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In: Human Nature, Science, Stories

We all tell stories.  We can’t seem to help it.  We are known in some circles as the ‘storytelling animal’.  We tell them around water coolers, over dinner tables, in coffee shops and we read stories in newspapers, magazines and in books.  I wonder if its curiosity which makes us do this or is it a way for us to get our big brains around what our senses are telling us? In our minds, our own lives are stories. Narrative therapy would have it that our identities are shaped by the stories we tell of our own lives.   Neuroscientist, Antonio Damasio, talks of story as integral toRead More →

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In: Reading

I’ve just finished a short story course with Australian writer, Patrick Holland, and throughout I read some amazing stories.  I’ve always had a fondness for the short story, perhaps because, they are distilled.  They stay with me, long after I’ve finished them.  They are kinder to the memory than the novel.    During the course we read from Ernest Hemingway, Anton Chekov, Margaret Atwood, Rudyard Kipling, Jorge Luis Borges, Tobias Wolff, Graham Greene, Patrick Holland, Yasunari Kawabata and Raymond Chandler and it was wonderful.  Whether it was the sense of place in works like Greene’s, Across the Bridge, the use of dialogue and sparseness in Hemingway’s,Read More →

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In: Freedom, Human Nature

My daughter is studying sociology and once in a while she sends me something she thinks I might be interested in.   The design of the Panopticon was one of  her recent offerings and I find the concept so diabolical I cannot help but share it with you. At times a popular concept in prison architecture, the panopticon allows for a central tower with 360 degree visual access to all inmates.  The presence of a powerful light (but reflective or tinted glass would also do the trick) emanates from the watchtower.   Blinded by this light, it would be impossible for the inmates to tell whether there was someone watching them.Read More →

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In: Human Nature

I ask this without judgement, each action having its purpose.  I’ve heard it said horses are flighters, always at the ready with their nervous systems exposed.  I’ve seen this.  We used to own horses and when one was spooked all of them fled.  This can be true of human herds too. Homo sapiens can and do harbour tendencies toward both fight and flight, but could choose one over the other more readily.  Those with a fear of confrontation or a strong desire for a peaceful existence may flee more often than they fight.  Others like nothing more than a good verbal or even physical stoush.  They playRead More →

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In: Reading

I’ve been reading Ebooks for some time, around three years, I think.  Now I read them almost exclusively. If I had had time to think about it, I would have held ground in favour of paper books, the smell, the weight, the way they gradually deform from handling and from then on look more loved. I am sure I would have, but I didn’t. It was around the time my old dad became more frail and because he wished to remain in his home, I began to spend more and more time between two houses, his and mine. My things needed to be portable. I wasRead More →

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In: Love

I’ve finished the first draft of a novella with internet dating as its central theme and I’m back to considering the idea of dating profiles etc.   Alain Badiou’s ideas, already discussed in a previous post, were helpful in terms of ‘safety first love’ with the dating profile allowing us to pick and choose people prior to meeting them.  But its not just this ability to check up on someone anonymously that has me flustered.  I think its that we come to meeting the person with a prior knowledge we wouldn’t have access to otherwise and this colours the way we see them. The Philosopher’s MailRead More →

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In: Freedom

Freedom’s just freedom right?  Well no actually.  Joe Gelonesi, presenter of ABC Radio National’s Philosopher’s Zone, spoke recently with political philosopher, Philip Pettit, and it appears the meaning of freedom has shifted over time and depending on your outlook this may not be a good thing. According to Pettit, Professor of Philosophy at ANU and author of Just Freedom: A Moral Compass for a Complex World, freedom is not what it once was back in the day….and we are talking right back in the day of Republican Rome.  Since the rise of liberalism, freedom has come to represent an attitude of non-interference.  If a person can navigateRead More →

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In: Love

In 2008, a conversation took place between philosopher, Alain Badiou and interviewer, Nicholas Truong at the Avignon Festival as part of the ‘Theatre of Ideas’ series. This conversation was later extrapolated on, translated into English and entitled In Praise of Love. I discovered this work while researching for a novella on online dating. There were reservations, you see. I felt an underlying brutality to this new system of love-seeking, more a ‘king hit’ from a street thug than the lovers’ embrace, but I could not put my finger on it, until In Praise of Love. Badiou calls it ‘a safety-first concept’ of love. In nominating traitsRead More →