Happy Christmas to all our readers

Open Forum would like to wish all our readers a happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year.

We’ve published over 1,000 articles this year on a wide range of subjects, from the future of Australia’s health service and the increasing impact of global warming to developments in the Pacific, digital trade and Australian security.  We hope these have both entertained and informed you, and that Open Forum has made some contribution towards encouraging rational and constructive national debate.

We will continue to publish as usual over the holidays, and look forward to another productive and thought-provoking year in 2019.  While the problems which beset the world can seem overwhelming at times in both severity and number, they are more than matched by the ingenuity with which humanity has tackled still greater tasks in the past.

There is always hope, there are always solutions, and Open Forum will continue to highlight the ways in which we are moving forward, as well as the many things which remain to be done.  While bad news will always dominate the headlines, life continues to improve for most people, most of the time, thanks to the hard work of our scientists and forward thinkers.

We’d like to thank all the writers who’ve contributed their thoughts and opinions to the site over the last year and Catherine Fritz-Kalish and Olga Bodrova at Global Access Partners for their tireless support.  This site would not exist without them.

We also look forward to reading your comments on the articles and receiving your article submissions for the site.  Open Forum is just that, a platform for everyone to air their views on the issues which matter, and we urge you to use it to air your ideas.

A free society thrives because it can admit and discuss problems and use the collective brain power of all its citizens to solve them.  Australia is a great country not because of its beaches or barbecues, but because it remains a bastion of freedom and robust debate.  Open Forum, in its own small way, will continue to make its contribution and offers you a way to do the same.

One Comment

1. 

   Amelia Anderson

   December 26, 2018 at 6:57 pm

   Happy Christmas to you too, and here’s to a brighter New Year.

   Articles on sites like these are like letters to the future. I don’t know how many readers you have, but a letter need only be read by one person to have an impact. In fact a letter’s greatest impact may be on the person who wrote it, as forcing people to organise their thoughts helps them reappraise them.

   In this age of emojis, email and texts, letter writing is almost a dead art, and I certainly don’t have the ability to pen a letter for posterity, but E. B. White, the author of Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web, certainly did.

   In 1973, he wrote this one to a correspondent, one Mr. Nadeau, who’d written of his despair for the future of the human race. I think it holds a message we need to remember today.

   Dear Mr. Nadeau:

   As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness.

   Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say, the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society — things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly.

   It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time waiting to sprout when the conditions are right.

   Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.

   Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.

   E.B. White

   Every day you post something new on this site, you’re winding that clock too. Long may it continue.