged groups, then it is not just. The ethical demand of justice is for equal treatment, where punishment reflects the crime, not the social status or identity of the offender.
Whether our idea of punishment involves revenge or benevolence, it’s important to understand the motivations behind our convictions. All the sides of the punishment spectrum speak to different intuitions we hold, but whether we are steadfast in our right to get even, or we believe an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, we must be prepared to find the nuance for the betterment of us all.
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BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
Community is hard, isolation is harder
Yesterday I crossed the street to avoid talking to an acquaintance.
Not because I don’t like them. Not because I was in a rush. But because I often feel a deep aversion to participating in small pleasantries or having to socialise when I’m mentally unprepared.
This is only one in a list of anti-social tendencies I’ve noticed myself developing during my adult life.
A lot of them seem more mundane than crossing the street, too. When’s the last time you took off your headphones and casually spoke to a stranger on the train or at the shops? Have you gotten to you know your neighbours or your barista? If a small accident happens in public, do you shy away or pretend you didn’t notice?
Community and Individualism
Recently on TikTok, something that’s caught my attention is a renewed focus on the benefits of and desire for community and how that conflicts with our increasingly individualistic mindsets.
Friction between these two ideas seems unavoidable: community involves a focus on the people around you, and individualism involves a focus on yourself. Go too far in either direction and you’ll inevitably begin to neglect the other.
In his video “This is one of my hills”, creator NotWildlin responds to the view held by some that we don’t owe strangers pleasantries. His gripe isn’t necessarily that we do owe strangers anything, but rather that this attitude appeared to be coming from people who were simultaneously frustrated with the lack of opportunity for community around them. Specifically, they had been advocating for more third places.
Coined by the sociologist Ray Oldenburg in his book The Great Good Place, third places are communal public spaces where casual conversation is the primary (but not necessarily only) activity, and the space is neutral, welcoming, cozy, accessible, playful and homely. Importantly, these spaces are separate from the home, our first place, and from work or study, our second place.
These are places where it’s encouraged to interact with strangers, with a sense of openness for conversation and general interaction with local community.
So, NotWildlin’s argument is this:
If you are the kind of person who laments a decline of local community, who wants to build social capital through things like third places, then how can you also justify being habitually anti-social?
Instead of thinking about pro-social habits as something we owe, we should think about them as something we want to develop in the name of community.
This argument honestly rocked me a little, as someone who is becoming increasingly community-minded, while also holding desperately onto my inalienable right to be left alone.
However, it does seem to me, as an extension of NotWildlin’s point, that a focus on third places is a misprioritisation. On a systemic level, yes, there could be more local government support in creating welcoming public spaces to encourage community. On the other hand, many areas in populous Australian cities do have third places that go underutilised. How many younger people do you know that use libraries, public gardens or other community centres? The deeper problem in my estimation is social and cultural.
Keeping the (inner) peace
Once we leave the education system, many people become creatures of habit, and that unfortunately can extend to the way we view relationships and interact with others. We’re less open to even fleeting interactions with strangers, we might be content with our small circle of friends and unenthusiastic about adding to the noise. We have our routines and any effort outside of them can feel like a small burden.
Unfortunately, that spells disaster for building community. Around the same time as NotWildlin, an Australian creator Jordan Stacey posted a video about the relationship between routine and community. She unpacks the idea that community requires compromise in ways that threaten our often highly sought after bubbles of routine, and too often community is neglected in favour of maintaining these routines.
Stacey talks through this with two main points. Firstly, routine is only a symptom of a broader desire for comfort and convenience. The reason that someone might struggle to accept a spontaneous invitation in lieu of their quiet night in watching tv (for example) is the same reason many people avoid interactions with strangers. And to some extent, this seems obvious, natural and maybe even justified. Why would we want to be uncomfortable or inconvenienced?
But arguably, this is a case of wanting to have your cake and eat it too – at least for those of us who envision a time in the future where we’re surrounded by supportive relationships within thriving communities – because as a reciprocal support network, community necessitates intermittent inconvenience.
If we want to develop and be surrounded by relationships in which we can find support, we also have to be willing to forgo some of our solitude and peace and embrace the inconvenience of being pro-social.
Stacey’s second point is that we live in a world that almost necessitates this level of comfort-protection; that causes us to frame these aspects of community as inconveniences rather than incidental aspects of functioning and fulfilling relationships.
“If you’re working 40 hours a week – a nine to five – the only way, for a lot of people, that this is actually maintainable is through a hefty routine.
The systems we live under directly limit our time and put pressure on our leisure. Our routines often block out weeknights to relax and recover and relegate the majority of our social time to the weekend, creating a sense of isolation throughout the week.
It is also, I would argue, the same inner-peacekeeping measure that motivates our aversion to public interactions. Talking to strangers on our commute or in the lift is a similar disruption to our routines – to the books or podcasts or music that get us from point A to point B without having to cast our attention to the people around us.
Creating Community
All this is not to say that we need to start making forced conversation with strangers. As I write, I’m sitting on a quiet train and would frankly be annoyed if I was interrupted by an overly outgoing commuter. And that’s okay, sometimes.
What I think we should take from this discourse, though, is a readiness to confront our own anti-social dispositions when we reflect that we’re consistently prioritising routine or comfort over building relationships.
While we might dream of a world in which we’re surrounded by supportive relationships and vibrant communities, we’re much less conscious of the personal cost of that dream. The reality is, community doesn’t materialise from thin air – it’s built, moment by moment, through countless small interactions and shared experiences. And yes, those moments often come at the expense of our personal comfort and carefully curated routines.
These compromises aren’t things to shy away from, but reminders that meaningful relationships and thriving neighbourhoods are more than just social policy or urban planning – they’re about us. About stepping out of our bubbles. About choosing to inconvenience ourselves in small, deliberate ways that foster connection.
Maybe the next time we feel the urge to shrink into ourselves, we can choose differently, because community isn’t just something we want—it’s something we create. And creating it means showing up, no matter how uncomfortable it feels in the moment.
The question isn’t whether we owe strangers pleasantries – it’s whether we’re willing to invest in the world we want to live in.
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