Articles by: Mark Furlong

Author Biography:

Mark Furlong is an independent scholar, and thinker-in-residence at the Bouverie Centre, La Trobe University: .

The Universities and Israel

In counterpoint to so much circulating about a victimised Israel, Riemer’s book is a work of ethical and affective commitment in which the latter, perforce, is animated by the former.

Automating the all-about-me: On Apple’s new Mental Health App

AI that seeks recognise, interpret and simulate human emotions may or may not be a pseudo-science, but it certainly is a jostling field that should be critiqued as a commercial rhizome.

Looking for Eros in the long hard rain of climate collapse

As climate collapse accelerates there will be massive material effects. But what are the consequences that will befall inner life?

i-dolatry: The cult of autonomy is degrading the prospects for relationships

What effect does a preoccupation with autonomy – with the i-me-my-mine – have on the prospects for ethical relationship and reliable attachment?

Better Access to What?: Australia’s mental health strategy misses the point entirely

Thinking about mental illness as a discrete phenomenon limits the need for broader social transformation to create a healthy and safe society.

Will climate collapse do our heads in?

The breakdown of the climate will produce a febrile emotional milieu. Fear and blame, grief and helplessness, among a larger set of intense feelings, will wash over and within us.

I-Me-My-Mine: The Expansion of Mental Health and Individualisation

This pre-occupation with my hurts, my dreams, my entitlements—with the organizing principle that I am, and should be treated as, special—is the garden bed into which the du jour varietal ‘have regard for your mental health’ has been planted.

Loving Machines: Mental Health by Algorithm Is Reshaping Care and Sociality

Woebot may sit at the outer rim of digital mental health technologies, but we can see the shape and trajectory it implies for understanding mental health, the care relation and, beyond that, the person generally. Where the CBT-AI combination sets up a relentlessly positive artificial other—an interlocutor that is never awkward or demanding, and becomes naturalised as ‘what I like’—real-world relationships are bound to be found unsatisfactory.

‘Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?’: Join the in-group, recognise the conspiracy

To be sensibly upbeat about what is coming round the corner is a big ask. Much easier is to sum it up and say, ‘It’s not my fault. We have been cheated’.

Proboscises Unbound: The psychopathology of Silicon Valley

…the acceleration of net worth enjoyed by the digital czars is unlike anything history has ever seen: Musk’s net worth increased by US$25 billion in a single day in March 2021.

Non-consensual reality: Conspiracy thinking, delusions and disputed truth

Feeding into this inchoate state of transgression is a cross-current of vectors: our knowledge of impending climate catastrophe, the disavowed madness of the economic system, the danger and transformative power of COVID-19, galloping I-centredness, social fragmentations, and more. This welter of concerns raises the deepest anxiety.

Trump as political calculator, narcissism as design for living

For Trump, it is better to bring the whole country down than to experience the private horror show that would be his lot if he were to be publicly rejected in the forthcoming election.