I'm old enough to know that I don't have any answers, but that won't stop me talking
The philosopher Fredrich Nietzsche in his writings frequently deplored the materially affluent and relatively safe bourgeois lives that most people of his era lived. He found such lives mundane and unheroic. He yearned for the coming of a Superman, an Ubermensch, who would, through his example, topple the existing moral order and usher in a new age of …
Continue reading “Should we sometimes say ‘Roxy’ instead of ‘Karen’? [Does it even matter?]”
Historicism is one of these concepts which I first encountered during my readings for my long ago abandoned MA thesis on Nietzsche, Hegel and matters which were in vogue in the mid 1990s such as the End of History. Historicism essentially holds to the idea that human nature changes over time, that as civilisation grows …
Continue reading “God’s Wrath and the Susceptibility of Crowds”
As a child in the 1970s, I avidly read much Enid Blyton. My favourite was the mischievous trickster Brer Rabbit, always getting the better of Brer Fox and Brer Wolf and Brer Bear with his quick wit. It was only when I re-read a few of the stories about a decade ago that I realised, …
I am a bit of a wine buff (which is a kind way of describing someone who probably should drink a lot less fine red wine than I do). Back in 1999 when I lived in Canberra for most of the year, I started reading about wine appreciation in order to relieve the boredom of …
Several weeks ago I wrote a post in which I expressed my concerns about recent changes to federal electoral laws to make it harder for minor parties to operate. Since that time, two long established minor parties, who have enjoyed a small degree of electoral success over the years, have had their registrations challenged by …
Continue reading “Bipartisanship as an affront to Democracy”
For a few days there, after finishing reading Stephanie Kelton’s book on Modern Monetary Theory, The Deficit Myth, I was starting to doubt my sanity. She sounded really convincing. This is the problem with not have studied economics formally, but just having read a few textbooks to teach myself economics. There are always going to …
I recently read a book about Modern Monetary Theory. I want to have an understanding as to what the current fashion is in financial policy, given that it does affect our wallets and our lives. The author was at pains to emphasise that MMT is not money printing – it is creating money electronically by …
Continue reading “The Global Financial System Is Insane So Let’s Just Print Money”
I was having a few beers the other day with a friend who is on speaking terms with various people associated with the remnant of B.A. ‘Bob’ Santamaria’s ‘Movement’ (although I am not sure that the NCC and the DLP are as unified as paranoiacs in the Labor Party would believe). He said that there …
There were protests in Melbourne this week, principally motivated by opposition to the technocratic pandemic bill proposed by the Andrews government, a proposed law with significant overreach, no sunset clause, no effective oversight by the Parliament (indeed, it represents an abdication of the Parliament’s duties), and limited (if any) right of review to the courts. …
Continue reading “Anti-Technocrat Protests and Faux Anti-Fascist Outrage”
I have been avidly reading the novels of Alexander McCall Smith for about twenty years, since I first discovered The Number 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and avidly devoured the first four novels (all that was in the series at that time). McCall Smith is quite prolific, and has since then started two other major series, …
Continue reading “Villainy in the novels of Alexander McCall Smith”
Lost For Words!