As high poll numbers are increasingly emboldening One Nation, Pauline Hanson now says she might seek to move to the House of Representatives.
Her adviser James Ashby first floated the idea on Sky News on Monday, saying he would “throw a new one into the mix”.
“Pauline Hanson might step down from the Senate […] and run for the seat that she lives in,” he said.
On Tuesday Hanson confirmed a lower house tilt was a possibility, saying, “It’s under consideration; no decisions have been made.
"We’re still two years outside the election.”
The speculation around Hanson follows One Nation’s Barnaby Joyce repeating in recent days that he might stand for the party in his present seat of New England, rather than run for the Senate at the next election, which has been his more likely option since he defected from the Nationals.
He told Sky on Sunday, “If it looks like we’re going to get […] a reasonable number of House of Representatives seats, then the party will no doubt make the request that I stand for New England,” he said.
“We have to have some oversight and some process to make sure we look like a professional diligent outfit in the House of Representatives.
"If that is not the case, then we continue with Plan A, which is stand for the Senate.”
Hanson lives in the Queensland seat of Wright, which is held by the Liberals. An alternative for her would be the Labor-held seat of Blair.
But hard heads will be warning Hanson of the dangers of trying to make a shift to the lower house. Failure to pull it off could not only see her out of parliament but could lead to the collapse of the party, which is built around its 71-year-old leader.
Hanson started her parliamentary career in the House of Representatives when she won the seat of Oxley as an independent. She had been disendorsed by the Liberal Party because of remarks about programs for Indigenous people, but given the timing she still had the Liberal tag beside her name on the ballot paper. She lost the seat in 1998.
Hanson is up for re-election at the 2028 election.
One Nation’s surge in the polls in recent months is leading to some muscle-flexing and a degree of hubris. Senior party figures have been saying that if there were a hung parliament, One Nation would give confidence and supply for a Coalition government but would want to obtain concessions on policy in return.
The party’s federal support is about to be tested in real time this weekend in the Farrer byelection, seen as a tight contest between One Nation’s David Farley and independent Michelle Milthorpe. Farley is receiving preferences over Milthorpe from both the Liberals and the Nationals.
If Farley wins Farrer, this will be the first time One Nation has won a House of Representatives seat.
A win would give it an important platform for trying to win regional seats in the November Victorian election.
Hanson was in Adelaide on Tuesday for the swearing in of the One Nation team in the new South Australian parliament. The party there has four lower house members and three in the upper house; its leader is Cory Bernardi, a one-time Liberal senator.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Across the world, concern about democratic backsliding – the erosion of democratic institutions and civil liberties – is growing.
It has become a live issue even in established systems, where erosion can often occur through the steady degradation of institutions and processes.
A recent report by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) highlights the role of parliamentary processes in this dynamic.
The core insight of this report is deceptively simple: parliamentary rules are not just procedural technicalities. They are often important institutional guardrails for democracy.
The IDEA report identifies several ways in which these guardrails can be undermined. Governments may compress legislative timelines, limit debate, or curtail committee scrutiny in ways that reduce the capacity of parliaments to perform their core functions. Procedural tools – for example, control over the legislative agenda or the structuring of committees – can be used to entrench executive dominance.
These insights resonate in how democracy in practised in Australia. There is a growing chorus of concern – from academics, research-based organisations such as the Centre for Public Integrity, professional bodies such as the Law Council of Australia, and non-government parliamentarians – that the Australian parliament is being undermined in different ways. As a result, policies and accountability are suffering.
Law-making with little parliamentary oversight
A first area of concern is the heavy reliance on executive law-making with little respect for parliamentary oversight. This was particularly apparent during the COVID pandemic, where governments understandably required flexibility to respond to rapidly evolving circumstances.
The Senate Scrutiny of Delegated Legislation Committee’s inquiry showed how easily significant executive lawmaking was undertaken outside of parliamentary control. In just the first seven months of 2020, 249 legislative instruments were made. Of those, 48 — around 20% — were exempt from parliamentary disallowance (that is, the parliament cannot veto them). Experts queried whether such exemptions were required even in the context of the pandemic.
The committee also found reduced parliamentary sittings meant less oversight. The committee recommended stronger safeguards, including limiting exemptions and ensuring emergency instruments remain subject to scrutiny.
While executive law making is a necessary feature of modern governance, there are serious concerns when it happens without parliamentary scrutiny. The expansion of such powers raise questions about the balance between efficiency and accountability. These concerns were exacerbated within, but extend beyond the pandemic response.
Disrespect for parliament’s constitutional role
A second issue concerns the integrity of primary lawmaking processes. The Centre for Public Integrity’s recent report, Lawmaking with Integrity, documents a pattern of legislative practices that, while not unprecedented, have become increasingly common. These include
compressed timeframes
limited or opaque consultation
the curtailment of parliamentary scrutiny in the name or urgency.
A small selection of case studies illustrate these trends.
The first involves the passage of the 2025 reforms to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act. Concerns were raised about the limited consultation preceding introduction and the “urgent” progression of the bill through parliament before the conclusion of the Senate Committee inquiry – even before public submissions had closed. This required the suspension of the Senate Standing Order that requires committees to report on bills before passage.
The proposed 2025 changes to freedom of information laws provide another stark illustration of how parliamentary processes can be abused. The FOI amendment bill was developed with no public consultation. The government’s approach to the parliamentary scrutiny process did little to restore confidence.
The Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee inquiry was conducted by a government-dominated, government-chaired committee. Notably, it did not call a number of prominent expert submitters to give evidence.
Equally troubling, reporting later suggested that in seeking to secure passage of the bill, the government had offered additional staffing resources to the opposition. If this allegation is true, it raises serious concerns about the use of public resources in negotiating legislative outcomes.
Government dominance of parliamentary committees
A third area of concern, also highlighted in the IDEA report, is the functioning of parliamentary committees. Committees are central to the scrutiny function of parliament. Yet their effectiveness depends on their composition and operation.
Where committees are dominated by government members, or timelines are truncated, their capacity to perform this role can be diminished. This is why the Centre for Public Integrity has called for best-practice models that ensure at least integrity scrutiny committees are not government-dominated (which remains the norm across most Australian jurisdictions).
Government control of information
A further dimension of democratic erosion is the control of information. Parliamentary procedure also determines what information is available to the parliament, and therefore what scrutiny is possible. Parliament requires appropriate access to information to make laws and hold the executive to account. These functions are central to responsible government.
It is in this context that growing concerns about information control in Australia must be understood. There has been an increasing pattern of government resistance to providing documents to parliament when requested.
The Centre for Public Integrity’s 2025 report, Still Shrouded in Secrecy, documented a significant increase in refusals to comply with Senate orders for the production of documents. Governments are more frequently asserting broad public interest immunity claims and, in some cases, failing to provide adequate justification for withholding information. There is no independent procedure to very such claims.
