On Change: Twelve Meditations

On Change: Twelve Meditations is a collection of philosophical fragments taking a personal lens to reflect on large-scale societal transformation.

The book invites readers on an introspective journey through life in the 2020s, as external shifts meet internal confusion in the lingering aftermath of the pandemic. Constructed like a Lieder cycle - or a concept album - it is loosely structured around three sequences exploring various modes of relating to the world, anchored in different design and virtue ethical principles. Each section offers a series of vignettes that weave together intellectual commentary with personal memories of the late 20th century in Strasbourg and Paris, and contemporary life in Australia.

This short book finds its place in a philosophical tradition that combines the Pre-Socratics, Daoism, Aristotle, Montesquieu, Kierkegaard, Ignatius, Chesterton and German Romanticism, with more recent queer, ecological, and post-colonial works. The more we recognise that things have complex genealogies, the more we can imagine different futures. On Change is a call to reflect on the way we conduct our lives in a fast-evolving world, and how we might best integrate the wisdom of the past to shape our emerging present.