Social

Sartre may have been right when he said Hell is other people. Yet, for some, their first step toward Heaven is meeting the God who shelters in someone else's soul.

Well, yes, we are, according to Rutger Bregman, author of Human Kind. Early in his book he introduces us to Tom Postmes, professor of social psychology at the University of Groningen who, every year, asks students the same question. “Imagine an aeroplane makes an emergency landing and breaks into three parts. As the cabin fills with smoke, everybody inside realises: We’ve got to...

Do you focus on results, or rather on the challenge itself and the development process involved in completing a task? How you answer this question reveals a mindset that has significant implications for all areas of our lives.

"Did you hear what he did?" "Guess what we found out about our new colleague!" In spite of their apparent enthusiasm, gossips—people who laugh loudly and try to capture the attention of others through the tantalising information they have to share—are often not as happy as they seem.

Starting with biblical stories, moving on to myths and legends, and finally reaching the contemporary film industry, people have always been fascinated by heroes. But what makes us look for heroes? What do modern heroes look like and what do they mean to the contemporary world?

It is said that it takes a village to raise a child. It's folk wisdom acknowledging that the development of a person requires the contribution of the whole community. What value does the community add, especially when the community in question is the scientific one?

In America, conservative Protestants seem to divorce at least as often as people of other religious orientations. The idea has become an opportunity for finger-pointing and accusations of hypocrisy, but this is only proof that the statistics are misinterpreted.

When confronted with the pandemic, we are anything but equals.

“The words of the mouth are deep waters, but the fountain of wisdom is a rushing stream” (Proverbs 18:4).

After a chance meeting of mutual friends, I was introduced to Tim and Sonia in a restaurant in central Toowoomba, Queensland, eight days before their home was washed away.

Couples do not break up because they fight, but because they do not know how to argue, relationship therapists say, underlining the functional components of the differences between partners.

Nine years ago, as my then-fiancé and I were deep in the throes of folding paper flowers, painting glass bottles, and designing and making our own wedding stationery, the question popped up fairly regularly: Why don’t we just elope?

Two recent stories in Australian media shocked me to my core. Two 12-year-olds in different states took their own lives after being bullied at school. 

It is said that the intelligent and cynical Talleyrand, a French diplomat and Catholic priest who was later secularised, said to Napoleon when asked to devise a political message: "Sir, give me the idea and I'll find the arguments myself..." If such an intellectual attitude is cynical and unscrupulous in politics, let's imagine the consequences in the religious sphere.

Could it be that, beyond economic, political or geostrategic difficulties, there are obstacles to the ideal of the common good that are inherent in human nature? And if something specific to human nature stood in the way of achieving this ideal, would it not lead to failure, regardless of overcoming all other difficulties?