Parliamentary procedure dictates how the parliament can respond to such refusals. To date, this has had limited success.
At the same time, concerns have been raised about the quality of information provided to parliament in the legislative process itself. In a number of cases involving complex and uncertain reforms, governments have declined to release the underlying evidence or legal advice informing legislative proposals. Instead, it has asked parliament, and the public, to accept assurances that appropriate advice has been obtained.
In at least one instance, such assurances have later been called into question.
Resisting backsliding
In Australia, what may be dismissed as procedural trends are actually concerning signals of democratic backsliding. In particular, the Albanese government, armed with commanding parliamentary numbers following the 2025 election, has too often used that position to undermine the constitutional role of the parliament as a legislative and oversight body.
A healthy democracy requires maintaining democratic guardrails. In the current environment, this will require vigilance. Civil society must be willing to call out poor process, and oppositions, minor parties and independents must be prepared to defend parliament’s role. Importantly, those within the governing parties must be willing to uphold the constitutional function of the legislature rather than acquiesce to the demands of leadership.
Gabrielle Appleby works as the Research Director for the Centre for Public Integrity. She has previously received grants from the Australian Research Council.
Eighty-one years after Adolf Hitler died by his own hand in a Berlin bunker, a viral video on TikTok shows an AI-generated vision of the Nazi dictator standing in Antarctica, shoulders broad and face smiling, sipping a White Monster Energy drink while Men at Work’s iconic song Down Under plays.
It’s an absurd image, but one that makes sense in the context of the “Agartha” trend on TikTok, which is quietly bringing white supremacist narratives into the mainstream to be seen by millions of users.
The modern myth of Agartha, a supposed utopia hidden inside the hollow Earth, was constructed from older pieces by esoteric authors after the second world war. It blends “Aryan” white supremacist themes with ideas of an occult SS and Third Reich spaceships.
Literal belief in hollow-Earth myths or Nazi UFOs is not the point. Instead, it’s an aesthetic – one that can host both coded far-right messages and explicit ones, fused with pop-cultural references such as the White Monster Energy meme.
Mainstreaming through borderline content
Agartha videos on social media are “awful but lawful”: the content is objectionable but legal. It allows extremists to embed their narratives into mainstream social media spaces, without triggering moderation or outright rejection by the audience. As a result, they can reach large, young audiences.
To understand how the underlying esoteric myths are used, we analysed a network of more than 43,000 Agartha-related TikTok videos and closely studied selected examples. This analysis is part of an ongoing project led by researchers at Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences in Germany. The goal is to understand how extremists abuse platform features to carry radical narratives into the mainstream.
We identified four key mechanisms which far-right actors use to push radical narratives to unsuspecting audiences: aesthetic camouflage, dog-whistles and split-second glimpses, network building, and weaponised irony. Let’s unpack each of these terms.
Aesthetic camouflage
Moderation systems on social media platforms aim to remove overt extremist propaganda. These systems work imperfectly, but overt propaganda is unlikely to reach mass audiences before being removed.
Instead, far-right actors often use generative AI to mask racial ideology behind seemingly benign tropes from science fiction and fantasy. This allows a “de-demonising” of their ideas. Elf-like depictions of the “Aryan” inhabitants of Agartha, or footage of an underground utopia, make the idea of a white ethnostate seem palatable.
The engaging aesthetic keeps people watching longer. In turn, this triggers the algorithm to push the video to wider audiences.
Dog whistles and split-second provocations
Far-right actors infuse their content with dog whistles that communicate to a certain audience without triggering moderation.
Our research identified recurring visual symbols in Agartha videos. “Raw milk” signals white supremacy. The number 271, which appears in hundreds of the videos, is a code for Holocaust denial.
The number 271 in Agartha videos hints at the idea that ‘only’ 271,000 people died in the Holocaust.TikTok
Agartha videos also sometimes include overt extremist markers such as the Hakenkreuz (the Nazi symbol of the “hooked cross” or swastika). They are often flashed for only fractions of a second.
This is a calculated provocation. It tests and pushes platform boundaries, normalising the presence of far-right markers and slowly desensitising viewers. At the same time, successful inclusion of forbidden symbols in videos with viral reach serves as a badge of honour within the in-group.
Overt far-right markers such as the Hakenkreuz or swastika are usually only briefly glimpsed in Agartha videos.TikTok
Building network bridges
The Agartha community is not an isolated echo chamber. Our analysis shows the Agartha network connects to others on TikTok. Around 87% of these connections come via the inclusion of mundane, mainstream hashtags on Agartha videos.
Extremists may deliberately “hijack” benign, high-traffic hashtags, such as #roblox or #loganpaul, to push their content into everyday feeds. Agartha is also strongly connected to gym and fitness content. Hashtags such as #gymtok serve as a bridge, potentially funnelling users towards radical narratives.
A looksmaxxer shown in an Agartha video with the Nazi ‘black Sun’ symbol in the background.TikTok
Here, we also observed targeted appeals. Agartha videos would commonly include hashtags associated with “looksmaxxing” – a trend for extreme physical self-optimisation – to push their videos towards audiences seen as potentially susceptible, such as insecure young men. Well-known looksmaxxers were also sometimes depicted in Agartha videos.
Weaponised irony
As the example of Adolf Hitler drinking a Monster Energy illustrates, Agartha videos rely heavily on absurd situations, frequently co-opting mainstream social media trends.
Because White Monster Energy is a popular meme within non-extremist spaces, users familiar with the trend are particularly likely to get algorithmic recommendations fused with extremist narratives.
Video creators have used this AI-generated image of an aged, muscly man to represent Adolf Hitler drinking a White Monster energy drink in an Agartha video.TikTok
Similarly, actors superimpose mainstream figures into Agartha to force association, such as YouTuber Logan Paul or actor Mads Mikkelsen.
Such co-opting is also done through music, with many hollow-Earth edits set to Men at Work’s 1980s hit Down Under. The track serves as a darkly ironic nod to the subterranean utopia.
This increases the chances for algorithmic amplification while providing creators with plausible deniability. Criticisms can be dismissed as a misunderstanding of dark humour or current trends.
Recognising the threat
Agartha is more than just a digital resurfacing of fringe occultism. It is a blueprint for how to design extremist content for algorithmically curated short-video platforms.
It’s also a reminder that extremist content on social media does not exist in isolation. Instead, it lives in what researchers call “hybridised spaces”, where users move in and out of extremist discourse. In such spaces, borderline content, outright extremism, mundane trends and humour blend seamlessly – and participants may find their mainstream interests lead them to radical narratives.
Marten Risius receives funding through the Distinguished Professorship Program via the Bavarian Hightech Agenda from the Bavarian Ministry of Sciences and Arts.
Christopher David does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
If you’ve decided to separate from your partner, and you have kids together, it’s normal to worry about the potential impact on them.
Although some studies have shown a higher risk of mental health problems for children of divorced parents, separation is not inherently harmful.
