It's interesting to me that the link between justice and anger is being rediscovered in more popular discourse.
"...people kept suggesting anger is irrational,” the US-based writer and critic Soraya Chemaly tells me down the phone during her recent trip to the UK. “That makes no sense. Anger is deeply rational response. It’s a warning. Anger is the language of justice and fairness.”
I see in this a parallel with a denial in popular Christian conversation of a link between love and wrath. The two are seen as incompatible opposites.
I guess I should also note, as I bring these two observations together, that I tend to agree with the idea that justice is love made manifest in social ordering. It is a political outworking of loving neighbour as yourself.
I am also invested in this to some degree as I have been thinking about atonement and various Christian accounts of it. Part of that consideration has to be to rehabilitate the notion of anger as an expression of love and as having roots in our notions of fairness and justice. It can, of course, come adrift from love and justice (and often does) but it would not exist without them.
So, rightly directed anger is something we might expect to give us energy to change things for good. To change things for the good of those we love and even for the good of those who have become our enemies. To change things to be more just, fair and gracious. Anger is something we need to learn to listen to: it tells us that someone is hurting or threatened and feeling disempowered or unheard. Our response is not to hit back but to understand, and if necessary offer the other cheek also in order to deal with the injustice at the heart of the matter.
‘Anger is language of justice’ says author of new book on women’s rage | openDemocracy:
See also 9'41" in TEd talk by Ryan Martin.
31 October 2018
08 August 2018
Smartphones and the art of conversation: we only have a Bible because there wasn't sound recording technology...?
I just thought that this was a really intriguing thing. I hadn't come across it before and I'll be on the look out for it among the students I work with.
Perhaps you might sympathise if I tell it this way: have you ever found that you wished that your conversation partner would stop interrupting and just let you say the whole thing in one go? Have you ever found that the data-bandwidth of your phone connection keeps meaning that you lose chunks of what the other person says because of your own interruption, cough, or background noise at your end forcing the connection to switch and choose between send and receive to the detriment of the conversation? (Because at that point you can't listen and speak at the same time). If you have then you have possibly come across the situation that this clever little trick may have been designed to overcome. Add to that the possibility that you are holding the conversation in conditions where interruptions are taking place (having to give change, get on the bus, etc) and it becomes a way to optimise communication. It also gives a way to listen again to parts to make sure you have got it right before you compose your own response. In fact it could helpfully slow down a conversation to proper thinking speed. It also gives the speaker the chance for a 'do-over' when something is not well expressed.
Far from an indicator of the end of civilisation, it may actually be the harbinger of better listening and speaking.
As Neil Postman and Andrew Crouch would remind us, though, we might do well also to consider the downsides: what is disabled or made harder by this. And I guess for some people it is easier to spot these. Probably it means that some of the joyous spontaneity of a lively conversation is deadened: that sense of mounting excitement as ideas and perspectives are shared and well received and a synchrony of thinking and feeling develops. What is also lost is the feedback of visual clues and verbal cues that as a speaker you have tried the patience of your listener(s) or that you have failed to convey your meaning and are puzzling your hearer(s) -or are angering them. Those feedback clues that enable us to adjust our speaking and self-presentation in order to communicate better and to rebalance rapport in the present moment.
If we think about what it is like to hear an answer-phone message, we get a clue also to how it might go. There is a slightly greater degree of 'objectivity' in the listening because we are less directly involved. For the speaker it is just a little bit harder to order our thoughts, but we do have to think a bit more about how what we are saying will be received because we don't have the visual and verbal cues to give us in-the-moment feedback. These factors will prove to have their plusses and minusses and we will have to evolve our practice to take account of them as they become apparent.
But the thing to remember is that it is the trying these things out that shows what is and isn't possible. If the things that it enables are useful -and more useful than the downsides are difficult, then the thing will develop and pick up its own etiquettes which will also affect the perceptions and notions of 'good practice', respect etc. So try it, wait and see if and how it is useful. It won't kill the art of conversation: there are too many pleasures in synchronous conversation for it to die. But it might be supplemented by this less synchronous form.
