THE RESILIENCE INDEX In their study of resilience in Australian communities, undertaken as a collaborative project by Zurich, Mandala and RedBridge and Accent Research, the most striking finding is that nearly half of Australians do not feel that they belong in their...

THE QUESTION What is the nature of the AI Revolution and where might it take us – what futures does it augur?  As Ed Husic MP recently said (The Saturday Paper 10 October): AI has become one of the defining issues of our time. The impact of this technology, relentless...

Ikebana: Still Rising by Pamela Croci "I used to think that top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that thirty years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems...

THE LIBERAL HUMANISM DREAM Unless liberal humanism can re-assert its own vision of the ‘good life’: fairness, freedom, irreverence and the adventure of living with difference, it will remain stunned by the appeal of authoritarian governments like Xi’s China and Modi’s...

When the wisdom insights of the ancients are meeting the possibilities and challenges of our uncertain times, we can experience our individual freedoms and belonging by riding the waves of relational reciprocity like a big wave surfer. INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM We long to...

ODYSSEY Based on Homer’s epic poem about Odysseus’ ten years of wandering after the fall of Troy, the dictionary defines an odyssey as a long and eventful or adventurous journey or experience. Critics are raving about Christopher Nolan’s new three hour film...

WHAT DOES BELONGING MEAN? I am provoked by the current political debate about immigration and multiculturalism, and the creeping anxiety about what constantly evolving agentic AI might mean for our humanness in a political ecosystem that bridges the carbon/silicon...

THE NEW DRIVER IN THE SEAT Many years ago, now it seems, I was invited by my friend Rhonda Galbally to join her in Melbourne to help establish the Commission for the Future, to which she had been appointed as its inaugural Director. Under the chairmanship of cultural...

COLLAPSE OR TRANSFORMATION? THE TRUST DEFICIT We’ve all been brought up on a constant diet of media entertainment shaped by conspiracy theories of the Deep State, corrupt politicians, wealth scams and national security fears, and the glorification of shallow fame and...

The Challenge of Relationship One of the issues that comes up in creating any community engaged in direct relationships is what is our relationship going to be with other communities? In particular, indigenous communities, and even more particularly those indigenous...

THE QUAGMIRE The ancient Dhammapada (300BCE) warned: “We are what we think: with our thoughts we make the world”. Canada’s Mark Carney named it at Davos: the post WWII international rules-based order under US hegemony is over. The global pattern of nation states’...

THE ANGLOSPHERE Mark Carney called it out at Davos: the end of the international rules-based order under Pax Americana, the undisputed global hegemon since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The world’s political powers are re-arranging themselves into a new multi-polar...