These things seem at odds, and unsustainable. There has to be a better way forward.

We are stuck in the biggest humanitarian crisis since WW2. There are wars all over the place and the world is in ruins. When will we get out of this mess? What realistically needs to be done to create peace in the Middle East and Africa and how much of the unrest is the fault of the rich Western countries?

I need to know, and so does the whole of humanity. What exciting ramifications might come from an affirmative?

Because I want to write a thesis on this.

What we should be doing for our future is important.

Our society professes to be concerned about animal welfare but sanctions very different treatment of animals according to their perceived utility and the vested interests that benefit from their use. The law as it stands reflects this contradiction. As a result millions of animals suffer routinely, whether it be for live export, domestic agricultural use, feral animal control, research or entertainment purposes. Not even companion animals are immune from suffering; treated as disposable property and with little or no restriction on their breeding and sale, hundreds of thousands are euthanased every year in Australia. All of this is both inhumane and dishonest. Either we believe in the humane treatment of animals or we don’t. If the latter, let’s be honest about it; if the former, we need significant legal change. A good start would be the creation of independent statutory bodies to administer and enforce animal welfare laws instead of the current primary industries departments with their conflicts of interest.

It seems a no-brainer not to stand on the shoulders of giants, and in my humble opinion there is much we could still learn from indigenous cultures of the world.

Just a tongue-in-cheek way of getting to a productive discussion and maybe shaking some skeletons out of the cupboards and wardrobes.

To quote the late great Christopher Hitchens in introducing his autobiography, Hitch-22, “The most intense wars are civil wars, just as the most vivid and rending personal conflicts are internal ones, and what I hope to do now is give some idea of what it is like to fight on two fronts at once, to try and keep opposing ideas alive in the same mind, even occasionally to show two faces at the same time.” From the personal to the political, and the intersection of the two, why do we find it so difficult to keep opposing ideas alive in the same mind?

There is nothing more vile or polarising than an online conversation thread about feminism.

When I was a teenager I read something wonderful and it stayed with me, the author’s name however did not. The internet attributes this vacant place in my brain to Rebecca West.

“I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.”