Finding Soho

Systems that govern economic transactions can be inherently opaque. While there is an expectation of transparency, the reality can be quite different, and the consequences of a lack of transparency can be significant. There is a cultural tendency to preserve the lack of transparency in economic transactions, and this is something that appears to be an inheritance of the pre-21st century political economy. For example, there is a tendency in the language of contractual laws to allow opportunities for the contravention of transparency obligations. This language is ingrained in the discourse of the professionals who manage these systems. The values attached to secrecy around economic transactions pervade the systems and create a culture where transparency is deemed to be something that needs to be 'managed'. For novices - people who have not properly interacted with these systems before - the sudden realisation that there are so many hitherto unknown nuances to transactions, which...

How does one understand the value of time for someone whose liberty has been curtailed for many years? In thinking about years of life and liberty lost, there are a number of crucial factors to consider for which we have no reliable measure except perhaps what know from our own experience - lost opportunity to grow into the world with your loved ones, develop an identity, nurture friendships, find love, explore the horizons of your world and beyond, learn complex things, experience ageing and physically, emotionally and intellectually changing over time, and so much more. How does one even estimate the value of lost time? It is almost impossible to do this. No belief or knowledge system can help one appreciate the value of lost time. So, given the impossibility of this task, do we have adequate ways of considering the value of lost time in building safeguards against gross errors in processes designed to impose confinement and confiscation of liberty? If so, how do we acknowledge and r...

What does the documentary series The Innocence Files teach us? There is a lot to learn about the challenges and flaws of justice systems and about the humanity and compassion of those who go against the grain to fight for the rights of people whose lives have been wrongly and unfairly destroyed by wrongful prosecution and conviction. There is a lot to learn about the seemingly superhuman capacity for patience and perseverance that some people demonstrate even in the face of the most trying of circumstances, where hope has been completely snatched away from them and even the absolute truth cannot save them. There is a lot to learn about the failings and ill will of people entrusted to protect people's rights and serve justice, and how flawed decision-making or malicious persecution can irreparably destroy innocent people's lives. But there is something that the documentary series cannot teach us at all, because it is impossible to fathom and almost impossible to articulate - tha...

Against a backdrop of increasing migration from Asia to Australia, the experience of Asian visitors and immigrants coming into Australia has changed over time; rather than disorientation, Asian migrants coming to Australia may experience a relatively more comfortable ‘settling in’. Drawing on existing networks and connections with established Australian residents (occasionally facilitated by family networks back home), new visitors and migrants can foster a sense of community fairly quickly and use support networks to gather information, manage the logistics of travel or settlement and participate in social events. The traditional pressures that attend physical relocation may thus feel less urgent and onerous, and the affective impacts of cultural adjustment may be less significant. Communities of settled migrants can provide a potentially helpful safety net or point of reference for newly arrived migrants, making these people feel like a part of an existing community and thus helping ...

It suddenly occurred to me yesterday how normal I find the experience of living among people from so many different cultures and countries. I went to a Greek restaurant and knew exactly what to order and how to pronounce it correctly. I did it almost unconsciously and the transaction was over quite quickly because I was so precise. (I became conscious of this because the customer before me was asking about every item and still trying to figure out what to order.) But later on, I thought to myself, how did I become this person who knows all this information? Because I didn't grow up in this setting. But now the experience is so familiar and so ingrained, I can't imagine life otherwise. The person that I was before would look upon me now and find it odd that I am familiar with the cultures, objects and tastes of so many different ethnicities and nationalities. But to the person that I am now, that is ordinary. There are so many ways in which I and so many others who have experien...

TW: self-harm This is an incredibly sad report. The tragic circumstances surrounding this man's death are heartbreaking. But it is clear that he was someone who was determined to seek help. He was an ABI survivor who underwent post-acute rehabilitation and expressed his intentions to persevere and live his best life in a succinct and powerful way. He was determined to continue to heal and recover. And, from the brief glimpse into his life that this report offers, it is apparent that he was engaging with mental health professionals in order to persevere with his recovery. It is sad that he experienced the crisis and desolation that led to his death. It sounds like he was courageous, willing and able to seek help when he needed it most. This tragic story indicates that mental health and psychiatric nursing has the potential to contribute in a powerful way to securing and safeguarding lives at critical moments. Rehabilitation care too is such an important field. This is where people ...

 “We have seen that imagining an act engages the same motor and sensory programs that are involved in doing it. We have long viewed our imaginative life with a kind of sacred awe: as noble, pure, immaterial, and ethereal, cut off from our material brain. Now we cannot be so sure about where to draw the line between them. Everything your “immaterial” mind imagines leaves material traces. Each thought alters the physical state of your brain synapses at a microscopic level. Each time you imagine moving your fingers across the keys to play the piano, you alter the tendrils in your living brain. These experiments are not only delightful and intriguing, they also overturn the centuries of confusion that have grown out of the work of the French philosopher René Descartes, who argued that mind and brain are made of different substances and are governed by different laws. The brain, he claimed, was a physical, material thing, existing in space and obeying the laws of physics. The mind (or t...