Nonviolence

This book by Mark Kurlansky is a history of the dangerous idea contained within its title. After a foreword from the Dalai Lama himself, Kurlansky explores the history of nonviolence & its sociopolitical impacts - from Jesus & Buddha to the American Revolution & the early Quakers to Gandhi & Martin Luther King Jr. As a relatively short book this is far from comprehensive, but it is expansive, and gives a profound & well-put portrait of this nonviolent ethic into historical & moral context. Well worth a read for anyone interested in the nature of power & how to resist it with a clear conscience.

The Rebel

This book by Albert Camus I had heard of for years, but always assumed it was a novel, much like The Outsider - which I enjoyed, but it didn't blow me away, so I'd reserved a general apathy towards his other novels. However, since YouTuber unsolicited advice informed me that it was in fact a work of nonfiction - indeed, being a kind of follow-up to The Myth of Sisyphus (which I read before I started this blog but intend to reread soon) - it immediately got shunted to the top of my to-read list.

   While The Myth of Sisyphus famously contends with the philosophical problem of suicide, The Rebel goes on to do so for the existential phenomenon of murder. Camus takes a generous definition of murder - the killing of someone by the state is just as much murder as the killing of someone by someone else, in both cases for whatever given reason. The first chapter is a simple, considerate portrait of 'the rebel' - why does a human rebel, and against what? The second chapter goes on to deal with 'metaphysical rebellion' - that of an individual or group of people rejected the natural order of conditions purportedly ordained by God; his arguments here are some of the most profound insights into the human condition that I have ever read. We live in a world and are told that the God who created it is good, but we perceive things in the world that we feel are unjust - and so we must kill God in our hearts before turning outward to impose, however successfully or arguably reasonably, our own sense of justice onto this broken created order.* Our passion & reason become sublimated to each other. Chilling stuff. Chapter three (being the meat of the book - about 60% of its total length) is about 'historical rebellion'; how, once one has become a metaphysical rebel, their ideas about righteousness & justice coalesce into ideology, which manifests in the direct organization & empowerment of similarly-minded (or convinced, coerced, it matters little in the big picture) rebellious folks into something more - a revolution. Through thorough analysis of the roots, methods, and fallouts of the French 1789 and Russian 1917 revolutions, Camus demonstrates that revolutions can have a nasty tendency to value their own idea of justice above basic respect for the sanctity of God-given life, and will often result in periods of terror - mass murder by the revolutionary state, or whatever power has supplanted that which was revolted against. Chapter four explores how artistic expression can be a means of & model for rebellion; he gives particular attention to the form of the novel as a way by which a creative mind can construct its own distinct, 'good', world. A final chapter then loosely ties up a handful of tangents touched upon in the previous four with a few extra reflections.

   Overall I found this to be a tremendously politically & religiously humbling book. It gave me a series of mounting epiphanies which forced me to re-evaluate much of my own ideological positions & how dangerous they might be in power. Though as a Christian obviously the concept of metaphysical rebellion is far from alien to me** - but having an existentialist philosopher of immense intellectual sharpness talk about it is a heck of a smack different to having an orthodox theologian talk about it in digestible biblical terms. Anyone interested in the human condition, how freedom & violence interrelate, the ecology of political ideas & the ethics of murder - will get a great deal to chew on from this book. Highly recommended.

* This concept as developed here existentially by Camus actually maps really quite neatly onto the 'royal consciousness' concept Walter Brueggemann developed theologically.

** Paradise Lost aside, the best imaginative depictions of metaphysical rebellions I can name off the top of my head are from Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials [being pro-rebellion] and C.S. Lewis's Space trilogy [being pro-obedience].

On Liberty

This book is a long essay by John Stuart Mill about the moral, social, political and psychological elements of liberty. It wasn't a particularly tricky read but I would struggle to summarise his ideas beyond: liberty is good for both the individual and their society; liberty of the individual in terms of their capacity to hold their own opinions free of coercion and to do what they will insofar as this harms no others is of profound value to the stability and ethical virtue of a society and these rights should be protected politically. He obviously says more than this but it all boils down to over-verbose circlings rhetorically of this core notion. Despite being written in the Victorian era the vigour of his argumentation feels astoundingly contemporary - indeed Mill as a philosopher of liberty still has much still to hope for in the 21st century, when such basic political assumptions as are enshrined in this text are losing that enshrinement when it comes to our basic political institutions. This isn't a particularly practical book, but neither is it an abstract series of obtuse or irrelevant speculations - Mill doesn't tell us where liberty comes from or how it is best used, he simply makes the case, in great detail and using very long sentences, for its being a personal and communal value and practice of profound importance to human flourishing. 

