The Minefield

If there is ever a time when politicians should be able to expect a fair share of the public’s attention, it’s during an election campaign. After all, this triennial event is when they can demonstrate to the Australian public that they’ve been attentive to their aspirations and concerns for the future, and have developed a series of policies able to address those hopes and fears.And yet Donald Trump’s reckless bluster and punitive tariffs have sucked most of the air out of Australia’s federal election, and the unpopularity of the US President has succeeded in blowing the campaign of at least one political party off course.Trump may well be unavoidable, but is the attention he garners inevitable? Are the differences between US-style politics and Australia’s well-functioning democracy now so vast that we can better appreciate the preciousness of our own rather more modest democratic way of life?

Damien Marr, a Senior lecturer in initial teacher education at the University of Technology, Sydney, dives into the transformative role of AI in education. He discusses the dual nature of AI as both a potential enhancer and a challenge to human creativity. The conversation also explores ethical implications and the importance of fostering critical thinking skills. Marr emphasizes the need for a balanced approach, integrating AI while maintaining the irreplaceable value of human interaction and deep engagement in learning.

Lucas Thompson, a senior lecturer in English and writing at the University of Sydney and author of several literary works, joins the discussion on Ray Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451.' They explore Montag's moral awakening and the risk of a society drowning in distractions. The conversation dives into the themes of censorship and the contrast between superficial entertainment and genuine engagement. They reflect on the importance of memory, education, and authentic connections in a world threatened by ignorance and anti-intellectualism.

We arrive, at last, at the end of our Ramadan series — and the second of our pair of positive responses to radical disappointment with the world. For some, hope is untrustworthy, amounting to little more than dreaming or wish-fulfilment. For others, hope can turn into kind of bad faith demand, leading to dishonest politics (in the name of being up-beat or staying positive) or even to habituated practices of avoidance.But hope can also galvanise a community to work together for an otherwise uncertain future, in a way that mere optimism cannot. One immediately thinks of someone like Martin Luther King. Jr. But there is another example to draw upon. In his book Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation, about the last great Chief of Crow Nation, Plenty Coups (1848 – 1932), the philosopher Jonathan Lear writes:“Plenty Coups was able to lead himself and his people forward into an unimaginable future committed to the idea that something good would emerge. He carried himself and his people forward, committed to the idea that it was worthwhile to do so, even while acknowledging that his own local understanding of the good life would vanish. This is a daunting form of commitment: to a goodness in the world that transcends one’s ability to grasp what it is … There may be various forms of ethical criticism one might be tempted to level at this form of hopefulness: that it was too complacent; that it didn’t face up to the evil that had been inflicted on the Crow tribe. But it is beyond question that the hope was a remarkable human accomplishment — in no small part because it avoided despair.”Hope, then, can emerge from loss, from mourning, from the experience of devastation. But this raises the further question of whether an anchor “out there” is necessary to sustain communal action. Can the impetus not also come from inherent value of the work itself — work that would be good and right to do, regardless of the outcome?—Upcoming live events:In the first week of April, as part of a special “Week with Students” — a joint initiative by Radio National and ABC Education — Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens will be recording two episodes of The Minefield with an audience of Year 11-12 students, parents and teachers.-1. ARE WE ON THE BRINK OF A WORLD WITHOUT BOOKS?The irony is unavoidable: a novel that imagines a world in which books are banned — and in which entertainment has swallowed up education — has earned a stable place on the Australian high school curriculum. For this live recording of The Minefield, Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens are leaning all the way into that irony and will discuss Ray Bradbury’s novel “Fahrenheit 451” with students, parents and teachers at the Parramatta Library. The future Bradbury imagined in 1953 has never felt closer; is it too late to heed his warning?WHEN: Friday, 4 April 2025. Arrive at 5:30pm for a 6:00pm start.WHERE: Parramatta Library, 5 Parramatta Square, NSW.Register your interest on Eventbrite.-2. IS AI A TECHNOLOGY TO BE FEARED OR A TOOL TO BE TAUGHT?Over a short period of time, AI has become pervasive. Immensely powerful platforms have placed artificial intelligence at our fingertips, and more than two-thirds of Australian students admit to using AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot. But as with any technology, alongside the convenience and new capabilities come certain risks and unforeseen consequences. The debate is raging over what it would take to ensure that AI’s power can be made to serve the common good. Is education and greater technological literacy part of the solution?WHEN: Saturday, 5 April 2025. Arrive at 10.30am for an 11:00am start.WHERE: ABC Ultimo, 700 Harris Street, Ultimo, NSW.Register your interest on Eventbrite.

