Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog

Edith Eger: The Choice

I was much moved by a catch-up listen earlier this week: an interview with psychologist / author / holocaust survivor 90-year old Edith Eger. It’s a powerful and moving story, but one who’s significance I’d missed, and therefore overlooked it, until friends started talking about it, along with her book The Choice: Embrace the Possible (pub. Sept. 2017). She offers the wisdom of a lifetime.

“…After decades struggling with survivor's guilt, Edie - who lives in California - now helps people overcome victimhood and rediscover the joy and self-love she says we are all born with…”

You’ll find the RNZ Nine to Noon interview here. The Irish Times have a story on her life here.

The Ordinary Virtues, Moral Order, and Utopia for Realists

With the New Zealand General Election happening tomorrow, I want to highlight two conversations; conversations that, for me, resource my thinking around some of the significant themes that touch upon our national and international lives and interrelationships.

The first is a lecture delivered by Michael Ignatieff. It was titled Human Rights, Global Values and the Ordinary Virtues, and was the Uehiro-Carnegie-Oxford Lecture in Practical Ethics, Merton College, University of Oxford. It was delivered on the 27 October 2016. I was fascinated by it, and both affirmed and challenged with respect to my own thinking, and indeed, actions. As with Rutger Bregman below Ignatieff offers a significant challenge and invitation to us all. I highly recommend his lecture, which you will find here. Additionally you might be interested in his book, The Ordinary Virtues: Moral Order in a Divided World was published a few days ago. His earlier book Fire and Ashes: Success and Failure in Politics (pub. 2013) is one I also want to purchase and read when able to. I’ve seen and heard so many positive reviews.

The very next conversation, following the lecture above, was a conversation with Rutger Bregman, a young
(b.1988) Dutch historian, opinion maker and author, and a person I hadn’t heard of his until I listened to this interview with him on Australian radio: Conversations with Richard Fidler. It aired on the 14^th September 2017.

For more of an introduction to his thinking, you might value this Feb. 2017 Guardian article. For those preferring a visual option, I recommend his TED talk (delivered in Vancouver B.C.). In this TED talk he does cover off some of the content of the podcast I highlight above, specifically, his comments on poverty (the talk is entitled: Poverty Isn't a Lack of Character, It's a Lack of Cash). Finally there’s his March 2017 book, Utopia For Realists: And How We Can Get There.

Glenn Colquhoun: People are Medicine for People

I’ve been meaning to put the link to this interview up since it aired on Radio New Zealand in May 2017.

“…Horowhenua GP and poet Glenn Colquhoun thinks about leaving medicine most days, but says he's never really come close. His new book Late Love tells how he came to love medicine as an act of creativity and also looks at the challenges of the New Zealand health system…Human health is a triptych of the physical body, social connections and thoughts – and medicine must treat all three aspects, he says. Our national approach to health care should focus on prevention and accessibility and also have a spiritual element…”

My first encounter with Colquhoun, in person, was at a talk he gave at Palmerston North’s public library. I was working in Palmerston North and had discovered the library, and noticed a poster advertising a talk by Colquhoun. So, after dinner, I wandered back. It was a fascinating evening in which he talked about his then most recent book North South (2009). And he talked about the New Zealand he grew up in over the same years as I was growing up. It was a hopeful conversation, as is this one in the following podcast.

You can find it here, or listen online using the following:

photo credit: David Unwin

A 'Fully Human Solution' to War: Thomas Merton on Christian Nonviolence

An interesting online article by Gregory K. Hillis is Associate Professor of Theology at Bellarmine University.

Excerpts:

“…Merton's understanding of his relationship to the world begins to change in the mid-1950s. Such rethinking is on full display in a November 1957 journal entry:

"Politics vital - even for monks ... To live in a monastery as if the world had stopped turning in 1905 - a fatal illusion."

Chief among these issues was the problem of war and the Christian response to it. Compelled by a strong sense of the dignity of all human life, Merton reacted with incredulity, not only to the possibility that humanity would doom itself to annihilation through nuclear war, but that American Catholics - including bishops - supported American use of its nuclear arsenal in a first strike against Russia.

Given this situation, he saw no alternative but to devote himself fully to the task of peace. As he wrote in a letter from 1961:

"I feel that the supreme obligation of every Christian, taking precedence over absolutely everything else, is to devote himself by the very best means at his disposal to a struggle to preserve the human race from annihilation and to abolish war as the essential means to accomplish this end."

And writing to Dorothy Day in that same year, Merton writes:

"I don't feel that I can in conscience, at a time like this, go on writing just about things like meditation ... I think I have to face the big issues, the life-and-death issues."