And if the household has a lot of tension and conflict, evidence shows “staying together for the kids” can actually be worse for their mental health and wellbeing.
Still, change can be hard for everyone – especially children, who thrive with routines, boundaries and stability.
So, what’s the best way to talk about separating? And how can you keep things as consistent as possible?
How to talk about separating
Be clear and direct with your children about what the change in your relationship means to them and their day-to-day lives and be open to hearing how they feel.
Will you continue living together for a while? Will one of you move out of the family home? Or maybe the kids will stay at home while the parents take turns living there (sometimes called “birdnesting”).
Have this conversation first with your co-parent and plan how you’ll tell the kids. It can be helpful to make some key dot points and assign a parent to each.
This doesn’t mean telling your kids everything. Focus on the details impacting them (such as care arrangements) and not the specific story of relationship disrepair.
Details depend on their age
Younger children will need fewer details than older children and teens. For example, you might say:
we are still a family and love you so much. But some families look different and are happier in two houses.
For younger kids, reading a picture book – such as Two Homes by Claire Masurel or The Invisible String by Patrice Karst – can be a helpful follow up that you can keep revisiting.
Older children and teens may benefit from more nuanced discussions about why you are separating. For example:
we both love you more than anything. But we’re not in love with each other anymore and have decided that it’s best to separate and live in two houses.
Try not to talk badly about the other parent, even if your child asks if one parent did something wrong. It’s important to allow your kids the chance for a meaningful relationship with both parents and to develop their own perspectives.
Where possible, include older children in the decisions that will affect them, such as how they split time between houses or how they want their parents to share information about them. This can increase their sense of belonging and protect against mental health problems.
What about co-parenting?
Effective co-parenting after separation improves mental health outcomes for children and parents.
Keep communication with your co-parent clear and direct and keep your emotions in check. Raising concerns can help you stay aligned on parenting and aware of any potential issues brewing. Speak to your co-parent directly and not via your child.
If there’s conflict, aim to focus on problem-solving rather than getting personal. Stay calm, try to be receptive, and don’t raise issues in the heat of the moment. It’s OK to say “I’ll get back to you” or to communicate by email or text if that takes the heat out.
And call out the good – if you notice your co-parent nailing something, tell them.
But stay safe
If you are leaving a violent or unsafe relationship with an ex, the rules for engagement change – what will keep you and your children safe is most important.
Seek help if you feel scared into agreeing with parenting decisions or are experiencing attempts to control you or your child.
In an emergency, call triple 0.
Strategies for maintaining consistency
Consistency is good for kids living across two houses. If possible, try:
keeping certain routines in place, such as morning chores, what happens at bedtime, and when that is
creating a shared online diary – having clear dates and shared expectations about care and events can reduce conflict
scheduling a regular, check-in meeting with your co-parent where you can discuss things like mood or behaviour changes in your child or any concerns, maintaining routines, upcoming events, and managing holidays, sport and schooling.
If collaborating with your co-parent doesn’t work, maintaining routines at your own place will still benefit your kids.
When does my child need extra support?
Children’s ability to regulate emotions often decreases during stress and change. Areas to keep an eye on include changes to behaviour, emotions, sleep, eating and friendships.
If particular behaviours are causing a lot of distress to your child (or others), impacting their day-to-day life, and are very different to others their age, it may be time to get some extra help.
Evidence-based online parenting programs, such as Triple P for Family Transitions and Parentworks can also help you build skills for responding to difficult behaviours in your child and reduce parental conflict.
If you need more support, talk to your GP about finding a psychologist for you or your child, and whether you’re eligible for a Medicare rebate.
The National Sexual Assault, Family and Domestic Violence Counselling Line – 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for any Australian who has experienced, or is at risk of, family and domestic violence and/or sexual assault.
Jaimie Northam has received funding from the Medical Research Future Fund.
A person fleeing persecution may not travel with extensive documentation, legal advice or even a neatly ordered account of their situation.
Trauma, fear, language barriers, fragmented evidence and a distrust of authority can significantly shape how they share their story.
This is why New Zealand, like many other countries, has a refugee determination system to assess claims carefully and fairly against a backdrop of someone’s forced displacement.
While the United States provides a clear example of how such a shift can unfold, it is not unique. Across a number of jurisdictions, asylum systems have increasingly been reframed through the language of risk and compliance, with greater emphasis on deterrence and enforcement.
In many countries, immigration policy has been increasingly organised around a preemptive logic – suspect first, verify later – enabled by expanded surveillance and reduced transparency.
New Zealand’s legislative language and political rhetoric about “risk”, “compliance”, and “system integrity” signal a similar shift. Asylum becomes less about protection and more a problem to manage.
Submissions on the Immigration Amendment Bill have now closed, with the select committee due to report by mid-August. But many organisations working within the refugee and asylum sector have said the proposed changes risk undermining fairness, proportionality and the core purpose of refugee protection.
Reduced humanitarian appeals
Some of the proposed changes are technical, but their implications are not.
One provision introduces the idea of “bad faith”, meaning a claim could be discounted if a person is seen to have contributed to their own risk, such as drawing attention to themselves through media or political activity.
This creates a paradox: remain invisible and your claim may lack evidence; become visible and your claim may be questioned.
The bill also narrows what people can do while they await a decision, often for extended periods. Someone who has found a job or formed a committed relationship would be unable to shift onto a work or partnership visa.
For people already living with uncertainty, this undermines efforts to rebuild stability and dignity.
Access to humanitarian appeals would be reduced. These appeals have functioned as an important safeguard, allowing decisions to be revisited when circumstances change. Limiting access narrows the system’s ability to correct itself.
Combined with faster processing and removal of a person from New Zealand, this leaves less room for error and can have potentially life-altering consequences.
This is particularly concerning given research demonstrates the Immigration and Protection Tribunal’s review function operates as a key safeguard, upholding human rights by preventing abrupt removals, or allowing more dignified transitions for those who have to leave.
‘Fortress New Zealand’
The government’s own analysis of the bill identifies a small number of asylum cases involving individuals with serious criminal histories, while acknowledging significant uncertainty in the data.
It notes the difficulty in distinguishing between claims that lack merit and ones that fall short of the legal threshold for establishing fears of persecution under refugee law.
In other words, the scale of the problem is not clearly established. Despite this, concerns about risk appear to have become the government’s central justification for pursuing such wide changes.
This is where the underlying policy logic matters. When uncertainty is treated as risk, and risk as something to be preemptively controlled, thresholds for intervention lower. Measures designed to manage outlier cases can reshape the entire system, affecting many legitimate claims.
Our research on 11,000 asylum claimants in New Zealand over 25 years shows how emphasis on credibility, risk and system integrity have resulted in a pattern we have described as “fortress New Zealand”.
