Zen and the art of truck driving

The ten rules I wish I didn’t have to learn the hard way.

Philosophy, at its best, is not some airy-fairy meditation on the meaning of life. It is a set of rules for living. The ancient Stoics understood this better than most. Epictetus gave us the Enchiridion, interpreted as a literal ‘handbook’ of reminders you have to keep rereading because your monkey brain keeps forgetting.

Another well-known Stoic, Seneca, confessed that he never came home from the Roman forum with quite the same moral character he had when he left. Something always became unsettled. He needed the quiet of his study to recompose himself.

A truck driver has no such luxury. The road does the recomposing for you, whether you like it or not. And it does it with the subtlety of a 20-crate dolly sliding off a wet foot-control ramp.

Epictetus’ idea of reason was based on the divine, active, and ruling faculty within human beings that allows them to distinguish between what is under their control and what is not.

Truck driving, however, is a lesson in the fact that you don’t control anything.

 

The next time you see a truckie 🚚 staring into the middle distance at the servo, don’t assume he’s daydreaming.

He’s probably just recomposing himself after another lesson he didn’t ask for but definitely won’t forget...

Article | https://t.co/SDHxxfNcZo pic.twitter.com/KqLeSO7AAY

— The Spectator Australia (@SpectatorOz) April 12, 2026

Dob in a servo? How very un-Australian

We would be far better off with a ‘dob in a useless politician’ scheme.

The NSW Labor government has found a new way to distract us from its own failures. It is encouraging the public to ‘dob in’ service stations charging what it considers ‘high’ prices for fuel.

In a move straight out of the Covid-era snitch handbook, motorists are being urged to report servos via the FuelCheck app for alleged price gouging. This is not a tough-on-business policy. It is the politics of incompetent governance dressed up as consumer protection.

And it is utterly un-Australian.

My latest in The Spectator Australia, Dob in a servo? How very un-Australian.

In a move straight out of the Covid-era snitch handbook, motorists are being urged to report servos via the FuelCheck app for alleged price gouging.

This is not a tough-on-business policy. It is the politics of incompetent governance dressed up as consumer protection.

And it is… pic.twitter.com/xlMOd86vao

— The Spectator Australia (@SpectatorOz) April 7, 2026

Our youth are impressionable, but not stupid

The Age of Woke is over and young people know they were lied to...

Let’s be honest. Australia’s young people have been marinated in Woke ideology from the cradle to the doctorate. From childcare centres, where toddlers learn about ‘gender fluidity’ before they can tie their shoelaces, through school curricula that treats Western Civilisation as an original sin, to university faculties that reward grievance studies over rigorous inquiry.

The left has had a captive audience for decades. They’ve been told that feelings trump facts, that capitalism is the root of all evil, and that the only moral posture worth striking is performative outrage. Impressionable? Absolutely. Stupid? Not even close.

The proof is in the polling.

My latest in The Spectator Australia, Our youth are impressionable, but not stupid.

Young Australians have realised they were lied to their whole lives by the left-wing machine at the heart of the education system.

Woke virtue-signalling can't pay an energy bill.

A Welcome to Country isn't going to fix social unrest in their cities.

Their diet of… pic.twitter.com/F0rwgMB2lJ

— The Spectator Australia (@SpectatorOz) April 6, 2026