The Minefield

Now that John Cleese has announced that the iconic series will return, it’s worth examining what made Fawlty Towers a masterpiece — and whether its interaction with the political climate of the 1970s had anything to do with it.

What made the Online Compliance Initiative — better known as the Robodebt scheme — so egregious is the way it was designed to treat those purported to be “welfare cheats” with utter contempt.

Even though we rarely frame it in these terms, it is hardly inappropriate to refer to the relationship between a parent and a child as a moral relationship. Professor Luara Ferracioli joins Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens to explore the nature, and limits, of that relationship.

There are good political and philosophical reasons for seeing free and equal access to early childhood education as an expression of our shared commitment to justice.

Dr Lauren Gurrieri joins Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens to discuss the sophisticated ways sports gambling operators are targeting new clientele — through targeted ads and by parasitising existing social media technologies.

Professor Naomi Baron joins Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens to discuss whether ChatGPT and its soon-to-be-released competitors, with their lure of efficiency and ease, are threatening the human ability to write.

Professor Maryanne Wolf joins Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens to discuss whether we are entering an age of widespread moral illiteracy — an incapacity to engage in the processes that make up the habit of deep reading.

Professor Mark McKenna discusses with Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens why any proposal to change the Australian Constitution must navigate Australians’ conservative disposition and underlying sense of national pride.

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?

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.

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?

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?

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.

In November 2022, Scott Stephens delivered the 20th annual Simone Weil Lecture on Human Value hosted by the Australian Catholic University. His topic was the moral conditions of democratic life.

Over the next few weeks, we are bound to be in the same space with some most disagreeable company. Is this a prospect we should dread?

Does Stanley Kramer's 1967 film, "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", have to make too many sacrifices in order to be morally palatable to its white audience?

Jealousy is one of those rare emotions whose presence or evidence is almost always looked down upon, but whose total absence is also viewed with a certain suspicion, even disdain. So how does it differ from envy? Can jealousy ever be "moral"?

Ever since the advent of “ready-to-wear” mass-produced clothing, the brands and prevailing fashions they establish hold out a kind of “idealised” body to which wearers must conform.

In our time, civility has gotten a bad name — usually by being reduced to something like politeness or courtesy. But is that all there is to civility?

There is no denying that Queen’s set at Live Aid on 13 July 1985 was one of the most electrifying live performances ever captured. But did Queen simply pull out their “greatest hits”, or were they attuned to the ethical demands of the occasion? Guest: Shane Homan is the Head of the School of Media, Film and Journalism at Monash University.

Movements like Extinction Rebellion and Effective Altruism both regard the fact of climate change and the impending threat of climate catastrophe as moral realities that cannot be ignored. Which is the more fitting response?

How far should clubs be expected to go when it comes to accommodating the ethical or religious objections of their players to wear sponsor logos?

Politics is sometimes called the “art of the possible”, which entails sacrificing what is ideal for the sake what is tolerable and achievable. But when are such compromises virtuous, and when are they a form of consent to injustice?

What are we to make of Elon Musk’s claims about “free speech” and about a private company functioning as a “de facto public town square”?

Because of the pervasiveness of contempt, we no longer see those with whom we radically disagree as members of a common moral community, and therefore as participants in a shared political project.