Slaughterhouses and violent crime -more reason to be vege

About three weeks ago at a staff "Christmas" do one of my colleagues -having observed my vegetarian option and exercised a modicum of curiosity about it, confessed to considering becoming vegetarian having come across research showing a link between factory-slaughterhouses and crimes involving lack of empathy in communities surrounding them. It has stayed in my mind and so I decided to do a web search on the matter
Perhaps the quickest and fullest way in is this article reporting the research: Probing the link between slaughterhouses and violent crime | Toronto Star. The basic finding is this:

Criminology professor Amy Fitzgerald says statistics show the link between slaughterhouses and brutal crime is empirical fact.

It seems that the correlation is rock solid. However, as often, the interpretation needs more work.Mainly the interpretive issue is whether working in slaughter houses causes an increase in the categories of crime studied, or whether the work itself attracts the kind of people most disposed to such crimes. The latter seems to me to be less likely given an aspect of the research itself:

“Some residents started to recognize that the crime rates were going up and started complaining, and the slaughterhouse companies were quick to blame the immigrant labour pool they were relying on,” Fitzgerald says. She found that abattoirs still seemed to raise the crime numbers when she controlled for these factors.

My suspicion is also that, taking into account framing and priming, there is a plausibility to work involving high levels of desensitisation to suffering tending to form people more likely to commit crimes where a lack of empathy is likely to be a significant factor. The desensitisation issue is problematised in the article:

"the correlation was not as strong for smaller farms where animals were killed. " Though I actually predicted that when I began to read the article - "“It seems like there’s something about the industrialization process,” says Fitzgerald. “you have people who are actually responsible for slaughtering thousands of animals a day.”

My reason for not eating meat is largely about environmental impact and sustainability: not eating meat reduces ones carbon footprint and there is not enough land to feed meat to the world's population at western rates of consumption. I can however, as something of a peace activist, begin to feel this reason gaining credibility for me.

Presence, space and relating mind

In a previous post, Presence, space and mind, I wrote about how presence need not always imply physical proximity but could be mediated by tokens such as letters, or electronic signals and that the crucial thing was that the tokens enabled and carried forward a relationship. At the end of that previous post I noted that there was still some exploration of the idea to be done:  

to think about the way that relationship can be mediated by tokens and the conditions for successful mediation of relationship which might be relevant to the Eucharist.

So it seems that presence need not be equated to physical proximity. However, we should note that this is not to imply that God is not present. Some of what we need to explore is that God is always and everywhere present so eucharistic presence is not a presence in distinction to absence, but it is rather the kind of presence being mediated. God's 'normal' or 'ordinary' ubiquity is supplemented or interpreted by the communicative tokens of bread and wine in the eucharist. God is present anyway and in the eucharist that presence is 'enhanced' by a collection of inter-related signifiers in a communicative economy based in narratives of Divine-human interaction.

So this is beyond merely 'physical' presence (that is presence alongside, over or through the physical universe rather than of a physical body). It is a storied presence invoked upon and by broken bread and outpoured wine and their place in the stories so invoked. So the presence is not only physical but it is collectively-mental; a presence within the minds and affectivities of disciples. This is a 'place' where the normal and ordinary presence of God does not automatically exist: it can only be there by some degree of welcome and acknowledgement. Which welcome and acknowledgement are called forth and substantiated by the rite. Perhaps, then, this gives a further credence to the notion of "transsignification" as a way of understanding the eucharist.

There is a real presence of Christ in the social-mindscape of the congregation. 'Real' in the sense that it is not merely a subjective construction of the human congregants but it is a presence-in-sign whereby the self-giving of Christ is appropriated subjectively within the social-mindscape as the physical rite is enacted. Just as word or gesture is needed to convey a personal and relational presence so is the rite important in conveying the Christ presence into the social-mindscape. The reality of the presence beyond the subjectivity of the congregants derives from the given-ness of the sign/s by God. As a letter conveys a real presence by virtue of it being sent by the author to renew or to keep alive a relationship, so this rite conveys a real presence by virtue of being 'sent' by God.

