The Complex Christ | Signs of Emergence

Goodbye, for now | New Book

I think the time is right to drop the curtain on ‘Signs of Emergence’  / ‘The Complex Christ’ / ‘Der Jesus Faktor’ and move on. The idea of this blog has been to give some space to extend the ideas presented in that book, and, personally, I feel that’s been successful.

But you shouldn’t keep flogging a dead horse. There have to be periodic moments of silence / jubilee / death / hidden-ness if the moments of speech / action / life are to have any meaning.

So I’m going to stop this blog, and spend some time working on a follow-up book.

The idea, as it stands in various sketches in my note books, is for an extended meditation on the idea of ‘the other,’ leaning left on the poetry/theology continuum, and hopefully drawing on the stories of some fantastic people I’ve met.

I’ve been pondering Jesus’ summary of the Law to ‘love God, and love your neighbour as yourself,’ and re-phrasing it as ‘love the other, love The Other.’ The other within the Self, the other within our communities, The Other that is immanent and beyond all… It strikes me as the core of everything we are about as people of faith. Indeed, since the birth of consciousness, it’s at the core of everything we are about as people.

And yet, with the continuing rise in anti-social behaviour, teenage stabbings in London, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, theological schism, global terror threats and clinical depression, it seems that in our fluid, multicultural, melting-pot, border-less, easyJet world, we are further from accepting the other than ever before.

Yet, despite all this. I think there are signs of hope. And we need to be those signs of hope. Personally, communally, locally, corporeally, we need to be communities that have this love for God and other at our core.

No, I haven’t got a publishing deal, or even spoken to anyone about one. I’m not sure how much that matters, to be honest. I’m just going to spend some time thinking and writing. And if you have any thoughts you’d like to throw in on the theme, any good books to read, do get in touch, come for a beer, leave a comment, or whatever.

Doubtless I’ll be around online again at some point… No idea when. But you’ll find out ;-)

Fare well, for now. And thanks. It’s been fun.

UK Wants Database of Every Phonecall, Email and Page View | Stop This Madness!!

Shocking news today: the UK government is proposing to create a database of every phonecall made and email message sent. (Update - original article in The Times here.) Yes, you did read that right: that would mean the government would effectively be tapping every phone call and intercepting every email and monitor every page view. What is this madness we're walking in to?! I actually had to check the date of the article to check it wasn't an old April Fool.

No need to ask about the reasons - it's our good old friend National Security. Just a wild guess, but I suspect it would get raided every time a crime occurred, to see if there was anything incriminating out there... and that would mean our everyday PC Plod fumbling around with data... and that would inevitably mean abuse of the system.

This from a government whose track-record on data protection has been terrible.

Oppose this now. Spread the word and raise awareness. Phone your MP. Email them. Write to them. And, if you can, get some of that 'this message will self-destruct' paper from the movies.

PS - hello lackey in MI5 trawling through suspect material. Yes I am planning to assassinate Bush, and Brown, and I have links with Al Queda, and Osama's hiding out at my house. NOW. Perhaps I'm just over-reacting having watched a Bourne movie last night...

Links: How to Avoid The Spies Around Us  ¦  CCTV 'doesn't reduce crime'  ¦  The All Seeing Soc(i)ety

Technorati: Civil Liberties | Politics

Don't Piss About London: Vote Ken Or The Monkey Gets It.

London goes to the polls this week. While the rest of the country has local council elections, London votes for its Mayor. It's the biggest directly-elected budget-holding post in the UK: £13 billion annually to spend, employing 103,000 people and a £39billion transport investment programme over the next 10 years.. And there are some massively key decisions to make which will impact on London for generations: the nature of the cross-rail project, the renewal of the contracts for the modernisation of the Tube...

And people are still seriously thinking of voting for Boris Johnson? Don't piss about London - this is serious.

Let's be clear - I really like Johnson. He's very funny, and articulate on TV. But he's simply no idea, or experience, of the complexity of running of major urban economy. The biggest job he's previously held is editor of The Spectator. While doing so he gave a lot of support and work to one Andrew Gilligan. Gilligan currently works on the Evening Standard, and has spent the past 17 weeks writing the most vitriolic attacks on the current Mayor, Ken Livingstone. The Evening Standard is the only proper London evening newspaper, and their hugely biased campaign has been disgusting.

