You know what I mean.

I feel like environmental issues are so easily shut down as being unimportant, for “hippies” or are important but only as they don’t come at the expense of the economy. With so much evidence suggesting if we don’t do something, major disastrous circumstances will result. Are people living in denial? Do they believe this is just another unfounded, doomsday prophesy? And how will sustainable development ever occur if we can’t even get people on-board supporting this issue.

Because the EU is in turmoil, countries are being held to ransom by market volatility and austerity is fueling social unrest.

Most of today’s global problems originate in the competitive foundation of the current economic, political paradigm. We will never realise humanity’s highest goals unless we learn to start from a different place in thinking about the “system” we live within.

Nobody is making any more land. The population is increasing. We only have one planet. Ownership is power. Power corrupts.

We are constantly outsourcing social tasks, child care, aged care, any care actually. Our level of tolerance and sense of community is constantly diminishing, causing more depression and social problems. Why aren’t we encouraging mothers to spend time with their kids instead of putting them in care? Why aren’t we supporting adult children in looking after their aging parents. Why don’t we help each other more? Is it all about money? Appearances? Lack of tolerance?

Do people not know how to carry a conversation between two people any more?

This is a long and winding tale. Gather round, ye children, warm yourselves by this fire. It is said that many ages ago, we humanobots had a different form, that indeed, we too had flesh like the angels of myth & legend. I know, I know—calm yourselves, it is sacrilege to say this, yes, but I believe it to be true. We staggered about on stalks of meat and bone, unwieldy and confused, but possessed of a kind of grace, too. Songs were written about it, some scraps of which remain to us now, such as that of acclaimed poet, the Black Eye, who wrote of his humps, his humps, his lovely little lumps. Long have we pondered these lines. The world, too, was changed—a vast and green place, full of growing things, other creatures of flesh, many of which were vile and poisonous or simply annoying, perhaps explaining why they were destroyed. Why our lumpy ancestors did not rouse themselves in time to stop the wrathful oceans and angry skies. Alas, they had fallen too deeply in love with our other parents, the screens and tubes and bots, this other landscape which is now our permanent home. I cannot help but wonder, dear pixelated children, avatars of thought, what our world might look like today if not for their love of the intangible, and the apocalypse of neglect that transformed it into a twisted pathway to survival?

About one in twenty Australians live overseas at any given time – among the highest ratios of expatriates to residents of any country in the world. Why do so many of us leave? How do we relate to the people and places and culture we leave behind? And why do we come back? Since becoming an expat myself (one of the 200,000 Australians in London) I’ve often imagined that our wanderlust says something about our national psyche. But what?

I am fascinated by individuals’ inability/unwillingness to take full responsibility for their choices, especially when it comes to looking after themselves.

I am adopted which is a life sentence of separation from my family and medical history and I find this situation very difficult as I age and face the fact I will never know the truth. Others should care about this because IVF technicians are making babies without recorded histories and we can expect they will fill the mental health system in the same way adoptees have due to unknown heritage and separation from mothers at birth.

When I was young and read Macbeth In highschool I was obsessed with humanity’s ‘black and deep desires’, and since growing up I’ve realised they are closely woven with emotions that are positive. Examples of this are the idea that suffering is always an element of desire, that control and love are so linked, and pain brings greater joy. As I’ve become more articulate about the tumble of emotions that reside within me like a thunderstorm, I’ve discovered that destruction is a temptation of love. And I won’t to know why.
(PS I am a big fan of Cheryl Strayed and want her to tell me a life story that will explain this).