And what is communicated is particularly signified as not simply presence or availability but more precisely the given-ness-unto-death of the God-man Jesus. The tokens communicating the real presence-in-social-mindscape are more precisely communicating the self-donation of the Word of God through deathly passion and 'resurrascension'. This too goes beyond mere presence and interprets presence as 'for us' and solidary as well as committed and saving. This is God conveying commitment to relating positively to us by re-presenting to us what God has been doing to create a positive relationship with the implication of inviting us to respond in kind. The presentation and the response come together in the co-ordinating signs that make up the rite: the actions of taking, blessing, breaking and consuming the bread and the wine,

And such presence involves both time and space.It is in the rite that the communication takes place -as the rite is 'read' by the congregants, the relationship via the deathly passion and resurrascension is renewed as a real presence in the mindscape. a real presence that becomes us at the very least by changing and reinforcing our neuronal patterns and their connections with the various aspects of our lives over time.

I think there's a little more to unpack ... watch this space.

Angel wrestling

I love this image. I think it is a representation of Jacob wrestling with the angel ...

Community: Wounded and Blessed – a workshop for Idealists, Hypocrites and Wanna-be Disciples of Jesus | Empire Remixed: wnb2

Gingerism and its discontents

At school and watching films on telly as a primary-aged child, I got the impression that beautiful or handsome humans were either black haired or blonde women whereas people like me who were some variety of red-headed were not. I also got 'reverse' skin-colour racism: being picked on because I didn't tan and only had freckles. So I don't need convincing that there is something in 'gingerism'.  I'm not saying it's as bad or systematic as racism or sexism, but it does really exist and we shouldn't let it pass without challenge.
As the article says:

the whole gingerism thing is a stealth form of acceptable racism that goes on in boardrooms, in authors' minds.

But I don't entirely go with the choice of example up next:

Look at Harry Potter – the redheads are the poor, weak family, the buffoons. If Harry Potter had been ginger, that would have been a different story.

It's true that Rowling has rightly picked up the way that a ginger family would quite likely be the object of derisive and dismissive comments. But it's worth noting the heroic and sympathetic qualities of that family. Rowling has the underdogs turn out to be among the celebration-worthy: their compassion, self-sacrifice are key to the plot. They are heroes in the story. The main hero even ends up marrying one of them.

Would it have been a different story if HP had been ginger. Not sure it would: one more thing for him to be harassed for and a further reason for him to identify with his best friends the Weasleys. They may be buffoons in the eyes of the self-important muggle-haters, but in terms of authorial and readerly respect, quite the reverse. Harry Potter is no gingerist text. It witnesses to gingerism but it critiques it too.

Damian Lewis and the case of the missing redheads | Art and design | The Guardian:

Maximizing Collective Intelligence Means Giving Up Control

I think that this is one of the key things I keep running into, sometimes in my own thinking, quite often with people I'm trying to talk with about corporisations and emergence.

If a group is behaving collectively smarter than any individual, then it — by definition — is behaving in a way that is beyond any individual’s capability. If that’s the case, then traditional notions of command-and-control do not apply. The paradigm of really smart people thinking really hard, coming up with the “right” solution, then exerting control over other individuals in order to implement that solution is faulty.

I think our temptation -like in the latest management wizardry books- is to think that somehow it's quasi mechanical: push the button, pull the lever and it's a guaranteed outcome. We're actually in the game of recognising that it's complicated and the outcomes will be co-created and that means sometimes unpredictable flows and unpowerful people can significantly and oddly change things. It's like having a calculating machine: if you knew the answer before doing the calculation, you wouldn't need to do the calculation. The interactions of people in a corporisation are a kind of calculation -the outcome is discovered in the operation.

So when we are looking to make changes for justice and humanity in corporisations, we have to recognise that we can only engage with good heart. We can't expect anyone or any group to deliver a guaranteed answer. We can only engage with the process and keep trying and keep interacting with as many people and groups as we can.

