Secret Women's Business

I stumbled across the following statement on Facebook the other day: "Conservatives want to help poor & needy by taking responsibility & freely choosing to help. Progressives want to help by abrogating responsibility to Govt & letting them take money & redistribute it." No doubt this is intended as a generalisation: clearly some progressives engage in charitable giving, and some conservatives do not. But the premise itself intrigued me. Is private aid more effective than government welfare? This question is always relevant for democratic citizens. We regularly elect representatives who sit somewhere on a continuum in the role of government in supporting the poor.  I thought I'd crunch some numbers around what it would take for  private charity to replace the role of government welfare. Let's look at current charitable giving for starters: "An estimated 14.9 million Australian adults (80.8%) gave in total $12.5 billion to charities and ...

In the War on Truth, there are many casualties. We are in the midst of a global pandemic, and the health and the lives of many are under threat from misinformation.  But there are other dangers from fake news - for social cohesion, for the West and democratic values, and even for the health of the planet. Why is there so much "Fake News"? Tactics to spread pseudoscientific misinformation were piloted by the  tobacco industry  to preserve their profits at the expense of human lives. The same tactics were then employed (and in many cases the  same people  were involved) in  climate denial . Wealthy  right-wing mega-donors  continue to promote media that supports their vested interests, and have no qualms around generating misinformation. Less prevalent but more disturbing are those on the extreme right aiming for a  collapse of society . Bizarrely, their aims are the same as the Communist states they despise. There is credible evidence Russia h...

Conspiracy theories are commonplace. They are appealing. Graham Lawton from New Scientist notes that : “Conspiracy theories can… be emotionally reassuring. They provide truthful-sounding explanations for events that otherwise seem inexplicable, random or capricious, and often make your political opponents look bad. They can also give believers a pleasing sense of superiority because they – and sometimes they alone – have seen through the lies and cover-ups to reveal the ‘truth’.” Some conspiracy theories are benign. Flat-earthers aren’t harming anyone else (although one flat earth proponent famously and tragically had his own life end in a misadventure ). However, some conspiracy theories are exceedingly dangerous. According to a 2020 March poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, “only about half of Americans say they would get a COVID-19 vaccine…. 31% simply weren’t sure if they’d get vaccinated. Another 1 in 5 said they’d refuse.” ...

There are fires raging over much of Australia right now, triggering debate on the contribution of climate change to our current unseasonable weather. This has also led to well-meaning people reposting articles from the climate denial industry. I thought I'd record a summary of my responses for posterity. That the earth is getting warmer is a fact.* See the graph here . There are two main possible reasons the earth is getting warmer. 1) more sunlight is coming in or 2) more heat is being trapped. Option One isn’t true – solar activity has been carefully measured. See graph here . **  This leaves us with Option Two. The earth is getting warmer because more heat is being trapped in the atmosphere. But why is it so? There are several so-called greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that can trap heat (this is called ‘forcing’). Carbon dioxide, water, methane, and CFCs are among the known greenhouse gases .  Of these, carbon dioxide has the biggest im...

A six-year-old boy called Nathan asks his father why his mum is crying. “Because you boys have been naughty” the father responds, referring to the boy and his younger brother. Nathan immediately feels terrible that his behaviour has caused his mother such distress. Somehow the message goes deep into his soul that he is responsible for the feelings of others. He must NEVER behave in a way that will upset others like that! Decades later, Nathan is a pastor. He feels significant anxiety when others disapprove of his words or actions, especially if they are older, respected figures. Nathan still carries an inner six-year-old who feels distressed if parental archetypes are displeased with him. Pastor Nathan is self-aware enough to realise his anxiety about pleasing others is holding him back as a leader. How might you address these kinds of deep-seated emotional responses? As Nathan’s coach I asked: “when did you first feel like you were responsible for other’s fe...

I have noticed (and heard about) some bad behaviour lately: to be more specific, bad online male behaviour involving misrepresentation of feminism and gaslighting of women. My curiosity was aroused by noticing similar patterns of behaviour from different people in different places. How are they learning these techniques? I’ve hypothesised an educational institution exists where such behaviour can be honed to perfection. What do you think of my proposed curriculum? What subjects should be added? Manchild Christian University Subject Choices Here at Manchild we teach you: Selective Biblical Literalism 101 We'll show you how the 59 references to slaves in the New Testament need to be read on their cultural context, while explaining how taking l Timothy 2:12 literally is a test of biblical orthodoxy, and that anyone who doesn't ban all women from leadership is a HERETIC! Women's Issues 102 We will help you develop a pat answer to every complex...

A number of years ago my sister and I took our parents to a rather elegant restaurant for lunch. It was a converted old manor house with beautiful old rooms and quiet carpeted floors; utterly unlike the hard-floored echo chamber of a typical Melbourne café. The gentle clink of cutlery and quiet conversations were the only sounds. I note this because at a strategic moment when everyone in the restaurant went silent, my father dropped the n-word. Nigger. It was like all the oxygen was sucked out of the room. “Dad!!!! You can’t say that!!!” my sister said in horror. “What did I say? What’s wrong with that?” he replied. My father was born in 1916 in country Victoria, and in his mind describing someone of African origin as a “nigger” was descriptive. In this embarrassing context, my sister and I tried to explain that the n-word is considered a highly offensive racial slur. Political correctness means “the avoidance of forms of expression or action that are perc...