The Nambucca Papers

By the time missing US resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia turned up in a hellhole in El Salvador, the story we Westerners had long been telling ourselves could no longer be taken seriously.

The term ‘conspiracy theory’ entered common parlance in the wake of the assassination of US President John F.

There may come a time when the old stories don’t make sense anymore.

About an hour south of Nambucca Heads, the Pacific shore curves eastward and then north to form a graceful sweep of aquamarine fringed by forest green.

In the modern world we celebrate individuality and freedom, but the truth is our mammalian nervous system loves order and conformity.

When Mark Fisher popularised Fredric Jameson’s aphorism that it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism[1] he alerted us to an important principle.

The road to Yapa weaves through clumped grasses in red sand woodland to the foot of a low, rocky ridge.

“It’s a sick society.”

The trick to perpetuating injustice, as any skilled propagandist can tell you, is to make what is entirely arbitrary seem natural and inevitable.

In the early 2000s a retiring senior executive from a prestigious German car company predicted our definition of luxury was about to change.

Dr Stephen Porges, originator of Polyvagal Theory[1], noted that Covid-19 exposed how individual physiological states intersect with the health of whole societies.

On a panel show one night, a small gathering of notables discussed a topic which had been appearing in the news.

The image called Earthrise was taken from lunar orbit on Christmas Eve 1968.

This is The Nambucca Papers, an essay series by Mike Dowson.