The Minefield

Writing in the 1850s, at the advent of what we would come to understand as the popular press — which is to say, periodicals for mass distribution, rather than aimed at paid-up members of unions and parties, or mercantilists with particular interests in, say, the price of cotton — Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard diagnosed that the invention of “opinion” solved a problem created by the newspapers themselves. For while the papers brought distant events “near” to readers, it did not expand their agency or capacity to act “morally” upon those events. The news informed them, but also made them feel more powerless.But then “opinion” came along and added an emotional dimension to news consumption: not just what happened, but what to make of it — how to feel about it. Before long, Kierkegaard noted, having a strong opinion became, in itself, a moral act. The opinion could be attained cheaply (for the price of the newspaper), it could be wholly derivative (and so lack the element of authenticity, of inner struggle and therefore responsibility), it could be displayed strongly (to the extent that it could be “worn”, like fashion, as an expression of oneself) and have no bearing whatsoever on events. But the opinion holders themselves felt like they’d done something meaningful.In this way, said Kierkegaard, intensity of feeling with an absence of “interiority”, a sense of moral agency with impotence. Though the differences between the media in Kierkegaard’s time and our own social-media saturated age are vast, his diagnosis is nonetheless a salutary one. Emotion is, after all, the currency of contemporary politics. Indeed, it is the form our politics takes. It can coalesce digitally around a cause célèbre and spill out onto the streets in mass demonstrations. It can sweep incumbents from power and elevate firebrands promising to dismantle the status quo. Intensity of feeling is often the strongest indicator of voter turnout in places like the United States.At a time when strong feeling translates to engagement, and engagement is that most valuable of commodities in the attention economy, it’s little wonder that powerful political emotions have come to define our lives online. Everything, it seems, is political.On the one hand, this has led to a certain distortion of our understanding of politics. Far from entailing principled compromise, patient coalition building and gradual, unglamorous reform, what Anton Jäger calls “hyperpolitics” thrives on clear-cut divisions, uncompromising demands, pervasive distrust and flashes of outrage. But as Jäger points out, hyperpolitics tends to be politically inconsequential. It is an aggregated, destructive “no” without the capacity to mobilise a broad-based, inclusive “yes”. This is what makes our politics feel so pendular, so inconstant, so unstable, so unlikely to coalesce around an issue long enough to effect change.On the other hand, these flashes of outrage and lack of tolerance for gradual change come on the back of decades of prevarication and political unresponsiveness to the concrete realities of voters. If the emotions that course through our politics today express a desire for agency, it is only because a sense of political agency has been steadily eroded.Perhaps the question now is whether a certain political intensity can give rise to more durable, inclusive, cooperative forms of collective mobilisation. But, of course, this question implies a darker alternative: what happens when intense political emotions — resentment, anger, contempt, powerlessness, humiliation — find their coherence, their explanatory power, in more thoroughgoing, even atavistic systems of belief and belonging? When incoherence seeks out authority?READING:Waleed Aly, Time of Monsters What Future for Liberalism?, Quarterly Essay 103 (September 2026).Intifar Chowdhury, “We’re all ‘political’ now — but can that lead to real change?”, The Conversation (14 August 2026).Guest: Intifar Chowdhury, Lecturer in Government in the Jeff Bleich Centre for Democracy and Disruptive Technologies at Flinders University.

