Ora pro me; 9 June

Although I'm starting work on 1 June (though having a few days out for moving stuff and doing a few finishing things at St John's during June and July), my formal inauguration of ministry (as Chaplain and faith advisor to Northumbria University) is not until Thursday 9 June. It is booked to take place from 6 in the Chaplaincy (Wynne Jones Building) with drinks and nibbles moving at 7pm to the Rutherford Hall (just 10 metres from Wynne Jones) for the ceremony followed there by further refreshments. If you can be there, I'd love you to come; just let me know so I can make sure that the refreshments, and set-up organisation is all that we might hope!

I'd love it if you could pray for me about this new beginning and for us as a family as we adjust to new circumstances and possibilities. In your holding us before God please consider Tracy as she seeks a right way forward in her ministry and vocation and for our children, Jo, Ben and Bex who each in their own ways are making significant transitions this summer (Jo seeking employment after his MA studies; Ben graduates and will be seeking business in graphic design; Bex continues at University into her final year and will be preparing both for marriage and post-graduate study).

I think that this may be the first time I have ever mentioned by name all of my immediate family on this blog. Since they are all now over 18 and have their own web footprint, I guess it may be about time!

The Americanization of Mental Illness

Here's one of those things where I get that sense of 'I'm not surprised to hear this but I hadn't quite clocked it before'.
The Americanization of Mental Illness - NYTimes.com: "the forms of madness from one place and time often look remarkably different from the forms of madness in another". In other words 'madness' has an element to it of cultural construction. That's not to say it is entirely so, merely that we tend to form the expressions of mental illness according to cultural mores and that in some cases cultural tensions exacerbate different underlying mental or emotional dysfunctions.

To take one comment from the article commenting on a cross-cultural study of anorexia: “Culture shapes the way general psychopathology is going to be translated partially or completely into specific psychopathology. When there is a cultural atmosphere in which professionals, the media, schools, doctors, psychologists all recognize and endorse and talk about and publicize eating disorders, then people can be triggered to consciously or unconsciously pick eating-disorder pathology as a way to express that conflict.”

And it is also to do with the way that mental illness is received in the host community (which, of course, will have a reflexive effect as the ill person will potentially view themselves and their condition through the cultural lens they have to hand). For example, in east Africa in those areas where schizophrenia tends to be understood as a spiritual affliction; "An ill individual enjoying a time of relative mental health could, at least temporarily, retake his or her responsibilities in the kinship group. Since the illness was seen as the work of outside forces, it was understood as an affliction for the sufferer but not as an identity." And surely that kind of attitude must have effects on the health, over time, of the sufferer.

Part of the point is to recognise that we, in the west, are exporting more than medicine with our mental health treatments; "Western mental-health discourse introduces core components of Western culture, including a theory of human nature, a definition of personhood, a sense of time and memory and a source of moral authority. None of this is universal,"
I find this quite intriguing when it comes to the care of people in a multicultural environment like a modern university. Not yet sure how it 'cashes out', but it's a perspective to hold beside what we see unfolding.

An Open Apology for the Church (by Joe Boyd)

I suspect that a number of readers may find a lot in this to make common cause with. See here
TheOOZE beta | evolving spirituality. � An Open Apology for the Church (by Joe Boyd): for the whole thing. Here's a flavour of it "I ask your forgiveness for every sin of every priest, pastor, minister, reverend, teacher, elder, deacon, pope, nun, monk, missionary, Sunday school teacher, worship leader, and for every Christian who has ever come into your life for any other reason than to love you. If any of us came to you and hurt you, we are the ones at fault. On our behalf, let me say that I am very sorry. It’s not who we are supposed to be"
I like the idea that every so often he adds to it...

Mapping, knowing and propaganda

Some readers will know that I enjoy a good map. It's the colour, pattern and promise of new places. I also find myself intrigued by the idea of mapping. The way that a map picks out certain features of reality in relationship to others to guide the reader through a literal, metaphorical or mixed territory. And while the map is not the territory, it shares with language more generally the ability to make us think it is -kind of.

Now the article here: 513 - Then We Take Berlin: When East Ate West | Strange Maps | Big Think: helps shine a light on the way that things that we take as natural, unproblematic or starightforward, are actually freighted with ideological, hegemonic perspectives -just like ideas and other cultural artefacts. See ...
"Take this map of the urban transport network (1) in Berlin. At face value, it is a purely utilitarian map, giving its readers a no-nonsense, schematic overview of the transportational possibilities of the German capital. But context matters: this map was produced by the East German government, for its captive citizenry. It mixes information with propaganda as it tries very hard to ignore an inconvenient truth - too big to hide completely: the existence of another Berlin."
So this is a great idea for cultural studies teaching and learning: a way in to a central idea...

Language Log � Translated phrase-list jokes

Some of you have no doubt seen the chart of English phrases and how they are heard by Europeans and what is really meant. Well, there's a short one with a handful of French phrases, the same treatment.

French Phrase	Literal Translation	Idiomatic Translation
"je serai clair"	"I will be clear"	"I will be rude"
"Il faut la visibilité Européenne"	"We need European visibility"	"The EU must indulge in some pointless, annoying and, with luck, damaging international grand-standing."
"Il faut trouver une solution pragmatique"	"We must find a pragmatic solution"	"Warning: I am about to propose a highly complex, theoretical, legalistic and unworkable way forward."

Language Log � Translated phrase-list jokes:

Military Social Influence in the Global Information Environment

A short while back, in giving my reactions to Dr Who of that week, I mentioned the Myth of Redemptive Violence. Well, this article brings home to me just why we need to pay increasing attention to the issue: the military are actively seeking to exercise hegemony in global society, that is they are seeking to win acceptance and a perceived 'naturalness' to their agenda.Scholarly commentary invited through December 2010.: Military Social Influence in the Global Information Environment: A Civilian Primer - King - 2010 - Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy - Wiley Online Library: "This ongoing “revolution in military affairs” (Metz & Kievit, 1995, p. iii) has precipitated, among other things, a steady increase in U.S. military capacity to conduct social influence campaigns at every level of the modern world's information environment: in local, national, regional (or “theater”), and global spheres; in domestic and foreign populations; among individuals, groups, organizations, and governments"
Whether or not this is explicitly tied to MoRV, said myth is clearly a 'sleeper meme' in our culture that can be easily activated to mobilise a population to support, fund and give bodies to the war effort. Particularly when the military use phrases like "perception management", we realise that they are after our minds and consent. The article referenced here is written with this end in mind: "it is now possible, if not imperative, for those who study and teach about social influence to understand U.S. information operations, arguably among the largest, most controversial, and most influential social influence campaigns in modern times."
This is more, for the most part, than simply the old propaganda battles, the new realities of weapons and IT mean "Our military's enemies, ... are most likely to be small, rogue groups who attempt to prevail by winning popular support and undermining U.S. political will for war ...The argument here is that in most modern war, physical battles, if they exist, will be for the purpose of defining psychological battlespace ... terrorists are “armed propaganda organizations”" -perhaps that latter remark is at least partly exponented by Al Qaida.
The other factors impinging on this are the greater transparency that IT tends to foster so that atrocities are harder to hide and for those whose soldiery are from democratic regimes this brings a change of role, particularly when combined with heightened awareness of human rights and international law: "the transformation of the role of the individual soldier in the context of the increasing transparency of the global information environment, the decreasing utility of conventional weaponry, and the increasing power of social influence. It has been suggested that the modern soldiers of western democracies are essentially “heavily armed social workers” ... These troops work to change behavior in the glare of a multi-technology-based global media. They are obligated to minimize casualties, manage the perceptions of the global audience, and influence behavior through nonviolent means."
Now, much of that has been stated in terms that sound as if there is a push towards the more ethical and applaudable end of warfare. And not particularly supporting the tone I set when I began the post. However, we should note that all of the above can be used -is used- simply to make the case. What is still going on is the violent and repressive exercise of brute force in furtherance of political goals by non-consensual means. Iraq has shown us that information manipulation and spin are also weapons of war. The mention of the soldiers of western democracies carries with it a certain irony since their most recent deployments have, it seems, been to impose democracy by non-democratic means. I know there is more nuance to it than that, but it is really hard to tell it any other way to ordinary people in Muslim-majority countries -just take a look at the bit and pieces of reportage about the way that Libyans, and others, have viewed NATO involvement there: there is a lot of suspicion around.

Of course, trying to do this in a global environment which has a lot of bottom-up about it is (or can be) like herding cats. It's working in a complex environment and so MI and IO is going to be about trying to find 'strange attactors' in information and opinion terms that allow the forming of opinion round certain perspectives most conducive to the interests they represent. It's always going to be a dicey thing: there is a lot of awareness of power interests and their wiles.

So it is important that we as Christians, following the Prince of Peace and the one who said 'Put away your sword', should continue to 'fight the good fight' (Blake's "mental strife") to demolish strongholds; ie we resist MoRV and other alibis for keeping elites in power and most people in the dark -sometimes violently herded into the dark.

Sitting is killing

Via: Medical Billing And Coding