Why we hate -a book review

The topic of this book is important as we are seeing a rise in all sorts of hatred across many societies. Social media seems not to helping -rather the reverse: fanning the flames. Our global community is increasingly being stressed by climate forcing -related changes which are beginning to push populations into harm's way in terms of forcing people to confront others who are being demonised. And our propensity to emote synergistically with those around us has always been a force for fanning the flames of conflict as we can be induced to hate someone designated 'enemy'. 

I came to this book also with my own questions about how anger and hate interrelate and how our psychology around hate can be manipulated and how that manipulation can be counteracted. 

I thought I'd give this book a try also because I recently became intrigued by this:

Hilge Landweer distinguishes between Verachtung (contempt) and Hass (hate). She argues that contempt fits perfectly into the neoliberal emotional landscape, because it’s a gesture of turning away from, and dehumanising the other person, not taking them seriously. Hate, on the other hand, takes its object very seriously. In a system of class hierarchies, there’s contempt from above and hatred from below. The ruling class don’t have to take the enemy seriously most of the time – unless the working class organises and strikes. But when you’re an oppressed person, you really have to take your oppression seriously, because otherwise you can’t exist. You can’t survive... " https://novaramedia.com/2023/04/17/is-hate-politically-useful/ ...

This was intriguing not least because it recognises the place of power in our emotional responding. And I recognised something in this about where anger and hate might be legitimate and about that adage "love the sinner, hate the sin" -is that sound advice? Or is there more complexity involved? And, as a Christian, is some of Landweer's analysis anywhere near what we might want to bring to reflection on Ephesians 6:1-10?

The book spends a lot of time initially on history and evolutionary  background to violence and discrimination. At this level, it didn't meet with my desire to examine hate as emotion firstly rather than as social attitudes relating to othering. Of course, this does lead me to consider the the relationship between othering, in-group and out-group attitudes on the one hand and detestation or contempt in individual psyches -and indeed the genesis of such hatred as well as the social construction or structuring of such emotions.

One of the things I appreciated was the outlining of good reasons to consider that homo sapiens are fundamentally a co-operative species (which scriptural-theologically I would locate in the narratives of Genesis 1 and 2) though that sociability is capable of being co-opted to ill. And the examination of the move from hunter-gatherer to settled agricultural societies with cities helps to justify both dimensions of that thesis.

I felt that the examination of wars and of just war theories was helpful and nuanced. It was also enjoyable that there is a British centre of gravity in the writing, in an era when so much takes a perspective of the other side of the Atlantic.

So, while this was not what I was expecting, it did throw light helpfully on the psychology and anthropology of war and prejudice. I guess the core thesis is that there are traceable factors that become culturally embedded but as it is 'merely' culture and not hardwired biology that does these things (though biology does play a part but not determinedly) , then we can design cultural ways out and around and beyond these hatreds.

I warmed to the authors deft handling and compassionate and fair-minded approach. 

Links

Why We Hate on Bookshop
Michael Ruse’s Website

 #WhyWeHate

Rice growing and cultural differences

In a PhD thesis, it is being proposed that the co-operativeness demanded by rice growing has generated a distinct cultural psychology to that found among wheat-growing societies.

Talhelm and his co-authors at universities in China and Michigan propose that the methods of cooperative rice farming -- common to southern China for generations -- make the culture in that region interdependent, while people in the wheat-growing north are more individualistic, a reflection of the independent form of farming practiced there over hundreds of years.

"The data suggests that legacies of farming are continuing to affect people in the modern world," Talhelm said. "It has resulted in two distinct cultural psychologies that mirror the differences between East Asia and the West." 'Rice theory' explains north-south China cultural differences -- ScienceDaily:

To me this seems very plausible and could take its place alongside the effects of the tech-complex of move-able-type printing on rag-paper as generating quite important cultural mindscapes.



What I'm left looking for with this, is how this particular difference is handed down when societies move beyond such a large demographic investment in the agricultural bases. In other words, what mechanisms are there that continue to propagate the different mindsets in populations where rice-growing or wheat-growing are not big practical factors in people's lives?



Is it that the mindset is further embedded in other institutions which take over the propagation of attituteds? If so, what institutions might they be?

Genesis and the Rise of Civilization -a review

I have had to be careful how many books I pick up for review for Speakeasy -I've got a reading list to work through for various ongoing writing projects of my own. However, when I sow this being offered for review*, I knew I had to have a look at it. Genesis and the Rise of Civilization by J. Snodgrass:  The Goodreads review is short but captures what drew me in.