In our previous explorations of famous “last words” — performances or compositions delivered with a certain end in view, with a sense of either culmination or parting, or with an eye to the future and hence to what one leaves behind — we limited ourselves to the words of individuals spoken to their followers or fellow-travellers.The words of the Prophet Muhammad and of Martin Luther King, Jr, were replete with exhortation; they functioned both as expressions of fidelity to a task, and as examples to be followed by others. Which is to say, the messages were oriented beyond their speakers, toward some greater goal their audience must take up and pursue — hence the Prophet Muhammad’s stress on fidelity and continuity (“All those who listen to me shall pass on my words to others and those to others again …”) and King’s on fearlessness and a “dangerous unselfishness” (“I’m not fearing any man …”).This next instalment is different in almost every way. The words are not of one individual but a group — perhaps the most famous group of the twentieth century. There is no “message” per se, and not really anything being communicated to others. Their words are largely self-referential, intensely personal, quasi-autobiographical or else plain nonsense. The goal of the composition, the “end” (telos) it has in view, is evidently nothing more than its own aesthetic perfection. It is not a performance as much as it is a production: bits and pieces of earlier ideas gathered together, elaborated, reworked, enhanced, added to and repeatedly overdubbed between 22 February and 19 August 1969.This is a reference, of course, to the last album recorded by The Beatles, Abbey Road. The album began amid the fragments, financial chaos and interpersonal strife of the infamous “Get Back” sessions of January 1969. And while Let It Be, which represents the uneven results of those recordings, appeared later in May 1970, Abbey Road is the album that has all the hallmarks of an “end”.But even this raises a number of questions. Does Abbey Road represent the culmination of their artistry as a band, the zenith of their formal innovation and musical experimentation? (Surely Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band can make a more compelling claim.) Does the album showcase an usual degree of creativity and invention? What are we to make of the clear borrowings (from Chuck Berry’s “You Can’t Catch Me” and Fleetwood Mac’s “Albatross”, to the first movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No 14 in C Sharp Minor, a seventeenth-century song by Thomas Dekker and perhaps James Taylor’s “Something in the Way She Moves”) and moments of unadorned nostalgia — including doo-wop rock’n’roll throwbacks from their Hamburg days (such as “Oh! Darling” and “Polythene Pam”)? Or the fact that so much of the album is comprised of compositional orphans, off cuttings from The White Album and the “Get Back” sessions? As John Lennon would later complain: “Abbey Road was really unfinished songs all stuck together. None of the songs had anything to do with each other, no thread at all.”Moreover, Abbey Road is rife with contradictions and seemingly unreconciled elements. For instance, the album announces itself as a reunion of sorts, the getting back together of variously estranged band members who had been involved for months in side projects as solo artists, as movie actors, as music producers and studio musicians. But it then proceeds almost immediately to individuate them, featuring in quick succession songs that reflect their own peculiar style, voice and temperament — most apparent in George Harrison’s exquisite “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun”, whose delicacy and tenderness act as counterpoints to the sardonic edge and volcanic obsessiveness of Lennon’s “Come Together” and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”; but also evident in Ringo’s “Octopus’s Garden” which provides a playful complement to Paul’s persistent melancholy and nostalgia.And then there are Lennon’s intermittent absences during the first three weeks of July, during which Paul, George and Ringo recorded some of the album’s finest pieces: “Something”, “Here Comes the Sun”, “You Never Give Me Your Money”, “Golden Slumbers” and “Carry That Weight”. So much for coming together …What ultimately distinguishes Abbey Road, Kenneth Womack contends, is the degree of studio artistry, over-dubbing and post-production afforded by the availability of the EMI TG12345 console, a two-metre-long eight-track mixing desk that allowed the Beatles to isolate tracks and progressively add more and more layers and greater refinement to their preferred take of each song. What console permitted, in other words, was heretofore unimaginable complexity and perfectibility. While there are undeniable moments of virtuoso playing as a band on Abbey Road (not least the trio of duelling guitars during “The End”), the most arresting music (such as the chaotic, almost Wagnerian final four minutes of “I Want You”) and most brilliant vocal arrays (Paul’s open-throated growl on “Oh! Darling” and “Golden Slumbers”, and the nine-voice harmonies of “Because”) in the album were added or layered after the fact.It is in this pursuit of a certain technological perfection, on the level of the great artistic achievements of the twentieth century, that the Beatles rediscovered the kind of confluence, inspiration, joy even, that could have carried them through to further albums (as they were evidently contemplating). But in the end, the technological possibilities of the EMI TG12345 console and of George Harrison’s Moog synthesiser could not overcome what had broken relationally within the band itself. While John’s consuming obsession with Yoko Ono grew (along with his