Adrian Rosenfeldt
Dr Adrian Rosenfeldt teaches at Melbourne University. He is a journalist, public speaker and the author of The God Debaters: New Atheist Identity-Making and the Religious Self in the New Millennium (2022).
Adrian's articles (21 total)
What are we missing about Helen of Troy?
Debate over who can play Helen of Troy misses something more interesting: in Homer, she emerges as a rare figure capable of questioning fate, power and her own responsibility.
Might Kyrgios actually know what he is doing?
Nick Kyrgios, Rafael Nadal and Kylie Minogue took very different paths to success. Their lives raise a deeper question about ambition, sacrifice and what it really means to fulfil our potential.
Called to the Holy Land: places we don’t choose to travel to
A journey through Jerusalem, Mount Sinai and the Dead Sea becomes a meditation on pilgrimage, responsibility and the uneasy line between freedom and fate.
Teaching is a calling. That’s no excuse to underpay teachers
Teaching can offer meaning, dignity and a profound sense of responsibility to others. But devotion to the work should never become an excuse for poor pay, insecurity or burnout.
What drives someone to be a 'Hardcore Harry'?
Extreme endurance events may look pointless from the outside, but they reveal a deeper cultural drive towards discipline, self-denial and achievement for its own sake.
From Astral Weeks to the “Iron Cage”: Van Morrison and the disenchantment of the World
Van Morrison’s career traces a cultural movement from youthful openness and spiritual wonder towards bitterness, calculation and disenchantment.
The case for spiritual sociology
Modern society can measure inequality, power and behaviour in extraordinary detail, but struggles to explain despair, loneliness, hope and the human need for meaning.
Why Frankenstein still matters in the age of AI
Shelley’s portrayal of consciousness helps us to better understand why artificial intelligence cannot feel wonder or shame.
Michael Jackson, funerals and the myth of the authentic self
How we remember people does not fit easily into a therapeutic framework of suffering, confession and healing.
The grandeur of humanity: Pope Leo on AI
Pope Leo's first encyclical offers a vision in which human dignity and relationships guide technological development rather than people becoming slaves to technology.
“Please try to enjoy each fact equally” – Severance and the fragmentation of modern identity
Whether you're an 'innie' or an 'outie', the television series Severance resonates so deeply because its vision of fragmented identity, emotional suppression and corporate control no longer feels futuristic. It feels uncomfortably familiar.
Looking for a home in a land of empty houses
Beneath the current political debates about housing demand lies an unavoidable reality. Empty dwellings sit alongside visible and hidden forms of homelessness, with many people attempting to create homes in inhospitable places rather than submit to overbearing regulation and continual intrusions into their personal lives.
The gig economy promises freedom. The reality is different
What looks like reckless behaviour on the streets reflects a deeper system of incentives in the gig economy that rewards speed, constant availability and risk-taking.
What Good Friday and the Book of Job reveal about a world in crisis
Modern society assumes suffering can be solved through policy, technology and progress. But this belief leaves us unprepared for the reality that tragedy is an enduring part of human life.
From Les Misérables to Trump – what happens when moral certainty hardens
Polarisation is often described as ideological. But its deeper cause may be moral – a loss of the capacity to recognise goodness in those who disagree with us, and the consequences that follow.
Dangerously alive: summer, sharks and a ritual encounter with danger
A beach swim, a shark warning and a familiar summer ritual open up bigger questions about safety, fear, and what it means to feel alive.
New Year’s Day and the promise that does not last
New Year’s Day promises renewal, then lets it slip away. That fleeting openness may be the point – not a failure, but a reminder about how meaning actually appears in our lives.
Trembling before the religion of AI
We like to think we have moved beyond religion, yet our reliance on AI reveals a new metaphysics shaped by imagination, projection and fear. Adrian Rosenfeldt explores how digital systems have taken on the psychological role once held by the divine.
Frankie Goes to Bethlehem: myth, music and the power of love
In 1984, Frankie Goes to Hollywood released a reverent nativity ballad that revealed how myth, music and Christmas still speak beyond belief.
Led Zeppelin, my band that never ‘made it’, and the lost art of failure
Our culture treats success as virtue and failure as personal flaw. Older traditions – from Greek tragedy to Christian thought – saw failure as meaningful. Recovering that wisdom may be essential to living with dignity in an age of burnout.
Net Zero and the metaphysics of anxiety in Australia
Net zero is not simply an environmental target. It has become a psychological and cultural anchor in a society that feels increasingly unstable.