Perpetual Peace

This book (available from that link as a .pdf online for free) is a 1794* essay by Immanuel Kant on the possibility of ending war between sovereign nations. He basically argues that we need to seek to establish an international federation of co-dependent nations under a singular representative state. Pretty modern ideas for the 18th-century, but then, this is Kant we're talking about. His arguments are largely pragmatic and don't veer too much into philosophy** and should be generally digestible by a majority of readers. As stated repeatedly throughout the text, this is NOT a manifesto - I don't think Kant believed that any single state of policy would be able to even kickstart the move towards a perfectly peaceable world - but by holding out these plausibilities as ideals, he makes a very convincing case that establishing such a world is not beyond possibility even within a cynical grasp of reality, and so the main thrust of this test stands on its own two feet. Recommended reading for anyone whom this theme strikes curiosity into, but if you somehow happen to be a person of international political influence who reads this blog, I specifically implore you to read this and think of how Kantian your rationality as regards your work is.

* And the translation, by one M. Campbell Smith, was published in 1903 - so even the Very Lengthy (as in, longer than the translated text it was the introduction to) Introduction recounting the history of ideas around the core topic of this essay came too early to be able to speak of anything regarding such institutions as NATO, the EU or UN even, which might have quite substantively reshaped Smith's introductory commentary on the ideas herein.

** Except for the pair of appendices, where he first considers the disagreements between proper moral ethics and political reality, and then secondly looks at the singular overlap point between proper moral ethics and political reality - that being the idea of a public right.

Being Good

This book by Simon Blackburn (author of Think) is, as was his other book, a general introduction to some key philosophical issues and themes; it's also one that I had already read before I started this blog but I'm re-reading it now to see whether it's worth giving to my youngest brother who has just started studying philosophy for his A-levels.

   Anyway - Blackburn, in three large chunks, covers:

• Threats to ethics
• The death of God
• Egoism
• Evolutionary theory
• Determinism & futility
• Unreasonable demands
• False consciousness
• Some ethical ideas
• Birth
• Death
• Desire & the meaning of life
• Pleasure
• The greatest happiness of the greatest number
• Freedom from the bad
• Freedom & paternalism
• Rights & natural rights
• Foundations of ethics
• Reasons & foundations
• Being good & living well
• The categorical imperative
• Contracts & discourse
• The common point of view
• Confidence restored

   And that's the book.

   Though I have a lot of nits to pick with Blackburn in the minutiae, every philosopher has to come to their own conclusions, and he does to be fair present the things he discusses with a certain detachedness that enables the reader to continue their own explorations without being too bogged down with any of the biases found in what may well be their introductory text. A good book to kick off a habit of thinking about ethics with.

What Would Jesus Post?

This book by David Robertson takes that classic wristband acronym WWJD* and transplants it into the chaotic modern context of social media - hence the title. It's a good question. Were history's most famous Nazarene to have accounts on one of those half-dozen websites that constitute today's internet, what kind of content would he be putting out? Would he be a TikTok influencer? Instagram inspirer? YouTube video essayist? Twitter rage-debater? Reddit helper-outer of strangers lost in Google searches? Verbose blogger? Tumblr sharer of unprompted unhinged angles on stuff? Facebook shitposter? Some combination of any or all of the above? We simply don't know.**

   That doesn't mean we can't take the lessons learned from him and try our best to apply them to the communications landscape in which we find ourselves today, and I think Robertson has done a pretty solid job in this book of applying 2000ish-year-old meta-ethical precepts to Very New Paradigms of Possibility. It's far from a comprehensive*** manual, but as a starting point offers some healthy and biblical broad principles we can bear in mind as we engage with online communities as Christians. I think this is a very helpful and well thought-out book, and I would highly recommend it as a resource - most especially for older generations who have immigrated to the internet after an analogue life, and so aren't as adept as The Youth at navigating the psychosocial turbulence that all online society entails.

