Category: Opinion

At the eleventh hour, on the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, the Great War ended. In his speech to the House of Commons that same day, David Loyd George pronounced his hope for the signing of the armistice to, in fact, be an end to all wars. We know now that this sentiment has never reigned true. On Remembrance Day, we commemorate the sacrifice and bravery of our WWI soldiers and all those who have served and continue to serve the Australian Defence Force in all wars and conflicts since the Great War. Whilst today marks a momentous collective mourning in a fleeting minute of silence, we must reflect upon how we may change the meaning of this day from here forward. 

This is not to suggest that the past may be altered, that narratives should be constructed, nor that silence should prevail, but rather as the new generation and the inevitable soldiers in conflicts to come, we should take this day further than the minute’s reflection. What I pose to you today, goes beyond physical violence and bravery. Instead, I emphasise the contemplation of what war is and whether it is intrinsic to the modern human condition. Is war and conflict inherent to human nature? Is it a societal disease or confined to the powers that command it? I think that war can only be solved by understanding human nature and its interaction with society, something we have yet to comprehend.

The pursuit of understanding human nature is central to philosophical, historical and scientific dialogue. We question whether certain peculiarities of the human experience are inherent or learnt. No consensus exists apart from perhaps the instinct to survive. What I seek to understand, however, is whether conflict is inherent to the human. Do we start wars simply because they are fundamental to our being? In Herodotus’s, The Histories, he asserts that “no one is so senseless as to choose of his own will war rather than peace.” However, if we hold this to be true, we must wonder why conflict endures. If the man inherently pursues peace over war, why does conflict exist? Even at its most basic level, conflict occurs in our everyday humdrum routine. A car cuts another off at a lane change, provoking expletives, perhaps even a throwing of the bird; A man negligently bumps into another in a crowed bar, instigating stern words, a dirty look, and even a fist to his jaw. These simple disagreements seem inextricable from our lives. Has a single person lived without conflict? Can they?

In the mind of Thomas Hobbes, our existence is contingent upon a relentless desire for power, which inevitably causes conflict. To this end, he believed that society and authority were the only barriers against constant war. Similarly, Sigmund Freud’s Instinct Theory constructs war as a consequence of two human instincts; Eros, our inherent unifying creative drive; and Thanatos, our aggressive and destructive nature engineered by the death instinct. When Eros and Thanatos are united towards a common cause, for instance, racial and national supremacy in Nazi Germany, the human is blindly thrust into the throes of war. 

When reflecting upon the Great War and its causes whether it be alliances, nationalism, economic rivalry, the British-German naval arms race, or even the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, we see aggression united against a common enemy. However, to accept this premise, humans must have these instincts without influence. By this, I mean that a baby must be born with aggression and unity, it cannot be manipulated by the societies that surround it to develop these instincts. Without society, would the baby be aggressive or seek a unified community? Or is this baby capable of peace?

To this end, Jean-Jaques Rousseau would argue that this baby, in its natural state, is only motivated by amour de soi—self-love. This baby is capable of peace. But are we? If we do not seek conflict naturally, is society to blame? War and conflict are interwoven into the fabric of human history, some may even argue that it is the divine thread that holds our social history together. Thus, if war is a product of human organisation, or what we know as society, what aspects of human union cause conflict? Yuval Noah Harari’s award-winning depiction of human history, Sapiens, details the historic wars of mankind as a product of all societies rather than of human nature. In essence, Harari proposes that aggression and evolution are the primary hallmarks of mankind, asserting that whilst war leads to great destruction, it also fuels innovation.

 In this sense, conflict is a double-edged sword; WWII led to a devasting loss of life and geopolitical instability but simultaneously drove scientific advancements, including antibiotics and radar technology; The Vietnam War caused damage but also stimulated shifts in public opinion on military action and government in America; and in earlier conflicts such as the Napoleonic wars, evolutionary concepts of nationalism and political identities were shaped off the back of a great loss. Hence, war seems essential to societal development. Harari argues that the human ability to form complex and cohesive groups with intricate ideologies and power structures inherently leads to conflict. Where power and resources are finite, conflict is essentially inevitable in human society. What I then wonder is whether we would have progressed socially, economically and technologically to this degree if we did not have wars to shape and motivate human advancement. Do we need war?

