The Minefield (ABC listen)

One of the most notable cultural changes to have taken place over the past two decades is the emergence of “prestige television” — which is to say, television as the visual equivalent of literature, and with similar ambitions. What has this shift done to our moral sensibilities, or to our understanding of the shape and demands and limits and possibilities of the moral life?

Professor Rita Felski joins Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens to explore whether a better understanding of the nature of aesthetic experience – of what art does to us, and why – can give us a better sense of the nature of moral disagreement, and of how it is that we might come to discover a shared world.

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 Royal Commission into Aged Care and the ravages of COVID-19 within aged care facilities have thrown a spotlight on the adequacy, the ethics and the dignity of our ongoing care of the elderly. To what extent have entrenched patterns of ageist prejudice created the conditions within which certain forms of abuse and neglect could take place? And what can we do to challenge and change these prejudices?

Should certain privileges be afforded to those who have received a COVID-19 vaccine (from international travel to attending sports venues and restaurants)? Could such privileges act as incentives (and if so, under what conditions), or are they more likely to produce deep feelings of inequity and resentment?

The misuse of moral language in public debate is nothing new. But in our social-media saturated age, this misuse has taken on a distinct and rather perfidious form. Morally weighted language is regularly used to grant excessive or abusive claims, and personal or categorical insults, an air of moral seriousness. This kind of language marks the end of conversation. Are we better off without it?

In the face of the latest COVID-19 outbreaks, there is little that has differentiated the governing strategies of Liberal and Labor state governments — certainly not at the level of practice. Are we witnessing a more long-term scrambling of Australia’s already unclear political divisions?

Should we think about the story of Australia’s halting “recognition” of its First Peoples as an expression of the ongoing conflict between political philosophies and conceptions of what properly constitutes the common life of a people?

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?

In the absence of a police investigation into an historical allegation of sexual assault against the Attorney-General, many Australians have pinned their hopes on an independent, arms-length, confidential inquiry. Professor Rosalind Dixon joins us to discuss the legal and moral grounds for such an inquiry.

In his speech to the Garma Festival, PM Anthony Albanese put it to the nation that constitutionally enshrining a First Nations Voice would not undermine Australia’s national identity, but more fully express it. Professor Tim Soutphommasane joins Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens to discuss the nature and moral limits of patriotism, and whether it can co-exist with an appropriate sense of national remorse, even shame.

Could the full acknowledgement of the extent of our complicity in the injustices of the past, constitute a galvanising principle, the basis upon which a new political community is formed? Is shame really inimical to national pride, or is it rather one of its expressions?

It’s understandable that so much anger should be directed at the federal government, and that the federal government’s numerous missteps and failures to respond appropriately to what this moment demands have added insult to injury. But if the problem is culture-wide, can federal politics be the solution?

Are the more deleterious tendencies of economy and culture moulding sport after its own image?

Democratic politics is more than a matter of power. It is predicated on the possibility of discovering common ground through practices of mutual recognition, exchange, attentiveness, and understanding.

Does our limited conception of moral responsibility stem from a profound failure to recognise our interconnectedness, the extent to which our lives are implicated in the suffering and wellbeing of others – human and nonhuman?

The practice of compulsory voting, along with the two other pillars of Australia’s electoral system — preferential voting and non-partisan election administration — have kept Australian democracy remarkably stable over the past hundred years. But just how much can we rely on these formal elements of Australian democracy to safeguard Australia’s democratic culture?

The COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in a wave of “emergency politics”, in which the normal processes of democratic deliberation and public accountability have been suspended. In a public health crisis, is democratic dissent a problem to be solved, or a resource for a more sustainable, mutually beneficial outcome?

Two years ago Scott Morrison raised the drawbridge, effectively sealing “Fortress Australia” off from the rest of the world. What effect has the act of separating Australian citizens and residents from the world and from each other had on our sense of national life, identity, and solidarity? “We” may be “all in this together” — but who, exactly, can be said to count among this “we”?

The measures Facebook has taken over the past week have precipitated a long-overdue reckoning. Now that the “social network” has lifted the veil on its ambitions and civic disdain, how can news media companies continue, in good conscience, with their Faustian pact?

