Note: The for­mat of QE is that each par­tic­i­pant must sub­mit a dis­cus­sion ques­tion. There­fore every mee­tup date will fea­ture mul­ti­ple ques­tions.

Par­tic­i­pants are also encour­aged to come up with a list of about 10 con­tribut­ing ques­tions. The mod­el is Socrat­ic ques­tion­ing.

“All the world is mad but you and me, and even you are a lit­tle strange..” Unbal­anced men­tal states range all the way from depres­sion to killer crazy. In Aus­tralia in any given year 4 mil­lion peo­ple will expe­ri­ence a men­tal ill­ness, and 1 mil­lion Aus­tralians have a dis­abling psy­chi­atric dis­or­der. The favoured treat­ments of the age are most­ly phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal. How smart is this?

Whom do you trust? In a soci­ety, less trust = more laws. Sig­nals of trust change between cul­tures, and even social class. In some coun­tries pub­lic trust is almost zero. Also, can a “Face­book friend” or a face from TV be real­ly trust­ed? An Inter­net romance? For some, reli­gion sig­nals trust­wor­thi­ness. What is your solu­tion for build­ing trust in a com­pli­cat­ed world?

An attempt to out­line some sce­nar­ios, blow by blow, over the next four years under a Trump pres­i­den­tial regime. [Aus­tralia may be faced with some very  tough choic­es]

What dri­ves fash­ion – in clothes, ideas, behav­iour, motor cars, and all the rest. What forces work to dis­rupt it? How impor­tant is fash­ion, and to whom?

The kind of world we live in, whether it be work or play or love or even pol­i­tics and the fate of com­mu­ni­ties, depends a lot on the expe­ri­ences we had as chil­dren. Can or should this be influ­enced beyond the fam­i­ly? If so, how and by whom?

For a gen­er­a­tion glob­al­iza­tion has been sold as the yel­low brick road to pros­per­i­ty. What exact­ly is glob­al­iza­tion? Can its ben­e­fits be cher­ry-picked? Where do we go from here?

What part does luck play in the suc­cess of indi­vid­u­als, enter­pris­es and coun­tries? Think of exam­ples. From pol­i­tics to careers to find­ing the love of your life, there has nev­er been more advice avail­able, yet at the end of the game, some peo­ple seem to have been lucky and oth­ers not. Why is this so? Can you real­ly do much about it? 

There are many kinds of research and many kinds of peo­ple involved in research. Some­times what seems use­less at the time can have huge con­se­quences a gen­er­a­tion lat­er (and some­times not). Some research results which seem a tri­umph at the time are show use­less by lat­er devel­op­ments. A career in research requires ded­i­ca­tion and tal­ent, but is high­ly risky in terms of per­son­al and insti­tu­tion­al suc­cess. How can all of the­se fac­tors be bal­anced?

Pay every­one $400 per week (cur­rent age pen­sion), rich or poor, indexed to the CPI. Gov­ern­ments print the mon­ey (they do now), and the mon­ey goes around. You have an econ­o­my. Employ­ers pay a mar­gin above the UBI to attract work­ers if they want them (over­all prob­a­bly cheap­er for them than now). A true mar­ket then con­trols most work­ing con­di­tions, not the cur­rent black­mail. Cen­tre­link (now a failed orga­ni­za­tion) not need­ed. Tax sys­tem sim­pli­fied. Automa­tion tak­ing jobs doesn’t mat­ter. Health costs fall. Peo­ple can choose to learn, grow and think. Free uni­ver­si­ty & tech (like Ger­many). Employ­ment for sat­is­fac­tion, more mon­ey and/or career inter­est.

“ It costs … tax­pay­ers $109,782.60 a year – or $301.60 each day — to keep a pris­on­er “on the inside”, accord­ing to the Aus­tralian Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty Com­mis­sion. Alter­na­tive­ly it costs $49,700 – less than half — to provide that pris­on­er with rent, food, a small four-cylin­der car and mon­ey for any degree in Aus­tralia for a year”. [Bris­bane Times 28 Febuary 2016]

Com­ment: some­where out there in med­ical-land there is a use­ful answer for many med­ical ques­tions, but expe­ri­ence (mine at least) sug­gests that odds of find­ing a GP who knows is often slim. For some­one with basic research skills, good answers tend to come bet­ter (and more cheap­ly!) from “Dr Google”. Also Dr Google soon shows up where the sci­ence is not set­tled (most issues), but doc­tors rarely do. Nor will they debate the evi­dence.