 Snodgrass Integrates Studies of World Mythologies, Ancient Near Eastern Tribes and Empires, Archaeology and Rabbinic Stories to Read Genesis as a Parable about the Agricultural Revolution, and God's Counter-Revolution.

You see I'm finding myself fascinated by all of those things, so having them in one book ... well, several birthdays came at once. And the Goodreads blurb is right. I've enjoyed the insights brought to bear on specific stories or sections of stories by archaeological anthropology: these have been very insightful. Not always will they be congenial to a certain kind of literalism that can't countenance history or even pre-history beyond 6,000 years ago, or those who can only conceive that truth can be told by straight-forward historiography and are suspicious of the truth that can be told by parable, legend and mythical storytelling. What Snodgrass does is enable us to appreciate the truths that these kinds of language can tell.

As I've read this, it has become more evident to me that I'm going to be returning to it when I'm reflecting on the early chapters of Genesis and due to preach about them.

one of the themes that emerges clearly from this reading based upon prehistory reconstructed from archaeology and anthropology, is the conflict between pastoralists and agriculturalists in which the latter emerged the victors.  The interesting thing it makes clear is the way that, contrary to the myths and legends of most other civilisations of the shift from hunter-gatherer to settled agriculture, the Bible we have tends to exhibit sympathy for the pastoralists and to sound out the warnings about the downsides of agriculturally based ways of life.

The bigger picture of cultural difference and change is interspersed with little titbits of information which made me stop and think more. For example, what if it is right that Abram's wife Sarai's name reflects a background in her being an intentionally childless (ex)-priestess of the Moon-goddess cult. Could she and Abram have been fleeing a situation -eloping together for religious convictions?

The author is a teacher in church settings, and occasionally that background shows through in the writing in asides, puns and witticisms. I enjoyed these but i expect some readers might find them less scholarly and others that there aren't enough of them to properly lighten a scholarly book.

It's not a short book -though half of it is index etc.  There's something of interest on every page so reading it is not a hard job.

*Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the  publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR,Part 255 -even though I am British, residing in Britain.

The Real History of the First World War

 Some of you may know that I'm involved in trying to organise some helpful and educative responses to WW1 and in particular to start by commemorating appreciatively the Christmas Truce when troops spontaneously ceased-fire an Christmas Eve 1914. The more I have been looking into things the more I have come to appreciate what a thoroughly bad thing that war was. As it says in the book:

"The First World war was caused by military competition between opposing alliances of nation states. these nation states represented the interests of rival blocs of capital competing in the world markets.

The British were able to adopt a holier-than-thou attitude because they had grabbed the biggest empire in the 18th century and then led the industrial revolution in the 19th. They favoured free trade because they were economically established.

They were able to portray the Germans as 'aggressors' and 'militarists', and to claim they were 'guilty' of starting the war, only because they were defending an existing empire rather than trying to create a new one.

But the underlying aims of the rulers of all the great powers were identical: to carve-up the world in pursuit of profit and power. The First World War was an imperialist war."

No Glory: The Real History of the First World War - Stop the War Coalition
See also the No Glory website

Research shows Humans aren't natural-born war-mongers

This study is not doubt going to come under attack, but I think it has resonance with our experience. In brief, the article  Humans Not Predisposed to War, New Study Finds | Common Dreams points up:

Countering the prevailing notion that humankind is naturally predisposed to war, new research suggests that primitive humans existed mostly peacefully, with war developing much later than previously thought.

Now, as to why I'm disposed to take this seriously, leaving aside my commitemnt to taking seriously Christ's teaching. I think that the activity of warfare seems to require a certain amount of 'psyching up' rather than being something we 'naturally' slip into. As the study seems to show, murder is more likely -crimes of passion, resentment etc. Organising a unmber of people to warfare is a very different league and requires organising, arguing for etc -a far more expensive endeavour in terms of psychic and physical resources. Then consider that to get people to fight wars takes quite a bit of training -including desensitisation to killing and cuing aggressive responses (and even then typical soldiers tend to suffer fear reactions more than 'bravery').

 As an expression of that expense can be seen in the mythically-enshrined ideologies of ANE; the Babylonian and Sumerian creation myths which 'justify' organised violence. So the Genesis 1 account which reads to me like a counter-story is significant because it pictures a peaceable creation process presumably deliberately telling a different tale to warring god-factions and thereby giving a different vision of human purpose and dignity which is presumably the theological point. So I would see this as providing a pre-historical evidence that the theological assertion I'm seeing in Genesis 1 is mirrored by human development in history, And that the development of warfare is a later cultural development which required, among other things, ideological underpinnings which Genesis is resisting and countering.

