afraid of touching the question

I’m curious as to what others wished they had learnt in school and what they think our young people need to learn to cope/thrive in the future. I work as an educator and constantly question the relevance of what I’m teaching. What do we assume (most, some, all?) kids will naturally learn, but in fact they’d all benefit from explicitly being taught?

There are so many ridiculous food combinations when, you know, we haven’t unlocked the rights of or the refugees themselves.

I guess I find it a fascinating question because, if the answer is ‘yes’ (and I think it probably is), that runs quite contrary to the current obsession with science and truth and makes story-telling and art-play far more important.

I spend a lot of time thinking about this tbh.

Can you tell us how we, the people, convince the United nations to act as a genuine force for good in the world by bringing together the might of the world’s most powerful nations to rectify, at its source, the trauma these individuals are enduring? Or can you suggest other ways we can act? I’m asking this question out of sheer frustration that we can do nothing more than be compassionate to the world’s victims AFTER the event. People power has achieved results before, so perhaps those caring people can do more now – but how?

The concept of light years, billions of stars in our galaxy and then billions of galaxies outside of the Milky Way is just too big to get a grip on. Maybe there is another concept of distance in a physical law that we haven’t discovered yet, and that will make more sense of these distances and scale? Maybe the micro-world is as big relatively to the universe, that is, the relative distances between individual components of atoms and molecules is just as vast as the universe is big? How can there be an end to the universe – where is it located if it is confined in some way? We know so much – why don’t we know this?

It matters to me because I am 70 years old and have spent my entire life struggling to make Australia and the world a better place for women. We have made some gains but it still seems a long way to go.

Endometriosis and related conditions are VERY expensive to treat and go hand in hand with not being able to work so women and girls cannot move out, gain employment and are stuck in a hideously painful rut. The medical profession can be woefully uneducated about women’s health and more drugs need to be on the PBS. I pay about $200 a month for mine!

Could the legitimisation of the guilty pleasure mean the end of judgmental music criticism (good riddance!), or are new hierarchies of taste emerging?

Inspired by Rebecca Solnit’s The Mother of All Questions in Harper’s, and my own wondering if ‘happiness’ is really the best word to describe what we all are/should be looking for.