The events of 9/11 are inseparable from the horrors of what was subsequently revealed about the use of torture against detainees in locations like Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. What does the persistence of torture say about political communities that continue to countenance its use?

One of the perhaps underappreciated aspects of COVID-19 is the way the pandemic has dealt a blow to these daily interactions which reinforce our commitment to a common life. What is ‘civility’? What is the regulative role it plays in our common life?

In modern politics and moral philosophy, what is most meaningfully human is regularly ignored in the interests of solving “real problems”. While this is often understandable, it also points to a certain debility, a malaise at the heart of the way forms of both representative politics and moral philosophy are often practiced: an inattention to the “everyday”.

Is the conviction and sentencing of Derek Chauvin something to be celebrated as an indication of moral progress? Can the shared horror over George Floyd’s murder, and the solidarity that followed it, galvanise a fresh commitment to justice and a preparedness to sacrifice existing privileges?

Perhaps no “moral emotion” in our time is more reviled than shame. It is regarded, certainly in the West, as uniquely destructive to a healthy sense of self, as psychologically damaging and socially abusive, and to be avoided at all costs. Professor Owen Flanagan joins Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens to discuss whether shame has been given a bad rap, and why we might need more of it.

As the philosopher Bernard Williams anticipated, utilitarianism has largely disappeared from public view, not because it is no longer adhered to, but because it has become the “operating system” that governs most of our public decision-making. What the COVID-19 pandemic has done is make that hidden calculus explicit.

During the week in which American voters cast their verdict on Trump’s term in office, it makes sense to ask: To what extent is Trump to blame for America’s political malaise? In what ways might Joe Biden’s nomination be a sign of democratic hopefulness?

Do Republicans have an obligation to convict and impeach Trump, for the sake of the health of the body politic? Can democracy itself survive when each “side” casts its electoral success as necessary to the survival of the nation, and the “other side” as an existential threat?

There is an inescapable conflict that any policy meant to address housing affordability must contend with: in order to make home-ownership more achievable for some, the value of houses must decrease — thereby offending the way we have been urged to see houses as an instrument of financial accumulation. Professor Victoria Ong ViforJ joins The Minefield to discuss whether there is a solution.

Democracies assume that there will be a high level of disagreement among its members. But what happens when those disagreements become incommensurable, when the parties become unintelligible to one another?

There is a growing evidence that people have accepted the reality of climate change and the need for action. But there is significant divergence in attitudes toward the salience of the problem — which is to say, how big a problem it is, how much it should matter to us, and where to rank climate change in a list of national priorities.

For the last two weeks, Australian political coverage has been consumed by a series of decisions undertaken by the former Prime Minister. What made them so serious? How far should we go to ensure they can't happen again?

Ukraine has enjoyed remarkable military success against Russian invaders — thanks, in no small part, to the financial support and weaponry provided by Western nations. In response, President Vladimir Putin has raised the possibility of nuclear retaliation. Does such a prospect change the moral calculus of the West’s support of and solidarity with Ukraine?

The coronavirus pandemic has exposed, rather than alleviated, the nature and extent of inequality in many modern societies. As the recent federal budget demonstrated, Australia is a case in point. What is ‘inequality’, and why is it problematic?

There is no doubt that emotions like anger can be a proper response to the persistence of injustice or inequality or prejudice or cruelty in the world. But it can also be exhausting and insatiable in its desire for retribution, or to impose one’s will upon the world. Should we, then, seek to renounce anger?

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"?

What is the prolonged experience of the pandemic showing us about the nature of Australian politics, the limits of executive power, the role of experts in the administration of public life, and the fault-lines that continue to undermine our sense of common purpose?

Fatigue is a fascinating moral phenomenon. It can be a consequence of attentiveness, a willingness to face the realities of the world. But it can also be a form of avoidance, of “moral laziness”, the symptom of an active desire not to confront matters that seem to call for our attention. What are the dangers of fatigue, and how are we to respond to it when it overtakes us?

We live in a time when “hot” emotions prevail. It could be that an alternative sentiment, in some ethically complex circumstances, is ambivalence — which is to say, a willingness to withhold judgment, to linger in the interval between two options.

Attachment to sporting clubs is one of our deepest and most emotionally charged forms of prejudice. But what about those moments when a fan decides she can no longer support her team? Has she betrayed her team? Alternatively, in what ways can clubs betray their fans?