A month after this letter, Merton ventured into the anti-war waters by sending a chapter from his forthcoming book, New Seeds of Contemplation, to The Catholic Worker for publication. The title of the chapter was "The Root of War is Fear," and the chapter itself had been censored and approved by the Order. Not censored, however, were the three paragraphs that he added to the beginning of the version he sent to The Catholic Worker designed to "to situate these thoughts in the present context."

You’ll find the article here. For more on Merton and this theme, well worth reading is Jim Forest’s 2016 publication: The Root of War Is Fear: Thomas Merton's Advice to Peacemakers.

Thinking and Friendship in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt for Now

This was a truly fascinating On Being listen. I’ve had some engagement with Hannah Arendt, but I was surprise how many places my mind went as I listening to this conversation and reflected on the world around me. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about totalitarianism, fascism, and imaginative communities of resistance, and to the work of what I call re-making. Stonebridge also offers some interesting perspectives on loneliness.

“Along with George Orwell, the 20th-century political theorist Hannah Arendt is a new bestseller. She famously coined the phrase “the banality of evil” and wrote towering works like The Origins of Totalitarianism. She was concerned with the human essence of events that we analyze as historical and political. Totalitarianism she described as “organized loneliness,” and loneliness as the “common ground for terror.” The historian, she said, always knows how vulnerable facts are. And thinking is not something for elites; it is the human power to keep possibility alive.”

You’ll find the conversation here.

For more on psychoanalyst Melanie Klein you’ll find one of Stonebridge’s essays in this collection Reading Melanie Klein. For more on Arendt try: The Human Condition, On Revolution, and The Origins of Totalitarianism (for more on this theme you might enjoy this article written in The Guardian in Feb. 2017). Also well worth watching is the 2012 film Hannah Arendt. Finally, for a collection of academic essay’s engaging Arendt’s thought, I’ve heard some good commentary about Cambridge University Press’ 2010 publication Politics in Dark Times: Encounters with Hannah Arendt

If anyone can e-mail me a copy of Stonebridge’s essay Thinking without Banisters I’d be very grateful.

Finally, the soundtrack accompanying me as I wrote this was Kiwi band The Nudge and their album Dark Arts.

Jacques Ellul: Essential Spiritual Writings

A so-called lay theologian whom I have very much appreciated over the years is Frenchman Jacques Ellul (1912-1994). I have a number of his books and like the look of Orbis’ Jacques Ellul: Essential Spiritual Writings (in their Modern Spiritual Masters series), which was published this time last year (May 2016). Ellul can be a little difficult to read, but I personally think he’s now more relevant than ever. If you haven’t read Ellul I recommend that you start with this book. And, if you like Ellul, and haven’t already, I highly recommend another lay Episcopal theologian, William Stringfellow.

Book Description

“Thomas Merton is one of many who were deeply influenced by the work of Jacques Ellul (1912-1994), a French philosopher and lay theologian. A remarkable thinker and prophet of the twentieth century, he wrote over fifty books on a range of topics: law, history, sociology, theology, even poetry. Jacques Ellul: Essential Spiritual Writings is the first anthology of his work and provides an ideal work for those encountering Ellul for the first time as well as those already familiar with his thought.

Throughout his work Ellul spoke out against the "idols and myths" of the modern age, including technology, politics, materialism, and violence. His prophetic critique of modern civilization won an appreciative audience far beyond Christian circles. Yet this was only one half of a project that drew deeply on his Christian faith.

For nearly every sociological book he wrote, Ellul would write a theological or spiritual counterpart. And yet this other half of his work has received relatively little attention. This volume corrects the balance, highlighting spiritual gems on prayer, hope, and universal salvation. His call to reject the worship of the state and to embrace nonviolent activism has an abiding relevance and urgency, particularly in these times of protracted war and violence, gaping economic inequality, and enormous suffering.”

Contents pages (PDF) of both books attached below:

Download Jacques Ellul - Contents Page

Download William Stringfellow - Contents Page

Zygmunt Bauman dies 9th January 2017

It wasn’t until I read the March 2017 issue of the magazine Philosophy Now (issue 118), last week that I realised Sociologist, author, academic social commentator Prof. Zygmunt Bauman had died on the 9^th January 2017. Shaun Best has described him as an “intellectual entrepreneur”. Born in Poland in 1925, he went on to become Professor of Sociology at Leeds University, and died, in Leeds, aged 91

The first book of Bauman’s that I read was Liquid Modernity. Liquid Love followed this one, and then it’s been his most recent publications, including Babel (2016) and Strangers at Our Door (2016). I have found his standpoint incisive and extremely helpful for thinking about what’s happening in Europe and the so-called Western world.  