Maximizing Collective Intelligence Means Giving Up Control:

Doubt as a way of faith

"I'm so mixed up I doubt my doubts -only to discover I believe!"
Okay, so I made that quote up but it came to mind as I was thinking about the gospel passage for this coming Sunday.
First we have John the Baptiser having a wobble:

 "When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples ³ and said to him, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?’" (Mt.11:2&3).

Perfectly understandable: first of all John's in prison which perhaps doesn't seem fitting to him but might be part of the programme if the Messiah would then actually do something to bring about the Promised renewal. restoration of national life under God. But Jesus doesn't seem to be set to do that. So, is it all for nothing?

Then there's also the doubt that Jesus seems to be addressing when he turns to the crowds. Presumably, John's followers had come upon Jesus in public and asked their question in public; meaning that the doubt that John implies by his question is communicated to the crowd. If they have the same sort of particular Messianic script in mind as Jesus needs to address and subvert and reconceptualise in the apostles at other points in the gospels, then how much more the crowd? And how much more important to frame what they've heard helpfully.

I find it encouraging that doubt is not dealt with harshly -indeed it's not even named as such here. In some Christian contexts doubt has become "Doubt": it's a big thing, the beginning of the end, the start of a descent into lostness and to becoming one of those people that our church or our ministry sees as a enemy to the Gospel. I think, though, that doubt is a continuum one end of which is faith destroying, the other end is potentially faith-building, It is worth recalling, to help us understand doubt, that 'faith' is ambiguous. On the one hand we might mean something like 'a system of propositions about the nature of life/reality' on the other hand it may be about 'trust and/or commitment'. True enough: the two are linked -if your cognitive doubt is sufficiently foundation-shaking of the belief system, then the trust and commitment ebb away. And, of course, in some cases the commitment overcomes evidence or selects evidence of a more cognitive nature to support the commitment.

But some doubt is not so existential. Some doubt is mostly about trying to see things whole. It's about recognising differences of perspective and apparent dissonances in experiences or interpretations or some combination of those. And a lot of times that is more about 'making sense' brought about by changes in circumstances which change our reflex perspectives, or help us to see things from a different point of view, perhaps gaining sympathy with someone or an idea that previously seemed 'out there' for us. Sometimes it arrives with an increase in knowledge which questions something we'd previously assumed or makes a different line of thinking seem more fruitful, plausible or explanatory for us. The thing is, all learning, all making-sense, is initially disorienting to some degree. And this can feel like doubt. In some senses it is: it is a questioning or re-evaluation of what had previously been believed. And if that previous belief had been important to us or remains important to those around us whom we trust, then the doubt can feel quite frightening. In response we may try to ignore it, reassert the old perspective more vehemently to try to force it from us or we may face it with boldness or humility to learn what lies the other side. This kind of doubt is the vulnerability of the hermit crab between shells.

So, how do we see Jesus responding here (to John, via his followers)? In short, it seems to me, pragmatically and sympathetically. There is no deriding the 'wobble', nor is there a forceful restatement of the right position and/or an exhortation to believe. To be sure there is that at one or two other points -but let's take those also on a case-by-case basis, remembering that here it is dealt with sympathetically, I think that there are different ways of responding to doubt because there are different kinds of doubt and we do ill if we treat all of them as if they are Doubt.

Jesus treats John's doubt as sense-making disorientation: events have overturned John's prior understanding of the Messiahnic script and he needs help to reorient faithfully. So Jesus draws John's attention to some salient facts about what he's doing, and does so using phrases which echo Messianic passages in Isaiah, but which also point to another area of 'messianic scripting' that doesn't involve nationalistic, other-punishment or violent fantasy-stoking which may have been the script playing in John's mind and now being doubted. Jesus does a bit of pastoral re-framing to help John re-integrate his experience as it is now in such a way as to keep him true to the important things now: 'blessed is the one who does not fall away on account of me'.

