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Today the Westminster Magistrates’ Court will decide the fate of Julian Assange, well at least whether or not he will get bail. And so while I haven’t even told you much about last Friday’s rally yet, I had better briefly inform any Sydney readers that there will be another rally at 530pm, again at Town Hall, today. [1]

Professor Emeritus Stuart Rees (from Sydney Peace Foundation, and my friend and mentor) will be speaking, so if you are Sydney, do come along. It’s sure to be informative, conducive to Assange’s case, as well as a good laugh (if anyone knows Prof. Rees’ humour, you will understand why).

…

Anyway, returning to the story of the 30 hour Peace vs Defense saga that I began to tell you about yesterday in my entry Protests, Balls, Left and Right.

In one day I attended both the first wikileak rally, and then my friend’s army ball, both held at Sydney’s Town Hall – allowing me to directly access the often polarised worldviews of Peace, and Security, and bringing me to what I will from here on refer to as the Left-Right Paradox.

Although separated by a few hours, I was one of the Lefties outside Town Hall by day, a “Hippy/Communist” as the army boys called us (appologising when I owned up); and lapping up the benefits of our capitalistic security-driven Conservative government (at my friend from the army’s end of year ball), by night.

The rally emphasised the cowardous and inexcusable way our politicians are handling Julian Assange: washing their hands of him and feeding him to the lions den, before proven guilty, is not something any citizen would hope from their country.

You would think they would learn from the case of David Hicks… what happened to being presumed innocent until proven guilty?

The rally also emphasised the citizen right to freedom of speech, freedom of media, and right to the truth.

You have probably gauged from other blog entries the value I place on the “truth” – so as you can imagine, my values were largely aligned with the rally’s speakers.

Later that day I gowned up and entered Town Hall, I also came to understand the other side.

“The information leaked put my friend’s lives at risk.” said my friend who served in Afghanistan earlier this year. “There are bigger questions that have to be asked.”

Gulp.

Let’s consider some of questions:

Should all political information be transparent?

Yes, I would like it to be.

What if this puts lives of Australian soldiers at risk?

Then no, it shouldn’t.

Do the public have a “right to know”?

YES, I think they do.

Do governments have a right to hold some information “confidential”?

Paradoxically YES, I think they do too.

Who should decide what truths should be told, and which should remain hidden?

I guess as a democracy this is the people’s decision, enacted through the government we elect to consider the facts and (hopefully) make decisions like this, hence controlling the information we see, for our own benefit.

While I think Wikileaks is a great resource for accessing the truth of the political, economic and social world we are a part of, in my opinion there are limits to what should be published. Namely nothing that puts the lives of fellow Australians at risk.

What if this puts lives of people from other countries at risk?

It is here we return to the Left-Right Paradox – the dicotomy that positions global peace against national security.

If I prioritise the lives of people from other countries, I can jeopardise the lives of people in my own country. In the political games we presently play, sending our troops to Iraq and Afghanistan and beyond, information is a weapon crucial to our winning or losing the game. So long as we are playing a global game of chess, can we really afford to tell our opponents our next moves?

There are two sides (or more) to every story, and this complicated debate is not going to end any time soon.

There are no easy answers, and there are an endless number of questions:

Are Australia, America, Britain actually democracies, or does the power of the intimate connections between media, politicians, and corporate elites nullify the ideal?

Can the Australian public TRUST their government?

Will the government one day point their finger at someone like me and yell “witch”, just for asking questions?

I hope Australia is a democracy with a government that can be trusted, who respect our questioning and always put the interests and freedoms of their citizens first.

In my opinion, government information should be as transparent as possible and it is nothing but bureaucratic bullshit if the public is held in the dark while institutions we don’t even know about pull the strings.

If I were to discuss this topic with a particularly wealthy and wise friend of mine, his response would be: “It’s all about maintaining The Pyramid.“

THE PYRAMID is a very illuminating idea – that all civilisations are based on a pyramid structure, with powerful rich at the top, and the poor workers at the bottom. Connected to the idea of maintaining The Pyramid, is the game of chess that those in power are playing with many other’s lives. So the question we must ask is:

Are we happy being pawns in a giant game of chess, or do we want to change the game, for example, from from chess to sex.

I don’t have the answers but I do have hope – hope that with collective creative ingenuity we humans can write some new rules, and start playing a game where both parties win.

In conclusion I wish to quote one of the army boys from the ball:

“Everyone just has to chill – chill out! Have a beer, talk about their issues, and then the solutions will appear.”