   Before concluding this post, I will give a special mention to the format of the chapters in this book, as they're all broken down into the same sections that help lend flow and intentionality to the reading process. We open with an introductory overview of "the way it is", before digging deeper into some relevant theological concepts, then having a "pause for thought" in which what's just been discussed is thrown over to us to particularly consider, after which in a "joining the dots" section we consider contextual or social elements that apply what we've just read to the realities of contemporary internet use, then "a way forward" points us toward particular behaviours or attitudes that help us maintain Christian consistency on these issues, a Bible verse or two with an explanation of how it helps us navigate this, "wisdom from the Psalms" as far as I can tell being simply a nice balm to the soul to concentrate on the spiritual side of life rather than being prompted to relate everything back to the online, and finally a few questions to prompt further thought. The length and order of these sections varies chapter to chapter but overall they are consistent throughout the book and make it a much more engaging discipleship experience as a reader.

* "What Would Jesus Do?" for you heathens unfamiliar.

** My money's split between Facebook shitposting and completely out-of-left-field Tumblr dumps, both of which would be essentially parables converted to fit the format. If ministry responsibilities left him with enough free time he'd probably have a YouTube channel with over 10,000,000 views but only 372 subscribers, on which the Tumblr parables are delivered vocally (as you'd expect, the comments sections are full of confusion, people who only watched the first ten seconds, and a minority of people saying "this changed my life"). He'd probably have Twitter, but unless he had something that absolutely HAD to be said there and then, he'd only use it for ironically retweeting Pharisees and Roman officials. If anyone in Jesus's orbit has a blog it's probably Matthew, and Peter and John would have competing Instagram and TikTok accounts documenting the day-to-day doings of the disciples.

*** There are chapters on: the internet as a public arena, prayer, porn, confession, sowing seeds, our digital tongue, dwelling in God's presence, wisdom and discernment, humility, hospitality and generosity, the Sabbath, spiritual gifts, spiritual fruit, gossip, persecution, the footprints we leave, and community. For a pretty short book it covers a lot of ground, but with Christianity and the internet both being as diversely complexly themselves as they are, one can easily imagine entire books being written about any of these chapters. Which is what I mean when I say this is more of an introductory provocation text.

Just Living

This book by Ruth Valerio is a brilliant resource for furnishing a Christianity-shaped thought train about social, economic and environmental justice. Its ideas are presented with ample but not suffocating explanation, and plenty of pragmatic but not exhaustive pointers for further consideration or praxis.

   The first third of the book explores the fields of the issues at hand; the nature and complexities of both globalisation and consumerism, and then the specific economic-cultural context the modern Church finds itself in when relating to these - hegemonic as they are.

   The middle third is the meaty theory section, where we really dig into theological and philosophical groundings for the origin and trajectory of applicable ethics: Valerio first looks at how simply neglecting the Church's relationship to socioeconomic justice leads to a Christianity that is merely therapeutic and basically capitulates to consumer capitalism; next we consider how the Church should relate to money and property, with a look at the ascetic monastic traditions (with St Benedict and St Francis especially focused on); then finally how Aristotle conceived and Thomas Aquinas developed notions of the interrelation of justice and temperance as virtues, and how these uphold human flourishing when rightly understood and practiced.

   The final third of the book is given over to practical exhortation - prompting the reader to think of what they can do to put these ideas into practice, and making the case for doing so. This includes: reorienting our perspectives to be more cognizant of socioeconomic and environmental injustice; aligning our attitudes toward money and material goods to Biblical ethics, and following on from that seeking to consume as ethically as we plausibly can; engaging fruitfully with our local communities; stepping into activism to provoke change in unsustainable & unjust structures; and lastly making prayerful & fruitful use of the time that is given to us.

   I have to say, as someone who has already put a great deal of thought into the nature & necessity of Christian work for ethical, justice-oriented living, I didn't personally learn a lot from this book. However I did find it edifying & encouraging, and it helped strengthen & deepen my understanding of the shared space my faith & my social/political inclinations occupy. Valerio's credentials as a theologian are just as valid as her credentials as an activist and from reading this book you will be left with an indelible sense of engaging with the wisdom & insight of someone who really does their best to walk the walk they talk. It is also highly readable, and though dealing with some relatively complex topics (especially in chapter six) it skilfully explains everything with minimal jargon, of both the theological & the socio-political kinds. I'd highly recommend this as a book to give to Christians who take following Jesus seriously but don't seem all that fussed about justice; it might serve to tip them over the fence.