Ken is no angel - he likes a drink, and a couple of his people have been less than perfect - but Boris would wilt in a day under the same scrutiny. Boris is:

• prone to terrible gaffes, mostly on the issue of race. Not what you need in the most diverse city in Europe.

• a political chameleon, who has u-turned his way through elections since his student days.

• a useless economist, who has screwed up the figures on his flag-ship transport joke policy.

• given to violence. It is well known he offered to sort out 'disposing of' someone who had offended a friend.

So, London, don't piss about here. If you live in London, explore the issues properly and I'm sure you'll Vote Ken, and put Green at number two. The Boris joke is over. We need more than a monkey in charge. And if you know someone who lives here, make sure you tell them to get out and do something sensible with their ballot.

Technorati: Boris Johnson | Evening Standard | Gilligan | Ken Livingstone | London | Mayor

Clinton Defaults to Conflict: This is Washington, not Hollywood

"One of the things that makes Mrs Clinton so psychologically fascinating is her tendency to portray everthing in terms of conflict and confrontation. And one of the characteristics that makes her so interesting politically is that she is a much better candidate when things are going badly than when they are going well." From BBC News.

This is precisely why I think you Americans should not vote for Clinton. When she says in an interview that she would completely destroy Iran if they attacked Israel, her rhetoric is getting dangerous. It is highly unwise politics to threaten another nation in order to win votes in your own.

The world does not need another US President who defaults to conflict. It's fine in Hollywood: the victim finds their metal and fights back. It's just not good enough if the White House is going to be a force for good.

"America deserves a President who doesn't quit." Perhaps Hillary, but it also needs one who knows when stopping fighting is for the greater good.

Go vote Obama.

Rollins' New Book Gets Pulped. Ouch.

Poor old Pete - seems like some Fundie at the printers for his new book has taken exception to the title of his new book 'The Fidelity of Betrayal', done some reworking, and sent it out to stores as 'The Betrayal of Fidelity.'

Ouch. That's gotta hurt sales.

Both copies have been pulped.

Taking the Fight to the Government on Civil Liberties | "Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?"

Disadvantage of getting older: you have to go to 40th birthday parties.

Advantage of getting older: the friends throwing the parties have done more interesting stuff.

Never more so in the case of Jules vs. His Rapidly Disappearing Youth... Great time on Saturday night hooking up with a lot of the old Abundant crew - who, if the ripples could be traced to their edges, really have had a profound impact on life, faith and culture in London and far beyond.

It had been common comic currency in the old days that Jules was always suing the police - making sure they were chased down properly over wrongful arrest, abuse in prison etc., but I'd missed the fact that he'd been representing some very high-profile people like Lotfi Raissi. Raissi was the first person charged in connection with 9/11... And subsequently Jules won him a huge victory by forcing the UK government to issue a complete exhonoration, which won him Lawyer of the Week in The Times last month.

Nice one Jules. Keep at them. As he notes in the interview, "in the past six years there has been an unprecedented expansion of the State into the life of the individual. Parliament has significantly failed to protect rights we have enjoyed for hundreds of years. Unless this trend is reversed soon, in ten years’ time I will be viewed on a surveillance monitor playing football in the park with my wonderful boys teasing me about how old school I sound going on about civil liberties."

It does genuinely worry me that we are sleepwalking into 1984, but we can all sleep more easily with people like Jules 'watching the watchmen.'

Connected: Phorm - don't let your ISP stalk you | The All Seeing Soc(i)ety | First Pilotless Police Drone Launches

Technorati: Civil Liberties | Jules Carey | Law

New MA at Kings

Kings College have a new MA which they wondered if I'd be happy to flag up, which I am.

It's in 'Politics, Theology and Faith-Based Organisations', and you can read more about it in the doc attached below.

Service Interruption

Thanks to every0ne who pointed out the blog 'wasn't working' over the last couple of days... Guess I shouldn't fiddle with the design in future ;-)

Abnormal service now resumed.

