I’m asking because it is a question, after standstill discussions with peers — some for; some against — I cannot clarify to myself what I believe. To have this question answered would not only put my mind at ease, but influence how I see the world and go about my life.

I am quite interested in the metaphysics of physics and in particular time.

I really want to know!

As a first world country, Australians experience a high quality of life. Yet everybody suffers and hurts, and could our experience of suffering, through illness, abuse, loss, break-up, poverty, discrimination, fear etc be put into a different framework where it is recognised for what it can bring and enable, individually and on a bigger scale? The biggest national identities of white Australia seem to be based on and through hardship and suffering.

We largely ignore the thoughts and ideas of children, when they are active participants in their cities and towns. Children have their own culture, and histories. They have more time to observe, make lateral connections, and have a heightened sensory perception. They have such valuable input and are shamefully undervalued in conversations, which have a direct impact on their environment. I fear that the absence of their voices in the planning and analysis of our social infrastructure is to our detriment as a society.

Despite knowing about the risks of climate change since the 1960s and after 25 years of UN climate negotiations, emissions have continued to rise. With the impacts now clearly visible around the world, why are governments still failing to act?

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 have a mental illness in a regional city. I had an episode of anger which I understand is due to acute anxiety, at my daughter’s school. Three years on, people still cower, there is gossip about me, that is of the effect that I am going to coffee shops to ‘meet’ and ‘pickup’ men, and that I am most interested in meeting married men. I am told I have to just move around and amongst the society, (by my psychologist) but I find it safer and apparently I am becoming more reclusive, to remain at home. I don’t condone aggressive behaviour. The school and my workplace, were trying to ‘support’ me, by having psychologists at the school, monitor my behaviour and have people behave ‘accordingly’. I began to feel I was living ‘The Truman Show’, and realise none of my interactions were authentic. Initially those people were being ‘kind’ but misguided, in supporting me, and I guess, my daughter. I have 3 years until she leaves school. I will go ‘somewhere else’. Michael Kirby has spoken of the chaplaincy program being a ‘front’ to filter through students of need/risk. I plod on. This stigma came into my new workplace. I plod on. Btw: this is not my paranoia. Underneath, I find it deeply alienating and distressing.

I grew up in cities, but have lived in the provinces for over 20 years, and find it to be a refreshingly connected place to live. I rail against the snobbery of city folk towards ‘country folk’. We have just as many great ideas and cultural practises as cities do.

Because BeeGees asked it in 1977, and Calvin Harris is asking the same question in 2015.

I saw graffiti on a wall showing two characters arguing with each other. One said, ‘Question Everything!’ The other said, ‘Why?’
I was introduced to a body of work on cognitive style that highlights 40 years of research on the predictable differences in the way people think. People do not think alike yet can anyone suggest any management strategies in any organisation or in society that recognizes these differences and allows for different styles of thinkers to thrive? I have asked this question for ten years and found just one organisation that shaped approaches for different style of thinkers. The cost to organisations and societies for not recognizing these predicable differences is tremendous. You see it in our cliches. For some, seeing the glass as half full is positive. For others it is negative as you fail to see that the glass as twice the potential. As such, seeing the glass as half empty is positive as you twice the potential. Yet society thinks seeing the glass as half full is seen as positive; it can also be seen as accepting the mediocrity of the status quo.

Climate change and the arts are two prime examples of areas where seems difficult to apply this metric-based approach. I am curious about alternatives. What if everyone had a smartphone? Could we something radically different emerge?