Cheers to that!

Thanks for listening to my rant… I’m sure everyone has an opinion and I’d love to hear your thoughts if you care to leave a comment below.

References

[1] http://antonyloewenstein.com/2010/12/13/sydney-rally-for-wikileaks-on-14-december/

Some links

This entry is continued from – https://julietbennett.com/2010/12/13/protests-and-balls-left-and-right/

My older entries on this topic that might be of interest:

Human Rights or a Collective Future – the Problem with Definitions

Am I a Leftist Idealist or Right Conservative, or BOTH?

A balanced article I quite liked – http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/42140.html

A little video I shot on the day of Lee Rhiannon of the Greens (NSW Senator Elect).

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS3pqtAbS2k[/youtube]

Wikileaks video and site – http://213.251.145.96/video.html

Academic, Peace Politics, The Pyramid, Wikileaks

Mapping out religious beliefs and learning to think

22 Nov ’10Written by Juliet Bennett

Have you met TED? Introducing “Narratology”

16 Nov ’10Written by Juliet Bennett

1 Comment

Which Ted? Ted from How I Met Your Mother, or Ted-Talks? While both are wonderful sources of inspiration, today I will using the former to introduce “Narratology”.

Narratology is the study of narratives, the stories lived and the stories told. The stories in one’s head, and the stories that become one’s reality. The story of you, the story of your people, your culture, your religion, the story of humanity, the story of the universe… stories surround us.

Roland Bathes, sums up narrative better than I ever could:

The narratives of the world are numberless. … Able to be carried by articulated language, spoken or written, fixed or moving images, gestures, and the ordered mixture of all these substances; narrative is present in myth, legend, fable, tale, novella, epic, history, tragedy, drama, comedy, mime, painting, stained glass windows, cinema, comics, news times, conversation … [and] narrative is present in every age, in every place, in every society… Caring nothing for the division between good and bad literature, narrative is international, transhistorical, transcultural. It is simply there, like life itself. [1]

Narrative is, in the words of another great narratologist Theodore R. Sarbin, our “root metaphor.” [2]

How I Met Your Mother has some of the cleverest scripting ever. Besides the fact that it has me laughing, and that it has even had me in tears (when Ted got hit by the car), my favourite thing about this show is the way they play with narrative.

In case you haven’t seen it, every episode is told from told from the viewpoint of a father in 2030 telling his children “how he met their mother”, recollecting his friends’ stories from and seemingly never getting to the part where he actually meets their mother. Episodes don’t always follow exactly on from one another and stories are played out as they would be told – with parts forgotten, exaggerated and imagined. Stories within stories within stories are told from individual people’s different perspectives, capturing many truths about our culture, social nuances, fantasies and life issues.

This is one of my favourite examples… “Blah Blah” and the hot-crazy scale!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zADosF3XoQ[/youtube]

Ok, so if you are a keen follower of this blog, you will notice that (once again) I am jumping eclectically from one topic to another. The other day I introduced my plans for studying philosophy, and now I’m talking narratology. Where is my structure? My staged methodolic organised research? It might make no sense to anyone else but it is there, somewhere in my unconscious and subconscious mind, I just haven’t identified it yet.

My approach to research is more intuitively led – and I like it this way, it keeps things fun. I’m also interested the application of the concepts I’m studying – rather than just the theory. The different theories I’m reading about seem to overlap and shine lights on each other.

What does narratology mean for philosophy and religion and big history? What does Social Construction Theory have to do with Faucault’s Discipline and Punish, with power, structure and agency? What does this have to do with our ecological trajectories? What does this mean for me, and the life I am living? These are the sort of questions going through my head.

It might seem mind-boggling, with complicated topics layered upon one another, but I get bored easily, and this keeps me entertained. I would much prefer move organically through the literature, reading whatever topic makes me excited in a moment, rather than over-indulging in one of them and moving sloggishly onto the next. How this pans out in pulling together a large body of academic work… I suppose I’ll just have to wait and see.

As I learn about these very interesting mind-twisting concepts, I will share them. If you get lost in my brain, in the hopping from one topic to another, then I appologise – it probably means I’m just as lost as you!

Long story short – if you haven’t met Ted then you should meet him soon!

References:

[1] Barthes 1966 essay Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives, quoted in Michael J Toolan, Narrative: A Critical Linguistic Introduction (London: Routledge, 1988). p. 6.