Defence of Socrates, Euthyphro & Crito

This collection of texts attributed to Plato are perhaps some of the most significant blobs of words in the history of western philosophy. Honestly - having never actually read anything by Plato before, when working my way through these (which only actually took a couple of days as I found them so gripping) I was seized with a sense of spiritual reverence that I have never felt in reading anything but holy texts. There is a specialness in these ancient dialogues.

   In reverse order then:

• Crito: this is a dialogue with Socrates, having been condemned and now languishing in prison, debating with someone attempting to release him what exactly is the proper relationship between an individual and the state in the moral order.
• Euthyphro: this is a dialogue between Socrates and a young aristocrat about what is the proper obligation of a human being to the gods; where morality comes from, whether we could ever owe it to the gods to do something evil, or if they would be gods were they to demand such a thing.
• Defence of Socrates: in here Socrates, accused of atheism and corrupting the youth of Athens, stands trial amongst his peers, and has to offer a coherent rational defence of his thinking, behaviours, ideas and their impacts on wider society - he knows he will be put to death should this trial not go his way, but he is not concerned with self-defence so much as he is with pursuit of absolute truth.

   I know these summaries are barely scratching the surface. If the Socrates that Plato sketches in these texts is half as wise as the real man they were based on then I must agree he was probably the wisest man in history. Anyway. So that's the book. Exactly who determined that these three should be collated together I do not know - certainly not Socrates, and probably not Plato, but it cannot be denied there is a pure and sheer brilliance of deep overlap between the ideas herein. If you like philosophy and you've not read these, you must. If you don't like philosophy but you wonder why philosophers think you should - you should read these.

KEEP THE FLAG FLYING

This book is a very patriotic collection of what makes the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Island so damn special. Which is nothing, really, we're just used to our own weirdness - if deeply, blithely ignorant of ways in which our own prideful hubris has spread to infect World Kultur.

   In any case, I found this book particularly rousing to my sense of English (and Yorkshire) pride; and found myself making a number of annotations in this book in the hope that it may be craftable into an apologetic present for the Conservative friends in my life whom I fear I have alienated somewhat with my own failures to live graciously since 2016 - I can only hope they find it, plus my scribblings, inspiring as I did - and we may come to see a new reimaginable Britain emerge with vim & vigour into the 2020's.
   Small prayers.

Living Dangerously

This book, edited by Alan Jacobs, is a collection of extracts from the speeches & teaches of Osho, also known as Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh - a man who were it not for this excellent netflix documentary series I wouldn't have heard of probably. As you'll know if you've seen the doc - things got strange; but as you'll know if you're read this blog much - I love it when things get strange, and I'm always happy to suspend disbelief a bit when the lines between genuine wisdom & odd cultic dogma seem to be blurry. So, without making any judgments whatsoever - I decided it wasn't worth only having an impression of the man's life and/or philosophy without actually exploring some of it directly rather than just via a probably-somewhat-dramatized retelling of all the juiciest highlights. And my verdict is - I mean, my personal jury's still out on the nature of the cultic community his ashram turned into, but in terms of his actual outlook and ideas? The man makes some excellent points, which are highly uncomfortable to hear for anyone from settled ideological perspectives: his reflections on the nature of meditation, modernity & the mishap-overlap in-betweens therein are some of the most striking new poignancies I've heard from any thinker on the subjects of mindfulness and modernism, and much of the rest of his philosophy in my view does bear striking similarity to the clarity of insight and quasi-prophetic character of properly, dangerously enlightened thinking. That's not to say I necessarily agree with him about all the things he said - far less endorse all the things that happened under his watch - but you know, shit happens when you start trying to fundamentally question & uplift the human consciousness beyond the boundaries of convention, so I'm not gonna throw stones. Think for yourself if you want to dare to try to.

[edit - June: I've lent this book to a colleague of mine who's into spiritual mysticism and all that after we had a conversation about the documentary. He's still very skeptical which is totally fair enough - they did have those pink police people...]

