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The Burning Archive

The Burning Archive

essays, notes and poetry against cultural decay

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Tag: public service

Posted on December 17, 2020December 28, 2020

On human frailty in governing

Today I am reposting this piece from July 2019, following the 2019 Australian election. It is newly relevant today as the American republic wrestles with how to save its crumbling…

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Posted on October 18, 2020

From here to immunity: charting COVID from pandemic to endemic

2020 has proven a testing year for the culture and capacity of governments around the world. Many governments have failed. Governments far away and close to home have failed. The…

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Posted on August 11, 2019

Free speech for public servants and Osip Mandelstam

During the week the High Court of Australia passed judgement on a case in which a public servant was sacked for an anonymous tweet, critical of government but made in…

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Posted on July 7, 2019

On human frailty in governing

Once ten years ago I gave answers to one of those personal profile questionnaires that aimed to help people know more about their colleagues at work. It asked questions like…

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Posted on August 13, 2017August 13, 2017

Free speech and public service

A minor controversy has broken out in Australia over restrictions on the free speech of public servants. The controversy was prompted by the Australian Public Service Commission issuing revised guidelines…

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Posted on June 11, 2017June 11, 2017

On humility

For many years I have believed that Carl Jung once said or wrote that “you must stoop to drink from the river of life.” But google has taught me humility,…

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Adam Phillips America Australian politics blogging bureaucracy civil war coronavirus cultural decay culture decay democracy Donald Trump election Empire Essays featured Fernandez-Armesto Franz Kafka Fukuyama governing history Hopkins identity politics impeachment Ivan the Terrible literature lockdown machiavelli madness music philosophy poetry political decay politics power Prose public service quotes Russia Russian history society terror travel trust in government Vaclav Havel Wallace Stevens Weber writing year in review Zbigniew Herbert

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Recent musings

  • Ezra Pound, the unavowable fury of thy true heritage in fragments February 24, 2021
  • The persistence of the Mahabharata February 21, 2021
  • Sponges, metamorphoses and psyche February 18, 2021
  • 13 ways of looking at a bureaucrat February 17, 2021
  • Sound and fury told by the American cultural “elite” February 16, 2021

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Adam Phillips America Australian politics autobiography Bakhtin Blanchot blogging bureaucracy change China civil war coronavirus cultural decay culture culture wars death decay democracy Donald Trump dream election Empire Essays Ezra Pound featured Fernandez-Armesto Foucault Franz Kafka Fukuyama governing Harold Bloom history history of emotions Hopkins identity politics impeachment Ivan the Terrible Kierkegaard literature lockdown machiavelli madness Melbourne memory music Nietzsche philosophy poetry political decay politics power progressive politics Prose public service quotes reading Russia Russian history samizdat society Solzhenitsyn Symborska terror travel trust in government Vaclav Havel violence W.G. Sebald Wallace Stevens WB Yeats Weber William Dalrymple writing year in review Zbigniew Herbert

What is the burning archive?

The burning archive is my symbol for our cultural condition, and my own experiment with a new literary form. Read more here

My burning archive