Introduction:
vignette and overview
Ch. 1
The virtue of temperance
[Casablanca - Aristotle on
temperance and continence - Augustine and Aquinas - the Enlightenment on reason
and the passions - Nietzsche - MacIntyre and recent writers]
Ch. 2
Virtue clothed in literature
[Greek myths, Iliad and Odyssey,
plays - fairy stories - Mansfield Park, Madame Bovary, Heart
of Darkness, The Rainbow]
Ch. 3
Excess in Australia
[The Sydney Cove orgy - Gold Rush and
land boom - drunkenness and violence - Henry Lawson's mates - gambling - the
Sixties let rip - Greed is Good: Alan Bond and Rose Hancock, workaholism -
Schoolies Week and Mardi Gras]
Ch. 4
The lost stories of the victims
[`Orphans' underfoot, stolen
generations - Syphilis and GPI: Conder - George and Charmian - AIDS - the
religious life of restraint]
Ch. 5
Australia and the heroism of thrift and
temperance
[Noble
convicts and hard work - Women and temperance - the Protestant work ethic,
Church and Lodge - the mid-century calm - Menzies' `forgotten people' - thrift
and reticence - baby health and the Flynn effect - the old order regroups after
the Sixties - safety first and compensation litigation]
Ch. 7
The psychological and sociological evidence
[Development of self-esteem and looking after
oneself - hormones, genes, ADD, age and restraint - psychiatric perspectives -
different communities, different mores - religious and ethnic differences - the
law of provocation]
Ch. 8
Education for self-respect
[Older Australian educational
techniques: civics and morals, sport, Scouts, Empire, Anzacs - discipline and
self-control - religious education - values education and ethics]
Ch. 9
Addictions: intervention or restraint?
[Addictions
and their treatment - 12-step programs and AA - repressive measures and fear
versus self-control - Australia's response to AIDS - failures with tobacco
addiction - regulation and self-regulation of industry and commerce -
sustainability]
Ch. 10
Techniques of restraint and dysfunctional
communities
[Fetal alcohol syndrome, petrol-sniffing and
violence in remote communities - history of failed interventions - what works?]
(The Restraint Project has sponsored the creation of an Australian Database of Indigenous Violence ... story ... and initial work by Stephanie Jarrett on her book, Liberating Aboriginal People from Violence).
Ch. 11
Cognitive restraint: reasonableness and scepticism
[Teenage fanatics, but no suicide bombers
- the role of "reasonable", "evidence" and "probably" in English -
legal cultural baggage and the 1790s Boston case - scepticism about
political and marketing hype]