These latest proposed changes are part of an incremental slide away from a protective orientation toward control, efficiency and risk management. It happens not through a single decisive reform but by cumulative adjustments that reshape the system’s character.
This shift toward harsher, enforcement-first immigration settings is not unique to New Zealand. The US experience, particularly under the second Trump administration, illustrates how quickly a protection framework can change.
Deportations increase, access to asylum is constrained, enforcement capacity grows, and refugee admissions are reduced. At the same time, access to judges narrows, enforcement extends into everyday spaces, and personal data is repurposed for immigration control.
New Zealand is not there yet, but the direction of policy drift is recognisable.
At its core, the Immigration Amendment Bill poses a simple question: what kind of asylum system should Aotearoa New Zealand have? One that begins from a position of suspicion, where claims are treated as risks to be managed? Or one grounded in protection while addressing instances of misuse?
Public confidence and system integrity matter. But both depend on balance. When the system tilts too far toward enforcement, it risks undermining the principles it is meant to uphold.
Jay Marlowe received funding from the Royal Society Te Apārangi (New Zealand) through a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship, which supported the research informing this article.
Timothy Fadgen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Hostage-taking by nation-states is emerging as an overlooked consequence of the more unstable and dangerous world that’s been created by the fracturing rules-based order.
In an increasingly might-is-right system of international relations, malign actors have become even more emboldened to take the citizens of Western democracies hostage.
Once primarily the domain of non-state actors, including terror groups, drug cartels and armed gangs, hostage-taking has become a lucrative bargaining chip in the hands of countries like Iran, Russia, China, North Korea and Venezuela. (I was imprisoned by Iran for more than two years on false charges of espionage.)
It has become an unorthodox yet highly effective means of forcing concessions, including prisoner swaps, financial payments and the removal of sanctions.
The unfortunate truth is that hostage diplomacy works, and there is usually a lot to gain and not much to lose for the countries that practice it.
However, very little scholarly research has examined the phenomenon. The data we do have on cases is patchy. This is in part because the governments whose citizens have been taken hostage usually prefer to negotiate in the shadows. We only tend to hear about select cases that attract media coverage.
Part of the challenge in proposing ways to tackle an amorphous problem like state hostage-taking is that, while out-of-the-box thinking is required, some approaches may not be feasible or may not work at all. We shouldn’t shy away from this.
Treating state hostage-taking as a consular issue to be solved via traditional diplomacy hasn’t worked. Bad actors haven’t been deterred; rather the opposite. An innovative new approach is long overdue.
What we’ve found
A new, special edition of the the Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism (which I guest edited) highlights some possible policy solutions.
Grappling with this issue requires us to ask: what kinds of dynamics are motivating states to take hostages in the first place? And how can governments take better care of former hostages and their families?
The special issue is a collaborative effort between practitioners and scholars, featuring contributors from a variety of backgrounds. These include human rights lawyers who have represented victims, the current UN special rapporteur on torture, activists, specialists in trauma recovery, and even former hostages themselves.
Some of the ideas put forward in our research include:
This includes reframing state hostage-taking as a form of torture and, under certain conditions, even a war crime or crime against humanity.
UN torture rapporteur Alice Edwards argues this would help open avenues for victims seeking justice. Many have been frustrated by impediments to restitution when a nation-state is responsible for hostage-taking, not an individual.
Legal academic Carla Ferstman suggests governments should look to existing models in the US and Canada and consider passing legislation to allow victims of state-sponsored terrorism to sue hostage-taking states in their domestic courts.
2) Stronger government-led responses to hostage-taking
Many countries don’t have a designated office or role within government to coordinate domestic and multilateral responses to hostage-taking.
These positions exist now in the US and Canada. This step was also proposed in a 2024 Australian Senate inquiry into the wrongful detention of Australian citizens overseas. The government has yet to respond to the inquiry.
3) Innovative models for multilateral rapid responses to hostage crises
Several contributors to the journal have proposed new ideas for how states can do this, including former Canadian Justice Minister and Attorney General Irwin Cotler (with international human rights lawyer Brandon Silver) and former hostage Michael Kovrig (with international security and diplomacy expert Vina Nadjibulla).
Their recommendations include:
developing rapid-response mechanisms to hostage-taking in pre-existing multilateral groupings, such as the G7 or NATO
imposing multilateral sanctions and other tools of economic leverage against states that engage in hostage-taking.
4) Greater investment in post-detention recovery care for both victims and families
Proposals for taking better care of former detainees came from the NGO Hostage International, human rights lawyer Sarah Teich and an Israeli team involved in designing reintegration programs for Gaza hostages.
These proposals include:
passing legislation to mandate a “duty of care” by governments to former hostages
developing new strategies for helping former hostages overcome their psychological challenges, based on emerging research in the field.
Learning from specific cases
It’s also important we learn from the recent incidents of hostage-taking around the world. These need to be viewed as a global problem, not a series of separate incidents to be managed in isolation by governments.
For instance, in an innovative study on Israeli public opinion in the wake of the mass hostage-taking by Hamas and other armed groups on October 7, 2023, our contributors found that feelings of connectedness to hostage families had an impact on how the public perceived hostage deal-making. This emphasises the importance of family advocacy in cases like these.
Other research shows Russia escalated its strategy of taking US citizens hostage as the relationship between the two countries deteriorated, particularly following the outbreak of war in Ukraine.
Russia’s approach differs from that of other hostage-taking states as it appears to be primarily used to target Americans. As such, it should be viewed as a feature of the bilateral relationship.
A way forward
If the world wants to do something about hostage diplomacy, we need to brainstorm, exchange ideas and test solutions, no matter how radical.
What has emerged from our research is that hostage diplomacy is a complex phenomenon that is difficult to identify and even harder to deter and prevent.
This is where scholars and practitioners can play an important role. They are the ones who can gather data, identify trends and focus the attention of policymakers trying to tackle this growing international issue.
Kylie Moore-Gilbert does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
You’re standing in a supermarket aisle, weighing up whether to buy a microwave meal or a bunch of fresh carrots.
We all know making healthy eating choices can be tough. That’s especially true if you are hungry, or have a hungry household to feed.
There are so many reasons for this, and many are outside our control. But one you might not be aware of is a psychological concept known as “decision fatigue”.
So what exactly is decision fatigue? And could it help or hinder your healthy eating goals?
What is decision fatigue?
Decision fatigue, also known as choice overload, describes what happens when we make many effortful decisions over time.
Whenever you make a decision, you use a small amount of mental energy. As that energy runs low, you tend to make worse decisions.
This means you’re more likely to act without thinking, or simply choose what is easy or familiar. You might also find it harder to plan ahead and resist certain impulses.
This means you might be more likely to grab a takeaway instead of the ingredients to make a meal, or default to familiar comfort foods instead of making intentional, healthy choices.
The average person makes hundreds of food decisions each day.
You may think you’re just choosing a meal. But that one decision involves making many layered choices about what and how much you eat, as well as where, when and how you eat it.
