I have always found it to be a most poignant song/question and I wanted to ask it again in a milieu where it would be wrestled with a tad. With the 24 hour news cycle constantly informing us yet increasingly we have no clue as to what is really going on in the world.
is viewing events the best way for us to understand the world? Or should we be looking deeper?

It matters to me because of all the killing that has been done in the name of religion

It matters because there does appear to be the collective wisdom to consider the impacts

Some countries use a year of compulsory military service as a rite of passage for young adults. Looking at our 18 year olds today, some might say we need to bring in this kind of enforced ‘gap year’ for the good of the individual and of our whole society. And of course, it would strengthen the country militarily to have a national service corps. But at what cost? Would this be worth it?

If someone steals something they are arrested but if someone sends in troupes under dubious pretence killing thousands of civilians, ruining the lives of their own combatants why is it that they just float off to a life of ease? Shouldn’t high office hold high accountability. There must be factors that give them immunity. What are they?

I’m asking this question because it is, without doubt, something that most of us want to have happen, and I would like it to be both possible and to be brought about. However, I’m wondering if thinkers who have had more experience of life and of thinking, than I have, believe that it is actually possible. It matters to me because I see peace as enabling any person to experience a positively richer experience of life, and for this reason, I view it as being something that should matter to all of us.

Sometimes adults get a little too serious and forget to have fun! I would like to see what happens to our work culture and society if game play is more available & mainstream for adults. It would be a great experiment to test the importance of play and creativity and how it correlates to innovation and new ideas for the Australian economy.

I am asking this question because the UN has identified a set of development goals such as equal access to education and eradication of poverty that it made me wonder if we as citizens of the world can truly achieve these goals.

I thought it was interesting.

Because this is one of the root environmental problems we face. My grandmother was born into a world with 75% fewer people and this seemingly unstoppable growth undermines all of the good we do. If we halve consumption and double the world’s population, we have achieved nothing, but forced sterilisation is obviously completely unacceptable, as is the total freedom to have 9 children if you feel like it. You should care because at the moment the future does not look like now with more electric cars; you should more picture 40m people in rags foraging in a gravel car park the size South Australia for 27 potatotes.

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.

I’m not a great speller and the rules I find intriguing!

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.