dependence on heroine), and George and Ringo looked to life beyond the Beatles with an undeniable optimism, even relief (what else is “an octopus’s garden in the shade” but a form of respite?), it is Paul who seems to feel the regret most keenly, that the end is a weight that must be carried: “I never give you my pillow / I only send you my invitations / And in the middle of the celebrations / I break down.”The final recordings for Abbey Road were completed on 19 August 1969. The album was released on 26 September. The cover famously portrayed the four men walking away from the studio, never to return.READING:Kenneth Womack, Solid State: The Story of “Abbey Road” and the End of the Beatles (Cornell University Press, 2019).Walter Everett, The Beatles as Musicians (Oxford University Press, 1999).Guest: Jade O’Regan is Program Leader and Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Music Practice at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

In 1967, after reaching the heights of social and political influence in 1963, after being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, and having been instrumental in the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr watched his popular support fall precipitously away. He had reached the lowest point of his life on the public stage, with fully two-thirds of Americans disapproving of him. King’s rousing vision of nonviolence — of racial coexistence within a community defined by mutuality, interdependence and love — seemed to be growing ever more remote following the landmark civil rights legislation. The Black Power movement was gaining influence, and in 1967 alone there had been 76 violent riots across major American cities.Then, in April 1967, King denounced the US military involvement in Vietnam — a war that was wildly popular with the vast majority of Americans. For his supporters, it was strategically counterproductive to so connect the cause of civil rights with the goals of peace activists; while Barry Goldwater, the standard bearer of a kind of atavistic conservatism, characterised King’s words as treasonous.King had also grown concerned that the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts represented, for many Americans, the end of their concern. This legislation had ushered in a kind of complacency that absolved them from any further inconvenience or moral concern.Now that Black people had been granted equality de jure, what was needed was for them to be accorded equality de facto — especially in education, employment and housing, and not only in the South. Therefore, in the autumn of 1967 King launched what would be known as the Poor People’s Campaign, which was meant to culminate in a new march on Washington DC in the spring of 1968.But disagreement with the ambitions and unruliness of the campaign from within, coupled with outright antipathy from the Johnson administration due to his opposition to the war in Vietnam, plunged King into a condition of deepening despair. Even as he gave himself with increasing desperation to the cause, and tried to rally support for the Poor People’s Campaign across the South, he suffered from a growing sense of futility. The constant threat of being killed did nothing to alleviate his depression. According to those closest to King, he was physically, emotionally, spiritually exhausted.In March 1968, King received a request from Memphis, Tennessee, to offer his support for the 1,300 of the city’s sanitation workers, who had gone on strike for better pay, the ability to organise and improved working conditions after two of their number had been killed on the job. King accepted the invitation, believing that Memphis would mark the beginning of a nationwide campaign against poverty and housing discrimination.In Memphis, he and his team met with reticence among their own number and political opposition to mass demonstrations — including a federal injunction obtained by the city prohibiting any demonstrations for ten days, after one such march had been derailed by violence. On the evening of 3 April, King was scheduled to speak at Bishop Charles Mason Temple. Because of severe storms, King believed turnout would be suppressed. He was, moreover, sick with the flu and asked Ralph Abernathy, whom he described as “the best friend that I have in the world”, to speak in his stead. But when Abernathy saw the church was filled to capacity, with more than 3,300 people packed into the building, they sent word back to King telling him the people needed to hear King speak, even if briefly.Once King arrived, Abernathy gave an unusually long introduction — close to 30 minutes — in order to minimise the strain on King himself. King spoke without notes, and was evidently unprepared. He habitually started his speeches slowly, haltingly, in order to allow them to reach a series of rhetorical peaks. But his weariness on this occasion was evident from the beginning. At times, the speech feels improvised, vague, superficial, a little meandering; at other points, it feels as though he is playing his “greatest hits”.But as King goes on, the speech grows in clarity and coherence. He begins with a kind of survey of human civilisation and the struggle for enlightenment and freedom — a historical arc spanning from the liberation of the slaves from Egypt to the gathering that stormy night on behalf of the sanitation workers of Memphis, all expressing the same cry: “We want to be free.” He concludes with a survey of the high points of the civil rights movement, expressing his gratitude for the gathering in Memphis to now belong to that number — and inviting those gathered to see themselves as continuing the common struggle.Between these two surveys, he urges the audience to see their struggle on behalf of