Should British Kids Salute the Flag? | Identity | Symbols

A recent government report has proposed that teenagers should make an oath of allegiance to 'Queen and Country', in order to give them a 'sense of belonging.'

I'm aware that something similar exists in the US education system, though the only reason I'm aware of it is by it's bitter-sweet use in movies to suggest some apple-pie nostalgia that's going to be blown up in our faces.

I actually think it would be a very bad idea, for a number of reasons. As a teacher, knowing both the sorts of people who work in schools and the sorts of kids who attend them, I think it would be totally impossible to implement with a straight face.

However, leaving the possibility of people not taking it seriously aside, the question remains about what it would actually mean. Would we be insisting the teenagers 'take the pledge'? What would happen to those that refused? Would immigrants or temporary residents have to take the pledge too? Are we seriously suggesting that teenagers might think twice before acting in an anti-social manner, before buying cheap alcohol and marauding around high streets, because of it?

In these sort of public liturgies, the words themselves are merely symbolic, and are meant to be a public statement of some already deeply held truth. The same is true in marriage and baptism. So aren't we asking our children to actually lie if the are forced to say the words without the belief? And if so, is this not simply going to lead to deeper problems later?

Children in the UK are suffering an identity crisis. They are insecure, adrift and alone on the ocean of free-market consumerism, battered by peer pressure, told not to hold on to beliefs or foster relationships or risk being sunk by commitment.

An oath to Queen and Country is an insult to them. How about instead a commitment, a public statement by government, reciprocated by a public commitment by parents, to do better by our children, to love them and support them, to adopt laws that would support families rather than atomising them in the drive to make people work?

Once again, it's the children who are taking the rap. And, as I think the parable of the sower suggests, we shouldn't expect so much of our young seedlings.

Technorati: Allegiance | Britishness | Government | Oath | Parents | Teenagers

Sort it out gays - stop destroying earth!

The Telegraph reported recently that an Israeli MP has blamed the recent spate of earthquakes in the Middle East on gays. The Knesset has recently repealed various laws about homosexuality, and this created the siesmic events.

Gays were also to blame for flooding in Britain last year, according to one Bishop, and one might also argue that with their thrusting steel tubes penetrating and bringing down two of America's largest twin erections, 9/11 was some sort of twisted stunt to highlight the destructive power of gay love, a judgement on liberal America, if you will.

So sort it out gay people - we don't want more floods and earthquakes and terror attacks! Stop it!

Flocking to the Cities

Sorry been a bit quiet here. Kids' birthdays, other writing projects... stuff.

Anyway, a piece on the news caught my ear yesterday. Apparently a long-term study of the hunting habits of peregrine falcons has found that they have evolved their methods and are now increasingly hunting in cities at night.

The thinking is that they are using the lights from urban areas to spot migrating species - like Woodcocks - at night, and swooping in for the kill over our cities.

Why have they moved in? It's a pattern we can see in many other animals too. Foxes - once a very rare sight in my childhood - are now a daily feature of my suburban street. Animals are finding cities good places to be because of two factors. Firstly, there are lots of easy pickings for scavangers like foxes. Discarded protein, in the form of chicken wings and kebabs, are easier to hunt down than rabbits. And migrating birds crossing over cities at night are very easy pickings for falcons.

Secondly, the irony of urbanisation, and the intensive food production it requires (see previous series touching on this), is that much of the countryside is very bland. In fact, in some urban areas there is now a greater variety of plant species per square kilometer than there is in the 'countryside', with its acres upon acres of intensively farmed land.

What does this tell us about cities? What is abundantly clear is that they are heavy masses, with large gravities. Falcons didn't look at cities and think 'hey, it'd be great to go and live there'. They circled them and were drawn in by them, inch by inch. Cities do not exist in isolation from, or in opposition to the countryside. The presence of the city infects and affects that which feeds it.

There's a passage in the novel I've written* where the protagonist reflects on Forster's assertion in Howards End that 'all of Cornwall is latent in Paddington (Station)', and concludes that the flow has switched: all of London's vices are spread out and latent in the country stations that flow from its terminii.

It seems that the same pressures that drove people off the land and into the factories are being felt by other species. Nic always asserts that 'you're only out of the city when you can't get mobile reception', and that is getting a long way away now. But even in those places, the fingerprints of mankind's domesitication of the landscape is plain to see.

