To an MP on the need for Proportional Representation

Here's an email I recently sent to my MP. 

Dear Nick,
As you may know, on 2 December, the bill presented by Jonathan Reynolds, Labour and Co-operative MP for Stalybridge and Hyde, is to be submitted as a Private Member’s Bill to the House of Commons to change our voting system to a proportional one (Additional Member System http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/additional-member-system ). I am writing to you to ask you to support the Reynolds bill.It seems to me and many people that the last general election was a particularly sharp example of the way that first past the post voting is ill suited to a democracy where there are more than two parties attracting significant support, I trust I do not need to rehearse the egregious injustices produced by the fptp system earlier this year to you. The overall misrepresentation of seats to votes cast nationally made comments from other Europeans especially poignant when some, on understanding the British result, described our current system as barely democratic. I can't think of any recently emerged democracy choosing fptp and it is notable that devolved nations in the UK haven't adopted it eithr. Most go for the system Jonathan Reynolds is proposing which broadly speaking New Zealand went for and seems likely to be brought into Canada.
I trust you will recognise that we do need to be mature about recognising that our society with its communications systems and exposure to global forces and ideas has evolved beyond its political needs being satisfied by a bipolar whigs and tories system and needs an adequate way to express multiparty democracy in as fair a way as we can manage as exemplified in the devolved assemblies of the UK.
It seems to me particularly poignant to feel that I have to outline the case to a Labour MP, given both the history of the party and also the way that boundary changes and demographic changes could make it even harder under fptp for us to challenge a government elected by less than 30% of the electorate.

Widening negative religious stereotypes?

Just after the Paris shootings/bombings on Friday last, one of the people I follow on Twitter tweeted:

creeped-out by calls to "pray" for the victims and families. Abrahamic monotheism is probably not the thing to lean on/ mobilize today.

— Benjamin H. Bratton (@bratton) November 14, 2015

Now, I know this guy is self consciously not religious, but I'm quite used to the 'non-religious'  people around me getting the idea, for example, that just because someone who does something wicked self-labels as, say, "Muslim", doesn't mean that this person really represents in any meaningful way the views, attitudes or likely behaviours of others who might bear the same self-designation. So I responded:

@bratton tbh: I'm concerned by yr tarring with same brush in this reaction: same impulse as behind some unpleasant stereotyping?

— Andii Bowsher (@AndiiBowsher) November 14, 2015

Now, I'm not sure that this really conveyed my concern because Ben responded in ways that indicated he hadn't really picked up what I was concerned about. I was trying to at least hint towards the idea that it looked like being creeped out by Abrahamic monotheists praying for victims etc perhaps came from a place of lumping us all together with the Abrahamic monotheism of the criminals who committed the murders. In most of the rest of our society's more informed discourse, that would be seen as negative stereotyping. Of course, it might be that I've misunderstood Ben's point; though I'm struggling to put another interpretation on it -hence the question mark at the end of my tweet and the attempt not to be too accusatory. This particularly because I follow Ben because I like some of what he posts and reposts and find some of his perspectives helpful, so this came as a bit of a shock.
There were a couple of further tweets, but somehow I can't access them just now...

Arthur C. Clarke's 31-Word Sci-Fi Story, "siseneG"

Read Arthur C. Clarke's Super Short, 31-Word Sci-Fi Story, "siseneG" | Open Culture: “siseneG,” a story story — a very short story indeed — Clarke sent in to Analog magazine in 1984:

And God said: DELETE lines One to Aleph. LOAD. RUN.
And the Universe ceased to exist.
Then he pondered for a few aeons, sighed, and added: ERASE.
It never had existed.

I liked this because it does imply some interesting philosophical reflections. Of course, it is hard to really imagine a being outside of time 'pondering for a few aeons' (what could that possibly mean?). But I warmed to the idea that we could perhaps think of the universe as fundamentally code. I think that's where I see a lot of physics thinking at the moment. And then, if code, then what of "In the beginning was the word"?

Learning Calm: Christians and mindfulness.

I was very recently asked by a Christian student at my university with regard to a set of meditation sessions I had just advertised under the title 'Learn Calm and Carry On'.  "May I ask based on what philosophy behind will the meditation be conducted?". This is the answer I quickly formulated, but it seemed to me that in brief it helped me to articulate why I do it. You may discern that I have answered more than the simple question as asked: coming from a Christian tradition which has sometimes been more wary of things like this, I judged that placing the answer within a broader context was needed.

The philosophy behind it, from my point of view, is slightly sophisticated. In overview; it is rooted in scientific research on exercises involving focus on breath and awareness of one's own consciousness. As the person who leads this particular package of exercises, and as a Christian I understand what I'm doing as in Christian terms. I think that self-awareness is an important discipline for Christians to develop in order for us to become aware of how we do and don't follow God's will (even into the recesses of our personal formation) and to help us to become more conscious of God's presence in our everyday life.

These exercises can help us to cultivate those awarenesses.

However, these sessions are open to people who don't necessarily share a Christian commitment because I think, based on the scientific evidence, that the exercises can help people develop better mental and emotional health and because I believe that Christian faith calls us to 'do good to all', offering something like this is part of a broader Christian outreach. I occasionally talk with people about how they link up with Christian faith. Within the sessions themselves, I just use exercises that can be accessed by a wide variety of people with no particular content that requires a specific faith commitment.

As a Christian I see mind-body wholism as a part of the heritage of our faith reaching back into Hebrew anthropology and exemplified in the philosophical commitments that the churches of the first four centuries recognised as consistent with Christian commitment. That mind-body wholism leads me to expect that by engaging in certain kinds of psycho-somatic exercises, people would gain some health benefits. It is no surprise, either, therefore, to discover that by engaging in exercises of this kind, Christians can also find things that can help to mature their own discipleship of Christ.

On a more personal note, my own engagement in these exercises came through recognising that the effects and some of the component parts were actually part of practice and experience of many Christians, myself included. It was just that taking them out of the familiar context of a specific spiritual tradition made them seem somewhat unfamiliar at first.

Now, of course, there are others who might lead a range of exercises such as I do who don't share a Christian faith. And, of course, they would have to work out for themselves how they square the scientific results with their own philosophies. In what I've written above, I hope I've given you an indication of how it seems to me that these exercises can fit within a Christian understanding of the world. 

Further comments

My response ended at the last paragraph, but a few further comments might be called for.  There is in this response an implicit view of the relationship between the philosophical entails of Christian commitments and the 'public square': I'm not an exclusivist in this respect: I think that because world-views are seeking to explain the world which is a common heritage, there are enormous overlaps of explanations. In fact, missionally, I see these as the reason we can, as Christians, engage in conversations about how we collectively 'do' society and expect that sometimes our views can gain some degree of collective acceptance -because there is common ground in the human experiences of ourselves, our bodies, minds and the world. But maybe that's another post ...