In his Socratic dialogue, The Republic, Plato argues that war is not essential to nor inescapable for human societies. Like Harari’s view, Plato asserts that conflict is not inextricable from human nature. Instead, he believes that human passions—such as the pursuit of power, pride and wealth create conflict through competition and rivalries. At the epicentre of The Republic is Plato’s utopia, where conflict is minimised and ideally obsolete.

You may wonder how he achieves this. The answer is not necessarily practical nor is it compatible with our modern conception of democratic society. Plato’s ideal society employs a tripartite hierarchal class structure consisting of: The ruling class, the Philosopher Kings with extensive education; the Guardians, undertaking the protection of the state and enforcement of its laws; and finally, the producers, responsible for specific trades and the production of resources. Within this system, only the Philosopher Kings can vote, favouring meritocracy over democracy, since in Plato’s mind most people lack the wisdom and knowledge required to make decisions on governance. 

Plato’s rationale for this radical approach rests upon his belief that human harmony can only be achieved in a society in which governance is based upon intelligence, and where individuals fulfil their roles. It is truly an interesting proposition to consider. Is war a product of human stupidity? While many might agree on a moral level, the issue is more complex than it seems. Karl Marx, for example, considers class struggles to be the source of all conflict and war in human society. Based upon Marx’s theory, Plato’s Republic society would only cause conflict since it relies upon a rigid class system which subjugates the proletariat. The issue is still unclear, but both perspectives reveal competing views on harmonious societal function which may collaborate whilst they appear to compete.

Reflecting upon these diverse perspectives in the context of modern conflicts can offer nuanced and valuable ideas on how to eradicate their underlying cause. Let’s consider the Myanmar conflict, for example. The conflict was initiated in the political insurgencies in 1948 following the country’s independence and has only escalated since the 2021 coup in which the Junta (the military) overthrew the democratic government. Since gaining power, an authoritarian regime of military control has dominated the region, plunging it into civil war with the Junta acting upon the values of traditional Burmese and Buddhist Nationalism, Militarism and Anti-Democracy. Approximately 50,000 people are estimated to have been killed, with 3 million displaced. The primary targets of the violence are the Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic minority in Rakhine State. 

The civil conflict evokes chilling parallels to the genocide of the Jewish people in Nazi Germany, as the Arakanese Buddhist majority has been mobilised against the Rohingya by the militant junta regime. The persecution, killing and diaspora of the Rohingya people was declared to be a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2018. Yet, the conflict has been relatively buried from international attention, with little intervention and sparse public knowledge. You can read more about the current crisis here. 

Considering the nature of the Myanmar crisis, is it a product of human nature or society? One may argue that Hobbes and Freud’s theories explain the war’s motivation. With the Junta’s desire for power, and the proponents of the militant regime united through aggression against historic ethnic tensions, it seems clear that we can blame the conflict on the human proclivity for war. However, it is not a clear-cut rationale. We must wonder if the Arakanese people and Junta forces would feel aggression towards the Rohingya without the national narratives and social structures which have conditioned them. Perhaps then Harari and Plato offer a more logical explanation since the conflict is a product of differences in culture and poor political governance. Yet, it is still possible that humans innately seek conflict against the “other” as Hobbes and Freud suggest.

It is frustrating to consider. You may feel one view is stronger than the other, you may believe that both perspectives should be considered together. That in essence, is a conflict. What do I think? Whilst I am as confused as you are, I think that regardless of both views, human nature and society will always fundamentally exist, and they are indivisible. The modern state of affairs will never depart from human organisation, and we cannot deprive humans of their humanity. In my mind, society and the human condition react in a catastrophic but paradoxically harmonious way. Yes, war persists, but so do innovation and human empathy. We see, hear and learn about the atrocities of war and feel compelled to fight against it.

That in itself is conflict. I do not think conflict is inherently evil I think that if it is harnessed and controlled, it can lead to good. A debate is conflict, an essay is conflict, philosophy is conflict, and so is war. The issue is whether we can contain it to its early stages before it reaches the climax of violence. Thus, the first step in reaching peace is understanding why conflict escalates and how we can minimise it in our everyday lives. On the 105^th anniversary of observing the minutes’ silence, I hope that we can contemplate war beyond bloodshed. The greatest difference we can make is to take time to think and try to understand war.

Consider this: If every person contemplated the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of war, would it exist?

If the drunken man in the bar thinks before hitting, does he hit?

Are we capable of peace if we simply think?

Have you ever felt like your focus is being hacked, invaded and stolen right in front of your eyes? 