There's an implicit warning in there as well as encouragement to stay true. One might fall away because having hoped that Jesus were the Messiah, his following parts of the script that were previously not noticed or not weighed sufficiently heavily might cause one to throw over the whole plot rather than adjust ones expectations and understandings in the light of an expanded appreciation which reframes the former beliefs.

Then Jesus has to turn to the crowd who've been listening in on the exchange and drawing their own conclusion and perhaps finding their own doubts or skepticisms amplified and played back -perhaps even as they murmur to one another. So I imagine that 'Blessed is the one who does not fall away on account of me' is also said with the crowd in mind -to encourage and challenge them too. But with some further perspectives to supplement. He tells them, in effect, that those of them who went to see and hear John's ministry were right to do so and that John was indeed the fore-runner. This is a reassertion of the plot but with a further dimension drawn to attention: that the forces arrayed against them are the rulers and the interests of wealth-accumulation. Implicitly a reminder that they shouldn't be expecting an easy shoe-in to earthly power but rather powerful opposition. And, of course, we realise that this is also a prefiguration of Jesus' own life-narrative.

There are forms of doubt that can make us less likely to stay true to the plot when it contains suffering and misunderstanding by others. There are forms of doubt which enable us to put aside perspectives which would keep us from staying true because they are perspectives which would deter us, lead us to take mis-steps or even end up working against the God-plot and for the Powers-plot instead. In this latter case, doubt is part of the way of faith.

Co-operative university

I've found myself musing over the last few months, as you do, about the way that our Higher Education system is being funded and the cultural effects that seems to be having on the enterprise: on students, on institutions, on staff and the relationships. expectations and possibilities created or ruled-out.
My own university, Northumbria's history prompted a further sort of reflection. A major strand of the precursor institutions was a set of educational establishments set up by a Congregational minister and his church to serve the educational advancement of working class and poor families. So my musing was about how a university could run without the business ethos taking over and the whole thing becoming a version of service/product provision for customers. Then I wondered what if students were not positioned as 'customers' or 'consumers' -could that be done?

So I started wondering whether a university could be a co-op. All staff, like the John Lewis Partnership, as genuine economic partners in a truly democratic organisation (see also article on the Uni of Mondragon). Students who, like the customers of the co-op shops, could become members and be paid dividends on their fees. Alumni could remain members, perhaps.

The problem with universities in their current form is that they “treat professionals as employees”, he argues. This means that running difficulties and big decisions are seen as “management’s problem”, not “our problem”.
Give staff a slice of ownership and control and they are more likely to take responsibility, [Mervyn Wilson, quoted from here)

I like the idea that students could become members too. Perhaps that could help the Students' Union to find a fuller and renewed role.

There are already co-operative schools in this country and perhaps they could offer us a glimpse of how it could be.

The co-operative trust model embeds co-operative values and principles into schools. These include open membership, equal democratic participation (one member, one vote) and a clear line of accountability from those who manage the schools to those that use the school and its extended services. Importantly this offers schools the opportunity to involve the wider community in the running of the school, including local people, businesses, voluntary groups, charities, parents, pupils and staff through membership of a ‘Council’ or ‘Forum’. The ‘Council’ appoints trustees to the trust which, in turn, appoints governors to the governing body of the school. The Council plays a pivotal role in delivering the trust’s objectives in accordance with the core co-operative values.  (quoted from here)

Co-operative university seminar | The Co-operative College: This approach offers a new take on debates over privatisation, marketisation and the defence of the ‘public university’ It'll be interesting to hear what the outcomes of the seminar are in a few days time.
PS An article pointing to some of the seminar papers here. One of the slides in the presentation cited gives a useful summary of why bother which seems to pull together the various things that have gone through my mind about the topic.

• Disenfranchisement / Alienation of academic labour (casualization, instrumentalism, performativity, managerialism) 

• Challenge to notion of student as consumer 

• Market volatility, competition, differentiation 

• Alignment of values with governance  perhaps benefits performance & bottom line

And another slide notes an alignment of academic and co-op values: "Co-operative values are (broadly) academic values:
self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity"

See also article on the Uni of Mondragon and the New University Cooperative of Canada.