“…In recent years Bauman analysed the refugee crisis and the rise of rightwing populism across Europe and the US as a “crisis of humanity”. The promise of a socially progressive Europe meant a great deal to him. He believed ardently that the European Union stood as a safeguard for hard-won rights and for shared protection against war and social insecurity. In what proved to be his final lecture at Leeds last October, he drew parallels between the Holocaust and the capacity of today’s populism to make everyone “other”, without compassion or remorse…”

Excerpted from his Obituary in The Guardian (15^th January 2017).

Bauman’s most recent publication, Retrotopia was published in January this year (2017). For an academic (though accessible) overview of Bauman’s thinking I highly recommend Bauman’s Challenge: Sociological Issues for the 21^st Century (2010). A film / documentary was produced from interactions with Bauman in 2010. Its titled The Trouble with Being Human These Days, but I have no information as to whether its been released on DVD or is available for purchase anywhere.

Strategies of Resistance with Michael Gecan

On this week’s episode of On Contact, Chris Hedges discusses strategies of resistance with Michael Gecan, author of Going Public: An Organizer’s Guide to Citizen Action.

Chris Hedges: The Wages of Rebellion

Today I want to highlight a recent review, by Alan Roxburgh, of a recent book written by Chris Hedges. Hedges is a leftist thinker, one who deeply engages contemporary US and Western culture. I've always found Hedge's to be a very helpful commentator, and a number of his books can be found on my shelves, including The Wages of Rebellion, which is the book Al reviews.

Here's an excerpt from the review.

"...As the expectations of a better future recede for more and more people across the West (e.g. shrinking middle classes, jobless or part-time minimum wage economies, austerity) there is a growing loss of faith in the primary narratives undergirding Western social, political and economic life. With this situation comes a weakening of the capacities or will of elites to provide leadership. The cumulative result is a growing undercurrent of rage, confusion, and frustration roiling just under the surface, waiting to be catalyzed into revolution.

For Hedges these conditions now exist across the West. The hope that we'll, somehow, get through it all with a new fix misses what is happening. In Hedges' analysis what is occurring is no longer amenable to adjustment. As the basis of people's hope keeps being hollowed out, existing social, political and economic structures can collapse at a dizzying speed. This sense of collapse is now happening, but it's not primarily at the level of rational, abstract analysis. Rather, what is occurring is that the emotional experiences and convictions of people are changing as witnessed in events like Brexit or the US election. When this happens the soil is ripe for revolution. Revolutions are about emotions not primarily new ideas. As has been said revolutions come about when people feel that established power structures no longer serve the common good. The language Hedges uses here is drawn from the American social theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr who used the term sublime madness to describe a force which gathers inside people who 'disregard immediate appearances' and, with 'nothing but madness will do battle with malignant power and "spiritual wickedness in high places"' (211). What was prescient about Niebuhr's own evaluation was his recognition that traditional liberalism (which has made a come-back in Canada in its last national election) is a 'useless force in moments of extremity' (211)..."

The first book of Hedges that I bought was his War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning (2002). The most recent is Unspeakable (Oct. 2016) which is a transcript of Chris Hedges conversation with David Talbot (He is the founder and former editor in chief of Salon).. It covers all of Hedge's areas of focus and interest and should be a good introduction for anyone not familiar with Hedges and his writing.

What Kind of Future Do We Want?

I was disturbed by a 2016 lecture by Israeli Historian Yuval Harari (b. 1976) who specialises in World History and macro-historical processes. I listened to it yesterday. He is the author of the September 2016 published Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. He is apparently also a practitioner of Vipassana Meditation.

“The industrial revolution gave us the working class. Harari believes the digital revolution will create the useless class as technology destroys millions of jobs. Speaking at the RSA, the Royal Society for the Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, he says that social inequality will grow unless we make different choices now. Otherwise the future could be ruled by a super-elite of technocrats.”

The following excerpt, from Tim Adams’ Guardian review of Homo Deus, will give you the flavour (you can find Adams’ complete review here:

“…The new longevity and super-human qualities are likely to be the preserve of the techno super-rich, the masters of the data universe. Meanwhile, the redundancy of labour, supplanted by efficient machines, will create an enormous “useless class”, without economic or military purpose. In the absence of religion, overarching fictions will be required to make sense of the world. Again, if nothing in our approach changes, Harari envisages that “Dataism”, a universal faith in the power of algorithms, will become sacrosanct. To utopians this will look a lot like the “singularity”: an all-knowing, omnipresent data-processing system, which is really indistinguishable from ideas of God, to which humans will be constantly connected. To dystopians it will look like that too. Harari is mostly, thrillingly or chillingly, sanguine about this prospect…”

Even if I found it disturbing, the talk is well worth a listen. You will find the downloadable podcast here. I wondered too what reponses Christianity might want to make in response to Harari's talk?