Masses that get too heavy exert such a strong gravitational pull that not even light can escape. These black holes are constantly hungry ghosts, never satiated. The question is, how do we avoid allowing our cities becoming these dark places, drawing in and consuming everything around them? I guess that was one of the questions I was trying to grapple with writing the book.

 

* on Lulu for a while while I flaggelate myself before agents.

Close Small Schools, Open Large Prisons?

The last couple of days have seen local government proposals to close hundreds of small village schools in the England, and central government proposals to build Titan 'super-prisons' in England and Wales.

Both policies seem in doubt now, as central government has written to local governments reminding them of their obligations to keep small schools running, and prison inspectors have written to central government telling them that 'super prisons' would be a really bad idea.

I hope people are wise enough to see the connection between the two stories. Large schools create communities where children are anonymous, not known well by staff, and this breeds poor behaviour. Investment in smaller, more relationally focused education will, eventually, reap savings in a smaller prison population later.

But that would require thinking beyond the 4-term cycle of General Elections. I hope we can see long-term enough to cough up now. Locking up thousands more simply can't be the answer.

Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton: Dynasty or Democracy?

In my recent post about predictions for 2008, I was (not) surprised to find most of the debate being around the comment of the collapse of the Emerging project. Actually, I think it'll be more about the language changing, but hey.

What garnered no comment was the prediction about '08 being the year when people begin to critique democracy as an effective way of getting things done. I guess people were happy with that one, right?

Well, here's your chance in the US to do the democracy thing. And I hope you really use the right well. Last night I watched Moore's 'Sicko', and actually found it a much better and more heart-felt film than I thought I would. The ending plea to America to be a country that cares for one another, to be a place where people-power really works and where people can rise up and really change the god-awful healthcare and education systems that do so little for the poor was genuinely moving.

But then it struck me as the news of Clinton winning in NH filtered through: what if she gets through and wins? Your honour-board of Presidents would thus read:

1989-1993 Bush

1993-1997 Clinton

1997-2001 Clinton

2001-2004 Bush

2004-2008 Bush

2008-2010 Clinton

Are these really the best people you've got? This isn't a meritocracy. This isn't even really democracy. It's bloody dynasty - the leaders of the free world for the past 30 years coming from just two families. Surely that can't be right. Hilary can talk 'change in Washington' all she likes. But I can't see how voting her in could be anything less. Clean sweep, I say.

Sad News: John O'Donahue Dies

It's was with enormous sadness I received the news that John O'Donahue has died.

Martin Wroe, who had for so long championed him at Greenbelt Festival, sent me this email:

Our friend John O'Donohue has died. John was on holiday in France with the family of Kristine, a wonderful woman he met at Greenbelt just last August.

Poet, priest and philosopher, John was a one-off, the warmest, funniest, wisest person you could hope to meet.

His most recent book, 'Benedictus', was published just before Christmas. It's a book of blessings and this is an extract from one.

'May there be some beautiful surprise
Waiting for you inside death
Something you never knew or felt,
Which with one simple touch
Absolves you of all loneliness and loss,
As you quicken within the embrace
For which your soul was eternally made.

'May your heart be speechless
At the sight of the truth
Of all your belief had hoped,
Your heart breathless
In the light and lightness
Where each and every thing
Is at last its true self
Within that serene belonging
That dwells beside us
On the other side
Of what we see.'

May John know that serene belonging dwelling beside him. May we all.

Technorati: John O'Donahue

ID Cards | Data Protection | Education/Legislation

The Customs and Revenue department announced today that it had somehow 'mislaid' discs containing all of the details of 25 million people in Britain claiming Child Benefit. Personal details, bank details, National Insurance numbers and addresses were all part of the records that went missing in an internal mail delivery.

And this is within a government that wants to spend £5.6bn - three times that much, say experts - on a National Identity Database, linked to ID cards. Well they can bugger off. Quite why I should pay £50 to have a card that is going to cause me grief, leave my ID and details being more open to theft is beyond me. The reasoning is that it will stop terrorism. Ah yes - terror plots like the ones perpetrated by full British citizens Mohammed Siddique Khan et al. It's total nonsense.