Let’s face it, I’ll be the first to admit, our attention spans are slipping through our fingers, and we’re often left wondering, “Where did all that time go?” Take a moment to consider how many times you pick up your phone in a day. Some think 100, maybe 150, pushing 200. Well hold on, because the average person picks up their phone a staggering 2,617 times every twenty-four hours.

I have spent my fair share of hours mindlessly doom-scrolling through the never-ending abyss of social media. There have been many days planned immaculately full of good intentions, only to be sabotaged by a screen. It’s a cycle that feels as inevitable as it is frustrating. 

A recent best-selling book, ‘Stolen Focus’ by Johann Hari explores how we are living in a serious attention crisis – one with huge implications for how we live.

However, he takes a different approach to addressing our attention crisis.

He says this isn’t happening because, all of a sudden, we became weak-willed. Your focus didn’t collapse overnight; it was stolen. But by whom is the question?

Our world is being flooded with information. The more information there is, the less time people can focus on any individual piece of it. It’s like we’re drinking from a fire-hose – there’s too much coming at us. And we are inevitably soaked in information.

In 2016, the British writer Robert Colville says we are living through ‘The Great Acceleration.’ It’s not simply our technology that’s getting faster – it’s almost everything. We talk faster, we travel faster, and even our Instagram Reels are getting faster! The original BlackBerry advertising slogan was, “Anything worth doing, is worth doing faster.”

Prof. Earl Miller, an award-winning neuroscientist at MIT, believes that we have all fallen for an enormous delusion. He explains that “your brain can only produce one or two thoughts.”

The myth we have invented. The myth we have fallen for. Is the myth of being able to multitask. Workers now spend 40% of their time wrongly believing they are ‘multitasking.’

Miller goes on to explain the ‘switch cost effect.’ When you check your texts while trying to work, you aren’t just losing the little burst of time you spend looking at the text, but you are losing the time it takes to refocus afterwards.

You don’t have to look far to see the effects of this. You see people nowadays sit in libraries with their phones, laptops, ipads, books and headphones – wondering why they can’t focus on a single thing. A recent study on college students found that they only focus on any one task for 65 seconds. 

In my own experience, uninterrupted time is becoming increasingly rarer. We have to deal with conflicting priorities, people chatting in Link and, on top of all that, music blasting from the gym. A study found that most people working in offices never get a whole hour uninterrupted in a normal day.

In our culture we have created a perfect storm of cognitive degradation, as a result of distraction.

Adam Gazzaley, a professor at the University of California says that our brains are not only overloaded with switching but also with filtering.

He explains that you should think of your brain as like a nightclub where, standing at the front of that club, there’s a bouncer. The bouncer’s job is to filter out most of the stimuli that are hitting you at any given moment – that obnoxiously loud drunk person, the person slurring their words, and of course your mate who’s probably lying in a bush – so that you can think coherently about one thing at a time.

The bouncer is essential: this ability to filter out irrelevant information is crucial if you are going to be able to attend to your goals.

But today, Gazzaley believes, the bouncer is besieged in an unprecedented way. He’s exhausted. 

And so, a lot more is fighting its way past him, so the nightclub becomes full of rowdy people disrupting the normal activity. ‘We could ignore them and pretend we’re capable of everything we would wish – or we can acknowledge them and live our lives in a better way.’

A lack of focus, an abundance of message pings and a compulsion to check emails might not be the biggest crisis we face, but it underpins our ability to deal with any others.

The answer, according to Prof. Miller, is that we need to try and focus on one thing at a time. Our desire to absorb a tsunami of information without losing our ability to focus is like a desire to eat at McDonalds’s every day and still stay trim – an impossible dream.

Hari says that “Attention is the building block of absolutely everything you want to do.” Without it our dreams, goals, and even our relationships risk falling apart.

So if you’re feeling overwhelmed, know that you are not alone – and it’s not your fault. But we can’t afford to ignore this crisis – if we continue with this fragmented focus, where will it lead us? Maybe it’s time to take back control, one moment at a time, and regain our precious superpower of focus.

After all, in a world that is continually speeding up, choosing where to place our attention might just be the most radical act we have left.

Are you doing enough? 

Are you doing enough to build your career? 

Are you investing enough time in friends and family, work and uni? 

Push yourself, do more than what’s expected of you, go above and beyond everyone else. Get ahead. But don’t overdo it. Relax and take time for yourself, journal and meditate, but not too much or you’ll fall behind the other kids your age; they’re all doing more than you. Make a routine and stick to it. Work, study, exercise, see friends, eat well, and then do it all over again, every day for the rest of the year. Book your holidays up with trips, work and activities with friends so that you’re constantly moving forward, but don’t actually relax while you do it, just fill up your time. 