For the last two episodes, we’ve been discussing what might be called negative or aversive responses to radical disappointment with the world — even though, as we’ve seen, both despair and fear have characteristics which commend them. In the next two episodes, we’re turning to rather more positive responses.There is little doubt that pessimism enjoys a certain cultural cache these days. It is easy to say that things are bad and getting worse. And yet such a claim can have a corrosive effect on the democratic bonds on which the very possibility of change depends.Likewise, the demand on the part of some to be optimistic — whether that is the meliorist appeal that “it’s not all that bad”, or the political pledge that “the guardrails will hold”, or the techno-utopian promise that “technology will save us” — can act as a pressure-release valve on our moral emotions. At worst, such optimism can function as what Martin Luther King, Jr. called the “tranquilizing drug of gradualism”.So does optimism absolve us of moral agency, or is a tempered optimistic disposition — what we could call a certain “cheerfulness” — the condition of possibility whereby we are willing to rely upon one another and entrust ourselves to each other’s care?—Upcoming live events:In the first week of April, as part of a special “Week with Students” — a joint initiative by Radio National and ABC Education — Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens will be recording two episodes of The Minefield with an audience of Year 11-12 students, parents and teachers.-1. ARE WE ON THE BRINK OF A WORLD WITHOUT BOOKS?The irony is unavoidable: a novel that imagines a world in which books are banned — and in which entertainment has swallowed up education — has earned a stable place on the Australian high school curriculum. For this live recording of The Minefield, Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens are leaning all the way into that irony and will discuss Ray Bradbury’s novel “Fahrenheit 451” with students, parents and teachers at the Parramatta Library. The future Bradbury imagined in 1953 has never felt closer; is it too late to heed his warning?WHEN: Friday, 4 April 2025. Arrive at 5:30pm for a 6:00pm start.WHERE: Parramatta Library, 5 Parramatta Square, NSW.Register your interest on Eventbrite.-2. IS AI A TECHNOLOGY TO BE FEARED OR A TOOL TO BE TAUGHT?Over a short period of time, AI has become pervasive. Immensely powerful platforms have placed artificial intelligence at our fingertips, and more than two-thirds of Australian students admit to using AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot. But as with any technology, alongside the convenience and new capabilities come certain risks and unforeseen consequences. The debate is raging over what it would take to ensure that AI’s power can be made to serve the common good. Is education and greater technological literacy part of the solution?WHEN: Saturday, 5 April 2025. Arrive at 10.30am for an 11:00am start.WHERE: ABC Ultimo, 700 Harris Street, Ultimo, NSW.Register your interest on Eventbrite.

Throughout the month of Ramadan, we are examining the range of emotions that arise in response to radical disappointment with the state of the world. Last week, we looked at the centripetal emotion of despair — a response that can cause us to withdraw into ourselves. This week, we turn to the centrifugal emotion of fear — which can take the form of paralysis, but most often is directed outward toward some threat.There are few emotions that are more natural than fear. While fear might be necessary for survival, it is not an emotion we can live comfortably with. We prefer to live without fear, which most often means eradicating what we imagine to be the source or cause of that fear. And therein lies the problem.

The political climate over the last six months in much of the world has been undeniably dark. It’s little wonder that so many people seem to have given in to despair.The causes of this prevailing condition are numerous — they include the ongoing death and destruction in Ukraine and Gaza, the devastating return of dead Israeli hostages, the rising tide of antisemitic and Islamophobic violence, the tearing of Australia’s social fabric, the ascendancy of anti-democratic forces in the world’s advanced democracies, the seeming impotence of international and constitutional law to safeguard our ideals of justice and accountability, the waning of political determination to address climate change.Our despair stems from a sense of radical disappointment with the state of the world. It is not only that the world seems impervious to our collective aspirations for justice, peace and the protection of the vulnerable — it is as if the world rewards mere force and a casual indifference to the fragility of human life.Over the four weeks of the month of Ramadan, we will be exploring some of our responses to this radical disappointment with the world — beginning, appropriately, with despair itself. Should despair always be avoided? When it gives rise to resignation and a kind of nihilist inaction, yes. But despair can also be a morally fitting response to the preciousness of what it is that is lost or under threat.Could it even be, as Henry David Thoreau recognised, that despair can be “the slime and muck” out of which hope, like a water lily, can grow?

As the results of the recent German election came in, a familiar pattern took shape. A broadly unpopular centre-left political party was voted out — due, in no small part, to its immigration policies and perceived economic failures — in favour of a centre-right party who pledged to adopt a “stronger” approach to borders and migrants, and to restore the nation to its former prosperity.Lurking in the wings, meanwhile, is growing far-right movement that cannot overtly be courted by the governing parties, but whose popular appeal is implicitly acknowledged in the way they frame their policies and rhetoric.For decades, the “firewall” (die Brandmauer) has stood between the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), on one side, and the centre-right Christian Democratic Union and the centre-left Social Democratic Party, on the other. But forces from with without, and political tactics from within, seem intent on testing whether that non-cooperation agreement should continue to hold.So is a “firewall” — which seeks to limit the parliamentary influence of the far-right — the right way to defend a constitutional democracy, or does it undermine claims of democratic legitimacy?

Supriya Subramani, a Lecturer in healthcare ethics at the University of Sydney, delves into the fallout from a controversial video where nurses expressed anti-Israeli sentiments, raising urgent ethical concerns in healthcare. The discussion highlights the sacred duty of health professionals to care for all patients, transcending societal conflicts. It also addresses the complexities of community outrage, the intersection of discrimination in healthcare, and emphasizes the need for compassion, understanding, and ethical responsibilities to restore trust among marginalized groups.

In 2016, the Western Bulldogs made an improbable run to the AFL Grand Final. The seventh-place team would beat the minor premiers, the Sydney Swans, and end a six-decade drought. But their longest serving player, the erstwhile captain and heart-and-soul of the team, Bob Murphy, would not take the field. In the third round, a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament had ended the 17-year veteran’s season.After their triumph, Murphy watched his teammates walk up to the dais, one by one, to receive their premiership medal. He felt elation, and pride, at his team’s success. But there was an undeniable separation between him and them. As he wrote in his memoir, Leather Soul:“The Dogs sat atop the football mountain as famous victors and I was part of that, but the 22 players on the field had just become football immortals. There was a clear line between the 22 who played and the rest of us. That’s just how it is in our game.”The secret to the Bulldogs’ success was “team over individual” — and no one embodied that ethos more than Bob Murphy. He tried to console himself that it couldn’t be any different after their Grand Final victory.But then the Bulldogs’ coach, Luke Beveridge, said into the microphone, “I’d like to call Bob Murphy to the stand …”What did this experience teach Murphy about the emotional cords that bind teams together, about the importance of shared stories, about the centrality of connection?