You may make these choices subconsciously or automatically. But they each require to you weigh up various factors, such as taste, costs, time, expectations and more.
When decision fatigue sets in, you’re less likely to make thoughtful, health-focused choices. Instead, you may gravitate towards options that require less effort and offer quick rewards. You may also become more influenced by outside cues. An example of this is advertising that promotes convenient but high-calorie options such as fast food, snacks or indulgent treats.
Having too much information can make these decisions even harder. Nutrition advice often assesses the value of foods by how much protein, fat, fibre or vitamins they contain. This way of thinking, sometimes called nutritionism, can make food choices more complex. Instead of choosing food as food, we try to calculate and juggle many numbers at once.
Several other factors may affect your food choices.
One is stress. One study from 2022 showed parents who experience high levels of both stress and decision fatigue found it more difficult to stick to positive food-related behaviours, such as making meals from scratch or eating together as a family.
Another is tiredness. One 2017 study showed time of day affected meal choices. It found between mealtimes, and especially in the afternoon, people were more likely to choose the simpler default food choice than one that required more consideration. This suggests having lower blood sugar and less mental energy meant people made less considered decisions.
How can I reduce my decision fatigue?
Here are four tips.
Have healthy foods on hand
When we’re low on mental or physical energy, we usually turn to what’s easy or familiar. That’s why it’s important to have healthy food options within reach. Thankfully, this doesn’t need to be complicated. It could look like pre-cutting fruit or having some healthy frozen meals in the freezer. And research suggests removing unhealthy foods – for example from the pantry or fridge – can be just as helpful when you’re trying to make healthier food choices.
Plan your meals
Planning meals could help too. This may involve setting some weekend time aside to decide what meals you’ll cook and eat. That’s instead of making last-minute decisions at the supermarket or on the drive home. Meal kits and batch cooking, which both reduce the number of food-related decisions you have to make, may also reduce decision fatigue.
How you frame choices may also improve your eating habits. For example, you may be more likely to “eat a colourful meal” rather than simply telling yourself to “eat more vegetables”.
We often think eating should be simple and intuitive, but blame ourselves when it doesn’t feel that way. However, the concept of decision fatigue shows healthy eating is not just about willpower. It’s also about noticing when you’re tired, stressed or time-poor, and taking practical steps to make healthy foods the easiest option.
Emma Beckett has previously received funding for research or payment for consulting from Mars Foods, Nutrition Research Australia, FOODiQ Global, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Australian Research Council, the AMP Foundation, Kelloggs, Hort Innovation, and the a2 milk company. She is a member of the Australian Academy of Science National Committee for Nutrition, and the National Health and Medical Research Council Iodine Expert Working Group. She is a registered nutritionist and a member of the Nutrition Society of Australia, and the Australian Institute of Food Science and Technology. She is the author of 'You Are More Than What You Eat'.
Australia’s schooling system is among the most highly segregated in the OECD. Public schools educate the majority of disadvantaged students, while there is concentrated advantage in private schools.
This situation can be attributed, in large part, to our school funding arrangements. Recent research from the Australian Education Union shows “over half of Australia’s private schools now receive more combined government funding per student from both the federal and state governments, than similar public schools”.
Review: Rich Kid, Poor Kid: The Battle for Public Education – Jane Caro (Australia Institute Press)
In her essay Rich Kid, Poor Kid, public education advocate Jane Caro provides a detailed historical excavation of Australia’s school funding policies, politics and policy ideologies over the past 65 years.
As its subtitle makes clear, her essay details the “battle” experienced by Australian public schools as they are often forced to compete with well-resourced private schools for enrolments. These private schools are free to charge uncapped school fees and receive government money.
At the same time, in states and territories other than the ACT, most public schools do not receive the minimum amount of their legislated government funding, known as the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS).
Caro contrasts this with the experiences of non-government or private schools (Catholic and independent schools), most of whom receive the full amount of their legislated government funding and more.
As the recently legislated Better and Fairer Schools Agreement – which seeks to address part of the funding inequality between sectors – comes into effect, Caro’s reflections and lamentations are timely.
Jane Caro shows how Australian public schools are forced to compete with well-resourced private schools.Wall Media
A funding system unequal by design
Caro begins by opening the “black box” of Australia’s school funding arrangements to reveal their contents.
In order to explain the current inequalities in resource distribution, Caro takes readers on a funding policy journey. Public funding for private schooling began in the late 1960s. Until this point, the federal government played virtually no role in school funding. Initially, it began its involvement through one-off grants for government and non-government schools, to support the building of science laboratories and school libraries.
This funding expanded over time with successive federal governments, in response to a few intersecting factors.
Among these was the Catholic sector’s desperate call for financial aid from the federal government to assist with rapidly increasing enrolments, and simultaneously decreasing supply of labour and resources from its religious teachers and leaders (nuns and brothers). This call for “state aid” was politically contentious.
By 1975 – under a Whitlam Labor government – recurrent federal funding for private schools was in full swing. As Caro explains, Whitlam positioned this decision as “educationally necessary”: that is, funding based on need for both public and private schools.
But this move also served dual political purposes – it helped address the “state-aid” issue and appealed to Catholic parent voters.
Caro documents what she describes as the schooling system’s “shift from an emphasis on the public good towards the private and positional”. Subsidies for private schools continued, and even expanded, but were no longer justified by needs. Rather, a right to choice came to predominate.
This was reinforced by the next federal government under Malcolm Fraser, who embedded a “basic grant model” for private schools based on entitlement and choice, rather than need. Ultimately, these decisions provided the basis for our current system: government funding for both public and private schools – a funding system that is internationally unique.
Caro moves through funding policy agendas and reforms of successive federal governments, explaining the politics, policy principles and policy levers that created and sustain deep inequalities in Australia’s school system.
Among many examples, Caro refers to the commissioning and release of the 2011 Review of Funding for Schooling, conducted by an expert panel headed by David Gonski AC. The “Gonski Review” revealed (among other things) the concentration of disadvantage in Australia’s public schools. In an attempt to address inequalities in Australia’s existing funding arrangements, it proposed a new funding model based on the concept of student need: the Schooling Resource Standard.
Here, Caro points to the infamous promise made by then Labor prime minister Julia Gillard, that “no school will lose a dollar” as a result of the review or the implementation of the new funding model. This meant the possibility of a fully needs-based approach was compromised from the outset.
Caro also explains the various concessions offered to private schools, despite them being publicly funded.
For example, private schools are free to select and exclude students, including on the grounds of gender and sexuality, and to charge uncapped school fees. Many private schools also have “charitable status”, providing a range of tax exemptions, including incentivised donations. While not explicitly stated in the essay, these factors also undermine the extent to which the Schooling Resource Standard can be understood to function as a true “needs-based” funding model in practice.