others through the lens of the “dangerous unselfishness” of the Samaritan who tended to the man beaten and bloodied on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho in Jesus’s parable.But near the end of the speech, at one point King’s voice trails off a little. He uncharacteristically does not finish a sentence he has begun: “And they were telling me …” He breaks off to recount a threat to his life as he made his way from Atlanta to Memphis by plane earlier that same day. His voice slows down once again. He refers twice more to the “threats” he has faced: “What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?”But in the final two minutes, his voice grows at once strong and carefree. He repeatedly says he “doesn’t know” what is going to happen next and “doesn’t mind” about the “difficult days ahead”. But he couples that with one of his characteristic statements of modest moral purpose (such as “I just want to be a good man” or “I just want to leave a committed life behind”, on other occasions): “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will.”What is remarkable is not only the absence of ego in these sentiments and the lack graspingness that accompanies the fear of death. It is King’s ability, having begun by invoking the journey out of Egypt, to conclude by pointing those gathered to the task ahead, now described as the departure from a wilderness of hatred and violence and into the “promised land” of mutuality, interdependence and love:“I just want to do God's will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And so I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”Guest: Stan Grant is a proud Wiradjuri man, a theologian, and the Vice Chancellor’s Chair of Australian-Indigenous Belonging at Charles Sturt University. He is the Director of Yindyamarra Nguluway and the author, most recently, of When Words Fail Us: Truth Beyond Time.

Over the last twelve months, there have been two conspicuous trends in federal politics. One is the precipitous decline in electoral support for the Liberal Party, which began before last year’s federal election and has continued apace ever since. The other is the rise in One Nation’s electoral fortunes, which began to tick upwards in September but then took a leap in December and January.Both trends converged, rather spectacularly, in the latest Resolve Political Monitor, conducted for the Nine newspapers. Not only had the Coalition’s primary vote drop to 20 per cent (an all-time low), but One Nation’s primary vote shot up to 29 per cent (passing Labor on 28 per cent). Moreover, Pauline Hanson emerged as preferred prime minister with a third of respondents, while Anthony Albanese was selected by 29 per cent — opposition leader Angus Taylor took only 16 per cent of nominations.This poll comes little more than a month after One Nation won the Farrer by-election in rural New South Wales, with a commanding 40 per cent of the primary vote, thereby gaining its first lower house seat in federal parliament. And it came days before Pauline Hanson’s first address to the National Press Club in Canberra, three decades after she entered parliament.Almost exactly forty years ago, then opposition leader John Howard famously said “the times will suit me”. The same could now be said for Pauline Hanson. For three decades she has been a fixture of federal politics. The major parties have variously denounced and attempted to accommodate her views on immigration, multiculturalism and Indigenous policy, among other things. But while the political landscape around her has changed, she has not. If anything, due to the excesses of political rhetoric and perverse incentives of a social-media saturated informational ecosystem, the electorate has grown inured to what once would have been scandalous, perhaps even disqualifying. In an age of Trump, Hanson comes across to many voters as simply “plain spoken”, as the “voice of reason”.The question, however, is whether One Nation’s electoral support is, in fact, an affirmation of the party, its policies (such as they are) and its leader, or merely a kind of aggregated discontent with the major political parties? Is One Nation the temporary beneficiary of voter anxiety and anger — with polling and by-elections here functioning as a means of political communication — or does this point to a more profound disintegration of two-party politics? Does One Nation’s current rise reflect what Pierre Rosanvallon described as the three-fold simplification at the heart of populism’s more general appeal (the simplicity of the ‘natural’ social bond over against the difficulties of multiculturalism; the simplification of the cause of current social problems; the simplification of the political remedy, over against the complexities of deliberation) at a time of dizzying complexity?Either way, Pauline Hanson’s ability to both appeal to and harness electoral discontent in times that are characterised by “a near-constant sense of crisis, spanning the economic, social and political”, presents a challenge to the exercise of responsible political leadership — particularly that of someone like Anthony Albanese, whose moderation and commitment to a kind of gradualist centrism rarely touches the political passions that animate our current moment.Then again, in the UK and Europe, far-right parties have tended to poll well between elections and have even enjoyed a degree of success in European parliamentary elections and by-elections, only to see their support fall away come the general election. Is something similar happening in Australia?Guest: Paul Strangio is Emeritus Professor of Politics at Monash University and the author, most recently, of The Alchemy of Leadership: Seven Australian Prime Ministers in a Turbulent Twenty-first Century.