Reasons to Stay Alive

This book by Matt Haig (much like this one but moreso) is a mishmash: part personal testimonial about mental health and what happens when it goes extremely wrong in context of one's life; part rambling disjointed (at least he's constructed it to feel like that but it flows like triple-ply clockwork toilet paper) meditation on all of this, and how it is going to be differently similar for everyone 'experiencing' it from whatever point of view.
   In a straightforwardly practical empathetic sense I honestly don't think I've come across a better descriptive walkthrough of what it's like to suffer depression and/or anxiety, and similarly the reflections (drawn from both reliably-common-sense research and Haig's own brush with a suicidal inkling) on supporting loved ones going through this are probably some of the more grounded, helpful and well-put bits of advice I've seen given to General Readers on the subject.
   I've been put off reading this book for the last couple of years despite seeing it all over the place on bestseller lists* because - frankly, because I've been scared of the degree to which my own mental health is not entirely stable and I resented the idea that anyone would need to receive reasons for this Very Obvious Thing from a book. But all that said and thought, I found this book so moving and raw and real and just honestly humanly hopeful that I'd recommend it with gusto - particularly good for friends or relatives of someone unduly-acquainted with the black dog.
   For people in such a situation themselves it may help but first up I can't make book recommendations over the Real Important Shit of 1. getting help BEFORE the situation becomes dire & 2. see 1... Mind and the Samaritans both offer free support and can be a real lifeline.**



* When 'how-and-why-to' guides for not killing yourself are bestsellers, it should maybe be a bit of a clue that you live in a somewhat Fucked society. Meh

** Not to disparage though as I've got a hefty hunch Haig's book has probably gone some significant way toward saving many lives. Which - you never know whether you may have helped someone in some way like this before either. Or maybe you do. Mental health can often be a silent killer and so if you know someone who is struggling - don't wait for things to stew, be better as a friend & help each other through this shit

the Tao of Pooh & the Te of Piglet

This book (or rather pair of books, their having originally been published separately but are nowadays generally distributed as a two-in-one compendium, just like their  founding inspirational scriptures of Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner), by Benjamin Hoff, is a delightfully accessible and remarkably profound introduction to the general kind of shape and texture and colour of the principles of Taoism.

   Replete with extracts from A. A. Milne's beloved original classics (as well as illustrations from these) as well as from the writings of Lao-Tzu, Chuang-Zhu, and a number of other ancient Chinese sages, Hoff adroitly demonstrates how Pooh lives in harmony with the Tao of the Hundred-Acre-Wood and its various inhabitants in ways that we could learn a great deal from in our crowded rushed modern world; while Piglet's very smallness and oft-fearful-but-never-insincere eagerness to help or reassure insofar as he can encapsulates much of the Taoist virtuosity of Te... all this in ways I would be doing both the philosophy and Hoff's wonderful children's-fictional exposition of it a grand injustice to try to give a pat summary of. But I must say it was quite wonderful to have characters like Eeyore, Owl, Rabbit, Kanga, Tigger and Roo, in their deceptive charming simplicity, be shown to quite perfectly embody the positive or negative or fluid aspects of un-Taoist living or un-Tefull being that pervade and restrict so much of the natural mystery of living and being, particularly in our over-intellectualized over-systematized technological mess of what we consider passes for contemporary civilisation.

   Pardon my rant. I kind of gonzo'd this post in an attempt to avoid falling into the very same kind of Heffalump trap that I'm trying to gently warn about, and which Hoff, through Christopher Robin's assortment of imaginary friends and various evasive apothegmic koans or jokey anecdotes about Confucius, will kindly and accurately help you to see wherever they may pop up in the footsteps in the snow you're following round and round the copse. Anyway, this is a fantastic entertaining enlightening book and probably the best introduction to Taoism I could, in my inexperience, recommend to a Western reader.

the Universal Christ

This book by ecumenical thought-leader Richard Rohr is an astounding treasure. It dives into the wholesale glorious mysteries of the biblical gospel, reminding us of the meaning of 'Christ', the freedom of forgiveness, the reality that Creation was God's testimony to us of heavenly truth long before scripture was written, the nature of spirit and incarnation, the sheer uncontainable universality of grace and peace and love...

   I don't have anything particuarly clever to say in reflection on this book. It simply pulled off the boots of my own Christian faith, shook them upside-down to dislodge a few large lumpy pebbles of English-evangelical intellectual cowardice and tribal complacency, then gently eased them back onto my feet as a liberating send-off back to the Jesus I had always known but now saw afresh. It is written accessibly enough for non-theologians, even non-Christians, and has a moral sensibility and wholesome common-good heartiness that I defy you to not find beautiful, challenging, and totally eternally counter-cultural: this is not Rohr's ideas unfolding themself but the very basics in implication of the gospel of Christ crucified and risen. A dazzling pragmatic inclusive truth, that has so long since been contained and constrained by overthinking underliving Christian commentary, the stultification of which Rohr here does a supremely excellent work in decolonizing Christ-consciousness from, yet never descending into partisan critique.

