Welcome to GR Online, a series of short-form articles that take aim at the moving target of contemporary culture as it’s whisked along the guide rails of innovations in digital media, globalisation and late-stage capitalism.
This isn’t theoretical
‘This is the first time we’ve ever taught the history of pandemics while an actual pandemic is upon us,’ I tell the class, to nervous laughter. We are still at the nervous laughter stage, which will quickly be overtaken by the ‘just nervous’ stage...
Note to self
Safe to say, I wasn’t in a good headspace. There was no space, actually, inside the head. The head was a churn, nauseating as the Tilt-A-Whirl, gurning away from 3 am each morning, blankly exhausted during daylight hours, marinating in cortisol and adrenaline.
Mortality’s hour
Urban solitude – retiree solitude – is tough. Especially if one is unaccustomed to domesticity, for solitude is, at its core, domestic. And in old age, solitude insists on vigilance. A pragmatic, fierce vigilance of the flesh.
The void
By then, coronavirus had invaded my life. Australia had imposed travel bans; several friends who were in China couldn’t get back into the country. We had planned to travel together; we couldn’t go anywhere anymore.
The truth about growing older
When ageing is framed as a problem, we can be persuaded to buy things to ‘fix’ or ‘stop’ it. And when we can be persuaded that ageing is a disease, and natural transitions are pathologised, we can be persuaded to buy things to ‘cure’ it. The driving force here is capitalism...
Moving in quarantine
This year, the crisis that began for this land over two centuries ago has clawed its way to the surface of the national psyche. The consequences of invasion, dispossession, resource exploitation and the interruption of care for country continue to devastate Indigenous peoples...
The long road home
Two days before our flight, Dubai – our leapfrog to Sydney – closed its border. At midnight, we had new tickets routed through San Francisco…At Heathrow we ate egg sandwiches on the airport floor…and checked our email. Our permission to travel through the United States was revoked.
Mistrusting the news
Some of what we call ‘fake news’ today is what we used to call propaganda. When the US-born Briton and fascist politician William Joyce, known as Lord Haw-Haw, broadcast radio programs during World War II designed to mislead and demoralise the Allied opponents of Nazi Germany, he would present a mix of fake and factual information.
The Pause
This hospital has a long history of taking on challenges. It’s coped with AIDS. Coped with SARS. Coped with Ebola. But right now, all hospitals in New York are pushed to their limits. The swell in numbers of confirmed cases is the problem. This virus is ‘out of control’.
Science in an age of scepticism
The risk associated with trust is that a person or institution we trust may fail to behave as we expect or hope. This highlights the difference between trust and reliance: we can rely on inanimate objects, such as our car or phone, but strictly speaking we are not betrayed if they don’t work properly. The same is not true in trust-based relationship...
2020: The year of reckoning, not reconciliation
I refused to sing the Australian national anthem and honour a flag that showed the Union Jack, the symbol of another country. Searching for a sense of belonging in a system that routinely denied both my true identity and the history of my people was a constant battle of two worlds colliding. It is a perplexing experience to feel lost in your own country.
Trust and the competition delusion
The competition delusion sees competition and co-operation as two ends of an ideological spectrum. And it presumes that, where one has to choose, competition should be presumed preferable to co-operation.