It is important to note that not all private schools are high-fee paying or elite. Indeed, there is some diversity in the sector. However, Caro confesses she sometimes “cannot help wondering whether divide and conquer was the plan all along”. Her essay reminds readers the current situation is by no means accidental. Rather, it is constructed through particular policy decisions and values that have created a class-based schooling system.
Challenging ‘business as usual’
Part of Caro’s contribution is her discrediting of arguments often used in defence of the current system. For example, governments often argue for the need to fund private schooling, to provide parents with accessible options. However, as Caro shows, private schools remain out of reach for many.
Referring to a recent study, she explains that even “after decades of publicly funding private schools”, Australia’s secondary schools are some of the most costly among developed economies of the OECD.
The result of unequal access to an unequally resourced “market” of schools, Caro shows, is the concentration of social advantage and disadvantage. Schools compete to attract the same set of privileged students, who will boost their market position for top results. At the same time, they compete to exclude students with higher needs and less potential to blitz tests.
Caro addresses other commonly evoked rationales for supporting school choice policies, too. These include: “Private school parents pay taxes, so their child is entitled to be subsidised.” And: “Public funding of private schools saves the government money.”
In response to these arguments, Caro suggests that “taxation is not a deposit account that we can draw on to ‘buy’ whatever service we choose”. (In this case, parents are buying what is “perceived as an educational advantage”.) The “glaringly obvious problem” with the tax argument, she writes, “is that when a large part of that choice involves fee-charging schools, only parents with money have choice”.
The battle for public education
Across all of these arguments, we see the tensions within Australian school funding on full display: entitlement and a right to parental choice operating at the expense of school funding based on the principle of “student need”. Underpinning Caro’s argument is a belief in
the ideal of a strong public education system funded by everyone, for the benefit of everyone, originally developed alongside the ideal of representative democracy […] for the benefit of everyone.
She opens her essay reminiscing about her own experience with New South Wales public schooling in the 1960s and 70s, which, she explains, provided her and her peers various opportunities. This included the chance to mix with a socially diverse group of students, irrespective of their socioeconomic or cultural capital. It is this version of public schooling, she argues, that has been lost.
Caro argues that “public schools are an expression of a public good: the common good.”
As professor of education Jessica Gerrard writes, there is a danger in idealising the public schools of the past, which had their fair share of exclusionary practices and prejudice. Fighting for public education requires acknowledging that it hasn’t always been inherently democratic. Public schools have also been sites of harm and exclusion for some.
The democratic potential of public schooling is connected to ongoing political struggles over whose knowledge, identities and futures are recognised and supported within public schooling – including through funding.
Where to from here?
How might we imagine and achieve a more just approach to school funding policy? Rich Kid, Poor Kid draws to a close by addressing this question, providing a list of “solutions” for a “more equal” schooling system.
Caro suggests various changes to current funding arrangements, such as reconsidering private school tax exemptions and having all schools that receive public money subject to the same standards and compliance measures. Certainly, these would go a long way toward addressing the frightening inequalities laid bare in her essay.
Caro considers what she refers to as the “political possibility” for these solutions. It is difficult to see how such solutions and more just funding policy approaches might emerge until there is a deeper reckoning with what she identifies as Australia’s unwavering political and cultural fidelity to school choice and entitlement. How this might occur must also be a core part of the discussion.
Other terms of the debate must also shift. For example, it is problematic to hold discussions about school funding in terms of the “cost” to the taxpayer, “cost” to the system, or referring to students who are the “the most costly to educate”. Narratives like this (political and otherwise) can perpetuate marginalisation and stigmatisation. They reduce student need to a bottom-line, cost-benefit analysis.
Rich Kid, Poor Kid reinforces the urgency and devastation of the school funding problem in Australia. Caro delivers the story in a way that should propel readers into action.
Elisa Di Gregorio does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
There’s a growing awareness policy works best when shaped by the people and communities who have lived through the issues it aims to address.
If we don’t listen to and learn from those who have experienced issues such as homelessness, family violence, distress or trauma, we risk building systems that misunderstand the harm and the hope within those realities.
Across social and public sectors, new roles are being created for people with what is often called “lived expertise”.
These are people whose personal experience informs work to improve policy, practice and research. They are advising government departments, helping to design services, informing inquiries and guiding community initiatives.
But while lived experience is often invited into the room, we still know little about what it is like to work from that experience across distinct issue areas – and about the emotional toll, risks and challenges of trying to make change inside systems that actively resist it.
To explore this further, we spoke with ten lived experience leaders as part of our research, released today.
Deep commitment
The lived experience leaders we spoke with work alongside a range of communities – for example, First Nations peoples, incarcerated women and girls, those experiencing mental distress, young people, people from LGBTIQA+ communities and those impacted by family violence.
Our research revealed that these lived experience leaders are deeply committed to structural change. They carry hard-won knowledge and a strong determination to ensure others have better experiences.
One told us:
I came in with the motivation that there were so many people that this had happened to, and I wanted to change it.
Another said:
I don’t feel accountable to dominant systems […] What I feel accountable to feels greater than me – accountable to my ancestors and to those who come after me.
Influencing from the inside and outside
These leaders work across, between and beyond institutions – sometimes from the inside to influence change, other times building power outside them.
As one leader said:
I believe we need to build power ourselves and then the system will come to us for the answers, rather than us trying to fit into their structures and processes.
Moving between these spaces is not easy.
Another leader said:
We hold one shield that’s fending off the system and another shield that’s fending off the organisations we have to work with, and then another that’s defending victim-survivors. Then we don’t have anything left to protect ourselves.
Leaders are often drawing on collective experience, not just their own, and feel deep accountability to others, particularly those who share experiences of injustice and harm.
As one said:
I am accountable to the people at the end or the bottom – to service users and the people who have the most to lose.
Their approach intentionally challenges dominant hierarchies. They lead alongside others, guided by the quality of relationships they build – and by care, accountability and connection. One person told us:
I would never speak about women and girls in cages if I’m not being held accountable by the women and girls in cages […] Otherwise, you’re operating from a position of “power over” – and that’s not true leadership.
Hazards, harms and hope
Lived experience leadership can also carry risks. Many leaders spoke about being invited to contribute or “have a seat at the table” without being genuinely heard, or seeing action taken from their insights.
Participation often feels like a compliance exercise. Tokenism, they said, is still common. One person told us:
Something we don’t talk about enough is the price we pay for sharing our lived and living experience.
Another said:
We choose to do it because we genuinely care about people we’ve never met – because we want people to live, because we want the systems that continue to fail them to change.
The toll that takes – the exhaustion, the trauma that’s constantly brought up, the feelings of not being valued or considered – and yet still choosing to fight each day for the right reasons, is more than anyone could ever possibly imagine.
And yet, many leaders also spoke about hope. One person told us:
I do have some sort of hope most days […] This is love for, and belief in, our community. My hope is kept alive through contact with and service to my community.
Where to from here?