   I am giving this book to my mother and buying another copy to lend out.

A Call for Revolution

This book is a short, impassioned and timely reflection from His Holiness the Dalai Lama - as the title suggests, calling for a global insurgency - albeit one of empathy, of deep love for all beings and our shared world, for compassion, forgiveness, listening, breaking down the walls of the mental prisons we have traumatized ourselves into inhabiting across our history and creating spaces for new, urgent possibilities. It is a call I very much endorse.

No-one is too small to make a difference

This book is a collection of speeches made over this past few months by Greta Thunberg - whom you've probably heard of by now, unless you've been living under Boomer Snowflake Rock - since pretty much all of these speeches are available online or were covered in the news media, the only real reason I can envision buying a copy of this book might be for someone a necessarily recommendable act is as a present for people living under that aforementioned rock. Not that they'd probably read it, because hey, who's going to listen to an autistic Swedish teenager if you're already not going to listen to a united consensus among our planet's most dedicated minds on questions of ecological action?

Single-Minded

This book by Kate Wharton is about singleness; a vital counterpoint to the mass of extant Christian literature about its alternative. Rooted in personal experience to demonstrate the veracity of her case, as well as very much in Scripture - the "ideal" individual disciple's experience of primary intimacy with God in Christ rather than any worldly relationships - throughout she makes powerful arguments and highly encouraging ones to anyone who, like me, may have felt somewhat left out of the all-too-often world-conforming Christian culture of "oh well we may as well get married to someone as soon as possible because isn't that just what all the nice Christian couples at church have done?"
   It's likely to be an uncomfortable read for many on that side of the divide just as much as it is an affirming one for single people: but Kate's right in saying that Jesus very much emulated the ideal of a single life, well kept and well lived, to and for God alone; it's a message so deeply counter-cultural both inside and outside of the Church & I can only applaud her for having put forward the view so poignantly as here given the fat enormity of this particular lacuna not only in Christian literature but most church communities too.

the Presence of the Kingdom

This book by Jacques Ellul needs very little said about it because it quite completely blew my mind, not by introducing me to new ideas but essentially because it represents a total synthesis of all of what I thought were my most radical systems of ideas I'd encountered and grouped into some kind of holistic critique of modernity but expressed more succintly (not to mention logically) than I would ever have been capable of, and grounded fully and richly in a rigorous exposition of the dynamics of God-headed Spirit-led discipleship rightly understood in opposition to the worldly powers of the twentieth century. No single book* has quite so entirely both affirmed and challenged my personal state of thinking and living. If every church leader read this and digested its truths, there would be an utterly unprecedented surge of repentance from congregations who have conformed too far to comfortably stand against sin; a return to Scripture to listen to Jesus' cry of forgiveness for those lost in the condemned pits of modernity. One of our greatest western prophetic thinkers, to be sure. Partly why I'm writing such a short post about it - it's one of his earliest books and is described as laying out his general systemic viewpoint, and so I will certainly be digging into further detail of his perspectives through others of the many books he wrote.


* As ever with these hyperbolic statements about Christian literature; except the Bible.