With more CCTV cameras per capita than any other nation in the world, with data security breaches like this one part of a pattern of systemic failure of central government to protect information, and with spiraling costs, it seems we are being sleep-walked into a crazy Orwellian world. As I mention in the book, education is always more preferable to legislation. It internalizes the desired effect: I don't commit terrorist acts because I believe they are wrong, not because I'm afraid of being caught.

Imagine £5.6bn - or more like £12bn ring-fenced into community-based education, or programmes to target those most at risk from offending. Surely this would have better outcomes, and leave the rest of the law-abiding society to get on with their business without a camera prying into every damn thing.

Technorati: Child Benefit | Education | HMRC | ID Cards | Orwell | Legislation | Terrorism

Storyquest | Lara Croft is no Wise Guide | Antisocial Behaviour

Storyquest is the national festival of story-telling and the spoken word, and runs for the whole of November. Alongside many keynote events, the organizers - the Prince of Wales' Foundation for Children & the Arts - are simply encouraging families to 'fill their homes with stories, capturing the moment when a story gets inside you and fires the imagination.'

One idea they have is to simply open an old photo album and start talking about the people within it - whether alive or dead. Doing exactly this is something I remember fondly from my own childhood.

With the heavy-handed 'National Literacy Strategy', story-telling has been rather gutted of its emotional heart. Reading is to be 'done' and stories are to be studied. This is a tragedy, not simply for the pure enjoyment of stories, but because - as Christopher Booker argues in The Seven Basic Plots - it is stories that forge our emotional and spiritual development. Remove them and you stunt growth and maturity.

Of course, people will argue that stories still abound in childhood. What is Lara Croft other than a story animated and controlled by the player? True. But the issue is the commonality. A child playing alone at a computer is in control of their own story. Left alone to navigate a world with no narrator or guide. And this, I am convinced, leads to a wounded and insecure heart that finds love and grace and appreciation of the other difficult. In other speak, it contributes to anti-social behaviour.

So turn the screen off, go grab a book, an album, or just your imagination, and tell someone a story. The fire is lit.

Technorati: Antisocial Behaviour | Arcade Game | Christopher Booker | Gaming | Lara Croft | Prince of Wales | Story-telling | Storyquest

No More Our Father? | IVF, Sexuality and the Father Figure Clause

I'm not one for 'natural order' arguments, but part of me is drawn that way over the news that the 'father figure' clause currently in British IVF legislation is potentially going to be dropped.

A government joint committee report "took issue with the proposal to remove the current requirement for IVF clinics to take into account the need for a father. They said it was right that lesbian couples should be considered for IVF, but said removing the father clause could encourage clinics to downgrade the importance of a two parent family."

Absolutely. In my experience as a teacher I am absolutely convinced that it is the absence of proper father figures that is leaving children flailing around for meaning when they reach around 12 years old. It is then that, for boys, the move away from the maternal accelerates, and the move towards manhood begins. In the absence of secure father figures, boys struggle to form secure masculine identities. Many begin to violently reject the maternal, and their behavior becomes very poor. Others, unable to find security in the paternal, instead define them through the fraternal, and these immature groups of boys struggling toward manhood become gangs.

I seriously hope that the committee's concerns are listened to. In our virtuous march towards a just and liberal society we must also make sure that freedom for one group does not impact on the lives of another. In this case I am worried that freedom for any woman to bear children is going to very seriously impact society in a few years time as the 'crisis in masculinity' gets worse.

Am I being too conservative here, or is it common sense that a child needs a mother and a father for a balanced upbringing?

Technorati: Family | IVF | Lesbian | Masculinity | Parents

Soliton | Signs Book Launch

I'm very pleased to have been asked back to help facilitate the Soliton Sessions 07 in Ventura. If you're in that part of the world I can't recommend it highly enough; last summer's sessions really were one of the highlights of my year.

On the Friday night (10th August) we'll be doing a book launch event for the book. This will be open to everyone, not just those attending the Soliton, so do come down if you're around. It should be a great evening: food and drink, plus some readings, art and reflections.