That's not to say that a rosy view of early humanity is propogated by the Bible -far from it. However, in line with this interpretation of evidence, violence in scripture is seen more as interpersonal (Cain and Abel) first of all.

Marriage, sexuality and the CofE

Mark Vernon has written a very helpful piece responding to the new CofE report on marriage (engendered by the recent debates around marriage equality). The piece is here: Where's the good news? - Philosophy and Life:
In it Dr Vernon outlines the main thesis and critques it ...

...that marriage is a 'creation ordinance', defined as between a man and a woman, as apparently implied in Genesis. This is either making the norm the rule or reducing the rich myths of Genesis to a formula. If it's the former, it's simply a category error. If it's the latter, it's an appallingly reductive reading of scripture that strips it of life.  ...  The idea that Genesis sanctions the nuclear family is, actually, a modern idea: I believe it can be traced to John Locke's 1690 Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent and End of Civil Government. Then, a legal definition of marriage was required because before, committed relationships had gained their social sanction by being made before God. Also, before then, families rarely looked like Adam and Eve under the fig tree because people died too often: hodgepodge families seem far more likely to have been the norm.

The first point in the quote above is what I too recently came to understand: that the 'traditional' Evangelical scriptural argument is a category error -making the norm a rule (as I try to say here and note that Steve Chalke realised).

It's important to be reminded that this argument is essentially a modern one, though I think that we should note that marriage liturgies for a long time have referenced Adam and Eve. It is important however to note the variation that has constituted marriages historically. Such accepted variation makes it hard to sustain an argument that traditional marriage is being defended: whose 'tradition' and why is it defended? We should also note that the Bible is replete with counter-examples to the Genesis ideal as latterly interpreted. If we avoid making the norm the rule, then scripture seems to 'sanction' a wide variety of patterns.

Gifts differing: church, mission and unity

At this morning's 8am service in the church down the road from us, I presided over a small congregation (snow, no doubt, reduced the number) and preached. The themes I spoke about, I find -on reflection- are things I want to jot down here. The readings were 1 Cor 12:1-12 and John 2:1-11. I felt drawn to the former -surprisingly: I normally feel drawn to the gospel passage nowadays. I was considering a church (Anglican, CofE) which has a history of catholic ministry which has tended, by all accounts, towards the 'Father says...' rather than a Vatican 2 'whole people of God' approach. So I was also considering encouragement towards a whole people of God emphasis is probably important and appropriate at this time. This means a move from a medieval revival model of church being a sacramental dispensary where the role of the unordained is to give money and attendance and in a sense to 'sit tight and wait for glory' to a way of thinking about church in which everyone is discovering their gifts and callings and giving themselves into God's mission -part of which is to support and encourage others to do so (including to enter into doing so for the first time -which is evangelism).

So, I ended up making two or three main points -depending how you divvy them up: two of them are closely related enough to be parts of the same point, perhaps.

It starts with an incident when I was a curate, a newish church member said to me that she would like to be involved in doing something for the church. I was stuck for a there-and-then encouraging response because our church at the time seemed to have all the help it needed in doing what it was doing and the kind of involvement required to expand the work needed theological and pastoral experience as yet lacking for her (so it seemed to me). That incident has stuck with me though: it is a picture of what goes on more generally in churches: we arrange things so that only about 20% of the people actually can get involved -and that becomes a self-fulfilling arrangement: the 80% come to expect a passive role and even come to like it that way ("I come to be fed!"). So the challenge of 1Cor.12 is not only to recognise that everyone does have gifts (and callings -is implied) but that we consciously 'do church' in ways that enable those gifts to be discerned and to be expressed and used (and I would say that it is part of the charism of ministerial priesthood to work to that end).

Is this week of Christian unity it is worth reflecting, it seems to me, on the history of church fracturing. In many cases, I would suggest, part of that history is tied up with not simply doctrinal differences and misunderstandings but also with vocational and 'charismal' difficulties. Sometimes part of the problem has been that churches have been unable/unwilling to make room for the gifts and vocations of those not already in positions of ministerial power.

