One of the defining features of the last century is the fact that “evil” has become more vivid to our imaginations and common in our language than “good”. Stan Grant joins Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens to discuss whether “evil” is, in our time, a concept worth holding onto. Or does its use and misuse in our public discourse cause more harm and confusion than good?
There is something undeniably satisfying about revenge. When we feel we have been aggrieved, harmed or humiliated, it is natural to want payback. In ancient Greece, to inflict such an injury was conceived of as incurring a debt — and the only way to make the perpetrator “whole” was to have the injury repaid in kind. The paradox — as Socrates, Sophocles and Euripides all knew — is that revenge, though it is desired, is never satisfying, because it gives rise to a perpetual cycle of hit-and-retali...
Just weeks before a US presidential election, a combination of political mendacity, the perverse incentives offered by social media platforms, and opportunism on the part of content creators/consumers, have come together to form a perfect storm. The tragic irony is that the devastating consequences of these forces have become apparent in the aftermath of two hurricanes which hit the American south-east in quick succession. With state and federal elections around the corner, and little more than ...
After the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and the outcome of the Brexit referendum, “populism” became the catch-all diagnosis for everything the ails democratic politics. But its polemical use has tended to obscure rather than clarify the meaning of the term.
The policy of negative gearing — which gives the owners of investment properties an unlimited ability to deduct losses from their overall taxable income — has come to symbolise the disparity between the different ways Australians see home ownership: for some, it is a means of wealth creation; for others, it represents the ever-receding promise of shelter, stability, security. It is unsurprising, then, that the policy would evoke such strong feelings whenever it re-enters public debate. Will chan...
The war poetry of Wilfred Owen refuses the comfort of hollow consolation in response to the mass loss of life — it also urges the sacrifice of the kind of bellicose pride that sees nothing but territorial gain and national self-interest, and is prepared to offer up the lives of the young to these ends. In a time of heightened violence and bloodshed, Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens – along with acclaimed concert pianist and award-winning writer Simon Tedeschi – attempt to recover the rhetorical pow...
With the US presidential election on the horizon, to say nothing of a number of Australian elections, our airwaves, news sites and social media feeds are filled with political rhetoric. Many of us have come to accept political rhetoric — with its obfuscations, generalisations, exaggerations and outright evasions — as the price of doing business with democratic politics. Is there a meaningful difference anymore between political rhetoric and propaganda? What disciplines and constraints must polit...
Given the dependence of many Australian universities on international student fees, a significant drop in enrolments with no corresponding increase in government funding will likely yield a decline in the quality of teaching and research, a reduction in academic staff, and a precipitous tumble down the world university rankings. This would do considerable damage to Australia's fourth largest "export". If the forecasts are accurate, why would the federal government embark on legislation that amou...
One of Australia’s greatest strengths has been the remarkable diversity of its multicultural society. But is this also a potential source of weakness? In this live recording at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens, along with guest Stan Grant, explore the internal and external forces that risk undermining our sense of social unity.
Even for a nation obsessed with the concept of “freedom” — or perhaps it would be better to say, concepts, not all of them easily reconciled, some of them utterly incommensurable — the prominence it was given during the recent Democratic National Convention was arresting. It was as though the Democratic Party vaulted the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush alike — both of which used “freedom” as a mantra, a talisman, a point of vital differentiation over against communism and terror...
In democracies with a history of racial injustice, are “colourblindness” and recognition of a “common humanity” — which were at the heart of the moral philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. — desirable as expressions of our commitment to justice as equality?
When the first episode of Seinfeld went to air in 1989, it faced stiff competition from a packed field of American sitcoms. By its finale in 1998, the “show about nothing” had redefined the sitcom genre and conquered comedy. Critical to its success was the unlikely alchemy of the four central characters — their navigation of the interpersonal conflicts and petty irritations of New York City life, and their heedless disregard for conventions of morality. That was the trick: the situations they fo...
Humour can often be a response to the sense of being ill-at-home in society — perhaps even ill-at-home in the world. But whether it takes the form of fatalism or self-deprecation, all such forms of ironic self-distancing have a sting in the tail.