Our research shows lived experience leadership holds real potential to address the complex problems traditional approaches struggle to solve.
But this potential can only be fully realised when institutions recognise their own capacity to cause harm and begin to share power with those most affected.
Real progress means more than inviting lived experience into rooms or at tables – it means taking responsibility, acting on what’s heard and being changed by it.
As one leader urged:
Sometimes we have to demand the impossible […] Let those with institutional power worry about how they’re going to hold us back […] Most of the time, you sit at the table because collaboration is essential – but sometimes, you do have to flip it.
Lived experience leadership isn’t about earning a seat at someone else’s table.
It’s about questioning who built the table in the first place – and creating new spaces where power, decision-making and design are genuinely shared.
Morgan Cataldo's research was funded by the Paul Ramsay Foundation.
Kelsey Dole's research was funded by the Paul Ramsay Foundation.
Perrie Ballantyne's research was funded by the Paul Ramsay Foundation.
Robyn Martin's research was funded by the Paul Ramsay Foundation.
Suzi Hayes' research was funded by the Paul Ramsay Foundation.
Every day, we publish a selection of your emails in our newsletter. We’d love to hear from you, you can email us at yoursay@theconversation.edu.au.
Monday May 4
Can AI evolve?
“This article seems to overlook that evolution of anything needs a physical mechanism for reproduction that can be influenced in some way (deliberately or otherwise) by the entities that are evolving. Decades ago I read a sci-fi short story about a planet populated by extremely intelligent horse-like creatures whose four limbs ended in razor-sharp hooves. Great for fighting (and the story) but without the ability to manipulate objects and their environment they were stuck forever in the lifestyle of ordinary horses. Sounds to me like AI.”
Peter Tuft, Kettering TAS
The problem with going to Antarctica
“I applaud the thoughtful article on Antarctica. I considered a trip there this year, knowing that at 81 I don’t have many chances left. And then I considered the number of people now going there, with commercial benefits to the many cruise lines, and the consequent environmental impact, and decided such a trip would not be ethically acceptable. So I am going to the Eastern Mediterranean instead – where ancient civilisations have already trashed the place!”
Julie Lake
Tuesday May 5
Speed cameras or revenue machines?
“The driving public has been assailed by many automated enforcement systems for quite some time. There needs to be more pressure placed on state governments to rein in their desires to raise revenue in the name of road safety. As the author stated, there needs to be more context and consideration of the appeal process. I would posit that if I took a photo with my security camera of someone breaking into my house they wouldn’t take the person identified in the camera into custody without further evidence. It seems like we have a situation with road safety that is very much akin to ‘big brother’. What is obvious to me is the notion we are considered ‘guilty’ until we can prove otherwise. Doesn’t that go against the underlying tenet of our legal system? I would also like to point out that even with all the automated enforcement systems, the number of road fatalities has not dramatically decreased. They do not work for the purpose intended or stated, and I suspect the authorities know that.”
Bob Sibson, Adelaide, SA
Bearing the brunt
“Why is raising interest rates the only way to manage inflation? Home owners carry the burden. Why have we not looked at a variable rate of superannuation? Some industries are not affected by interest rate increases (some even benefit from them) so why not flip the script and change superannuation to be variable and the reserve bank can choose to change interest rates, superannuation contribution rates, or both?”
Melita Kemp, Nipaluna/Hobart
Fashion vs fine art
“The question of whether fashion is an ‘art’ is a fascinating one. Activities included in the ‘arts’ have varied throughout history, and have included such things as saddle, tent, hat and glove making. The current list of ‘fine’ arts, along with the distinction between ‘fine’ and ‘decorative’, was only settled in the 19th century: ‘fine’ art is essentially the product of the uncoupling of the production of ‘art’ objects from church, court and state, and the development at the same time of auction houses. The number of activities included in the category ‘art’ needs to be kept small and rarefied (one-off items, hand produced by an ‘artist’) to maintain high values. In broad terms, fashion doesn’t fit in because it’s mass-produced and available to pretty much anyone: it would undermine the art market to start including such things as fashion as a ‘fine art’.”
Over the past 15 years, I have witnessed university students’ shrinking patience for reading – especially for reading “long” books. Increasingly, students also opt for audiobooks. While speeding up the reading experience, these fundamentally change what is noticed.
The neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf suggests many students no longer have the “cognitive patience” to read long books due to the complexities of thought and sustained attention required.
One explanation for this shift is the dominance of digital technology in our daily lives, which has rewired our brains for surface-level scanning and multitasking, weakening our capability for prolonged attention. Another is our culture of instant gratification.
Some studies into the “screen inferiority effect” suggest when we read on paper (rather than on screens such as smartphones) the brain often processes more deeply and comprehension is better. Memory and information recall are also stronger.
So where does this leave the classics?
Millions of Australians, both children and adults, struggle with literacy.
In this series, we explore the challenges of reading in an age of smartphones and social media – and ask experts how we can become better readers.
Many books considered “classics” are long. Masterpieces such as Middlemarch or Les Misérables might seem intimidating because in physical form they resemble door stops and they often have complex, demanding language and long, convoluted sentences.
But reading the classics can deliver cognitive, social, emotional and even ethical benefits, helping us strengthen habits of thoughtful attention and develop the skills to communicate with clarity and empathy.
Goodreads
Extending our attention spans increases our ability to connect thoughts and ideas, challenges memory and recall and perhaps helps us attend more patiently to our own lives and the lives of others. In reading Robinson Crusoe, for instance, we share in the patience of the title character, stranded on a desert island. We, too, pay careful heed to details and signs in the world around him.
The complex language of classics can help us discern meaning amid a multitude of voices. When working through multiple sentence clauses and the layered sentences of a meaningful paragraph we need to suspend judgement until we have the fuller picture. Following complex and interwoven narratives also helps us to understand human complexity in real life.
Here are some tips for reading the classics – and some shorter ones to start with.
1. Follow your instincts
Goodreads
Find out which classic novels influenced the development of your favourite genre and you might find a natural fit. My brilliant English teacher at school, Mr Taylor, knew I loved detective fiction, so he kept recommending Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone as an early example of crime mystery. Eventually taking his advice, I loved it and followed it with Collins’s other classic, The Woman in White.
2. Remove distractions
It can help to set aside dedicated reading time, such as 20–30 minutes a day in which phones, smartwatches and other devices are out of the way. There is an added benefit: research by Mindlab International has shown reading for only six minutes reduces stress levels by 68%.
3. Make a note of memorable sentences
You don’t need a teacher to notice powerful moments or startling language. For example, Charles Dickens’s opening to A Tale of Two Cities (“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times …”) famously captures the coexistence of extremes in the world – of hope and despair, of wisdom and foolishness. Dickens has crafted an enduring truth of human experience.