I think, for example, of the English scene where this seems to be part of the issue with Quakerism in relation to Anglicanism in the 17th and 18th Centuries and between the emerging Methodist movement and established Anglicanism (though not only Anglicanism) in the 19th century. In these cases the issue of how vocations and gifts were discerned, encouraged, enabled and resourced is part of what is happening. The pressure of having a strong vocation, evident gifts and important insights which couldn't be exercised or recognised through the existing churchly structures and procedures contributed to eruptions of Christian ministry beyond the currently ministerially recognised church. These eventually coalesced into further ecclesial entities and that coalescence was hardened by uncharitable and arrogant relating on both sides of what had become a divide.

However, this is all very church-centred and although Paul clearly had meetings of local Christians in mind in writing 1 Corinthians, it takes only a little thought to recognise that some of these giftings might apply beyond the gathered church setting. Indeed " the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good" could easily be extended to a wider 'common-ity' than the church considering that

• some of the gifts mentioned are clearly capable of being exercised and useful beyond the church
• in other gift lists, outreach-y gifts and ministries are mentioned
• the gospel passage is of a spiritual gift exercised by Christ in what we would basically think of as a secular (perhaps even profane) setting.
• if the Mission of God is bigger than the church, then we should expect that spiritual gifts would be given to enable Christians to engage in that mission beyond the church, in everyday life and the secular and profane world.

Indeed part of response now to the woman I began this reflection with would be to consider this wider mission as well as to consider how her sense of vocation might indicate and open up the ministry of the church to a wider variety and expression and how that might be interrelated to the existing ministries and may even open up 'spaces' for new ministries to develop.

I renew my call to consider 'vocation-shaped church': the idea that we should organise, structure and fashion church life to identify and support the vocations off all its members -even when that leads us to form gatherings that look very different in all sorts of ways to the originating body. It is at this point that the matter of maintaining the bonds of peace becomes important -and indeed involved people who have vocations and gifts to do that.

Sandy Hook 'truthers' and historical truth

What a fascinating article. It's actually about conspiracy theorists claiming that the Sandy Hook shootings were a government staged 'unreal' event -actors were employed and lies are being told. I presume that the plot is to remove guns from the toters.
its here: Sandy Hook 'truthers' and the paranoid quest for meaning where there is none:

point is that when you freeze any moment of history, then analyse it in extreme detail, you'll always find numerous things that "don't add up". Every moment in history is full of them; it's just that most moments in history are mundane, and therefore go un-analysed. And "if you have any fact which you think is really sinister … hey, forget it, man," Tink Thompson, a private detective who investigated the case, tells Morris. "Because you can never, on your own, think up all the non-sinister, perfectly valid explanations for that fact."

I couldn't help thinking of Biblical Studies ... This article might be worth keep handy when discussing issues of historical truth, method and evidence.

That last comment from Tink Thompson is important and shows the place of imagination informed by cultural and general knowledge. It's also why I find Sherlock Holmes really annoying: the unbelievable part of Holmes's 'deductions' is not that he makes shrewd judgements about what is likely (and that is what a lot of is involved in his chains of reasoning as portrayed in the stories) but that he is always right when so many things could be otherwise -it is possible to think up other perfectly valid and probably equally likely explanations or rationales.

Similarly, quite a lot of Biblical criticism relating to the gospels (for example) while seeming to be straightforward applications of knowledge about background, culture etc are just one particular reading based on an inevitably partial understanding of what might have been occurring. That's not to say they aren't valuable or that I find some relatively convincing, but it is to say that we should be ever mindful of the possibility that a further piece of insight or knowledge could make some difference.

Religion, evolution, reason

Andrew Brown's been writing an intriguing mini series in the Guardian in response to Robert Bellah's book on Religion since the axial age. There are some points he makes that are worth pondering further. One is to do with the 'invention' or 'discovery' of reason; we're so used to it that we forget that it may not always have been 'around' in human culture in the disciplined and methodical way we now approach it. And indeed, part of the story is about religion and not just in the inimical way that New Atheists would have us hear it (since the story begins before the so-called Enlightenment).

This isn't a universal conflict. "Reason" itself, as contrasted with myth, is a relatively recent invention. You could in fact understand the history that Bellah tells of religion up to the Axial age as a story of the invention of reason (or, for Platonists, and theists, its discovery).

The story involves understanding myth as something more than a mere fiction and being able te recognise the bona fides of cultures approaching existential issues and matters of public knowledge and indeed wisdom with different backgrounds and teloi than the Modern West.

Thus:

 If religions are best understood as ways in which we dramatise and come to understand the urge to power and the urge to nurture, it's obvious that they can never be displaced by science, nor vice versa. Science itself is a playground, or arena, for both urges.