Cities are a com­pli­cat­ed and fas­ci­nat­ing sub­ject. They pose end­less ques­tions. For exam­ple, as indi­vid­u­als, are our life oppor­tu­ni­ties more defined by par­tic­u­lar cities than par­tic­u­lar coun­tries? How much loy­al­ty and sweat should we invest in a par­tic­u­lar city? What makes a good city? How impor­tant is it for a city to be well-known, and what can they do about it? The UN lists 4,416 cities in the world with a pop­u­la­tion of over 150,000. The biggest (Tokyo and Jakar­ta) have over 30 mil­lion peo­ple. Cities usu­al­ly want to be “rec­og­nized” to attract some kind of advan­tage, usu­al­ly eco­nom­ic. Is this kind of ‘city exhi­bi­tion­ism’ a waste of time? .. and more ques­tions that you can think of.

First­ly a lot (not all) of “mod­ern” art and poet­ry and even music stopped say­ing much about the soci­eties which host­ed them and became pure­ly self indul­gent, often pompous­ly “abstract”. This mir­rored a lot (not all) of what was hap­pen­ing in many areas of aca­d­e­mic work, and a lot (not all) of what was hap­pen­ing in so-called high finance. When the dig­i­tal cam­era democ­ra­tized imagery, “self­ies” (or the ulti­mate self-indul­gence, sex­ting) became the dom­i­nant form of pho­tog­ra­phy. Now Don­ald Trump stands on top of the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal muck heap and asks to be anoint­ed as the emper­or of self-love. 

It is often said that his­to­ry is writ­ten by the win­ners. You might also say that pop­u­lar his­to­ry is writ­ten by Hol­ly­wood, or Face­book, or what­ev­er polit­i­cal enclave you are liv­ing in .. Does any of this mat­ter?

Pol­i­tics is like med­i­cine: some­times use­ful, even nec­es­sary, in small amounts, but fatal if tak­en in an over­dose. Politi­cians can be a use­ful species but are prone to going fer­al. Democ­ra­cies often elect either medi­oc­ri­ties or con­fi­dence trick­sters because large num­bers of elec­tors share sim­i­lar qual­i­ties. In prac­ti­cal terms, is there a bet­ter way to man­age nation­al affairs?

Aus­tralia has over 600,000 not-for-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions, and a quick­ly expand­ing “shar­ing econ­o­my” (e.g. Uber, Airbnb, eBay). Most of this is under the radar of news reports. What are the signs that NFP’s and the shar­ing econ­o­my can become a main career path for many when automa­tion destroys half of nor­mal jobs Aus­tralia & Amer­i­ca in the next few years?

Over 140* peo­ple have now signed up to the Active Think­ing mee­tup… So let us know (active­ly!) what you expect to hap­pen when you and a 7 oth­er peo­ple get togeth­er in the State Library to think active­ly about a cho­sen top­ic. How do you approach puz­zling top­ics over and above giv­ing a sim­ple unex­am­ined opin­ion? (And just for laughs, how might cyborgs think through things dif­fer­ent­ly?)  Um, what top­ics are you ready to think about active­ly?

[*post­script: Over 500 had signed up by a year lat­er when I dis­con­tin­ued the series Most were ghosts who nev­er came]

There are road acci­dent reporters, but there do not seem to be inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ists and insight­ful com­men­ta­tors who inter­pret the city to itself. What is to be done?

Can we rec­on­cile “live and let live” with “draw­ing a line in the sand”?

Exam­ple: Many Amer­i­cans see “the right to bear arms” as a tri­umph of indi­vid­u­al rights over the col­lec­tive rights of the state. 

How can we inter­pret Bader’s idea?

Note: for a few weeks this mee­tup was called “Par­lia­ment of Eight”, so the abbre­vi­a­tion of the series is AP8

Imag­ine that you are start­ing a new busi­ness. What would it be? Why did you choose it? Why would you choose a per­son­al enter­prise over work­ing for some­body else (or why wouldn’t you)? What rewards would you be look­ing for? What per­son­al costs would you be pre­pared to tol­er­ate? Would you attempt it alone, or would you look for partner(s)? What are the ways you could fund such a star­tup? Would it be local, or seek a wider mar­ket? .