In Christian terms, I think I welcome the possibility of having a slow form of conversation where people can think about things less immediately. Being able to listen more fully and to meditate on what is being said and shared chimes well with a big stream of Christian thought over a long time. It can be a positive expression of loving neighbour by giving them space and consideration to express themselves and to give us a chance to respond better in loving attention and reply. It could be a school of re-ordering our responsiveness by giving us a chance to practice good replies and self-awareness at a speed we can think by initially -until our neural pathways have built a highway for charitable responding.
Perhaps too, it helps us to ponder what communication is and in doing so to think more about divine-human communication. While we are only too used to thinking about the word of God as something written, we have tended to forget that originally it was/is spoken, indeed performed. The Bible is a record of that (an inspired record and interpretation, but still somewhat second hand). So re-learning through a slightly strange medium what is involved in 'live' oral communication may benefit us in considering human-divine communication afresh. It may be worth considering that perhaps we only have a written Bible because there wasn't sound-recording technology ... ! ... ?
Have smartphones killed the art of conversation? | Technology | The Guardian:
And PS -see whether this article from four months later picks up the same thoughts.
using the voice memo function on WhatsApp as a sort of dictaphone to “talk in turns” rather than hold “a live conversation” is now a thingThe title of the article that introduces this seems to be adding to the moral panic reaction. The actual article is actually better than that. But I did read this because I was wondering in what way I was going to disagree. And in relation to the sentence quoted above, I felt I could see how, in fact, this development might be viewed as a positive by users. Now, I'm not sure in what I'm about to write, whether I'm interpreting rightly in terms that users would recognise. What I'm offering is an interpretation of why I could imagine myself doing that.
Perhaps you might sympathise if I tell it this way: have you ever found that you wished that your conversation partner would stop interrupting and just let you say the whole thing in one go? Have you ever found that the data-bandwidth of your phone connection keeps meaning that you lose chunks of what the other person says because of your own interruption, cough, or background noise at your end forcing the connection to switch and choose between send and receive to the detriment of the conversation? (Because at that point you can't listen and speak at the same time). If you have then you have possibly come across the situation that this clever little trick may have been designed to overcome. Add to that the possibility that you are holding the conversation in conditions where interruptions are taking place (having to give change, get on the bus, etc) and it becomes a way to optimise communication. It also gives a way to listen again to parts to make sure you have got it right before you compose your own response. In fact it could helpfully slow down a conversation to proper thinking speed. It also gives the speaker the chance for a 'do-over' when something is not well expressed.
Far from an indicator of the end of civilisation, it may actually be the harbinger of better listening and speaking.
As Neil Postman and Andrew Crouch would remind us, though, we might do well also to consider the downsides: what is disabled or made harder by this. And I guess for some people it is easier to spot these. Probably it means that some of the joyous spontaneity of a lively conversation is deadened: that sense of mounting excitement as ideas and perspectives are shared and well received and a synchrony of thinking and feeling develops. What is also lost is the feedback of visual clues and verbal cues that as a speaker you have tried the patience of your listener(s) or that you have failed to convey your meaning and are puzzling your hearer(s) -or are angering them. Those feedback clues that enable us to adjust our speaking and self-presentation in order to communicate better and to rebalance rapport in the present moment.
If we think about what it is like to hear an answer-phone message, we get a clue also to how it might go. There is a slightly greater degree of 'objectivity' in the listening because we are less directly involved. For the speaker it is just a little bit harder to order our thoughts, but we do have to think a bit more about how what we are saying will be received because we don't have the visual and verbal cues to give us in-the-moment feedback. These factors will prove to have their plusses and minusses and we will have to evolve our practice to take account of them as they become apparent.
But the thing to remember is that it is the trying these things out that shows what is and isn't possible. If the things that it enables are useful -and more useful than the downsides are difficult, then the thing will develop and pick up its own etiquettes which will also affect the perceptions and notions of 'good practice', respect etc. So try it, wait and see if and how it is useful. It won't kill the art of conversation: there are too many pleasures in synchronous conversation for it to die. But it might be supplemented by this less synchronous form.