In other words, I think, Science is not immune from its protagonists continuing to behave badly, to compete with malice, to deceive and do-down even while proposing that it is all about nurturing the common good and treading the way to a brighter future.

Nevertheless, moral imperatives are well to be grounded in some degree of reality else they'll not overcome the ingrained self-serving and confirmation-biases which would undercut ideologies of Reason: there is still a difficulty about deriving an ought from an is and any ought grounded in 'human nature' is too immediately self-defeated and open to challenge. Why should we follow the better angels of our nature? And who says they are better? And can we really argue with the Ayn Rand's of this world?

I think that this is part of What Brown is getting at when he writes:

Ever since that discovery [of reason], in all the places where it has been kept alive, reason and myth eat away at each other, and feed on the other's remains. Unless myth is felt as a truth larger than ourselves, and unless it is understood from the inside, it just won't work. But a working myth cannot be made entirely proof against reason. Perhaps the first discovery of this was by Adam and Eve. It was certainly obvious to the thinkers of the 18th century, whether or not they were Christians. You find it in Voltaire and Hume as well as Swift and Bishop Butler. They all understood that reason alone cannot justify the claim that we should live by reason alone.

It seems to me that the last bit there is a reflex of the incompleteness theorem in Maths and of the epistemological conclusions of mid 20th century philosophers that in order to know something, you first have to believe something.

Religion in Human Evolution, part 8: the invention of reason | Andrew Brown | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk:

Still in Mutiny

The big theme of Mutiny -at least as far as I've read to this point (about a third of the way through) is about the conflict between two views of the world; on one hand there are those who seek to extract maximum economic value from what they own and to own more property from which to extract value even if that means exploiting people and reducing them to machine-like servitude. On the other hand are those who suffer the consequences of those ways of conducting oneself who fight back to preserve, regain or protest their dignity, rights to life and livelihood.
This then influences how we define 'pirate': 

"This, then, is what we can take 'pirate' to mean: one who emerges to defend the commons wherever homes, cultures or economies become 'blocked' by the rich. Be it land that is being enclosed, or monopolies that are excluding and censoring, or wealth that has been hoarded, blockages to what should be shared freely and equitably create the conditions in which pirates well be found. Moreover, ... we can conclude that when they rise up, they tend to do so from places of poverty and need, partly because it is the poor and needy who fell the effects of enclosure more immediately ...." (p.50)

In effect, we could see the paradigm characterising as commons vs enclosure. It is interesting and helpful to see that paradigmatic dynamic being worked out in more modern kinds of piracy such as radio stations playing music, for example.


Kester's not blind to the criminal potential and makes a distinction between piracy in these 'fighting back' terms and "criminal gangs". And I think he makes a case, in a sense, for seeing some of the state-sponsored enclosure as not much better morally than the action of criminal gangs. In other times and places we sometimes use the term kleptocracy. That said, I would like to see the difference between the TAZ and a criminal gang more fully explored, because, of course, the kleptocratic state tends to paint the former in terms of the latter and thus seeks to neutralise the threat ideologically (largely successfully).


And, of course, we should be reminded that in the 17th and 18th centuries the official religion of the captains and lieutenants who were acting oppressively in the name of the king is the religion that, for the English, the king himself was the temporal head: the Christian religion in the form of the Church of England, or for others Roman Catholicism or Reformed Christianity (Spain, France and the Netherlands were the other main powers involved). It is ironic and I find bitterly sad and angrifying that following Jesus the Christ had been co-opted by state authority and made-over in such a way as to have made enemies of those who really ought to be Jesus's most natural friends by becoming the ideological support for social control of a brutal and egregiously unjust sort. Thus Kester includes the church an the dynamic of the blocked. So retelling the legend of Captain Mission and Fr Caraccioli inspired in me a wistful hope that it might have been true. It turns out to have been written up by Daniel Defoe (available freely here).


More later, I hope ....

Mutiny! -Towards a review

I'm currently reading Kester Brewin's 'Mutiny' and I'm aiming to produce a proper review in due course. But while I read, I thought I'd make a few notes. Maybe in a handful of posts.

One of the things I like about this book, even before I started reading it, is that there is a certain degree of putting his money where his mouth is. In this case, he says;

my plan is to make back (some of) an estimated figure of what the book has cost me to write, and then release it into the public domain – probably with an option for a charitable donation. There’s no way a publisher would accept such a limited copyright, so self-publishing was the best way forward.