[2] Theodore R. Sarbin, ‘The Narrative as a Root Metaphor for Psychology’, in Sarbin ed., Narrative Psychology : The Storied Nature of Human Conduct (New York: Praeger, 1986b).

Academic, Truth Narrative, Narratology, social construction

Mastering Philosophy: A Love of Wisdom

10 Nov ’10Written by Juliet Bennett

2 Comments

Before I even properly knew what philosophy was, I knew I wanted to study it. I remember being drawn to it and religion when I first finished school, but my UAI and father’s advice lead me to study Business. I know the world in the 21st century is dominated by business… but is that really what life is about???

Well as you know I’ve moved on from a marketing-money dominated paradigm, and eventually to a situation where here I am blogging my “search for truth”. And would you know it, searching for “truth” is exactly what philosophy is all about!!!

“Don’t go killing yourself,” my dad laughed when I told him now I am studying philosophy. “All the philosophers go around and round in circles, and eventually they kill themselves to put themselves out of the misery.”

I wiki’d it and suffice to say the odds aren’t so bad. Only six high profile philosophers have suicide in the last 30 years, and one (Foucault) died of aids. Before that majority of the deaths of philosophers were from treason, murder or the Inquisition. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_of_philosophers)

Anyway I don’t plan to get too deep into the linguistic word plays so hopefully I will deepen my understanding of the meaning of life, and not lose a sense of the worth of it all. The thing is, I have to study philosophy, I mean, how a “search for truth” not include at least a peak at the great minds of the last few thousand years?

The word “philosophy” comes from the Greek φιλοσοφία (philosophia), which literally means “love of wisdom”. Philosophy is ‘the study of general and fundamental problems, such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. [1]

If you have been following the journey you have over the last month caught up on some insights from peace and conflict studies. Now I invite you join me as I try to “master” philosophy – something that’s not exactly going to be so easy for someone who has NEVER studied philosophy…

But heck, throwing oneself in the deep-end and forcing yourself to swim (generally) won’t kill you, so porque no?! (Why not?!)

Today just a very quick overview, so you can have some idea of the journey ahead. I’m not going to study all of these categories, or at least I don’t plan to, but it’s good to know what’s out there.

There seems to be an infinite number of branches and types and schools of philosophical thought. Thanks to the web, summaries are easy to find. These (according to wikipedia) are the main branches:

Metaphysics is the study of the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and body, substance and accident, events and causation. Traditional branches are cosmology and ontology.

Epistemology is concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge, and whether knowledge is possible. Among its central concerns has been the challenge posed by skepticism and the relationships between truth, belief, and justification.

Ethics, or “moral philosophy”, is concerned with questions of how persons ought to act or if such questions are answerable. Ethics is also associated with the idea of morality. Plato’s early dialogues include a search for definitions of virtue.

Political philosophy is the study of government and the relationship of individuals and communities to the state. It includes questions about justice, the good, law, property, and the rights and obligations of the citizen.

Aesthetics deals with beauty, art, enjoyment, sensory-emotional values, perception, and matters of taste and sentiment.

Logic is the study of valid argument forms. Today the subject of logic has two broad divisions: mathematical logic (formal symbolic logic) and what is now called philosophical logic.

Philosophy of mind deals with the nature of the mind and its relationship to the body, and is typified by disputes between dualism and materialism. In recent years there has been increasing similarity between this branch of philosophy and cognitive science.

Philosophy of language is inquiry into the nature, origins, and usage of language.

Philosophy of religion is a branch of philosophy that asks questions about religion.

Also, most academic subjects have a philosophy, for example the philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics the , the philosophy of logic, the philosophy of law, and the philosophy of history.

Then there’s a range of newer subjects that historically were the subject of philosophy. These include science, anthropology, and psychology.

Then philosophy divides into Western and Eastern, each with their own periodic and geographical categories, and then some main theories including:

Realism is the doctrine that abstract entities corresponding to universal terms like “man” or “table” or “red” actually exist outside the mind.

Rationalism is any view emphasizing the role or importance of human reason. Extreme rationalism tries to base all knowledge on reason alone. Rationalism typically starts from premises that cannot coherently be denied, then attempts by logical steps to deduce every possible object of knowledge.

Empiricism downplays or dismisses the ability of reason alone to yield knowledge of the world, preferring to base any knowledge we have on our senses.

Skepticism is a philosophical attitude that, in its most extreme form, questions the possibility of obtaining any sort of knowledge.

