Professor Joseph Camilleri OAM returns to St Michael’s to deliver three exciting lectures offering a new perspective on how we are travelling in the 21st Century. The presentations will combine interviews with guests and conversation across the generations to help us probe the present and re-imagine the future.
There is no suggestion here that the nightmarish vision of the future Aldous Huxley paints in his Brave New World is upon us. Yet, his reading of the future has a too close- for-comfort feel about it: the conditioning of people to think in certain ways, economic and political dogmas that go virtually unquestioned, the media-shaped narratives of reality, the habit of reducing human beings to consumers, use of language and images that purposely confuse and mislead.
To make sense of current trends in Australia and the West more generally this series focuses on our public institutions, how truthful and trustworthy they are, what we the public think of them, how well equipped we are to handle, individually and collectively, the challenges of life in ‘our brave new world’.
Part 2: Is Social Trust in Decline?
Lee Monik, Jane Hosking, Joanne Brislane and Neal Schwartz, four former students, now well advanced in their respective careers, will lead a discussion about the trustworthiness of our public institutions, this coming Tuesday evening (18 September 6.00 pm at St Michael’s on Collins) in the second of a series of three lectures/seminars around the theme Brave New World.
This will follow my own presentation which will focus on the sharp erosion of public trust we’re now seeing in politics, but also in business, the media and other areas of public life – in Australia and in much of the Western world. How has it come to this? And what of the implications for the future?
Just a word about each of the four panellists:
- Lee works for a trustee services company that provides fiduciary services to investment funds.
- Jane works for World Vision, seeking innovative ways of supporting projects in developing communities.
- Jo has designed and managed initiatives to prevent violence against women and promote gender equality, both in Australia and the Pacific.
- Neal is currently a solicitor-advocate in the Children’s Court focusing on child-protection and youth crime.
Part 2 Is Social Trust in Decline? Tuesday 18 September
What does this mean for Politics, Business, Banking, the Media, Religion?
Part 3 Redeeming Truth and Trust in Public Life: What will it take? Tuesday 25 September
When: Tuesday 18 September 2018, from 6pm
Where: St Michael’s Uniting Church, 120 Collins st Melbourne
Tickets $20 per Seminar or $45 for all 3
Bookings via: https://www.trybooking.com/XKLK or call the Office on 03 9654 5120