It could be said that human beings reveal who they most truly are as they approach the end. For the end of one’s life is not simply its terminus ad quem; it is also its telos, its goal or meaning. A life that has been lived in the thrall of egotism, whose fundamental pursuit has been the safeguarding and satisfaction of the self, will almost certainly, at the end, turn inward upon itself and find itself grasping, desperately, at something like immortality — as the indefinite prolonging of the self. It would not be surprising for such a life to be shrunken, fearful, petty, suspicious, diminished at the end, rather than open-handed, open-hearted, at peace.Consider the example of Shakespeare’s King Lear, who craves flattery and reassuring falsehoods, who obsesses over small offenses and slights to his ego, who remains unconcerned with truthfulness and unnourished by the love of his youngest daughter.On the other hand, a life that is lived meaningfully — which is to say, a life that serves a purpose beyond itself — is able to approach the end without fear, not only because a certain humility has become a habit of life, but because the prospect of the end brings what is most important into sharper focus. This is perhaps what Socrates had in mind when he said that “the one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner is to practice for dying and death” (Phaedo, 64a).Here we could think of Martin Luther King, Jr’s final sermon at Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee, on 3 April 1968, during which he reflects on threats made to his life. “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life”, he admits. “Longevity has its place.” Then he immediately says, “But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’ will … And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man.” Or consider the philosopher Stanley Cavell, writing tenderly in his memoir that, “anticipating the ending of my life, I am becoming freer than ever of the desire to persuade”. Or Toni Morrison, after surveying modern literature’s fascination with evil (“Evil has vivid speech; Goodness bites its tongue”), affirms “these last forty years, I have become more and more invested in making sure acts of goodness (however casual or deliberate or misapplied or … blessed) produce language”.Only lives spent renouncing egotism, and pursuing what matters most, could speak such words.So occasionally over the coming months, we’re going to spend some time in the presence of those who are approaching the end, listening to what they have to say. It may not be the end of their lives, but their lives will, in each instance, be approaching a pivotal moment for which their habits of life, their daily devotion to a cause bigger than themselves, will have prepared them.Perhaps the most historically consequential of these moments has just been observed by millions of Muslims around the world. In February 632 CE, twenty-three years after receiving his first revelation in a cave near Mecca, the Prophet Muhammad would lead tens of thousands of his followers back to the city of his birth with the intent of guiding them through the full ritual of the hajj. It was to be his final pilgrimage.Over the course of several days, Muhammad led them in the seven processions around the Ka‘aba — the simple square structure believed to have been constructed by Adam, and then rebuilt by Ibrahim/Abraham, the first monotheist, and finally by Muhammad himself — followed by the journey back-and-forth seven times between the nearby hills of Safa and Marwa, thus re-enacting the frantic search of Hagar, wife of Ibrahim, for water for their dying child Ismail. The Prophet then led them to the plain next to the rocky hill of Arafat and addressed those gathered. His message has all the marks of finality about it. Here is part of what the Prophet said (the translation comes from Yahiya Emerick):“O People, listen to my words, because I don’t know if I will ever be with you here again after this year. Therefore, listen to what I’m saying carefully and take these words to those who could not be here today.O People, your lives, property, and honour are sacred for you until you appear before your Lord, just as you consider this month, this day, and this city sacred. Return the things that are entrusted to you to their rightful owners. You will meet your Lord, and He will hold you answerable for your actions.Know that every Muslim is a brother to every other Muslim and that Muslims are one brotherhood. Nothing is allowed for a Muslim if it belongs to another unless it was given freely and willingly, so do not oppress each other.All practices of idolatry and ignorance are now under my feet. Every right of revenge coming from unjust murder in pre-Islamic times is rescinded …Charging interest is forbidden; therefore, all interest obligations are also cancelled. Your original money is yours to keep. Do no wrong and you will not be wronged.O People, be aware of God concerning women. Indeed, you’ve taken them on the security of God and made them lawful to you with God’s words. Indeed, it is true you have certain