Every­one has only 24 hours in a day. In many coun­tries the sheer strug­gle to sur­vive occu­pies most wak­ing hours. In some oth­ers, any “free think­ing time” is care­ful­ly manip­u­lat­ed by state direct­ed activ­i­ties, pro­pa­gan­da and cen­sor­ship. A pos­si­ble third mod­el is that rul­ing elites and gov­ern­ments may pre­vent crit­i­cism by dis­tract­ing the main pop­u­la­tion with sports, enter­tain­ment and end­less triv­ial ‘news’.

What­ev­er you think of reli­gions per­son­al­ly, or any par­tic­u­lar reli­gion, they seem to have been around forever amongst (most) humans, and seem unlike­ly to go away entire­ly amongst the species as a whole. Clear­ly though, par­tic­u­lar cul­tures in var­i­ous his­tor­i­cal phas­es have many mem­bers who are attract­ed to reli­gions or sub­sti­tute ide­olo­gies, but tend to drift away from them in oth­er phas­es. At a dif­fer­ent lev­el, wom­en seem to be the most per­sis­tent believ­ers by num­bers, but reli­gious hier­ar­chies are almost always con­trolled by (humour­less old) men…  What is it in human psy­chol­o­gy that gen­er­ates the­se reli­gious phe­nom­e­na?

Forty years ago the biggest social debates were about the accept­abil­i­ty (or not) of cen­sor­ship relat­ed to sex­u­al­i­ty. Now the pre­oc­cu­pa­tion might be more with polit­i­cal cen­sor­ship. There are many kinds of cen­sor­ship, includ­ing self-cen­sor­ship. Who should be draw­ing the­se invis­i­ble lines in the sand, and applied to what?

With the rock­et­ing prices of ter­tiary edu­ca­tion and the avail­abil­i­ty of free online open cours­es, will uni­ver­si­ty edu­ca­tion become obso­lete? What needs to change in the sys­tem to adapt to the new real­i­ties of the work­place and tech­nol­o­gy?

Aus­tralians trav­el quite a lot inter­na­tion­al­ly, most Amer­i­cans very lit­tle. How well is inter­na­tion­al tourism expe­ri­ence of Aus­tralians reflect­ed in a greater tol­er­ance of oth­er ways of life?

Every­one has only 24 hours in a day. In many coun­tries the sheer strug­gle to sur­vive occu­pies most wak­ing hours. In some oth­ers, any “free think­ing time” is care­ful­ly manip­u­lat­ed by state direct­ed activ­i­ties, pro­pa­gan­da and cen­sor­ship. A pos­si­ble third mod­el is that rul­ing elites and gov­ern­ments may pre­vent crit­i­cism by dis­tract­ing the main pop­u­la­tion with sports, enter­tain­ment and end­less triv­ial ‘news’.

The Best Script for 40–90? : Biol­o­gy and every cul­ture offer fair­ly clear scripts for ear­ly growth, edu­ca­tion, breed­ing and careers. Now the longest part of our lives is 40–90, and the script seems con­fused. How can this lat­er peri­od be opti­mized? [pro­posed by Thor]

Since World War II Australia’s lead­ers have con­scious­ly posi­tioned Aus­tralia as a client state of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. Defence forces are total­ly inte­grat­ed, and for­eign pol­i­cy rarely devi­ates from the Amer­i­can line. Australia’s com­mer­cial cul­ture is Amer­i­ca writ small. Is this Amer­i­can pat­tern­ing the best option for Aus­tralia in the future?

Does social media improve the qual­i­ty of human rela­tion­ships, or not?

It’s all around us. From face lifts to lux­u­ry cars on hire pur­chase, from inflat­ed CVs to exag­ger­at­ed job titles, from com­pa­ny pub­lic­i­ty mate­ri­al to the spin that gov­ern­ments put on their fail­ures and decep­tions. At what point does fak­ery become fraud? Would the world be a duller place with­out it?

For most ordi­nary peo­ple, their job is not some­thing that they enjoy much. How­ev­er, with­out for­mal work they lose focus, become depen­dent on wel­fare, and become social­ly stig­ma­tized. It seems that increas­ing num­bers of peo­ple will nev­er be able to have secure employ­ment. What is a prac­ti­cal, long term nation­al solu­tion to “the work prob­lem” for ordi­nary peo­ple?

Before the 19^th Cen­tu­ry few peo­ple trav­elled much, and nation states as we under­stand them hard­ly exist­ed. Now bor­ders are rigid­ly defined, tourism is com­mon, but emi­gra­tion is a strict priv­i­lege. What are viable alter­na­tives, if any, to the present pat­tern?

