What's Wrong?: Making Sense of Nonsense

Description

Around the world, people have witnessed a decline in thinking and language. 'Social media' has maimed language and manners; it has brought us the violent madness of conspiracy. Twisted media are infected. In Australia, our schools have not kept up. People ignorant of both logic and grammar are unleashed on us. Judges are weighed down by paper and anxiety. We sacked the civil service and trashed the Westminster system. Politicians are mired in jingles, spreadsheets and photo ops; the two main parties are spent and adrift. Nations, including ours, have lost their vision, and people their faith. In 2016, the decline became the fall, when two spoiled brats exploited those lesions on our public life and lured the gullible into fiction. This book is the joint response of a poet and a lawyer- a guide on how to think and how to write. With analyses of 'truth' and 'bullshit', there are chapters on grammar, style and professional writing. This is a book for people who want to think straight and write clearly, regardless of their academic record. You don't need a ticket to use this book, but if you do have one, you will be better off than many people who make it through tertiary. And we face bigger problems in this country than snobbery.

Chris Wallace-Crabbe AM is our leading poet. The author of more than twenty volumes of verse, he has a world-wide reputation. Dubbed the 'genial smuggler of surprises', Chris has taught at Harvard and the University of Venice, as well as being Emeritus Professor at the University of Melbourne. For many years, Chris was retained by the Judicial College of Victoria to assist in judicial education in writing judgments. The poet describes that task as challenging. Geoffrey Gibson, a former barrister, has written widely on history, literature and logic - as well as the law. During thirty of his fifty years in the law, Geoff spent part of his time trying tricky cases in statutory tribunals. Three of his tax decisions were appealed as far as the High Court; three members of that court have appeared before him. Geoff claims that is a record. He affects to be relaxed about his many stints at Cambridge, Harvard and Oxford. After the final ascent of the AFL Demons, he is content to feel the serenity. And the NRL Storm are up next.