In one form or another, comedy often proceeds from a certain exaggeration of life — exaggerated bodily movements, or facial expressions, or scenarios, or reactions. These exaggerations have an unreality to them, but still maintain an uncanny relationship to more “normal” life. Put another way: sometimes comedy is just plain silly, the art of relishing the fun of suspending our expectations and upending our social conventions. What is happening when performers give free reign to the silly? Does i...
Immanuel Kant called laughter a form of the disappointment of the understanding — which is to say, surprise — for which the body then compensates: “Whatever is to arouse lively, convulsive laughter must contain something absurd … Laughter is an affect that arises if a tense expectation is transformed into a nothing.” But surprises, it turns out, come in many shapes and sizes — from a slip or a fall, to a near-miss when you expected an accident, to an uncanny coincidence where you expected random...
The attempted assassination of former US President Donald Trump, while undeniably shocking, was not altogether surprising. It was just the latest blow in a steady drumbeat of political violence that has only grown louder over the last decade. This reflects the fact that political violence is “in the air”, and is increasingly being regarded by many Americans — and citizens of nations around the worlds — as a justifiable response to political disagreement. What does it take for such violence to be...
Comedy happens when something occurs that makes visible just how futile are our most earnest efforts, and how superficial are our solemnities, our moments of greatest seriousness and decorum — hence the deep connection between comedy, absurdity and tragedy.
Because our lives are increasingly tailor-made, we are constantly seeking ways of distinguishing ourselves from others. What is being lost through it all is our sense of a humanity whose inherent vulnerability to misfortune, malfeasance and violence makes us dependent on one another.
The Beatles composed their best music in the years after 1965 — so what could account for the ecstatic response the band received in the United States and Australia in 1964? Why were they “big” before they were “good”?
On 30 May 2024, after two days of deliberation following a five-week trial and hearing the testimony of 22 witnesses, a jury of 12 New Yorkers found former President Donald Trump guilty of 34 felony charges. But do the facts of the case brought against him, and the overriding fact it was brought in an election year, present insurmountable political risks?
The results of the recent European Parliament elections have only fuelled the growing concern across the member nations of the European Union that far-right, radical right, Eurosceptic and otherwise anti-immigrant parties are, once again, on the rise.
Apple Music recently released its list of the “100 Best Albums”. It was, without question, a clever marketing technique — but one that raises the problem of whether it’s appropriate to rank works of high human achievement in the first place.
At a time when so many eyes are on international courts, is their apparent failure to protect civilians in Gaza — or to punish the perpetrators of 7 October — further damaging an already shaky public confidence in the concept of international law?
It’s 18 months since the technology company OpenAI made its wildly popular interface with an advanced large language model — GPT-4 — available to the public. What has ChatGPT done to the habits of thought and consideration that produce distinctly human expression?
Protests are, by their nature, unequivocal and univocal. They tend to avoid nuance or fine distinctions, and most often do not invite dialogue. They make demands. Does the particular vocation of universities place ethical limits on the forms of expression available to protestors?
Reciprocity, cooperation, kindness, turn-taking, forbearance, empathy, experimentation — can these counter the decidedly illiberal, impatient, anti-pluralistic, well-nigh apocalyptic energies that now seem resurgent in parts of the West?
During the pandemic, there was a sudden renewal of interest in Harold Ramis’s 1993 film “Groundhog Day” — especially its bleaker aspects. But this missed its sophistication and humanity, to say nothing of its acute depiction of moral growth.
Residents of Sydney have found themselves understandably overwhelmed by the compound traumas of two stabbing attacks in three days. How are we to make sense of the cycling-through of emotions in response to shocking public violence?
There has been an odd confluence of events over the past couple weeks that has managed to intensify the sense of a conflict between two of our most important democratic institutions: the law and the media.
Does the failure on the part of Israel to enable the provision of humanitarian aid or to do everything in its power to prevent civilian casualties suggest “a blameworthy indifference to Palestinian lives”?