How does own­ing (or not own­ing) real estate, and mort­gage debt, influ­ence the behav­iour of indi­vid­u­als in their wider lives? What are the con­se­quences of the­se pat­terns for whole nations?

Is edu­ca­tion most com­mon­ly treat­ed pure­ly as an instru­men­tal tool (e.g. to get a job), or as a path to self-devel­op­ment, or both? How can a bal­ance between objec­tives be achieved in pub­lic edu­ca­tion?

The Aus­tralian Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment is propos­ing a new law to expand the pow­ers of nation­al secu­ri­ty agen­cies and increase penalties for dis­clos­ing pro­tect­ed infor­ma­tion. Would this law be in Australia’s best inter­ests?

What are some illu­sions Aus­tralians live by? .. and why would we want to dis­pense with illu­sions? Think of the imag­i­nary coun­tries we live in. Do all those peo­ple you pass on the street every day have their heads in the same place that you do? What are some con­se­quences of NOT shar­ing the same illu­sions?

When can the use of rea­son lead to bet­ter lives and soci­eties, and when can it under­mine them?

Think­ing point: The Attor­ney Gen­er­al, George Bran­dis has just declared that argu­ments for cli­mate change are irra­tional and that those who assert it should take a lesson from Voltaire … http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/climate-change-proponents-using-mediaeval-tactics-george-brandis-20140418-zqwfc.html#ixzz2zDYtpzHx

Soon­er or lat­er every­one — indi­vid­u­als, gov­ern­ments, com­pa­nies — has to make choic­es about whether to put aside cer­tain val­ues to achieve a desired end. Michael Pas­coe, an Aus­tralian finan­cial jour­nal­ist, has recent­ly dis­cussed this at http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/business/comment-and-analysis/abandon-principles-and-pay-the-price-20140331-35tz4.html

Every­one fails at some­thing soon­er or lat­er. The impor­tant thing is how they han­dle fail­ure. A recent edu­ca­tion­al fad in Amer­i­ca is to teach stu­dents “grit” (http://www.npr.org/2014/03/17/290089998/does-teaching-kids-to-get-gritty-help-them-get-ahead ). How have you man­aged your fail­ures, and has fail­ure made you a bet­ter per­son?

exam­ples — Ger­many, Turkey (Arme­ni­ans), Sovi­et Union, Iran, South Africa Rwan­da, Aus­tralia (Abo­rig­i­nes) etc etc

 Addi­tion­al bil­lions have been spent on edu­ca­tion with­out a marked improve­ment. Some argue for and again­st exams, and oth­ers argue for a com­pe­ten­cy based assess­ment method. Oth­ers argue that it is the qual­i­ty of teach­ers that is the key fac­tor, whilst oth­ers argue that based on the con­cept of the bell curve there will always be those who are at the upper end and those at the low­er end. What do you think?

The 20th Cen­tu­ry revolved polit­i­cal­ly around com­pet­ing inter­pre­ta­tions of Cap­i­tal­ism, Com­mu­nism, Social­ism and Fas­cism. The­se are all ways to orga­nize the lives of peo­ple on a large scale. Are real alter­na­tives or new inter­pre­ta­tions like­ly to emerge in the chal­leng­ing years ahead? What might they look like?

 Please present your mod­el of a utopi­an soci­ety, and why you think it would work. Or are you rea­son­ably hap­py with the present sys­tem? Are there any sig­nif­i­cant changes you would like to make?

 Have there been any out­stand­ing­ly good peo­ple in human his­to­ry, or have the life sto­ries of those held up as good (e.g. Gand­hi, Moth­er Tere­sa, the Dalai Lama, Mar­t­in Luther King) been “pho­to­shopped” to suit the pur­pos­es of oth­ers? Do our con­cepts of what is good pro­gress over time any­way, such that what once was moral­ly out­stand­ing (e.g. oppos­ing slav­ery) is now mere­ly nor­mal?

Humans are not sta­t­ic. Evo­lu­tion is an ongo­ing process. Humans will inevitably change over time from var­i­ous selec­tive pres­sures on sur­vival and repro­duc­tion. That much is cer­tain. Equal­ly cer­tain is the fact that the indi­vid­u­al and col­lec­tive deci­sions of humans will have var­i­ous direct and indi­rect effects on this grad­u­al change. The only ques­tion that remains is to decide whether we wish for our influ­ence on our con­tin­ued evo­lu­tion to be ran­dom, dis­or­gan­ised and entire­ly unin­ten­tion­al (remain­ing in denial of the facts due to the stig­ma on eugen­ics), or to make our influ­ence very delib­er­ate, care­ful and cal­cu­lat­ed.
The fact is that (whether we like it or not) we are faced with the ques­tion of how we want to change our species, and denial of this will only mean that we leave the des­ti­na­tion of our species to pure chance, which doesn’t seem like a very respon­si­ble or intel­li­gent respon­se to me.

