Aesthetic Beauty Beauty is by large a social construct. Social constructs are carried and manifested through social institutions that impress themselves on populations, transmuting often unspoken beliefs about is and aughts into conventional wisdoms and actionable truths. Whilst some social constructs and the institutions they flow through are relatively benign, the concept of objective beauty is one…
The US and Allied forces withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years of a war that had come to “have no clear purpose” was one of the most sensational and dramatic events in modern times. Images of would-be refugees of the war-ravaged country clinging to the sides of American cargo planes proliferated across the internet, penetrating…
Technology is at the core of our lives. Technology has become so ubiquitous that often technological progress has surrogated for the more general notion of progress, hiding truths about social, ideological and philosophical progress that often underpin true progression.It has been forgotten that the point of technology was once to create more productive lives, to…
Every 10 minutes, Australians throw away 15 tonnes of fashion waste on the planet. This amounts to 800,000 tons per individual a year. With the increase in buying and producing fashion products, about 148 million tonnes of fashion waste is expected by 2030. This is fuelled by a relentless pursuit of up-to-datedness but is being…
During the 90’s and leading into the early 2000’s, there was a society wide expectation that racism was largely over. Although many forms of explicit racism had vanished from the primary social view, racism still occurred and occurs in the realms where its most damaging effects manifested; economic and cultural. The banishing of explicit iconographic racism should be seen…
I grew up as a non-white, Australian. Specifically, I grew up as a South Korean, Asian. I have to say this was an odd experience. Australia is a known multicultural society that values a fair go for everyone and generally has disdain for overt and explicit racism, like most other western countries. Despite this, I grew up…
Our relationship with mental health and mental health issues have had a uniquely formative power over our lives. The way that mental health has been seen throughout history has informed so many of the narratives we tell ourselves about why we act the way we are, the things that drive our worst and best decisions. At our…
Humans are uniquely prone to body image issues. As visual and social creatures, the way we see ourselves is linked in complex and systemic ways in the way we see each other and the world around us. This may sound like a vague explanationas to why body image issues are so prevalent, a brush offeven, but there is a critical truth to this…
Homelessness is a notoriously difficult subject to talk about. Unfortunately, during the 80’s, moral aggrandizing attached a type of cultural structure to homelessness that caused a large amount of otherwise decent and empathetic folk to see homelessness in a specific way. A caricature of a homeless white male shaking a cup at pedestrians to buy drugs or…
DISCLAIMER: This article was written by a male and so will be limited by their male experience. It’s been a long road for modern feminists and their allies. As we celebrate International Women’s Day, we will take a moment to reflect on the ongoing resourcefulness, strength and unity of the modern feminist cause but also…