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To celebrate or perhaps just to mark 500 years since Martin Luther nailed his '95 theses' to a church door in Wittenberg and set in motion the Protestant Revolution, the Australian Broadcasting Commission has been running a number of programs discussing the legacy of this complex man featuring leading thinkers and historians in the field.
Much of the ABC debate has centred on Luther's impact on the modern world. Was he responsible for today? Without him, might the world still be stuck in the 'Middle Ages' with each generation doing more or less what the previous one did, largely within the same medieval social structures? In that case could those inhabitants of an alternative 21st century, obviously not us, as we would never have been born, still live in a world of less than a billion people, most of them working the land as their great grandparents had done, protected and governed by an hereditary aristocracy, their mundane lives punctuated only by variations in the weather; holy days; and occasional wars between those princes?
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The recent Australia Day verses Invasion Day dispute made me recall yet again the late, sometimes lamented, British Empire.
Because, after all, the Empire was the genesis of Australia Day.
For a brief history of that institution I can recommend Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World by Scottish historian Niall Campbell Ferguson.
My choice of this book was serendipitous, unless I was subconsciously aware that Australia Day was approaching. I was cutting through our local bookshop on my way to catch a bus and wanted something to read. I noticed this thick tomb, a new addition to the $10 Penguin Books (actually $13).
On the bus I began to read and very soon I was hooked when I discovered references to places I'd been and written of myself. Several of these 'potted histories' can be found in my various travel writings on this website (follow the links): India and the Raj; Malaya; Burma (Myanmar); Hong Kong; China; Taiwan; Egypt and the Middle East; Israel; and Europe (a number).
Over the next ten days I made time to read the remainder of the book, finishing it on the morning of Australia Day, January the 26th, with a sense that Ferguson's Empire had been more about the sub-continent than the Empire I remembered.
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I have reached a point in my life when the death of a valued colleague seems to be a monthly occurrence. I remember my parents saying the same thing.
We go thought phases. First it is the arrival of adulthood when all one's friends are reaching 21 or 18, as the case may be. Then they are all getting married. Then the babies arrive. Then it is our children's turn and we see them entering the same cycle. And now the Grim Reaper appears regularly.
As I have repeatedly affirmed elsewhere on this website, each of us has a profound impact on the future. Often without our awareness or deliberate choice, we are by commission or omission, continuously taking actions that change our life's path and therefore the lives of others. Thus our every decision has an impact on the very existence of those yet to be born.
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We recently returned from a brief holiday in Darwin (follow this link). Interesting questions raised at the Darwin Museum and by the Warradjan Cultural Centre at Kakadu are where the Aboriginal people came from; how they got to Australia; and when.
Recent anthropology and archaeology seem to present contradictions and it seems to me that all these questions are controversial.