Humans have a short phys­i­cal exis­tence on a plan­et that will even­tu­al­ly cease to sup­port life at all. In this con­text, what strate­gies should humans use to impart mean­ing to their own lives? Some pos­si­bil­i­ties are list­ed. Which of the­se have you used, and how effec­tive have they been? Are dif­fer­ent approach­es appro­pri­ate to dif­fer­ent stages of life? 

A. Com­pete with oth­er humans (e.g. for sta­tus)
B. Care for oth­er humans (e.g. as a human­i­tar­i­an)
C. Max­i­mize close con­nec­tions with oth­er humans (e.g. with a love part­ner)
D. Max­i­mize pos­i­tive sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ences (e.g. “be hap­py”)
E. Align your­self with what you believe to be a high­er pur­pose (e.g. pol­i­tics)
F. Adhere to a set of rules/standards (e.g. moral pre­cepts)
G. Attempt to cre­ate some­thing that will out­live you (e.g. art) 
H. Invest in the next gen­er­a­tion of humans (e.g. your bio­log­i­cal off­spring)
I. Oth­er approach­es?

Some believe “igno­rance is bliss”, and the more they know the more they get wor­ried. On the oth­er hand we def­i­nite­ly can’t be indif­fer­ent about many things. From a social per­spec­tive, through which we try to man­age our rela­tion­ship with oth­ers in a friend­ly man­ner, what is the bor­der­line between legit­i­mate wor­ry (which leads to tak­ing action) and indif­fer­ence (which pre­serve peace of mind, at least in the short term)? Is it moral­ly per­mis­si­ble to encour­age oth­er peo­ple to wor­ry about cer­tain issues, say glob­al warm­ing, human rights, ani­mal rights, etc. to pre­cip­i­tate effec­tive action? Should we con­sid­er them self­ish if they are innate­ly not con­cerned about such issues, or mere­ly show token agree­ment?

Sharia law in Aus­tralia. Is it pos­si­ble for Islam­ic law to coex­ist with West­ern prin­ci­ples in Aus­tralia? Are efforts to cre­ate par­al­lel legal sys­tems legit­i­mate for Mus­lim Aus­tralians? How does this com­pare with par­al­lel legal sys­tems where they exist for indige­nous Aus­tralians?

Mar­riage laws–how broad should they be? Gay mar­riage is a cur­rent top­ic in many coun­tries around the world, and it is like­ly that it will even­tu­al­ly become the norm in most West­ern coun­tries. What oth­er forms of mar­riage might we be pre­pared to accept? Polygamy is a form of mar­riage that is tech­ni­cal­ly not legal in Aus­tralia, but is infor­mal­ly accept­ed. Should polyg­a­mous mar­riage be legal and if so, with­in which lim­its? How would the legal sys­tem need to change to accom­mo­date polyg­a­mous mar­riage?

Recre­ation­al drugs–should they be decrim­i­nal­ized? In 2001, Por­tu­gal became the first Euro­pean coun­try to abol­ish crim­i­nal penalties for per­son­al pos­ses­sion of drugs, includ­ing mar­i­jua­na, cocaine, hero­in and metham­phet­a­mine. (This goes well beyond poli­cies adopt­ed in Hol­land, which has not legalised soft drugs, but does not enforce the exist­ing laws.) Is decrim­i­nal­is­ing drugs a good idea? What would be the effect if it were done in Aus­tralia?

Coal seam gas–a tech­nol­o­gy for a green future? Most pro­jec­tions of future ener­gy use include an increas­ing pro­por­tion of nat­u­ral gas as part of an effort to reduce green­house gas emis­sions. Nat­u­ral gas is increas­ing­ly pro­duced by “frack­ing”, and has already led to a decrease in US CO2 emis­sions, but it is a con­tro­ver­sial method. Should we allow frack­ing in order to mit­i­gate green­house gas emis­sions? Is it bet­ter for us to use coal seam gas, than direct­ly mine the coal?