Julian Assange’s defenders claim that the free speech protections afforded to news organisations should apply to Assange as well — and that his impending extradition to the US therefore poses a threat to democracy. Professor Katharine Gelber joins Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens to discuss whether the free speech argument holds.

Over the last century, we’ve seen the profound longing for a way of life that has seemingly been “lost” — or, more insidiously, “stolen” — be weaponised by cunning politicians and turned against members of a political community. But should nostalgia simply be dismissed?

Opinion writing plays a disproportionate role in our media eco-system: it drives online traffic, fuels emotion, feeds the forces of polarisation, and promotes an incapacity to understand one another. But is there a different way to think about opinion?

Opinion writing plays a disproportionate role in our media eco-system: it drives online traffic, fuels emotion, feeds the forces of polarisation, and promotes an incapacity to understand one another. But is there a different way to think about opinion?

Over the last two weeks, we’ve seen a new wave public protests grow in both size and palpable anger in Victoria. With politicians already trying to make the most of these demonstrations in the lead-up to next year’s federal election, what are their implications for representative politics in Australia?

Now that vaccines are enjoying widespread coverage among wealthy nations, and with the recent emergence of the Omicron variant and rapidly rising rates of infection in the United States and throughout Europe, many states have begun implementing domestic booster campaigns. But this presents thorny ethical problems involving vaccine distribution and global equity.

The military coup, which overturned the results of last November’s national election, has plunged Myanmar into a cycle of escalating violence. This poses quite specific questions about the legitimacy and limits of revolutionary violence, and the kind of political community that might be left in its wake.

With the proliferation of digital distractions and addictive technologies, many of us live in a state of perpetual half-attention. We tend to move from one “sugar-hit” to the next — stimuli which elicit strong if transitory emotions, but discourage us from being present, entirely, to one person, one text, one idea. What is the lack of attentiveness doing to our moral lives?

How do we practice solitude in a time rich with distractions and which exhibits peculiar aversion to (and fear of) loneliness? And when we are alone with ourselves, how do we avoid the dangers of self-deception such that solitude becomes genuinely transformative — for us, and for others?

While fasting is an observance associated with Ramadan, versions the practice are broadly familiar to us — from the forms of “self-restraint” that are bound up with physical fitness, to advice commending the health benefits of a regular 14-hour fast. But are these forms of “self-care” just further preoccupations with “the self”, rendering us forgetful of the needs of the moral life?

Over the past two months, the conduct of two prominent figures have evoked fierce expressions of public emotion. What explains the intensity of feeling? Have these emotions distorted the public’s judgment, or have they granted that judgment a certain moral clarity?

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?

Far too much debate today is more like a play of competing monologues, or forms of self-promotion designed to perform for one’s tribe. Should we give up on the fantasy of persuasion through argumentation and cascading theses, as some philosophers have, or do we need to rethink the conditions of persuasion altogether?

Far too much debate today is more like a play of competing monologues, or self-promotion designed to perform for one’s tribe. Should we give up on the fantasy of persuasion through argumentation and cascading theses altogether?

Of all the ways we interact with the world and with the moral reality of other persons, none is as fundamental as speech. In a time when we are saturated with words, what might it mean to purify our language?

There are habits of seeing which can corrupt our moral lives, or clutter our vision, or defile our imaginations. Just as there is a “contemptuous gaze”, as Iris Murdoch puts it, there are also “eyes tempered by grace”. So what might it mean to undergo a “fast for the eyes” in order to see the world more clearly?

Few of life’s activities are as morally complicated as eating. If food has become, in our time, a source of nourishment for what Iris Murdoch calls the “fat relentless ego”, what might it mean to transform food into a means of achieving companionability with others?

What if the impediments to moral growth are not purely or even primarily external to us? During the month of Ramadan, we explore the inner tension between our tendency toward egotism, craving, and self-deception, and the task of cultivating the virtues of humility, self-restraint, and moral clarity.

One of the defining features of our time is the overproduction of what could be called “useless knowledge” — ranging from gossip and empty speculation, to undeniably important “news” which makes no claim on our moral lives other than that we have an opinion about it. In a world full of competing distractions, could it be that one of the greatest moral challenges is how to limit what we know?