rights with your women, but they also have rights over you. It is their duty to honour their intimate obligations and not to do improper actions. If they do, then you will have the right to reprimand them, though not harshly. If they respect your rights, then to them belongs the right to be fed and clothed in kindness. Treat your women well and be kind to them for they are your partners and committed helpers. It is also your right that they not make friends with anyone you don’t approve of and never be unfaithful.Beware of Satan for the safety of your way of life. He has lost all hope in leading you astray in this land, but he will be happy if you follow him in small things. Therefore, abstain from obedience to Satan. Indeed, I’m leaving behind me two things, the Book of God and my example, and if you follow these two you will never go astray …O People, listen to me closely. Serve God, say your five daily prayers, fast during the month of Ramadan, and give of your wealth in charity. Perform the hajj if you can afford it and obey whatever I command you, for that is the only way you will get into Paradise.O People, indeed your Lord is One and your ancestor is one. All of you belong to the line of Adam, and Adam was created from dust. An Arab is not better than a non-Arab nor is a white better than a black or a black better than a white except in piety. The noblest among you all is the one who is the most pious.O People, no prophet will come after me, and no new way of life will be born. Reason well and absorb the words that I am telling you. All those who listen to me shall pass on my words to others and those to others again; and may the last ones understand my words better than the first.Be my witness, O God, that I have conveyed Your Message to Your people.”Accounts have it that, when he finished, Muhammad prayed, “My Lord, have I delivered the message?” His followers replied, “Yes, you have.” In June of that same year, he died.What is immediately apparent about this sermon, quite apart from the substance of its message, is the way the Prophet conveys:the novelty, the sheer newness, of the revelation with which he had been entrusted — such that what came before is consigned to an age of idolatry “ignorance” (Jāhiliyyah);the importance of these words, of this “way of life”, being taken to heart, put into practice and passed on faithfully to those not present on the plain of Arafat — such that “the last ones understand my words better than the first”;the absence of ego, the humility to question whether he himself had discharged his sacred vocation faithfully: “My Lord, have I delivered the message?”Within the Islamic tradition, the example of the life and conduct of the Prophet Muhammad are morally normative, not merely descriptive. So what can we learn about what it means to “approach the end” from the example of his farewell sermon?Guest: Mahsheed Ansari is the Higher Degrees Research Coordinator and Senior Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Centre for Islamic Studies and Civilisation at Charles Sturt University.For additional reading, Dr Ansari recommends:Martin Lings, Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources.Fethullah Gülen, Prophet Muhammad: The Infinite Light.Yahiya Emerick, Critical Lives: Muhammad.

There are four stories that could justifiably be described as foundational to Western culture: the temptation of Eve in the Garden of Eden; Prometheus’s gift of fire to humanity; Doctor Faustus’s pact with the devil; and Victor Frankenstein’s act of monstrous creation.Not only are the principal names immediately evocative to anyone who hears them, but that recognisability allows for nearly endless variations on their original themes. This is, in part, what gives these stories their staying power.But these stories could themselves be said to represent four variations on a still older theme: the longing for some forbidden knowledge, to transgress a proscribed limit — or as WH Auden would put it, the desire to “know too much”. In each instance, rightly or wrongly, the pursuit itself brings a severe punishment, even catastrophe. This is what gives each of these foundational stories an element of tragedy, of pathos. About whom could it not be said that, even though we know the danger of going too far, we want to do it anyway?And yet it is at this point that an important difference emerges between Faustus and the other three stories. Eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, granting fire to humankind and giving life to a “creature” of one’s own making all point a certain ambition, a restlessness, an unwillingness to remain in a perceived state of underdevelopment or adolescence. The consequences of that restlessness may still be both foreseeable and severe, and so suggest a lack of wisdom or trust or prudence — but that doesn’t mean the acts themselves are either base or self-seeking.The same cannot quite be said of Christopher Marlowe’s depiction of Doctor John Faustus at the end of the sixteenth century. It is true that, at the outset, explicit reference is made to the flight of Icarus