The current social obsession with productivity and wellness is infiltrating every corner of our lives. You step outside and see 50 people finishing a half marathon by 7 in the morning, and calling it just ‘a light easy jog’ on their story. Your ‘For You Page’ will show you twenty-something morning routine videos by midday; ‘How to study effectively before exams,’ ‘Euro-summer must-haves,’ ‘The secret workout split to tone and build muscle,’ ‘Places in Sydney everyone is obsessed with,’ or ‘Why you’re burning out,’ sharing ways to self-advance and improve every aspect of your life. That one friend will post their Strava run on Monday, their coffee with friends on Wednesday and an in-state beach holiday by Sunday, all while managing the load of full-time uni, what seems to be the perfect internship, a stable family life, a somehow unwavering and flawlessly balanced friend group, while journaling every week, with a side of community volunteering and pilates.

I think our world has settled on a set reality of what health, balance and overall well being look like, a vision that I can characterise in three categories, the Trifecta of Health and Wellness. The first is cost versus reward scenarios; this includes things in your day-to-day routine such as school, your job, exercise–anything that requires some form of personal payment, and concludes with some form of long-term benefit. It entails routine and discipline, such as a set sleep schedule, firm and healthy eating habits, days of sobriety and other self-imposed restrictions. The payments may be literal, but usually entail a sacrifice of time, comfort or energy, while the benefits may be financial, or result in a functional and fit body, setting career foundations or merely establishing a routine of productivity, to which other rewards and self-advancements are produced. This category is imperative to the Trifecta, but is subordinate to the second category. 

The second, which I interpret as the one that is largely held as the most valuable to our generation, is social immersion. This includes seeing friends and going to parties, going to coffee, going to Europe over summer, a beach day every weekend and then family dinners once a month to balance it all out. Building and maintaining strong relationships and evening out your work life by connecting with others. This category is distinguished by how it makes you feel; feel a sense of belonging and love, feeling interlinked with a community or friend group, feeling happy, and looking like you feel happy in the eyes of others.

The third category is where we pour our time into ourselves via self-care, characterised by doing anything that is unproductive, doesn’t require intellectual strain and benefits our mental health. It could be a daily walk while listening to a podcast, writing a journal, putting a face mask on and sitting in a bath, reading, watching a movie, playing with your dog, sleeping, all forms of rest. As great as these things are, they are often facets of performance and advancement masked as unproductivity and relaxation. This category completes the wellness triad and creates the impression that there is a flawless balance in lifestyle, as long as each division is fulfilled substantially and equally. 

The Trifecta and cult of wellness is shaped by the relentless pursuit of ambition, and Western social structures of function that generate endless productivity. We are living in a state of cyclical improvement in almost an underlying competition with the people around us, marked by our generation’s imminent fear of death, leading us to make the most of every minute of every day, and get as much as we can done at all times. There is a ubiquitous sense of urgency to do it all, and you have to go to Europe this year because ‘everyone’s going and next year just won’t be the same.’ 

I too have embraced this lifestyle, but what I have begun to recognise amidst my morning reels scroll – that doesn’t last longer than a 20 minute timer as it’s too unproductive – is that I don’t need to be constantly moving. We are missing moments of boredom, moments of silence and slowness, and we don’t have to do it all in a set time frame, and we don’t have to do it all, at all.

We have lost the habit to live deliberately, leisurely, candidly and are constantly stimulated in a lifestyle of cyclical performance. When I exercise the third category and journal or walk while listening to a podcast, I still feel as if I am not truly relaxed, but am merely ticking the self-care box of how I’m being told to wind down. And even when I do enjoy it, I still feel as if each small step of self-care is contributing to a larger, long-term picture of a curated lifestyle in which I am the centre, and of which I am the perfectly balanced, well rounded individual self-operating every action and event–an all-encompassing presentation of excellence. 

You don’t have to put every foot in every door, in every corner of your life and in each category. Our lack of presence in our own lives means in a way, many of us are all living in a narrative of what is expected of us, or what we expect ourselves to be doing at this age and in this time. As a break from the Trifecta, sit outside in the sun phoneless, podcastless, musicless. Break yourself from constant stimulation and productivity, detach yourself from what you think you should be doing. You’re not falling behind if you take a week off work, or if you do nothing on your day off, or if you spend a weekend alone. Indulge in your own creativity and let your mind wander, without any mental pacifiers. Your experience of boredom will shape new realities of creativity and thought, and provide an incubation period for ideas to grow and new realisations to form. 