  Kester's aim more generally is about:

controlling the means of production, re-imagining ideas of copyright and being able to say exactly what I want to say. One of the final reasons I’ve wanted to experiment with this concerns the idea of TAZ – the Temporary Autonomous Zone

So, all in all, a good bunch of reasons to anticipate the book eagerly, and having read a couple of chapters so far, I'm already considering two or three people to buy it for.

So far in reading it, the scene has been set giving a sense of looking most closely at pirates of the 1700's but also other forms of piracy including books and publishing, radio, and looking at modern Somali piracy. Kester points out that he is not seeking to condone violence or robbery, but to understand it (I think that's fair). There have been tales of particular pirates and mention of a pirate utopia. One of the things that I think I've been most interested in is the digging back into particular matters to do with social, political and economic factors. 

What in particular I think is worth remembering when considering the piracy in the Caribbean in the 1700's is that the behaviour of the pirates towards other vessels was not noticeably distinctive to that of official naval vessels or privateers: the issue was not robbery or violence used; everyone was doing that. No, the issue was for whom? -Empire or the co-operative venture -for that was often what a pirate vessel was. Many pirates were, it would seem, seeking to escape pressed servitude and arbitrary violence at the hands of their officers. At least on a pirate vessel there might be a degree of democracy, a fairish share of the loot and considerably less risk of violence from ones officers (whom you might have had a hand in voting into office).

Of course, the question is whether Kester's characterising of democracy and fairness was characteristic of pirates as a whole or just the a few of the better ones. But, given, the kinds of conditions they appear to have been attempting to escape, it certainly seems plausible and even likely that it could have been frequent.

The other thing that so far has not been more fully explored, is to ask what the popularity of reading and watching works about pirates is about. Even in the industrial revolution in England the books on pirates were popular. The suggestion is that actually the recognition of a degree of sympathy for protest against brutally maintained monopoly enriching the few by virtually enslaving the many who never get a real sniff of the fruits of their labour...

Was Patrick a slave-trading tax collector?

I caught this on the news this morning but didn't hear the whole of the story. So I thought I'd try to fond out more; after all, I've been teaching students of various kinds pretty much the standard story which -to be fair- is actually based on Patrick's own Confessions. Reading them you'd get the impression that Patrick was the victim of a slaving raid and eventually escaped. But ....

... a new study from Cambridge University based on his writings suggests Saint Patrick was not brought to Ireland as a slave, as the legend has it, but that in fact he may actually have sold slaves his family owned to pay his way to Ireland -- in order to avoid a job as a tax collector for the Roman empire

 In actual fact the study seems, from the report, merely to offer a possible reinterpretation based on noting a factor about the culture at the time:

According to his writings, Patrick's family owned several slaves -- a high value and easily transportable commodity -- and Flechner says in the historical context it makes sense that Patrick would convert his family wealth into slaves he could sell in order to pay his way..

The problem is, of course, that Patrick says he was taken as a slave: "... a small villa nearby where I was taken captive. I was at that time about sixteen years of age. I did not, indeed, know the true God; and I was taken into captivity in Ireland with many thousands of people ..."(see here): seems pretty clear to me. And basically Flechner's case at this point is to say that Patrick was being creative with the truth. I am finding it hard to think why Patrick should lie or 'spin' it in that way and on the admittedly brief report here, it is hard to think that the contextual clues Flechner adduces really add up to a case to doubt Patrick's fundamental veracity on this point; after all Patrick does not whitewash other aspects of his past, and slave holding and (presumably trading) wsa not, I understand, necessarily considered a big bad.

Flechner makes a point about the only way out of slavery was to be redeemed, but I'm skeptical that mainland Romano British would have felt that onse of their number stolen away and enslaved should be returned to their captors should they escape: a previously free Roman citizen escaping such a situation would likely be regarded as a returning free citzen not an escaped slave. Nor do I imagine that on returning to Ireland Patrick or any of his companions would feel that he should teturn to slavery in Ulster, and I imagine that no-one left alive in Ulster would actually remember him as a slave -he'd have been given up years before and hardly anyone would have really known him -he woud appear to have spent most of his time in Ireland out in the hills, alone, with livestock. So the redemtion issue seems to be a bit of a blind.

.Was Saint Patrick a slave-trading tax collector? - CNN.com:
The Confession of St Patrick.