from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, who fastened wings to his back with wax, but which melted when he ventured too close to the sun. Speaking of Faustus: “His waxen wings did mount above his reach, / And, melting, heavens conspir’d his overthrow; / For, falling to a devilish exercise, / And glutted now with learning’s golden gifts, / He surfeits upon cursed necromancy …”But even here, the point is not that Faustus went further than he should in his chosen disciplines, but rather that he abandoned them in favour of sorcery. And what Faustus seeks from the outset is not so much forbidden knowledge as it is wealth and renown — his own version of Lucifer’s sin of “aspiring pride and insolence” — and his attraction to necromancy’s “words of art” are mere means to that end.In other words, the reference to Icarus places the emphasis not on the ambition of Faustus’s heaven-ward reach but on the precipitous nature of his subsequent fall. Indeed, the trajectory of Marlowe’s play could be said one of perpetual descent: from the heights of academia to the utter solitude of his plunge into hell.In Marlowe’s play, it is not Lucifer who is the tempter, but Faustus who actively seeks out the means of his own “voluptuousness” — on the belief that the cost (“his soul”) can either be indefinitely deferred or that the bill will never come due (“Come, I think hell’s a fable”, Faustus says; to which Mephistopheles replies, “Ay, think to still, till experience change thy mind”).The lesson of the tragedy of Doctor Faustus probably remains the ridiculousness of the exchange of long-term beatitude for short-term prosperity and pleasure. The bill always comes due. But what Marlowe also reminds us is that the punishment is already present in the solipsism, the self-enclosure of the lives heedlessly devoted to pleasure. As Mephistopheles puts it, “for where we are is hell”.Guest: Kate Flaherty is the Head of English and Senior Lecturer in English and Drama at the Australian National University.

One of the by-products of digital technology’s pervasiveness in our lives is its seeming irresistibility. However much we try to remain conscientious objectors, to resist its allure, its promises of convenience and casual pleasures, to keep some part of our inner lives free of its influence, we soon discover that it is of the essence of new technological forms to exceed their boundaries, to seep out into the wider culture — into our language, our rhythms and habits, our expectations, our ways of seeing and interacting with the world.Such that, before long, we find we’ve become like the technologies we created. It’s like the Turing Test, but in reverse. And once that happens, precisely because there’s no longer any “outside”, it can become very difficult to think clearly about what is, in effect, our habitus. This is how technology ushers us into a condition of unthinkingness. Perhaps we could call it habituation.Digital technology’s irresistibility and sheer scale can make our efforts at thinking seem tiny, irrelevant, insignificant. Perhaps the best we can do is occasionally pause, and try to make sense of underlying rules that govern online experience — perhaps we could call it “the grammar of online life”: the rules of the game, as it were, that you must obey if you want to go viral.Over the last ten years, one of the most popular forms of online content is the reaction video — a kind of split-screen experience in which viewers watch both a piece of content (the livestream of a game, a movie trailer, a music video, another YouTube clip and so on) and another person’s reaction to that content. There is something about the desire to see the facial responses of other people, their seemingly spontaneous responses to what they see and hear, that is inseparable from the viewers’ enjoyment of the content itself. It is similar to the experience of hearing audience laughter during a sitcom, and before that “canned laughter”.Emotion here is the currency. But the point isn’t that the emotion is felt — rather, that it is conveyed. It is communicated. It is as if the emotion is the content.But even if we were to regard all social conventions as performances, as various ways of paying homage to the rules that govern social interactions, this commodification of emotions — which is to say, turning reactions into content — invites such a degree of performance, of exaggeration, that would be impossible to sustain the kind of un-self-consciousness that is essential to authenticity.To put this another way: the online emotion economy encourages participants — whether on reaction videos or video podcasts — not to be themselves but to act themselves; not to listen to what’s being said, but simply to react to it. What is this doing to our capacity to cultivate moral responsiveness?Guest: Nicholas Carah is the Director of Centre for Digital Cultures and Societies and Professor in the School of Communication and Arts at the University of Queensland.Nicholas makes reference to Rose Horowitch’s article in The Atlantic: “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books” (1 October 2024).