4. Ask yourself questions
Why is this considered a classic? Why do I dislike this particular character? Why does this scene make me feel uncomfortable? Usually, the author wants you to consider why things were written the way they were (rather than, for example, with a different vocabulary or narrative voice). Asking questions deepens comprehension.
5. Embrace the unknown
If longer sentences or old-fashioned language trip you up, go over them again and then keep going. Kindles offer instant definitions at the touch of the screen but sometimes looking up every word in the dictionary can interfere with the opportunity to deduce meaning from context.
6. Be ready to laugh
Some classic novels are downright funny. I am currently reading Anthony Trollope’s The Warden. The sentences may be long, but they are almost always punctuated with hilarious insights into the hypocrisies of human beings and the naming rights the author deploys are childishly funny.
7. Read aloud
Goodreads
Classic novels were often serialised and read aloud in instalments in families or community groups. As a teenager, some of my most memorable early forays into the classics were shared with a dear cousin while staying with our grandparents in the Blue Mountains, when we would read aloud to each other on wintry, windy nights by the fireplace. Here, I first encountered Daphne Du Maurier’s evocative West Country mystery Rebecca and Dodie Smith’s eccentric and funny I Capture the Castle. Begin your adventure into the classics by reading aloud with a friend or in a book club.
8. Don’t feel too daunted
Remember that getting started with the story, getting to know the writer’s style, gradually piecing together the world of the novel can be the hardest stage. Take your time, be patient and persist. The further you get into a novel like War and Peace, the easier it is to continue because you simply want to know what happens.
A heartwarming study of the “inward life” of Silas, the weaver, exiled from his fellowship of narrow religious sectarians. He finds purpose in life, first in money and then in the fatherly love he develops for Eppie, the child who wanders into his home. Silas Marner is an accessible taster of Eliot’s longer experiments exploring emotion and “fellow feeling”.
This book is, strictly speaking, a collection of 12 short stories. Together they form a masterpiece of brutal Anglo-Irish realism interrupted by moments of epiphany. The book contends with questions of action and inaction, betrayal, political idealism and pragmatism. The story of Eveline, who is on the cusp of eloping with the “very kind, manly, and open-hearted” Frank on a night-boat to Buenos Aires to escape the ill-treatment of her ageing, abusive father, leaves the reader astonished by the sudden departure in the final lines from her earlier rational self-analysis.
An experimental novel set on one summer’s day in London, 1923. The socialite Clarissa Dalloway prepares a party but the absence of any chapter breaks in the book creates for the reader a sense of the stifling impact of war that still lingers over British family, social and political life. In the trauma of returned soldier Septimus Smith we read an early fictional exploration of shell shock.
Johanna Harris does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Words escape you. Your skin tingles. You are overwhelmed by how small and insignificant you really are, bursting with a feeling that is hard to define. This is awe.
Awe is a complex emotional state we experience when the enormity of what we see or feel transcends what we understand. It can be positive or negative.
Astronauts report this feeling when confronted with the vastness of space and Earth’s puny place within it. This experience – sometimes known as the “overview effect” – can change forever how people who’ve seen Earth from afar think about life here.
But you don’t have to travel to the moon and back to experience awe. Beautiful art, a walk in nature or dancing in a crowd can give you this overwhelming, transcendent feeling.
Neuroscience suggests experiences of awe can be good for your mental health – when they’re positive. So, when is awe good for us? And what exactly is going on in the brain?
Awe can be both positive and negative
Positive awe is what probably comes to mind when most people think of awe. If you’ve ever been moved by something immense and beautiful – such as a majestic mountain or sunset – you’ve likely experienced this sense of calm and wonder.
However, psychologists sometimes describe awe as an experience at the boundary of pleasure and fear. Both pleasure and fear can result in similar bodily arousal – racing heartbeat, goosebumps and chills – but the way we interpret this as an emotion will depend on the context. It can be the same when we experience something vast and overwhelming.
Negative awe may occur when we feel threatened or a lack of control, such as during an earthquake or terrorist attack.
Imagine standing in front of a tsunami and seeing it come towards you. You may feel powerless and filled with dread, while also overcome with a sense of insignificance in the face of nature’s majesty and power. This is the complexity of awe.
Trying to make sense of the unexpected
Our brains are constantly making predictions and integrating our experiences into what we already know.
We tend to “filter out” sensory signals that match our expectations, to instead focus on being ready to respond to information that is surprising.
New information is processed by parts of the brain that help to fit it within our pre-existing understanding of the world, knowledge frameworks known as schemata (or schemas).
According to schema theory, we either assimilate this new information into an existing schema, or have to change the schema to fit the new knowledge.
Not all new experiences will evoke awe. It occurs when we experience both the inability to assimilate an experience into current knowledge and a sense of vastness.
For example, you might have a schema for “waterfall” – a mental framework of what you expect (rocks, water, beautiful). But confronted by the roar of Victoria Falls, its size and velocity, the way the sun hits the spray, you experience awe; it’s unlike any waterfall you have ever seen and is beyond your expectations.
Awe can make us feel small and insignificant in the face of something immense.byronetmedia/unsplash
What happens in the brain when we experience awe?
When we feel awe, activity decreases in the brain regions associated with internal or self-referential processing. This network is what drives our memory and understanding of our place in the world.
When activity in these regions decreases, there is a shift away from yourself towards processing external information. This may explain why you tend to “feel small” when you experience awe.
But positive and negative awe may have different effects on our nervous system.
Negative awe is associated with sympathetic nervous system activity, which drives our “fight or flight” response.
Positive awe, however, is associated with increased parasympathetic activity. This reduces heart rate and arousal, which is why we may feel calmer.
How awe can be good for us
If you’re someone who seeks out experiences bigger than yourself – hiking for breathtaking views, enjoying meditation, art or losing yourself in the roar of a crowd – you probably already know awe can make you feel fantastic.
Now, research is exploring why. Emerging evidence suggests awe may be good for mental health and wellbeing in five ways:
More work needs to be done before we can say whether awe results in long-lasting benefits. But purposefully seeking awe may help you feel less stressed, more satisfied and happier.
Sharing awe-filled experiences can help us transcend ourselves and connect with others.Danny Howe/Unsplash
Finding awe in the everyday
What evokes awe will likely be different for different people. But we know some things are more likely to induce this complex feeling, such as experiences of art, music and natural environments that move us.
Many people also find awe in collective experiences, especially those involving shared music or movement, or religious rituals. These help us transcend ourselves and become part of something bigger. Contemplating inspiring and complex “big” intellectual ideas by learning something new may also have this effect.
So, can you actively cultivate awe? One way to start is by taking “awe walks”. These involve walking with the intention of noticing beauty, vastness and wonder. Connecting with your own sense of spirituality – even if you are not religious – can also evoke awe.
In many cases, the vast and overwhelming experience of awe can start with simple acts of noticing.
Nikki-Anne Wilson has previously received funding from the Australian Association of Gerontology and the UNSW Ageing Futures Institute.
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