In Christian terms, I think I welcome the possibility of having a slow form of conversation where people can think about things less immediately. Being able to listen more fully and to meditate on what is being said and shared chimes well with a big stream of Christian thought over a long time. It can be a positive expression of loving neighbour by giving them space and consideration to express themselves and to give us a chance to respond better in loving attention and reply. It could be a school of re-ordering our responsiveness by giving us a chance to practice good replies and self-awareness at a speed we can think by initially -until our neural pathways have built a highway for charitable responding.
Perhaps too, it helps us to ponder what communication is and in doing so to think more about divine-human communication. While we are only too used to thinking about the word of God as something written, we have tended to forget that originally it was/is spoken, indeed performed. The Bible is a record of that (an inspired record and interpretation, but still somewhat second hand). So re-learning through a slightly strange medium what is involved in 'live' oral communication may benefit us in considering human-divine communication afresh. It may be worth considering that perhaps we only have a written Bible because there wasn't sound-recording technology ... ! ... ?
Have smartphones killed the art of conversation? | Technology | The Guardian:
And PS -see whether this article from four months later picks up the same thoughts.
Does the Moral Arc of the Universe Really Bend Toward Justice?
I like this quote:
One of the things that this underlines for me is that working to educate and to change minds towards peace and justice is important work. It can sometimes seem like learning and teaching are a bit weak compared with curing disease or building sewage systems. But there is value in helping people to think in ways that build and sustain human flourishing. There is value in challenging ideas that denigrate or diminish others.
The article itself is worth pondering, not least because it raises the question of how far this saying (picked up by Martin Luther King Jr) can be taken on without some kind of faith in providence. I guess that Marxist philosophy embeds the idea of providence in the dialectic of history and offers an interpretation of history which seems to found that view in a reading of the arc of history thus far. And Christian thought would tend to look to the working of God in and through human affairs. Both views have to be wary of inculcating a passivity which just waits for the process to work itself out. And in reality we need to remember that we are ourselves part of 'history' and caught up in providence. That if the arc of history does indeed bend towards justice, it is because 'we' make it so.
The real question, once the proposition is accepted (however tentatively), is why we think it might be so. In what some would argue is an indifferent universe, how come we think we can observe greater justice coming about? Is not 'justice' simply a human preference for arranging our affairs? Or is it something that ultimate reality 'cares' about? Why do we humans even have a sense that justice is better than cruelty and indifference? -which is a perfectly understandable reading of the way the universe appears to work, at least from some perspectives.
God has set eternity in the human heart (Eccl.3:11). Eternity is about love and justice. It is hard to make the statement about the arc of the universe veering towards justice without some kind of faith that there is an underlying reality which cares about such things and has embedded within the created order something that keeps pushing towards what is cared about. That underlying reality Christians name as 'God' and the something is the strange attractor of eschatological/ressurection life. This something is within the created order but points beyond; to a completion, to a wholeness, to a point of Rest; where hints and longings come to their fulness.
When we hope that it may be that the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice, we are hoping that 'God' really does care and that providence therefore will support our efforts in broad terms to make things more fair, loving and joyful -that indeed, our efforts to do so actually are eternally valuable, are worth something and work with the 'deep magic' of what is.
Does the Arc of the Moral Universe Really Bend Toward Justice? | Portside:
What we must always be aware of are the deep ideological structures that bolster the myths by which we live, and to make sure that those myths exist for us, and not us for those myths.It echoes the saying o Jesus about the sabbath being made for humans rather than vice versa, and Walter Wink's related observation that the Powers are similarly so made. I would say that, in a sense, this is also related since Myths are one of the existential underpinnings of many of the Powers. Corporisations are partly constituted by hopeful stories and mission statements which function mythologically. The thing is to learn to narrate myths which tell a truth which liberates and edifies.
One of the things that this underlines for me is that working to educate and to change minds towards peace and justice is important work. It can sometimes seem like learning and teaching are a bit weak compared with curing disease or building sewage systems. But there is value in helping people to think in ways that build and sustain human flourishing. There is value in challenging ideas that denigrate or diminish others.
