fourhares sisu blog
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On informed personal choice
Over the last few months, I have frequently been asked where I stood on the subject of vaccinations. My standard reply has always been: informed personal choice. I still stand by this. Over the course of the last ten years of so, main media channels have certainly had the opportunity to mis-represent my stance, so…
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Easter… and meditative practice
I was reminded only recently how far societal change has moved, and how distant and disconnected so many have become to spiritual understanding of festivals, commemorations, and various practices. Easter is probably an excellent example. Even amongst the privately (and that speaks volumes!) religious, unless directly engaged within the confines of the religiously minded community,…
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A time to live… a time to breathe…
Though each decade can warrant a comment that reflects its uniqueness and its various challenges, there is no doubt that this period, which may last the proverbial ‘one thousand two hundred and sixty days’ (Revelation 11), is showing us (again) humanity’s parasitic and self-destructive capacities. It is a bit of an understatement to mention that…
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Slaughter Live Exports
Though there are some situations where the migration of animals needs to be supported (read below), live exports destined for slaughter needs to be abolished. There are a number of reasons why Australia exports live animals to various parts of the world. Some of these are, from my perspective, perfectly reasonable, and the welfare of…
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On Guns, New Zealand, and politics
It seems that the terrible act that recently occurred in Christchurch, New Zealand, is receiving the kind of media attention and reflective commentary that has little been seen since the Port Arthur (Tasmania) or Hoddle Street (Melbourne) shootings that took place decades ago. And that discussion (not the act) is something commendable, despite the shocking…
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On the eve of the French Presidential Election
So… it’s between Le Pen and Macron, with the latter expected to win collecting approximately 60% of the votes. I beg to differ on nearly every analysis that I have yet had the opportunity to read. And I similarly disagree with the analysis many have given for either Trump’s victory or so-called ‘Brexit’. I read…
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On the passing of an exceptional philosopher
If there’s been one philosopher that stands out over the course of the past century, it would be John Deely. His voluminous works, all too often criticised for their obtuseness, display an astounding insight that is all too rare in the history of this cenoscopic field: he has provided a way forward from the limited…
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On bureaucracy as anti-democracy
In ‘We need to be more than right: in a liberal democracy we should be making space for small, dissident, and unconventional opinions and parties’, John O’Sullivan writes (my bold emphasis): As Anna Fotyga remarked, there is a surprising problem with the term “liberal democracy.” As a defender of liberal democracy as pure as Marc…
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The Value of Minor Parties in the 2016 Australian Federal Election
I am constantly astounded by the way in which that which the Left, when in power, unfortunately establishes, is perpetuated when the so-called ‘Right’ gets elected instead. What we have been seeing in Australia over the last few decades is a progressive (as in the former USSR usage of that word) move away from…
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On the Alphabet, Google and Kurzweil’s hesitation about the future of democracy
Got any book recommendations?