So although this triad is being pushed onto us, you don’t have to live one certain way, and you don’t have to have the perfect lifestyle balance, or the perfect life. The movement is positive until it becomes obsessive and all-encompassing, until you think you’re weird for not being in a run club. Be ambitious, have a routine, have friends, work hard, rest well, or don’t, but don’t force yourself to believe you are the odd one out for not dividing and balancing your life equally into three categories, or resting or working in a way you think you should. Where you are now is where you should be.

Live how you like, you have time!

‘Ummm yeah, I can’t believe he posted that. He’s cancelled.’

Shaped by the rise in digital activism and online political organisation over the past decade, our present post-pandemic political sphere is characterised by the convergence of wokeism, left-wing politics, and a push for change and freedom of speech. This amalgamation has given rise to a term we’ve coined as ‘cancel culture,’ a phenomenon that attempts to address the righting of historical wrongs in our modern era by enforcing social accountability online.

‘Cancelling’ someone is now an immutable concept in our current political discourse where any individual’s capacity to condemn someone’s behaviour – both online or in real life – is contingent upon their connection to wifi and ability to use a keyboard.

The past 20 years of history have undergone unprecedented political change, such as the legalisation of same-sex marriage, expansion of civil rights legislation for minorities, environmental protection measures, recognition of Indigenous rights, support of refugee and asylum policies, and overall greater recognition of non-western, non-traditional socio-cultural practices. All of these said political changes are positive and are leading towards a safer and more inclusive society, where individual human rights of self-expression, safety, non-discrimination, the right to work and adequate shelter are under extreme protection. 

Due to these changes, many believe our generation is possibly one of the luckiest to ever exist. Despite current world issues, at large there has not been a greater time in history that has adopted progressivism more expansively and cohesively in such a short period, or a generation with more access to more education, safety, health and technology on such a vast scale in comparison to the accessibility of these advantages in the past.

Some see it as a means of rectifying someone else’s behaviour, correcting their terms of speech or possible perceptions on subjects that may offend a certain group of people, which in concept is a constructive way of creating online accountability in an age where anything can be said, and anyone can see it. Some see it as a punishment tactic, to remove someone’s celebrity or popularity status through bandwagoning another user’s idea, collectively deciding that this said person no longer exists on the plane of online relevance or must be condemned to public ostracism because of something they’ve said or done.

The wokeism that birthed cancel culture is shaped by a recognition of systematic inequality, an educated recognition of historical wrongdoings and an attempt to deconstruct all forms of privilege and hierarchy, creating a highly controversial and emotionally charged contemporary discourse. However, when these passionate concepts are channelled through social media platforms, we continually see a clash between the ‘ignorant’ and the ‘educated’ in confrontational and polarised interactions, and cancel culture becomes a form of censorship. Someone can be cancelled and ignored for saying a slur online, while another can be cancelled and lose their job for their mere personal opinion.

There’s an attempt within cancel culture and within our young Western political plane in general, to reject not only mainstream cultural norms and values in an attempt to rewrite historical wrongs that perpetuate injustice but to deconstruct all values contrary to those of the canceller. There’s a slow but steady depletion of personal opinion online where individual convictions and ideas are muffled due to the fear of individual cancellation. 

These positive social changes, alongside the pervasive dissemination of addictive and attention-captivating content via social media, have contributed to the emergence of a generation that lives only in a mis-reality, where one’s online persona overshadows their presence and identity in real life. The time spent engaging with these platforms directly correlates with our perceived significance of digital existence, which should be secondary to our presence in real life. 

And it is not to say that someone’s online presence is insignificant and their words weightless, but I believe that there shouldn’t be a dispensable, self-endowed ability by any one person on the internet to remove, degrade and deplete someone’s entire existence by cancelling them online.

My advice, don’t feed into it! It’s not a real thing, and it shouldn’t be. The more the term is used casually, the more likely it is to be adopted as a legitimate social convention rather than an illegitimate spineless claim.

Say what you think respectfully if you feel the need to say it. 

If you don’t have anything nice to say, shut your phone and go outside.

And if you don’t like someone else’s opinion online, remove them, block the page or delete the app. Then go outside.