Why the monastic hours were less punitive than I imagined

WhenI first discovered that the seven monsatic hours of prayer included a prayer time that interrupted sleep, I used to feel that this was surely part of a punishing ascetic schedule. Now I'm not so sure. Evidence has been accumulating that we humans may, in fact not only be wired to have two roughly 4-hour sleep periods separated by an hour or so but that reading historical evidences shows that until the industrial revolution, most people seemed to do just that.
 "For most of evolution we slept a certain way," says sleep psychologist Gregg Jacobs. "Waking up during the night is part of normal human physiology."
One of the things that some texts mention is that some people used this time for spiritual practice. So it seems to me likely that the monastic offices were merely a monkly or nunly version of this.
BBC News - The myth of the eight-hour sleep:

Pink for boys

Well it could have been and at one point in western culture it was. This article is worth looking at not only if you're interested in the way that gender is marked culturally and want to get a sense of the evolution of some markers, but also to get a bit of an insight into how culture really is an ongoing 'big society' conversation involving artefacts, ideas, social dynamics (power, solidarity etc) and so on (as per my first lecture in Engaging Culture). So check it out: When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink? | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian Magazine

A nice example of the way that the flow of history 'randomly' reconfigures cultural meanings:
"Prenatal testing was a big reason for the change (to "pink for a girl"). Expectant parents learned the sex of their unborn baby and then went shopping for “girl” or “boy” merchandise. (“The more you individualize clothing, the more you can sell,” Paoletti says.) The pink fad spread from sleepers and crib sheets to big-ticket items such as strollers, car seats and riding toys. Affluent parents could conceivably decorate for baby No. 1, a girl, and start all over when the next child was a boy." See? Artefacts, biology, connatation, economics ...

Vonnegut: how to get a degree

Apropos of checking out Kurt Vonnegut's use of science and anthropology in his science fiction, I found this amusing wee story. Vonnegut is the writer:

 I got a letter from a new dean at Chicago, who had been looking through my dossier. Under the rules of the university, he said, a published work of high quality could be substituted for a dissertation, so I was entitled to an M.A. He had shown Cat’s Cradle to the anthropology department, and they had said it was halfway decent anthropology, so they were mailing me my degree

Now this got my attention because I recently suggested to  a colleague that a possible assessment task relating to church history might be to rewrite the endings to a couple of short stories I read. They are alternative timeline stories where the writers manage to rewrite Christianity out of the picture. The task I would set would be to take the story on a bit further, take on the 'what if' of the story but develop the story in such a way that Christian faith endures in the timeline. The assessment criteria would be historical plausibility (which would rest on a good understanding of the actual history) and theological integrity in relation to the context.


The book is below and the particular stories to think on (though there are at least two others worth considering) The Wandering Christian and A Letter from the Pope.


Of course the other interesting thing is that people want to write Christianity out of history.

When Baghdad was centre of the scientific world

I sometimes point out in lectures on early Islam and Christianity that the Islamic empire seems to have expanded militarily so quickly that it outstripped the ability of the conquerors to supply elites and civil servants to run the societies they now ruled. Result? Christians -among others- were often holders of high office in early Islam. This of course nuances the claim you may sometimes hear Muslims make as to the civilisational credentials of Islam -sometimes it was Christians under Muslim patronage who were doing the 'heavy lifting': "The most famous of all the Baghdad translators, Hunayn ibn Ishāq, was born in the ancient Christian city of Hira and never converted to Islam. He would spend many years travelling around the world in his search for Greek manuscripts. It is the medical work of the physician Galen that is his most important legacy, for not only did it open up the Islamic world to this great treasure, in many cases it is only via these Arabic translations that much of Galen's work reaches us today."
The article (When Baghdad was centre of the scientific world) mentions the philosophical importance of Al Kindi. Interestingly there was another Al Kindi around who was a Christian and whose contribution was to offer apologetic arguments in relation to Islam.

Anyway, worth looking at the article to get a sense of an Islam that was not (is not) obscurantist but rather a progressive partner in human flourishing.

What have the Romans ever done for us? Given us the Swiss Army knife !!!!

You may respond, "So why isn't it called the Roman Army knife?" And I say: 'no idea', probably the same reason as we don't use the Latin word for concrete; it had to be reinvented. But there's no arguing with the archaeology:
1,800-Year-Old Roman Multitool | Gadget Lab | Wired.com:
"the Roman version has a lot of foldaway implements stowed inside: a knife, spike, pick, fork and a spatula. Unlike the modern-day equivalent, the Roman Army Knife has a useful spoon on the end, making it likely that this iron and silver artifact, found in somewhere in the Mediterranean countries, was meant for eating with"
Well, a good idea is a good idea ... and there's nothing new under the sun.



Except new stuff.

