Authority, Compliance, Conformity and Adult Agency This article uses the archetype of Neverland to explore a mode of being in which growth is indefinitely postponed while authority quietly consolidates. Moving beyond childhood fantasy, Neverland is reframed as a psychological and ontological condition where time is suspended, consequence is deferred, and systems are structured to preserve motion without maturation. Through a phenomenological reading of Peter Pan, the Lost Boys, Tinker Bell...

Why ESG, Global Institutions, and Asset Managers Are Less Conspiratorial and More Systemic Than We Admit This article offers a pre-ideological inquiry into ESG, global institutions, and the narratives that surround them, not as conspiracies or moral projects, but as emergent products of collective sense-making. Drawing on the Metacontent Discourse, the Being Framework, and the critique developed in Sustainabilism, it examines how dominant metacontent, collective shadow, and inauthenticity giv...

How Force Accelerates Disobedience This article examines the gradual decay of authority when law, leadership, or governance becomes dependent on force rather than meaning. Drawing on patterns observed in highly coercive systems, it argues that order does not function through compulsion. Force remains effective only while authority retains symbolic and moral legitimacy. The analysis traces a clear arc. Authority begins as a meaning-bearing structure that people internalise. As that meaning ...

Recreational Hunting: Ecological Responsibility, Hobby or ‘Moralised’ Reaction This article examines recreational hunting in Australia as a case study in sense-making, authenticity, and sustainability. Drawing on the Metacontent Discourse and the Nested Theory of Sense-Making, it analyses how positions on complex environmental issues are formed, and how incomplete conceptions of reality can harden into ethical certainty while producing systemic harm. The discussion situates recreationa...

How Extremism and Authoritarian Overreaction Lose Reality from Both Ends This article examines extremism and institutional overreaction not as political failures, but as manifestations of a deeper civilisational breakdown in sense-making, meaning-making, decision-making, and conduct. Rather than focusing on perpetrators, ideologies, or instruments, it looks beneath surface events to the metacontent structures that shape how reality is interpreted, decisions are justified, and actions are t...

Why Control-Based Endurance Undermines Systemic Integrity and Erodes Long-Term Coherence, Illustrated Through a Contemporary Context This article draws on the conceptual foundations developed in Ashkan Tashvir’s recent book Sustainabilism, where frameworks such as the distinction between Authentic Sustainability and Sustainabilism, the Systemic Subversion Cycle, and the Reconstructive Ontology of Sustainability are articulated as part of a broader civilisational inquiry into how systems end...

The Architecture Beneath Decisions A case study in sense-making, governance under pressure and what the Bondi response reveals about decision quality Public crises often expose more than immediate threats. They reveal how decisions are made, how meaning is constructed, and whether systems respond with coherence or collapse. Using the New South Wales firearms legislation following the Bondi attack as a case study, this article contextualises key elements of Ashkan Tashvir’s broader body ...

Why Australia Needs Constitutional Protection, Not Managerial Permission Australia is widely assumed to be a free society, yet it lacks explicit constitutional protection for freedom of speech. Unlike many comparable democracies, Australians rely on an implied freedom of political communication that protects the functioning of government rather than recognising free expression as a civic right held by citizens. This structural gap was recently acknowledged by NSW Premier Chris Minns, who s...

Why authentic sense-making must come before opinion, policy and law – a firearms case study in abstraction and reality Forming an opinion, let alone designing policy or creating law, requires more than reaction, symbolism, or moral certainty. It requires sense-making: the ability to understand what things are, how they function, and how they operate within real systems. This is a central theme in Ashkan Tashvir’s work, particularly in his book Metacontent, where he explores how distort...

Let Us Not Allow the Shadows of the Attackers to Define Who We Are, How We Live, or the Sustainable Society We Are Shaping In the aftermath of tragedy, societies are tested not only by what has occurred but by how they make sense of it. This article argues that the most consequential responses to violence are rarely the actions themselves, but the layers of interpretation and intention that take form long before policy or law enters the frame. Drawing on the Metacontent Discourse and the B...

GHEST: A Charter for Human Coherence The Galley for Human Empowerment and Sustainable Transformation For many years, Ashkan Tashvir’s body of work has explored how human beings make sense of reality, how meaning is formed, and how integrity or its absence shapes personal lives, institutions, and societies. It has examined why well-intentioned systems drift toward dysfunction, why progress without orientation collapses into confusion, and why sustainability cannot be achieved without cohe...

Why Safety Fails as Meaning and Leadership Collapse When violence erupts, societies instinctively reach for control. More security. Faster laws. Tighter surveillance. Clear enemies. Decisive action. Yet despite ever-expanding systems of protection, the sense of safety continues to erode. This article explores why. Rather than treating violence as an isolated act or a failure of enforcement, it examines violence as a symptom of deeper breakdowns in Being, sense-making, meaning-making, and l...