This Is Water

This book is the text of a commencement address given by author (of Infinite Jest, which I will probably get round to reading at some poi- oh, who am I kidding) David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College in 2005. It also belongs to my flatmate Jack, who has gone home for Christmas, so I figured I could read it, blog about it, and return it all without his noticing in the interim few days of otherwise-festivities. The general thrust of his speech is about the complexity, difficulty, and ultimately the absolute necessity of trying to live a compassionate life. He's talking to a bunch of liberal arts graduates, so he hopes that something of the proactive and critical use of ideas which their education purportedly challenged them to grow in their capacities for might pay off here - that they may enter the world, twisted and nonsensical though it may be, and hold firmly able to interact with it as independent rational agents who are deeply and warmly aware that they are also very much interdependent beings, and they will need others' help just as others will need theirs, and to close themselves off from being able to ask for or offer this is to render themselves less than fully human for the sake of pursuing some insidious constructed lie. I found it interesting that David, though by no means a man of faith, talks at some length in this about the need for finding a coherent centre to one's worldview to help one retain the keenness of their grasp on this truth: "everyone worships... the question is what?" and goes on to include what is probably the most cogent and universal meditation on the nature of idolatry that I've ever read in a secular text. Overall he's very clear that the whole point of this conversation is not one in which anyone really learns anything new, but in which we are constantly having to remind ourselves and each other of the deep old fundamental truths that pervade our cultures and consciences just as thoroughly as they are regularly and easily forgotten. That's where the title's from: he wants us to be so fully aware of the network of moral obligations that hold society together that we become constantly cognizant of it surrounding us, like fish, patiently reminding each other as they swim along, 'this is water,' even though they cannot see it and could very easily forget it was there altogether, swimming about their own business and looking straight through it. This is water. This is water. This is water. David Foster Wallace was an outrageously clever man, and this transcripted speech veritably swells with a perspective rich with clarity and blunt wise truths.

Dethroning Mammon

This book by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby is one of those that so well brings together and consolidates differing major strands of my emergent (striving to be holistic) system of general thought that the best way to do a blog post about it entails buttloads of links to other books I've read, so settle in for a final paragraph more or less entirely comprised of these.
   First though - the book itself: it's a very straightforward critique, from what should be a pretty uncontroversial mainstream Christian perspective, of the idolisation of money and power and materialistic status (i.e. 'Mammon') in contemporary Western society. Welby walks us, in engaging, readable and non-complicated terms, through the central knots of what is spiritually problematic about the way most people in our socioeconomic setting live: valuing only what we can materially quantify, becoming controlled by it, insisting on primacy of individual ownership, enshrining it in our hearts and minds and value-driven behaviours, losing out on the eternal and moral gains to be made from being selfless and quick to share - and so losing out on joy as we become cogs in worldly schemes designed for short-term profit without respect for people's intrinsic worth. It's a book that I think is extremely timely, and should be as widely-read among Christians (especially Conservative ones) as any book can be - Mammon is the world's most pervasive, most collective, most insidious, and most successful idol, having risen to hegemonic dominance over more or less the entire global political economy - and the fact this is so un-discussed by the Church is a matter of extreme spiritual as well as sociopolitical concern. We have a duty as servants of Christ to, in seeking and working for his glory, not only evangelise and serve others, but also to stand and testify against idols running rampant through our cultures, and while there are many of these, Mammon is one so big and dominant and unchallenged (at least in spiritual terms from mainstream Christianity) that we absolutely must reject and fight it, and work to open people's eyes.
   Why is this important?
   Well, let's start with God, who being in absolute and ultimate a community of love, made us to emulate this love in the way we live. This is human nature as told by the biblical narrative, and that sets Christians in a radical light in a world that is not, by and large, shaped along these lines. We live in a world where billions are left to suffer and die in poverty, ignored by the rich, who have secured so completely their grasp on power that economic 'wisdom' itself is determined by their interests, enabling richer nations to bully and exploit poor ones as they strive for global dominance, even to the degree that our short-term economic endeavours threaten to dangerously destabilise the self-regulating biosphere. And for what? This materialistic striving doesn't make us happier, it just makes us competitive and angsty - allowing our individual and communal spiritual lives to wither, neglected, as we're all too busy chasing the gravy train, all the while finding our societies' ills perpetuated by the socioeconomic insecurities internalised by those living in highly unequal systems. In the Bible, we repeatedly see idolatry and injustice entwined together - and the same is true today. To be truly loving requires that we engage people spiritually and pragmatically: our pursuit of cohesive justice and our witness of gospel truth to others must go hand in hand. People forget that economics originated from moral philosophy - the social systems of production, distribution and exchange today are so complex, interdependent and verging on incomprehensible that trying to take a moral or religious perspective on them seems almost absurd - yet this we must do. But first we must disentangle ourselves from the web of apathy, misconception, and unquestioning conformity that surround Mammon: as salt and light in the world, we must not allow ourselves to be reshaped by the values of our idol-saturated culture but only by that which we know to be developing us as we help build each other up in the likeness of Christ - and having been socialised into accepting as natural and inevitable the machinations of a social order that glorifies affluence and marginalised those who do not, or cannot, attain it, that means first sharpening our critical thinking. Question things; question each particular usage of political or economic power as they are often neither moral nor legitimate, and do not be afraid of open reasonable discussion - as this is the life-support soil of civil society in which much intellectual Christian evangelism takes place and in which the seeds of progressive change are sown. Consider the impact and optimisation of your work for the service of these ends; educate yourself about the yes-complex-but-oh-so-important fields in which change needs to occur; open your eyes to actual circumstances of less-well-off communities; as an individual and through your influence on political decision-makers (am assuming most readers of this blog are lucky enough, like me, to live in democratic societies) try to promote the pursuit of an agenda that is inclusive and abundant rather than focused on hierarchy and scarcity - reframe your moral priorities around helping and empowering those most in need, rather than enabling those least in need to continue helping themselves. Oh, and if voting for this doesn't work, there are lots of other ways of making a robust point...