Commonplaces of technology critique

This is a really nice round-up of what I've tended to call the 'moral panic' approach to new technology -specially the internet and all its works: Eurozine - Commonplaces of technology critique - Kathrin Passig It identifies with some examples lending plausibility, several predictable phases of reaction to new-fangled jeejaws and thingummibobs: it starts with downright dismissal, moves through "It'll never catch on" then it'll be dismissed as something that "people like us" wouldn't be seen dead with" and "It's just a fad", then once it becomes obvious that it's settling in we get onto the "end of civilisation" jeremiads (which is where we're at with the internet just now: using the internet rots minds)... And so on ...

I loved this (one of many examples of the persistence and antiquity of the cycle of responses) in this case in the early stages of 'negotiation' about the etiquettes of new technologies:

In the early days of the printing press it was seen as bad manners to give a printed book as a gift; until the 1980s there was a stigma of rudeness attached to typed private letters. The criticism of the use of mobile phones in public deems a conversation with an invisible partner – as opposed to one with a third party who is physically present – to be an unacceptable lack of respect for the people in one's vicinity. Sitting in cafés with one's laptop open is something that restaurateurs do not like to see – it gives an antisocial impression and reduces takings – yet sitting around in public with a book or an open newspaper has not caused any offence for quite some time. The unspoken thrust of these complaints is ultimately that opponents of an innovation do not want to be confronted with it without their consent.

Oh, and do have a look at this to get a further sense of perspective:

"For critics around 1870, the postcard sounded the death-knell for the culture of letter-writing, while in February 1897 the American Newspaper Publishers Association discussed whether "typewriters lower the literary grade of work done by reporters"."

This is a must-read article to put beside all those books that seem to be coming out to alarm us about the brain-rotting, civilisation-threatening effects of search-engines and blog-reading.

Medieval Multitasking

Further evidence that sometimes we give new technology too much credit for producing new varieties of the human condition?

"there were a lot of “distractions” built into a medieval book. Indeed, these were often the main fare for the “reader” of a book. “Anyone can take delight in turning the pages of a Book of Hours, for example,” says Christopher de Hamel, “even without reading the text.” ... medieval books were very often not the single-author volumes familiar to us today. A binding might include a bit of Chaucer—something from the life of St. Bridget, perhaps—and part of an almanac, or a treatise on herbal remedies. They were mash-ups, that is. Or, to borrow terminology from George P. Landow, they were “dispersed texts,” unburdened by the modern fiction of sequential ordering of thought as “natural” or unitary authorship as normative that contributed to Enlightenment understandings of the “focused” mind of the individual thinker."

Puts me in mind of the enjoyment I sometimes derive from reading a text book from a library. Some people forget themselves and leave their annotations and marginalia. But that is sometimes a real help: it can point up where and what the big or contentious issues are and sometimes offer a help to find cross references ...
Medieval Multitasking: Did We Ever Focus? | Culture | Religion Dispatches

 

Food at the Last Supper in picture

I find this interesting:
Food culture and the Last Supper | Culture Making:

"From the 52 paintings, which date between 1000 and 2000 A.D., the sizes of loaves of bread, main dishes and plates were calculated with the aid of a computer program that could scan the items and rotate them in a way that allowed them to be measured. To account for different proportions in paintings, the sizes of the food were compared to the sizes of the human heads in the paintings. The researchers' analysis showed that portion sizes of main courses (usually eel, lamb and pork) depicted in the paintings grew by 69 percent over time, while plate size grew by 66 percent and bread size grew by 23 percent."

What I'm thinking about is why this should be. I can think of two or three possible reasons but not yet decide between them.
One of the reasons could be that, rather like the following of social fashion around the production of the painting, the portions are reflecting a greater wealth in society. However, that doesn't necessarily work; these works would have been commissioned by the rich and they probably didn't have stingy portions. But then, how would the painter have viewed that ....

Which brings into play another line of explanation: culture, but culture of depiction. Perhaps it could be to do with ideological considerations about what amount of food one should portray saints as eating. In a culture which values the ascetic, small portions would presumably be regarded as more seemly than large. However, that probably doesn't entirely do it either: ascetic attitudes continued through quite large chunks of this period and yet, presumably, the increase continued.

Perhaps it's a bit of both these explanations? A change from portraying ascetic ideals to reflecting actualities. This would fit, to some degree, with the shift to humanism; observation of the actual, valuing of human life as lived, desire by patrons to display wealth ... yes, that sounds plausible at first sight ...
What do you reckon?

PS more recently, a helpful response article on this...