Latest Articles
We are encouraged to rely more and more on government officials to do for us what we could equally well do for ourselves—and, maybe more importantly, not to do what might help us solve our own problems.
Sep 08 2024
10 mins
If we imagine a metric called the Pinocchio Scale, which measures the number of lies told by a politician as a percentage of his or her overall public statements, our current prime minister (for want of a better description), Airbus Albo, has moved well into uncharted territory.
Sep 06 2024
5 mins
Imagining the World
Woody Allen: A Retrospective
by Tom Shone
Abrams, 2015, 288 pages, $65
Gilliamesque: A Pre-Posthumous Memoir
by Terry Gilliam
HarperCollins, 2015, 352 pages, $65
In the screenwriting bible Story, Robert McKee argues that the professions that once gave meaning and guidance to our lives—philosophy, religion, politics—have been eclipsed and in their place stand the storytellers—the novelists, the playwrights and the film-makers. Stories and storytellers certainly have a significant part to play in making sense of the world. But this is not a new thing, and McKee ignores the fact that stories and storytellers still have to get their meaning from somewhere.
Stories are a medium through which messages of good and evil, right and wrong, truth and falsehood are communicated. In the past they drew not just on our common humanity, but also on the values that were commonly held, the philosophies and religions and the makeup of civil society itself.
In an age when common beliefs…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins