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?

Over the last year, there have been a number of high-profile cases where journalists have either landed themselves in legal trouble, or have sparked fierce backlash, due to their conduct on social media. This raises complex problems, not just for the public’s perception of journalists, their impartiality and credibility, but also of the news organisations to which they belong.

Over the last year, there have been a number of high-profile cases where journalists have either landed themselves in legal trouble, or have sparked fierce backlash, due to their conduct on social media. This raises complex problems, not just for the public’s perception of journalists, their impartiality and credibility, but also of the news organisations to which they belong.

Amazon recently unveiled its plans for an update to Alexa that will enable the device to sound like someone you love — even someone who has died. Professor Yolande Strengers joins Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens to unpack why this is such a bad idea, and how to understand the ethical limits of our relationship with technology.

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?

Every so often, fans are forced to reckon with the high price that sports can exact on the lives of athletes. In such moments, we are compelled to ask: Is our enjoyment worth the cost?

If levels of strident “vaccine hesitancy” in Australia are extremely low, and the push to help the population reach the necessary vaccination threshold is more logistical than it is ideological, should we continue publicly to use language and to employ punitive measures which effectively humiliate or ostracise the unvaccinated?

By turning the Solomon Islands into a federal election “issue”, Australia has emphasised the national security implications of their agreement with China. PM Manasseh Sogavare has, in response, asserted their right to “manage our sovereign affairs”. ANU’s Terence Wood joins The Minefield to discuss the tension between security and sovereignty, and what it all means for Solomon Island’s democratic culture.

Works of art, both high and low, can inform and inflect a moral vision of the world. It makes sense to approach works of art with an attentiveness to the light they shed on our lives and our life together. But does this still apply to the award-winning HBO series “Succession”, with its evident delight in cruelty, cunning, and almost virtuosic vulgarity?

In Jane Austen’s novel Emma, we find an abiding concern with the demands, not just of propriety, but of morality, an attentiveness to the dangers of self-deception, and vivid reminders of the importance of friendship to progress in the moral life.

Social media platforms have been the objects of unrelenting public and political scrutiny over the past decade. Rather less attention has been paid to their more benign cousins — so called “crowd-funding platforms” like GoFundMe. Until now. For what happens when one person’s worthy cause is another’s moral abomination?

They seem innocuous, but since their invention more than two decades ago, emojis have come to permeate our forms of online communication. Indeed, they are the perfect expression of what communication has become in a social-media saturated age.

They seem innocuous, but since their invention more than two decades ago, emojis have come to permeate our forms of online communication. Indeed, they are the perfect expression of what communication has become in a social-media saturated age.

Snitching, ratting, dobbing, grassing — these are all words for behaviour that we are taught, at a very young age, to find reprehensible. Is our reticence to “dob” an expression of a worrying disposition toward non-intervention, or is it an expression, even if a perverse one, of a deeper moral principle?

How much leeway should we give politicians to change, if not their minds, then at least their positions? Under what circumstances are political “U-turns” not liable to condemnation or censure? When should they be met with suspicion, and when should they be received as a reflection of the hard realities of representative politics itself?

We have become increasingly interpersonally punitive and unforgiving, believing this to be a sign of our moral seriousness or our commitment to justice. But perhaps Shakespeare’s late plays — especially Cymbeline and Winter’s Tale — hold out a different moral vision.

In a time when so many opinions are clamouring for views in our debauched attention economy, “sh*t-stirring” has become an irresistible strategy to get oneself noticed. But it does so at a cost, not least to the reputational cost of those who practice it — including moral philosophers. So what is the difference between “sh*t-stirring” and something like virtuous provocation?

A new “space race” is underway – except this time, it’s not between the United States and Russia, or even China and India. Instead, billionaires Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson are spearheading the lucrative “space tourism” industry. Should this be seen as a source of hope, or simply one more expression of capitalism’s dogma of infinite growth.

For many people, burning-out is taken as proof of our dedication to our jobs. Have we finally reached the point where we can re-envision the relationship between work and life?

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?

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?

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.

The debate over the Religious Discrimination Bill has exposed a tension at the heart of the liberal vision of a pluralistic society, in which citizens commit to living together despite their profound disagreement over matters of highest importance. What happens when disagreement becomes a cause of harm?

In a time when everything is politicised, it is worth noting that so many people have such evident affection for a figure who stood above the political fray. Does democratic politics require apolitical institutions in order to be healthy?

Perhaps the most consequential event over the last two months was decision of social media companies to ban Donald Trump — permanently or indefinitely — from their platforms “due to the risk of further incitement of violence”. Why are some vaguely uneasy about this move? Are there valid ethical objections?

Does the swift collapse of the US-backed Afghan government suggest that places like Afghanistan are ungovernable by anything other than brute force and unimpeded corruption — or does it suggest that the ultimate folly of the post-9/11 wars was the conceit of “nation building” itself?

The incommensurability of the claims in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict produces a kind of moral absolutism, whereby one side is entirely to blame and another is entirely justified. But are there moral resources that can be brought to bear which grant the legitimacy of the maximal claims of both sides, and then set about exploring the conditions of mutual recognition?

Should we be bound by the constraints of our former self, and the promises we have made in the past? Is moral progress a matter of consistency with one’s previous self, away from one’s previous self, or toward ever-enriching relationships with others?

How might we avoid bad faith quotations, served up in vain interests, and locate ourselves, our hearers, our readers, in a community of mutual interest and intellectual wonder — not so much using quotations, as exposing ourselves to their provocation?

How might we avoid bad faith quotations, served up in vain interests, and locate ourselves, our hearers, our readers, in a community of mutual interest and intellectual wonder — not so much using quotations, as exposing ourselves to their provocation?

Does the 2022 federal election tell us anything about the future of Australian democracy? We know that the Coalition was resoundingly defeated. But does Australia’s new patchwork parliament hold out a surprising model for how some of the inherent limits of representative politics can be overcome?

Will the experience of working-from-home make employees reluctant to resume the daily struggle with traffic or public transportation, or to put up with irritating co-workers and unproductive work environments? Or will we discover that we’ve missed something precious in being deprived of interactions with others?

Five years after the historic gathering at the red centre, Anthony Albanese used his election night victory speech to “commit to the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full”. Professor Megan Davis joins Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens on The Minefield to discuss some of the obstacles that stand in the way of a constitutional referendum, and how a First Nations Voice might transform the moral fabric of our politics.

It is hardly surprising that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been met by fierce, swift, and unified opposition on the part of the West and their allies — who have offered strategic support to the Ukrainian military, and isolated Russia through an unprecedented regime of economic, diplomatic, and cultural sanctions. What might this mean for international responses to other such atrocities elsewhere?

Philosophy’s concern with laughter is as old as philosophy itself. The association of laughter with derision and contempt runs through the concerns of philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to Hobbes and Nietzsche. But is there laughter beyond ridicule and derision? Can laughter be transformative or liberating?

In moral philosophy and mass culture alike, “nihilism” has a bad name. And little wonder. It is most often associated with meaninglessness, pessimism, and amoralism. At its heart, nihilism is a view of the world in which progress is not assured, a world without overarching meaning. Does that present a problem to the moral life?

While political comedy has long been a distinguishing feature of truly democratic cultures, one of the more notable shifts over the past two decades has been the merger of comedy into political commentary. What has this done to the conditions of our common life?

Following the ignominious resignation of Boris Johnson, the Tories are looking for a new leader — and the UK a new Prime Minister. The cast of contenders is the most diverse we’ve seen, but that hasn’t yielded a notably different political vision. Why? ANU political scientist Marija Taflaga joins Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens to discuss the significance of and constraints on diversity in political representation.

Lying has become so commonplace in politics that it has almost become expected — if not quite accepted. Many politicians who are notoriously promiscuous with the truth even remain relatively popular. Whereas few things infuriate voters like hypocrisy. Should hypocrisy bother us as much as it does? Should we be quite as blasé about political lying as we seem to be?

It’s become a sad commonplace in our time to hear the lines along which democratic societies are now divided. What is often absent, however, is mention of class. Why? Do Korean films like Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, or Hwang Dong-hyuk’s smash hit Squid Game, have anything to teach us? Atlantic staff writer George Packer joins us.