The Minefield

How does liberal democracy manage incommensurable disagreement? Do the moral and political demands for justice and inclusion trump the principles of free expression and open debate? What is the moral status of "opinion"?

It is the nature of technology to insinuate itself into our daily lives, and to convince us that it is both benevolent by design and utterly indispensable. Little wonder that we have invited digital domestic assistants into our homes and lives at an alarming rate — but at what cost?

Over summer last year, Australia witnessed the devastation of forests and the immolation of wildlife on an unimaginable scale. The emotional or even the tragic content of the bushfires has been — understandably — reserved for the loss of human life and home and livelihood, and for the loss of some non-human animals. But why do we grieve fauna and not flora? What if these fires present to us an invitation we refuse to heed: an invitation to rediscover moral companionship, moral community with trees?

The vice of impatience reflects a particular relationship to time: the notion that time is a finite commodity that ‘must be made the most of’, not an opportunity for encounter or an invitation to attentiveness and mutual discovery. Better put, impatience is ultimately about control.

Can pride be ‘redeemed’, and form the basis of human dignity, or is pride as such a form of moral corruption, a debased form of moral vision?

This is a year that has thrown up a sometimes dizzying series of crises and moral conundrums. On this, our last show of 2020, we try to take stock of the major events and try to discern the underlying themes that come to light. What have we learned — about us, about our world, about our common life?

Is "woke politics" really a form of moral judgment, or is it merely a brand of moralism that seeks to side-step the hard work needed for genuine moral and political transformation?

Have we come to accept a degree of corruption as part of the price we pay for democracy? Is administrative competence more important to us than political incorruptibility?

The Brereton Report compels us to reflect on what it might mean to say that soldiers express a nation’s “values and laws” – which is to say, that soldiers and civilians belong to the same moral community.

While Trump’s conduct, cruelty, and incompetence disqualified him in the eyes of a majority of Americans, very nearly half of the nation voted for and remain fiercely devoted to the president. America is divided, but so is the Democratic party. What does this mean for the future?