Idealism is the epistemological doctrine that nothing can be directly known outside of the minds of thinking beings. Or in an alternative stronger form, it is the metaphysical doctrine that nothing exists apart from minds and the “contents” of minds.

Pragmatism was founded in the spirit of finding a scientific concept of truth that does not depend on personal insight (revelation) or reference to some metaphysical realm. The truth of a statement should be judged by the effect it has on our actions, and truth should be seen as what the whole of scientific enquiry ultimately agrees on

Phenomenology was Edmund Husserl’s ambitious attempt to lay the foundations for an account of the structure of conscious experience in general.An important part of Husserl’s phenomenological project was to show that all conscious acts are directed at or about objective content, a feature that Husserl called intentionality.

Existentialism is a term applied to the work of a number of late 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the acting, feeling, living human individual.

Structuralism sought to clarify systems of signs through analyzing the discourses they both limit and make possible. Saussure conceived of the sign as being delimited by all the other signs in the system, and ideas as being incapable of existence prior to linguistic structure, which articulates thought – that language is no longer spoken by man to express a true inner self, but language speaks man. Structuralists believed they could analyze systems from an external, objective standing.

Poststructuralists argued that this is incorrect, that one cannot transcend structures and thus analysis is itself determined by what it examines – hence every attempt to grasp the signified results in more signifiers, so meaning is always in a state of being deferred, making an ultimate interpretation impossible.

Then there’s key philosophers to which the list is endless and debatable… a few can be seen on the map above. This map comes from www.philosophybasics.com which also has details on all of these theories and philosophers and more. Also an amazing resource for comparing similarities and differences and time lines of thought I discovered this one: http://www.wadsworth.com/philosophy_d/special_features/timeline/timeline.html# And of course there’s youtube!

I’m going to leave it there for today. If you are at my level of philosophical training most of these category titles won’t mean so much, but it’s nice to know they are there.

The lines of philosophical thought I will research will be far more narrow than this – my main interests seem to be basics of metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, philosophy of mind, history and science; and then in more detail something called Process Philosophy and the intersections between Modernism and Post-modernism.

While all this jargon can seem scary (at least it is for me), please don’t let this turn you off – I plan to keep it as practical as possible, applying the lines of thought to everyday life, and (hopefully) avoid a lot of those (almost unavoidable) word games 🙂

Note:

For anyone who is interested in academic formalities, I should tell you that a MPhil or “Master of Philosophy” is pretty much half of a PhD or “Doctor of Philosophy” which is not restricted to the discipline of philosophy but is a philosophical argument based on research. So, the MPhil I will write will still be in the discipline of Peace and Conflict Studies. It is for my own personal integrity, if I am going to carry the label “master of philosophy”, I want to know the basics.

References:

[1] Wikipedia – “Philosophy” (Apologies to academics)

Picture credit:

www.philosophybasics.com

Academic, Truth philosophy

Mastering Conflict: A Journal on the Business World

11 Oct ’10Written by Juliet Bennett

The “PAPER ECONOMY” and the GFC

31 Aug ’10Written by Juliet Bennett

2 Comments

Why did the Global Financial Crisis actually happen? The best explanation I have come across was when about this time last year Canadian professor Jim Stanford came to speak at my uni – he tries to demystify the economy by explaining the concepts and jargon in a simple, easily understandable way.

What is the economy? It is WORK. ‘The total sum of work we do to meet our needs and wants.’ The economy is about meeting human needs.

Jim separates the economy into:

1. the “real economy” – that is, jobs that create physical value.

2. the “paper economy” -that is, jobs that trade paper. These jobs are based on speculating on the real economy, and make money from others’ debt.

In our present system, the paper traders are getting richer as the physical traders get poorer. For every $1 of real economy, $100 of paper economy is traded. That means $100 is circulated by people speculating on that $1, and essentially getting paid to do nothing of real value – just buying and selling financial assets.

It makes sense when you think about it. What jobs pay the most in our society? Stock traders. Finance. Bankers. Business. That’s why Dads like mine want me to study Business and work my way up the ladder of a big corporation – it equals money and security. But what else does it mean? What value am I adding to society if I do this?

Where do our foods, clothes, housing materials come from? Who gets paid the least down the chain of production? The people picking the raw ingredients that make these things, and the people that put the goods together. People getting paid almost nothing (if not completely nothing) for their work.