The article itself is worth pondering, not least because it raises the question of how far this saying (picked up by Martin Luther King Jr) can be taken on without some kind of faith in providence. I guess that Marxist philosophy embeds the idea of providence in the dialectic of history and offers an interpretation of history which seems to found that view in a reading of the arc of history thus far. And Christian thought would tend to look to the working of God in and through human affairs. Both views have to be wary of inculcating a passivity which just waits for the process to work itself out. And in reality we need to remember that we are ourselves part of 'history' and caught up in providence. That if the arc of history does indeed bend towards justice, it is because 'we' make it so.
The real question, once the proposition is accepted (however tentatively), is why we think it might be so. In what some would argue is an indifferent universe, how come we think we can observe greater justice coming about? Is not 'justice' simply a human preference for arranging our affairs? Or is it something that ultimate reality 'cares' about? Why do we humans even have a sense that justice is better than cruelty and indifference? -which is a perfectly understandable reading of the way the universe appears to work, at least from some perspectives.
God has set eternity in the human heart (Eccl.3:11). Eternity is about love and justice. It is hard to make the statement about the arc of the universe veering towards justice without some kind of faith that there is an underlying reality which cares about such things and has embedded within the created order something that keeps pushing towards what is cared about. That underlying reality Christians name as 'God' and the something is the strange attractor of eschatological/ressurection life. This something is within the created order but points beyond; to a completion, to a wholeness, to a point of Rest; where hints and longings come to their fulness.
When we hope that it may be that the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice, we are hoping that 'God' really does care and that providence therefore will support our efforts in broad terms to make things more fair, loving and joyful -that indeed, our efforts to do so actually are eternally valuable, are worth something and work with the 'deep magic' of what is.
Does the Arc of the Moral Universe Really Bend Toward Justice? | Portside:
29 July 2018
Behemoth, bully, thief: English taking over the planet
I'm always interested in language. I keep noting that the easiest way to distract me and get me off-topic is to raise something that relates to dialect or a foreign tongue. So this Guardian article distracted me from sermon preparation (where I was kind of not quite getting it).
I'm thinking to my recent experience of the last handful of years of watching a lot of foreign-language films of television series. Many of them spoken in languages I'm not well acquainted with and subtitled (Swedish, Finnish, Russian, Japanese) some in languages I know fairly well (Spanish, French, American English -that last is a wry dig!). And so I've been observing with one part of my brain when English has been getting into those other languages (and for AmEng go along to this blog).
I note that English swearwords have become almost ubiquitous alongside or replacing native words and phrases. But I do wonder whether Tim Parks may have overstated his case or missed seeing it from a different angle:
I'm not saying that English as a language isn't influential, as I said above, I do notice it creeping into other languages and even influencing grammar. However, I do also notice that there are things that the subtitled translation doesn't pick up eg the change from formal to informal address -'you'- or a switch from Swedish to Danish in The Bridge which tells you something about the characters' relationship but isn't signalled in the subtitles. That doesn't seem to indicate Englishising. And in any case the variability of English itself may militate against this idea: regional and class and subcultural dialects some of which are driven by other-language contact may make a big difference in this analysis.
If we're worried about range of expression, it's capitalist globalising culture we should worry about; panicking about English may be a huge distraction from the real task.
Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet | News | The Guardian
I'm thinking to my recent experience of the last handful of years of watching a lot of foreign-language films of television series. Many of them spoken in languages I'm not well acquainted with and subtitled (Swedish, Finnish, Russian, Japanese) some in languages I know fairly well (Spanish, French, American English -that last is a wry dig!). And so I've been observing with one part of my brain when English has been getting into those other languages (and for AmEng go along to this blog).