Drugs in sport. What should be our respon­se to the use of per­for­mance-enhanc­ing sub­stances in pro­fes­sion­al sport? Should ath­letes be allowed to use any and all drugs? What about blood trans­fu­sions? What about genet­ic ther­a­py or sur­gi­cal enhance­ment? Is it pos­si­ble to have a clean sport?

Amer­i­ca has obvi­ous­ly just gone into sev­ere trust deficit with NSA inter­cept­ing everyone’s pri­vate com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Is this just about coun­tries though? Is the “trust index” drop­ping every­where, even at a per­son­al lev­el? How do cul­tures dif­fer in this?

New writ­ing by Thor: “The Pre­car­i­ous­ly Employed — that’s you, today or tomor­row — A Search for a New World Order”. This is a work in pro­gress. Revi­sion and exten­sion is like­ly. The top­ic is immense, but immense­ly impor­tant. Ideas and con­tri­bu­tions are wel­come… see http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/Precariat.htm

A human epi­demic of obe­si­ty / near-obe­si­ty has cor­re­lat­ed world­wide with the spread of man­u­fac­tured food & bev­er­age, and motor­ized trans­port. Diet & exer­cise though seem to be intense­ly per­son­al choic­es. How can this dilem­ma be solved?

Politi­cians and man­age­ment gurus tell us end­less­ly that inno­va­tion is crit­i­cal to nation­al sur­vival. Yet inno­va­tion requires cre­ativ­i­ty, and cre­ativ­i­ty needs a mind­set which does not usu­al­ly spring from accoun­tants and process work­ers. In fact, the most dynam­ic part of many economies world­wide is (and always has been) found in arts, music, film, per­for­mance skills, inspired writ­ing (imag­i­na­tive or non-fic­tion), and fine design of all kinds. Should the­se activ­i­ties be pure­ly for an elite, or should they be fund­ed and nur­tured for every­one with­in the nation­al edu­ca­tion frame­work?

[This top­ic incor­po­rates ele­ments from Top­ics 24 and 32]

Are we all in fact spir­i­tu­al? Is this term sim­ply a vague, redun­dant descrip­tion?

A read­ing list for this top­ic is online at http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/DiscussionTopics/SpiritualPeople.htm  (Sug­ges­tions for addi­tions are wel­come)

Is love an evo­lu­tion­ary instinct? I.e., is it an innate, uncon­scious impulse that has been encod­ed into our genes over mil­lions of years as a mech­a­nism to ensure the sur­vival of (the whole or indi­vid­u­al mem­bers of) the species? Or is there more to it? Is there anoth­er way to explain it? Do all ani­mals expe­ri­ence love?

Embry­on­ic stem cell research may offer rev­o­lu­tion­ary med­ical treat­ments because the embry­on­ic stem cell is the only cell we know of that can dif­fer­en­ti­ate itself into any oth­er type of cell, and can repli­cate itself indef­i­nite­ly. How­ev­er, embry­on­ic stem cell research is con­sid­ered con­tro­ver­sial because some con­sid­er that a blas­to­cyst (a fer­til­ized egg), from which embry­on­ic stem cells are obtained, is a human being.

Is Eng­lish the most impor­tant lan­guage in the world? Is all lan­guage trans­lat­able? Which parts of which lan­guages are incom­pat­i­ble with oth­er lan­guages and how do dif­fer­ent groups of indi­vid­u­als deal with that? Will glob­al­iza­tion accel­er­ate the loss of cer­tain native lan­guages? What are the con­se­quences of focus­ing on learn­ing the dom­i­nant lan­guages and not focus­ing on pre­serv­ing native lan­guages?

Is there any alter­na­tive gov­ern­ment struc­ture bet­ter than democ­ra­cy? What’s beyond democ­ra­cy? Is it impor­tant to have everyone’s voice being heard or is it the major­i­ty opin­ion that counts? Does the whole vot­ing sys­tem rep­re­sent a nation? What if vot­ing is not com­pul­so­ry in Aus­tralia?

Do the arts mat­ter? What does Arts Edu­ca­tion means to Aus­tralians and how do the Arts for­mu­late the char­ac­ter of a Nation? Can the arts inspire change, pro­voke thoughts in human life or are they a com­plete waste of time? Is it just extra mon­ey spent sat­is­fy­ing our need for enter­tain­ment? Is Arts edu­ca­tion as impor­tant as Sports edu­ca­tion in shap­ing a nation’s wealth and health? Or is Sport more mean­ing­ful than Arts?