On Being Nice

This book, from the School of Life (of Alain de Botton's work), is a really nice little turquoise hardback filled with short readable chapters about the various aspects of how to conduct oneself nicely* - a quality that is, apparently, lacking in modern society. Humans are social creatures, geared towards friendship and cooperation within communities - a trait that all genuine clear thinking supports the endeavour of and which even alien visitors feel compelled to partake in.**

   However, 'niceness' is only partly derived from this intrinsic bio-psychological drive in people to seek belonging and reciprocity with other people, and partly derived from a string of complex historical normative legacies. Our current western model of niceness has, according to this book's first section, been shaped considerably by Christianity (which emphasised other-centred action but also dampens vividness of character and ambition), romanticism (which emphasised spontaneous individuality as more valuable than predictable boring normal niceness), capitalism (which depends on people more or less getting along so they can operate as amoral cogs in its ever-growing empire of profit) and eroticism (which sort of built on the romantic spontaneity to characterise niceness as unsexy). The second section of the book deals with kindness - the importance of charitability in how we react to things, the importance of being reasonably open about our shortcomings and vulnerabilities (neither be a strong man or a tragic hero), taking motivation in consideration, responding gracefully to suffering, and cracking the delicate and multifaceted art of politeness. The third section launches into how we can use niceness to improve our own social lives and enrich the lives of others in it: being clear about the value of friendship, not being weirdly over-friendly, overcoming our own and others' shyness, teasing appropriately and affectionately, telling white lies, flirting to boost self-esteem, being warm and open-minded, being able to talk about yourself honestly and endearingly (without burying weaknesses, or ranting, or being needlessly boring), and listening properly to others when talking to them. The final chapter presents us with a challenge - the ultimate test of one's social skills: maintaining an interaction with a young (old enough to speak, and walk off if you bore or annoy it) child whom you haven't met before.

   There are parts of this book that I feel don't adequately map out the actualities of how to be properly adaptably nice,*** but the groundwork definitely seems to be present, and it's laid out in a friendly readable manner which makes the whole a rewarding and life-affirming reminder of the importance of being nice.

* I would like to offer a disclaimer that I didn't really learn much from this book that I wasn't already more or less putting into practice; as a friendly but still fairly culturally-typical Englishperson I'm quite good at being nice - though this stems more from my aim to live in a constant mindset of Christlike love and empathy than from the abstract wishy-washy humanism of the School of Life and such. Whatever. The reason for my reading this then is 'research' - one of the main characters in a big writing project I'm working on the plans for at the moment is just very nice, and what I wanted from this book was a systematic well-phrased exposition of the contours and nuances of Being Nice with which to pepper some of her deeds and comments. To this end, the book served me very well. However I imagine it would also be quite effective as a rough manual to the practice for people who are much better at deriving practical information from books than they are at empathetically and genuinely engaging in interpersonal relations. Probably don't give it as a present to people who need it though. Ironically, that would be quite rude.

** Four links in one sentence! I'm on a mad'un!

*** I mean, as a radically inclusive left-wing Christian with little respect for the charades of the bourgois echelons of British culture that the liberal humanists who wrote this probably inhabit, this should be no surprise, but still, this is a decent overview. It's not like I'm going to bother to dissect all the small nuances where I thought it should have said more than it did or where it made assertions that actually seem questionable under scrutiny in different contextual light - mainly because I can't be arsed, but also because it would be a petty pedantic scrabbling against a book which overall I think laid out a good picture of what modern secular niceness is.