I'm in the middle of reading some of the religious works Leo Tolstoy wrote at the end of his life. I'll tell you all about it some other time. In the meantime, here's something he says in The Kingdom of God is Within You, published in 1894 . The basis of authority is bodily violence. The possibility of applying bodily violence to people is provided above all by by an organisation of armed men, trained to act in unison in submission to one will. These bands of armed men, submissive to a single will, are what constitute the army. The army has always been and still is the basis of power. Power is always in the hands of those who control the army, and all men in power - from the Roman Caesars to the Russian and German Emperors - take more interest in their army than in anything, and court popularity in the army, knowing that if that is on their side their power is secure. In Australia over the century or so since federation we have been extremely fortunate that our ar
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson