As the Conservative government cuts away at public services it hopes to recreate some of them, at no or little cost to itself, by relying on volunteer replacements with little support or funding to help. It's called the Big Society.
There are many problems with this idea. In my village the local library is to shut. A few jobs will be lost, a local resource ended, the many elderly people in the area will be that much more limited in their access to company, books, information, newspapers and the internet, a social space gone. The alternative is to set up a new 'community run' equivalent, relying on volunteer staff, presumably open for vastly reduced hours and without specialist workers. Where the funding for this will come from is anyone's guess.
This blog is not intended to critique government policy. What I want to focus on is the patronising idea that the Big Society is something new or that it depends on government support. Most of us don't have to look far to find examples of extraordinarily generous acts on behalf of volunteers - or, as often as not, we even use services that we don't even realise are being carried out by volunteers. There are a host of television programmes on at the moment recording the nineteenth-century history of social entreprenurship and philanthropy, see the one about Robert Owen or Dr Bernardo. In the former the presenters are amazed to discover that the Big Society wasn't a twenty-first century creation. It isn't a nineteenth-century one either.
Every medieval monastery was obliged to give hospitality to those who asked for it. Tithing in medieval villages was intended both for the poor and for the church. I'm sure there are ancient examples too, but it's a period of history I'm less familiar with. Government can help a little - it can provide funding and expertise, and it can seek out the projects that need these resources - but it isn't the creator, only a sustainer. And now, of course, it has stopped doing even that.
Tuesday 15 February 2011
Sunday 13 February 2011
Tyrants, shepherds and priests
The toppling of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, whatever happens next, shows the awesome power of persistent popular protest, there is no greater force than the coherent, consistent actions of the Third Estate. It was wholly different from the sanitised clashes that we are used to - between leaders of political parties, trade union general secretaries, heads of think tanks or charities or campaigning organisations, journalists and Prime Ministers, and so on.
It was a clash between the people and an institution occupied by an individual. There were no leaders, no committee, no single spokesperson. Does this mean it was messy? Mal-coordinated? Did not do itself justice? Lacked leadership? One of the most exciting, inspiring aspects of the protest was its corporate unity. Human beings not simply carrying out their function within a hierarchy or structure but acting as part of a whole. So do we need leaders?
My university's Defend Education group, currently fighting the cuts to public services being carried out by the Tory government in the UK, also operates without a leader or even a leadership committee. Instead working groups were formed, each in charge of a different part of the organisation and reporting back to the entire body, which took all major decisions, planned future action and organised the campaign. It was, at root, the realisation of the kind of direct democratic control that has never been fully adopted at a national political level. It was fair, open, inclusive, effective and productive. Finding a collective voice or an efficient route to a solution could be challenging, of course, but the result was always the stronger for it - the means justified the end and the end, the means.
Could religions work like this? The Catholic and Anglican churches, among others, have rejected the possibility, choosing instead to set apart a small number of the congregation, targeting resources at these few people; giving them special training, special powers in the performance of the sacraments and a more-or-less monopoly on teaching, preaching and service leading in the church. The ordained priesthood has become bound up with the traditions of the church, an in-built aristocracy of those 'called'. Both churches are active these days in emphasising the calling of the laity, but not, of course, to preside over the sacraments, and only rarely to preach, teach, carry out 'official' pastoral work, or lead a service.
Most priests are not, of course, called to carry out all these tasks and often struggle to fulfill each to a sufficiently high standard. The natural end point of this thought is, of course, that perhaps no one person is called to carry out all this tasks but instead are each called only to do one or other of them. So why group them together and give them to individuals? Why neglect the teaching, preaching and sacramental abilities of so many members of the church?
Imagine a church where the whole congregation carried out the sacraments, the teaching, the preaching and the pastoral activities in turn and according to the skills and interests of the members. Those gifted at teaching could teach, while those gifted at caring could care, and those gifted at both could do both. Training, resources and special powers could be given to all those who will need it to carry out their activities. This would not be the end of the priesthood or the Church but its widening to include the whole of the religious body.
It was a clash between the people and an institution occupied by an individual. There were no leaders, no committee, no single spokesperson. Does this mean it was messy? Mal-coordinated? Did not do itself justice? Lacked leadership? One of the most exciting, inspiring aspects of the protest was its corporate unity. Human beings not simply carrying out their function within a hierarchy or structure but acting as part of a whole. So do we need leaders?
My university's Defend Education group, currently fighting the cuts to public services being carried out by the Tory government in the UK, also operates without a leader or even a leadership committee. Instead working groups were formed, each in charge of a different part of the organisation and reporting back to the entire body, which took all major decisions, planned future action and organised the campaign. It was, at root, the realisation of the kind of direct democratic control that has never been fully adopted at a national political level. It was fair, open, inclusive, effective and productive. Finding a collective voice or an efficient route to a solution could be challenging, of course, but the result was always the stronger for it - the means justified the end and the end, the means.
Could religions work like this? The Catholic and Anglican churches, among others, have rejected the possibility, choosing instead to set apart a small number of the congregation, targeting resources at these few people; giving them special training, special powers in the performance of the sacraments and a more-or-less monopoly on teaching, preaching and service leading in the church. The ordained priesthood has become bound up with the traditions of the church, an in-built aristocracy of those 'called'. Both churches are active these days in emphasising the calling of the laity, but not, of course, to preside over the sacraments, and only rarely to preach, teach, carry out 'official' pastoral work, or lead a service.
Most priests are not, of course, called to carry out all these tasks and often struggle to fulfill each to a sufficiently high standard. The natural end point of this thought is, of course, that perhaps no one person is called to carry out all this tasks but instead are each called only to do one or other of them. So why group them together and give them to individuals? Why neglect the teaching, preaching and sacramental abilities of so many members of the church?
Imagine a church where the whole congregation carried out the sacraments, the teaching, the preaching and the pastoral activities in turn and according to the skills and interests of the members. Those gifted at teaching could teach, while those gifted at caring could care, and those gifted at both could do both. Training, resources and special powers could be given to all those who will need it to carry out their activities. This would not be the end of the priesthood or the Church but its widening to include the whole of the religious body.
Monday 7 February 2011
The Best Kind of Reincarnation
Buddhists believe being reincarnated as a human being is highly desirable. This is not because human beings are are the highest level of creation; the opposite of the flea in a hippo's backside. In fact human beings occupy the fifth of 31 levels of existence, far below the gods who occupy levels which can only be accessed by the most brilliant of human meditators. Nor is it because there's some likelihood to it - in fact the opposite is the case, the fear of returning as an animal or a ghost or worse is at least partly because it seems quite probable.
The human level is desirable because it combines rational thought and the potential for achieving enlightenment with the suffering and mortality that will compel us to do it. It offers a combination of intelligence, insight and motivation that is not available to the gods whose lives are so long and free from pain that leaving the cycle of rebirth is virtually impossible.
I once argued with a friend that happiness was too readily considered all important and all desirable today. The justification for any activity or life plan is that <<it will make me happy>> Books are written on how to achieve it, those with it are winners, those without losers. It is a deeply individualistic, focused on the purchase of products and services that immediately grant us our desires.
She told me <<if you really think that, you've never been truly unhappy>>
Of course this is true. Happiness might be ephemeral, worshipped - even fetishised - to the point where other goals are almost completely disregarded, but its inverse is something we must all fight against. But it is a fight we are destined to lose; all human lives are marked by light and dark. An ethic built on pursuing happiness is doomed to failure and, given that, perhaps we should find what it is about unhappiness that drives us to make positive changes. The struggle to avoid unhappiness, to find what it is that makes life worth living, is the positive side effect of the hellishness of misery. This isn't much comfort to the miserable, none perhaps, but its a pleasant thought that were we offered a future life as a god we might do well not to choose it.
The human level is desirable because it combines rational thought and the potential for achieving enlightenment with the suffering and mortality that will compel us to do it. It offers a combination of intelligence, insight and motivation that is not available to the gods whose lives are so long and free from pain that leaving the cycle of rebirth is virtually impossible.
I once argued with a friend that happiness was too readily considered all important and all desirable today. The justification for any activity or life plan is that <<it will make me happy>> Books are written on how to achieve it, those with it are winners, those without losers. It is a deeply individualistic, focused on the purchase of products and services that immediately grant us our desires.
She told me <<if you really think that, you've never been truly unhappy>>
Of course this is true. Happiness might be ephemeral, worshipped - even fetishised - to the point where other goals are almost completely disregarded, but its inverse is something we must all fight against. But it is a fight we are destined to lose; all human lives are marked by light and dark. An ethic built on pursuing happiness is doomed to failure and, given that, perhaps we should find what it is about unhappiness that drives us to make positive changes. The struggle to avoid unhappiness, to find what it is that makes life worth living, is the positive side effect of the hellishness of misery. This isn't much comfort to the miserable, none perhaps, but its a pleasant thought that were we offered a future life as a god we might do well not to choose it.
Saturday 5 February 2011
Are religions evil?
What do all these have in common: a documentary on the BBC about illegal Zionist settlers in Palestine, the recent news about a couple owning a B&B who refused to accommodate a married gay couple and the heart breaking story of a little girl caned to death for being pursued by an older neighbour?
They all make me feel distinctly depressed about the extremes of behaviour that religious faith can drive individuals to.
This was also one of the points that kept being made repetitively, and boringly, in the debate between Tony Blair and Christopher Hitchens in Canada. The former cited the many examples of extraordinary charity, support and goodwill carried out by religious people and groups around the world. The latter noted the evil, intolerant and bigoted behaviour often seen by the same.
So is it a one-all draw? Well, essentially, yes. Human beings have the capacity for exceptional love and kindness; and evil and misery. Religion, for its enormity, for its calls for sacrifice and powerful action, can push these tendencies to each extreme.
What distinguishes religion from other drives which lead people to behave well or badly (sexual desire, hunger, ignorance, empathy, etc) is that those extremists on either side are willing to act <<in the name of their religion>> The Israel/Palestine conflicts might be best understood using a realist theory of international relations but it is carried out in the name of God or, rather, of different Gods. Whatever the role of Judaism or Islam is in the conflict, it is tarnished by the religious language used on either side.
I think it is probably an important caveat that the vast majority of religions, in the vast majority of their interpretations, stress love, forgiveness, mercy and generosity. Those who commit extreme acts of viciousness are generally to be found far outside the majority opinion of the faith. This is not to say that there are no 'mainstream' popular theologians, thinkers and religious leaders who freely propagate some horrible beliefs - homophobia springs to mind here in particular - but these examples are rarely typical of the core teachings of the faith.
They all make me feel distinctly depressed about the extremes of behaviour that religious faith can drive individuals to.
This was also one of the points that kept being made repetitively, and boringly, in the debate between Tony Blair and Christopher Hitchens in Canada. The former cited the many examples of extraordinary charity, support and goodwill carried out by religious people and groups around the world. The latter noted the evil, intolerant and bigoted behaviour often seen by the same.
So is it a one-all draw? Well, essentially, yes. Human beings have the capacity for exceptional love and kindness; and evil and misery. Religion, for its enormity, for its calls for sacrifice and powerful action, can push these tendencies to each extreme.
What distinguishes religion from other drives which lead people to behave well or badly (sexual desire, hunger, ignorance, empathy, etc) is that those extremists on either side are willing to act <<in the name of their religion>> The Israel/Palestine conflicts might be best understood using a realist theory of international relations but it is carried out in the name of God or, rather, of different Gods. Whatever the role of Judaism or Islam is in the conflict, it is tarnished by the religious language used on either side.
I think it is probably an important caveat that the vast majority of religions, in the vast majority of their interpretations, stress love, forgiveness, mercy and generosity. Those who commit extreme acts of viciousness are generally to be found far outside the majority opinion of the faith. This is not to say that there are no 'mainstream' popular theologians, thinkers and religious leaders who freely propagate some horrible beliefs - homophobia springs to mind here in particular - but these examples are rarely typical of the core teachings of the faith.
Friday 4 February 2011
The God Gene, part II
It's Christian Union week next week and the faculty is filled with undergraduates in bright blue hoodies with 'Truth' emblazoned across the front and a line up off implausibly ambitious talks on the back. It's reminiscent of a tour hoodie for a rock band but without the flavour of dark and dingy suburban gigs.
In the student newspaper this week is a letter by the President of the CU in response to an article run last week about a genetic tendency to religious faith. He argues that religious faith is simply one form of the faith that everyone has - in relatives, friends, and so on. It is not some sort of speculative, general philosophical thought or 'worldview'. Specifically, he writes, Christians put faith into Jesus Christ, a specific person like mum, dad or Bob.
This might make Christianity sound like a pretty enormous leap into the dark - who would put their entire repository of religious faith in an individual they, nor anyone they knew, had never met and whose person is unknowable - but he does make an important distinction between religion as <<I think there's something else out there>> and as <<here are the people and creeds I trust in>>
Religious faith can be stimulated by trust in many more people and things than God - in other religious people, in institutions, in books, in prayers, in liturgy, in art, in music, in architecture, in experiences, in religious history, even in the natural world. Faith in one particular divine person can be a culmination of faith in every part of our experience, things that show God in a way that is far more accessible than one messianic figure.
In the student newspaper this week is a letter by the President of the CU in response to an article run last week about a genetic tendency to religious faith. He argues that religious faith is simply one form of the faith that everyone has - in relatives, friends, and so on. It is not some sort of speculative, general philosophical thought or 'worldview'. Specifically, he writes, Christians put faith into Jesus Christ, a specific person like mum, dad or Bob.
This might make Christianity sound like a pretty enormous leap into the dark - who would put their entire repository of religious faith in an individual they, nor anyone they knew, had never met and whose person is unknowable - but he does make an important distinction between religion as <<I think there's something else out there>> and as <<here are the people and creeds I trust in>>
Religious faith can be stimulated by trust in many more people and things than God - in other religious people, in institutions, in books, in prayers, in liturgy, in art, in music, in architecture, in experiences, in religious history, even in the natural world. Faith in one particular divine person can be a culmination of faith in every part of our experience, things that show God in a way that is far more accessible than one messianic figure.
Tuesday 1 February 2011
The Hereafter
How to believe in the afterlife?
N says that it must exist - that there is <<too much love in the world for this to be everything.>> But I don't feel enough tension between these two forces - love and death - for this to be problematic. Couldn't there be too much love in the world for there to be more than 'this'? Or conversely, couldn't there be too much pain and suffering in the world for there to be an afterlife?
I have a different suggestion: in our world time is sequential (apart from, perhaps, at sub-atomic level or as we approach the speed of light). We live in chronos-time, where an afterlife must follow this life with death acting as the crucial marker in time separating the two. The afterlife is something else, somewhere else, belonging to the next period of time after the one in which our bodies are alive.
Time is subjective of course - it goes slower in a boring class, faster in a film, it stops in car crashes. Perhaps chronos time is one of the filters we use to turn noumena into phenomena. Noumenal time could be very, very different.
Ancient mythology included other kinds of time - particularly kairos, an undetermined period during which particular, peculiar or special events occur. Even as our lives are replaced, sequentially, by death, they could continue to exist in undetectable kinds of time. Perhaps to a time-less being - God - we are always alive, all events happening together, non-sequentially, although the concept expressed by 'together' relies on an idea of chronos time which is meaningless to God.
The afterlife has, occasionally, become an obsession within Christianity, generating theological contortions such as purgatory, limbo and chantries. We hear regularly of the virgins promised, apparently, to posthumous Islamic suicide bombers in the hereafter. If we are going to think about the hereafter at all our starting point should be the 'everlasting life' rather than 'afterlife', what does it mean to live forever? Is it like moving house into a new kind of 'existence' so that death never really takes place? Or is it the 'forever' part we should focus on - what happens to time when something lasts forever?
N says that it must exist - that there is <<too much love in the world for this to be everything.>> But I don't feel enough tension between these two forces - love and death - for this to be problematic. Couldn't there be too much love in the world for there to be more than 'this'? Or conversely, couldn't there be too much pain and suffering in the world for there to be an afterlife?
I have a different suggestion: in our world time is sequential (apart from, perhaps, at sub-atomic level or as we approach the speed of light). We live in chronos-time, where an afterlife must follow this life with death acting as the crucial marker in time separating the two. The afterlife is something else, somewhere else, belonging to the next period of time after the one in which our bodies are alive.
Time is subjective of course - it goes slower in a boring class, faster in a film, it stops in car crashes. Perhaps chronos time is one of the filters we use to turn noumena into phenomena. Noumenal time could be very, very different.
Ancient mythology included other kinds of time - particularly kairos, an undetermined period during which particular, peculiar or special events occur. Even as our lives are replaced, sequentially, by death, they could continue to exist in undetectable kinds of time. Perhaps to a time-less being - God - we are always alive, all events happening together, non-sequentially, although the concept expressed by 'together' relies on an idea of chronos time which is meaningless to God.
The afterlife has, occasionally, become an obsession within Christianity, generating theological contortions such as purgatory, limbo and chantries. We hear regularly of the virgins promised, apparently, to posthumous Islamic suicide bombers in the hereafter. If we are going to think about the hereafter at all our starting point should be the 'everlasting life' rather than 'afterlife', what does it mean to live forever? Is it like moving house into a new kind of 'existence' so that death never really takes place? Or is it the 'forever' part we should focus on - what happens to time when something lasts forever?
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