I note that English swearwords have become almost ubiquitous alongside or replacing native words and phrases. But I do wonder whether Tim Parks may have overstated his case or missed seeing it from a different angle:
The writer and translator Tim Parks has argued that European novels are increasingly being written in a kind of denatured, international vernacular, shorn of country-specific references and difficult-to-translate wordplay or grammar. Novels in this mode – whether written in Dutch, Italian or Swiss German – have not only assimilated the style of English, but perhaps more insidiously limit themselves to describing subjects in a way that would be easily digestible in an anglophone context.My response is that perhaps this is more to do with culture than specifically language. That is to say the Hollywood story industry and its ancillaries.
I'm not saying that English as a language isn't influential, as I said above, I do notice it creeping into other languages and even influencing grammar. However, I do also notice that there are things that the subtitled translation doesn't pick up eg the change from formal to informal address -'you'- or a switch from Swedish to Danish in The Bridge which tells you something about the characters' relationship but isn't signalled in the subtitles. That doesn't seem to indicate Englishising. And in any case the variability of English itself may militate against this idea: regional and class and subcultural dialects some of which are driven by other-language contact may make a big difference in this analysis.
If we're worried about range of expression, it's capitalist globalising culture we should worry about; panicking about English may be a huge distraction from the real task.
Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet | News | The Guardian
08 July 2018
Life at the end of Us vs Them
This is a book of essays but they share a family theme, so to say. The writer is a good communicator in prose. There is an amiable tone with a nice balance between well-chosen anecdotes and helpful and insightful comment and reflection drawn from the stories. These stories and the reflection on contemporary events through them would serve preachers and teachers well.
What I've enjoyed about reading this is the depth of analysis and the range of thinking-resources drawn upon. Sometimes that can leave a sense of 'where's this going?" but usually just after that, it gets resolved.
I've also enjoyed the masterclass it offers in how to think Girardianly and this has helped me to see more fully the power of Girardian analysis. I still remain a bit skeptical of the sacrificial thesis as '(pre-)history' but seeing the insights worked through the examples given has been really helpful.
Another thing that I've enjoyed has been to become re-acquainted with Ivan Illich's writing. And it's interesting to see how contemporary Illich still feels -even some 15 years after his death and considerably longer since some of his better known work. The thing that comes over as having been learnt from Illich is the humane-ness that we need to cultivate and the alertness to the way that human systems of care can be corrupted by, in effect, their dehumanisation, that is to say the loss of I-Thou from their heart.
I enjoyed in this book, also, the insight into the hinterland of Canadian issues related to their first nations and the genius of this book is how these become windows into how modern society often works -or rather doesn't work. Girard and Illich's insights are used to help us to see and begin to understand the gaps and contradictions and to gently consider how we might live otherwise.
I most value the thoughtfulness and the thought-provokingness of this collection of essays. I have valued too the unfolding example as I have read of taking seriously viewpoints with which we disagree; taking time to understand them argumentatively but most of all humanly. This is worth much in today's world.
And in the interests of full disclosure, I should point out that though I received a copy of the e-book, it was for review purposes. The opinions about it are mine and not produced to order or under any sense of obligation for them to be good or bad.
What I've enjoyed about reading this is the depth of analysis and the range of thinking-resources drawn upon. Sometimes that can leave a sense of 'where's this going?" but usually just after that, it gets resolved.
I've also enjoyed the masterclass it offers in how to think Girardianly and this has helped me to see more fully the power of Girardian analysis. I still remain a bit skeptical of the sacrificial thesis as '(pre-)history' but seeing the insights worked through the examples given has been really helpful.
Another thing that I've enjoyed has been to become re-acquainted with Ivan Illich's writing. And it's interesting to see how contemporary Illich still feels -even some 15 years after his death and considerably longer since some of his better known work. The thing that comes over as having been learnt from Illich is the humane-ness that we need to cultivate and the alertness to the way that human systems of care can be corrupted by, in effect, their dehumanisation, that is to say the loss of I-Thou from their heart.
I enjoyed in this book, also, the insight into the hinterland of Canadian issues related to their first nations and the genius of this book is how these become windows into how modern society often works -or rather doesn't work. Girard and Illich's insights are used to help us to see and begin to understand the gaps and contradictions and to gently consider how we might live otherwise.
I most value the thoughtfulness and the thought-provokingness of this collection of essays. I have valued too the unfolding example as I have read of taking seriously viewpoints with which we disagree; taking time to understand them argumentatively but most of all humanly. This is worth much in today's world.
And in the interests of full disclosure, I should point out that though I received a copy of the e-book, it was for review purposes. The opinions about it are mine and not produced to order or under any sense of obligation for them to be good or bad.
Link-Love
Life at the End of Us Versus Them on Amazon
Life at the End of Us Versus Them Website
The Ferment Podcast - "a farmer philosopher and a mystic folkie set out after the yeast of the kingdom."
Marcus Peter Rempel on Facebook
Church Matters Podcast Interview
Englewood Review of Books Interview
Common Word Author Reading
#UsVsThem Home: 'via Blog this'
Life at the End of Us Versus Them Website
The Ferment Podcast - "a farmer philosopher and a mystic folkie set out after the yeast of the kingdom."
Marcus Peter Rempel on Facebook
Church Matters Podcast Interview
Englewood Review of Books Interview
Common Word Author Reading
03 July 2018
PPI commission and labour rights; a speculation on a precedent
This is a very interesting potential precedent, perhaps.
UK banks could face new multibillion-pound claims after PPI ruling | Money | The Guardian:
Under the Plevin rule, if more than 50% of a consumer’s PPI’s payments went as commission and this was not explained to them at the time, they could claim back payments above that threshold, plus interestWhat I'm seeing there is the idea that if someone enters a contract but it is one in which they are exploited in such a way that the other party makes excessive profit, then they are entitled to money back. Now play that through the idea that workers in various industries have had wages depressed while business owners, shareholders etc have taken excessive commission ...
UK banks could face new multibillion-pound claims after PPI ruling | Money | The Guardian:
24 June 2018
Light of the World | some more words
I few years ago I wrote some words. Now I have some further words to the same tune and using some of the same lines.
Light of the world, of glory born,
Focusing radiance in earthlife
pinpoint Divinity's form,
Light of the world in darkness shine,
Word of God fleshed out in spacetime,
love of God tested in pain.
For it's the Mystery of the universe
The Uncreated makes a home in created time and space
Saviour, shine your life in us
enliven us in bearing light, as wells of grace.
Andii Bowsher cc2014 8.8.7.8.8.7 10.12.7.12 (cf Matt Redman, O Sacred King)
For comparison here's the 'original from 2000, posted in 2004.
Light of the World
of glory poured
Word of God fleshed out in spacetime
Love of God tested in pain
O gladdening light
enlightening all
we embrace love you've made human
light of truth that sets us free
For it's the mystery of the universe
the uncreated makes a home
in created time and space.
And now you share your self with us
pouring Godlife into death
breaking open life in us.
Jesus, Splice eternity in us
encode in us your Godwardness
and centre us.
Putting them together, I would recommend.
Light of the World of glory poured Word of God fleshed out in spacetime Love of God tested in pain
O gladdening light enlightening all we embrace love you've made human light of truth that sets us free
For it's the mystery of the universe the uncreated makes a home in created time and space. And now you share your self with us pouring Godlife into death breaking open life in us.
Light of the worldof glory bornFocusing radiance in earthlifepinpoint Divinity's form,
Light of the worldin darkness shine,Word of God fleshed out in spacetimeLove of God tested in pain.
For it's the mystery of the universe the uncreated makes a home in created time and space. And now you share your self with us pouring Godlife into death breaking open life in us.
Jesus, Splice eternity in us encode in us your Godwardness and centre us.
Light of the world, of glory born,
Focusing radiance in earthlife
pinpoint Divinity's form,
Light of the world in darkness shine,
Word of God fleshed out in spacetime,
love of God tested in pain.
For it's the Mystery of the universe
The Uncreated makes a home in created time and space
Saviour, shine your life in us
enliven us in bearing light, as wells of grace.
Andii Bowsher cc2014
8.8.7.8.8.7 10.12.7.12
(cf Matt Redman, O Sacred King)
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