When you get a big profit from trading on the stock market – where is that money coming from? I’m not pointing fingers at those who trade or own shares, saying, “ooooo you’re such a bad person.” I have shares too. Actually any of us who have bank accounts or superannuation funds, have shares on the stock market. Our shares contribute to the problem but I am part of the 85% of the population of developed capitalist countries who is paid for my employment, more or less economic slaves to the system as I need to earn money to pay my rent, my credit card bill, and pay for my next holiday. It is logical that when we invest in shares, or play with shares on the stock market, we hope that we will gain the greatest possible profit from our investment of time and/or money. These are the rules of the game we presently play.

These rules also define the responsibilities of CEOs to make the most profit they can, without regard for people and our planet, and pay these big boys very big bucks to do so. The main problem with this system lies with the 2% of the population of developed capitalist countries who own large majorities of the paper wealth in the world, with banks at the top given their license to print money and lend it out in debt. (Side noting that the other 13% work as farmers or in their own small businesses).

Jim says it isn’t fair that the workers suffer every time the system collapses as we didn’t cause the problem. It was the rules of the system that caused it, and unless we change the rules, it will continue to happen again and again. Jim says we need to ‘hold the banking system accountable to meeting society’s need for steady credit, or step in and do it ourselves’ (we can print money too).

Solutions include:

1. Demystify economics – explain where the crisis came from and understand why something needs to change.

2. Redeem the value and legitimacy of real work and production – based on a new model of growth / stability.

3. Don’t let the bank make us pay for their mistakes:

– re-regulate finance

– socialise credit creation (ie learn to do it ourselves through public banks and credit unions)

– look for comprehensible credible alternatives that also address global problems of poverty and pollution

– get rid of useless industries

– stop making shit

Jim explains it far better than these rough notes I took from his lecture.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OgkMukykew[/youtube]

There are more of his lectures on youtube – well worth a watch. Or his book:

Also, although this wasn’t from my notes from Jim’s lecture, I think surely we need to do something about the tax havens. Did you know that half of all world trade currently passes through tax havens? Apparently they ‘allow rich people and corporations to stash trillions in assets that could provide governments with at least $250 billion a year in tax revenues.’[1]

Look, I don’t like paying tax, I believe I still own a few shares (while they’re probably not worth much any more) and I can’t complain that my job is based on processing information (I’m not really sure if universities count as paper economy or real economy…) but I do not like the fact that the richest pay the least tax and the poorest pay the most…

According to the book called Conspiracy of the Rich I’m listening to at the moment by Robert Kiyosaki (author of Rich Dad Poor Dad) if you can’t change the system, you can still opt out of playing their game.

“Is the love of money the root of all evil? Or, is it the ignorance of money? What did you learn about money in school? Have you ever wondered why our school systems do not teach us much—if anything—about money? Is the lack of financial education in our schools simply an oversight by our educational leaders? Or is it part of a larger conspiracy? Regardless, whether we are rich or poor, educated or uneducated, child or adult, retired or working, we all use money. Like it or not, money has a tremendous impact on our lives in today’s world.” [2]

ALSO SEE BLOG ENTRIES:

Preserving The Pyramid: why things are the way they are

Some great YouTube clips explaining our economic and political system

Where are we now, where are we going, and how?

Rethinking the Pyramid

[1] Susan George, ‘We Must Think Big’, New Scientist (18 Oct 2008). p. 51.

[2] Robert Kiyosaki, www.conspiracyoftherich.com/ReadTheBook.aspx

Photo: Graffiti in the back streets of Sydney.

Academic, Peace Ecology, Economics, Paper Economy, Politics, The Pyramid

Potential: innate or situational?

28 Jul ’10Written by Juliet Bennett

A short biography

2 Sep ’09Written by Juliet Bennett

10 Comments

Who we are depends greatly on our biography. This is a short summary of the time I have spent on this planet – providing some background to where my philosophies and theories are coming from.

1982-1984

I spent my first two years in Jakarta, Indonesia and traveling the world. The adventurous nature of my Dutch mum and Aussie dad seeded in me a passion for travel and I think the lovely Indonesian ladies who looked after me as a baby probably seeded in me a love for people and cultures.

1984- 1999

Returning to Sydney my sister was born and I spent the next 15 years in the Northern Beaches attending a small Christian school in the same suburb, working as a kitchen hand in a local retirement village, and enjoyed a somewhat middle class Australian childhood.

1999- 2002

At 17 (the youngest in my grade) I followed my Dad’s advice and went straight to the closest university to my house and for the next three years I completed by Bachelor of Business (Distinction!) but again, with majors in Marketing and IT, I really didn’t feel I learned that much.

2002- 2004

I was 20 when I finished uni and after a couple of years working hard and saving up money to “see the world”.

2004-2005

After a short holiday in Thailand I landed in Japan where I stayed for the year and a half that followed. Here I taught English, “acted” in TV shows, short films & commercials, and did my first on-stage parade – in lingerie!

This was a dream come true. When hairdressers turned my hair yellow, green and purple I shaved it off and was surprised when this opened an opportunity to further my dreams – in Paris!

2006

I modeled in Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Majorca, and L.A. And in-between jobs I traveled around London, Barcelona, Hamburg, Munich, to name a few. I met wonderful people and gained a new perspective and appreciation for life.

Feeling homesick for family, mangoes, beaches and everything else that comes with the Australian summer I made a rash decision: I cancelled my plans for Europe, canceled my return trip to Tokyo, and booked a ticket home, turning up on mum’s doorstep on Christmas Eve.

2007

With an apartment in Tokyo and modeling agencies awaiting my return in Europe, I had some decisions to make. My Dad was in my ear with the typical fatherly “time to get a real job” speech and approaching 25 years old I (nearing retirement age for models) I had a quarter-life crisis and thought for a moment he was right. Selling advertising space for fashion magazines sounded like a good job that involved both but at the interviewer it was one little comment the interviewer made that changed my life.

He said, “And you know what the BEST thing about this job is? When you see the digits on your bank statement!!!” He said it with such enthusiasm. My insides curdled and I knew it wasn’t for me. But if not this, then what?

Photography? Fitness instructing? That would be a good life. My Opa (grandfather) at 91 years old had a fall and I offered to move in as I “skilled up” as I called it.

I assisted some fashion photographers, did part-time modeling in Sydney and became a qualified Pilates instructor.

I also got lost on wikipedia and in library books – teaching myself the things I’d either forgotten from my schooling, or never been taught. I was teaching myself a lot about science, history and religion – revisiting my childhood “faith” in the Christian doctrines, trying to reconcile it with my developing understanding and experience with the peoples and cultures of the world.

2008-2009

Realising I was never going to join the corporate world (much to my Dad’s disappointment) I took the time to go back to university and skill up more formally. Then I came across “Peace and Conflict Studies” at Sydney University, applied for a MA which I completed over the two years, making use of uni holidays to travel South America, which I am using to write a book about travel, life, love and contemplating the future.

2010-2011

I love learning so much that I submitted a PhD proposal on Narratology, Panentheism and Peace to start mid-2010. Prior to that I worked on submitting journal articles to get publication “points” and travelled to India to speak at a conference in Mumbai, do a yoga and ayurveda retreat in the hills of Coonoor, check out the Taj Mahal, and hang out in Kathmandu and Pokhara in Nepal.

This sent me on an adventure through Krakow, Poland, to speak at a “What is Life?” conference, and on to North Carolina, United States, to teach Storytelling (in Humanities) and co-teach War and Peace (cross-listed Philosophy and Political Science) at Lenoir Rhyne University in Hickory, for the second half of 2011. Along the way I dedicated a lot of time to editing “My Brazilian… and a kombi named Betty”, for which I am awaiting the right publisher…

2012-2014

On the way home from the United States I spent time visiting friends and hanging out in Vancouver, and teaching Pilates and hanging out at my friend’s bar Encuentros in Granada, Nicaragua.

By the end of this trip I realised my home: Sydney. I moved into a house with the most creative, fun and intelligent people who quickly became some of my best friends and inspirations.

I started part-time work as the Executive Officer of the Sydney Peace Foundation, a small not-for-profit organisation within the University of Sydney who award the annual international Sydney Peace Prize.

I finished my MPhil (a half-size PhD) in March 2014, and finally (on my fifth application) was awarded a scholarship to do a full PhD, beginning mid-2014.

2015 onwards:

Like anything worthwhile it’s a looooong journey, and a lot of work. But that’s what makes it great. As long as I’m enjoying the process I will continue this journey my whole life.

Through this little slice of cyberspace somewhere on the world wide web I offer my story as it unfolds. I share my spiritual, mental and physical adventure in quest of understanding peace, justice and my place in the universe — traveling, researching, thinking and creating.

Academic, Adventure, Beauty, Peace, Random Life Stuff, Truth Modeling

Adventures with Ideas: Truth, Beauty and the Paradoxes of Life