Time: 6pm onwards
Location: Ventura Vineyard: 1956 Palma Drive, Suite A | Map
Contact: Greg: 805.701.0079

Facebook Event Link

Technorati: Book Launch | Vineyard | Soliton | Ventura

Alistair Campbell's Diaries | The Best Summary of Blair Years | US vs UK

In a review of Campbell's diaries, David Hare notes:

"The virtues of pride, aggression and solidarity forged in the heat of New Labour's difficult evolution proved pitifully inadequate to contain a neoconservative ally far more ruthless than itself... It was no longer enough to be on message. Sadly, for the lives of so many, it turns out you had to be right as well."

I think this is the best single summary of the Blair years I've read. I think history will eventually see him as an essentially good man who meant well but who found governing much, much harder than he could ever have imagined. Especially with a US administration that screwed him, and a media dragon that he thought he had tamed.

Technorati: Blair | Bush | Alistair Campbell

Thank God

Alan Johnson released.

Technorati: Johnson | Alan

iPhone Launches Mass Transit Revival

Is there anything this thing can't do? Apparently now we'll all be taking the train so we can get more time playing with it... If only ;-)

Technorati: Apple | Environment | iPhone | Mass Transit

Christians Forced to Leave Iraq

Thanks to Will for the heads up on this article suggesting that Christians in Iraq are being forced to leave their homes as their neighbourhoods are 'Islamicized'.

One wonders what Qur'an these people are reading, as I'm pretty sure the holy book demands that Christians are treated well and allowed freedom to worship.

Certainly, Surah 6:107 suggests freedom of religious belief for anyone:

"If it had been God’s plan, they would not have taken false gods, but We made you, not one to watch over their doings, nor are you set over them to dispose of their affairs."

This is the problem with fundamentalism: it ignores the conjunctive texts from its own tradition and focuses only on purifying its own space.

Not that Christians are guiltless here. Unbelievably, one guy has decided the best way to minister to Muslims is to "urge all my christian brothers around the globe to use their influence to bed as many muslims girls as possible."

Unbelievable.

 

Blair, Brown, Catholicism and The Protestant Work Ethic

So, after 10 years and a roller-coaster political ride, we say goodbye to Prime Minister Blair, and hello Prime Minister Brown. Personally, I'm optimistic. I think we desperately need some new energy, vision and impetus in British political life, and I think Brown is the right man for the job.

What has been interesting though is Blair's drift in belief. To paint in broad, caricatured strokes - it is well known that he wants to convert to Rome - he began a Protestant, committed to a highly personal drive of 'whiter than white government' and 'ethical foreign policy' - an almost Puritan agenda, and has drifted, personally as well as politically, towards a more Catholic position. Wanting to be an icon. Admiring the pomp, the finery, the rituals, the power... desperate for confession.

Blair, I feel, knows he has really screwed up on Iraq. What will be interesting will be whether he sets up this Middle East envoy task as something akin to his own political purgatory - working off his sins in order to restore his place to heaven.

Brown, even more than Blair, will be bringing his Protestant work ethic, and seemingly wearing it on his sleeve. He has just released a book of his father's sermons. And, unlike Blair, appears more willing to 'do God'.

Classically, Catholicism has been the grand and powerful institution of the church. And it has had to do some desperate spinning over some pretty horrific abuses. Blair too has been the king of spin. And Brown's first job is going to have to be to try to restore some faith in the political system. Will he dissolve Parliament soon in order to do so? Perhaps here's another Charles I ceding to Cromwell... Does Brown see himself as our Lord Protector?

Technorati: Blair | Brown | Catholicism | Charles | Cromwell | Protestant | Work Ethic

We ALL Like Paper-clip Thieving, Staple Snatching Sheep Have Gone Astray

According to some new research, over two thirds of the population have 'broken the law at some point'.

The law-abiding majority appears to be a myth... Or is 'borrowing' from work, whether phone calls or stationary, a victimless crime, and part of the payback we expect from the Faustian pact we make with companies in this corporate, work-driven world?

Urgent Help Needed - Fire at The Simple Way Community

Many of you will know Shane Claiborne, and maybe will have read his book The Irresistible Revolution, or read about The Simple Way community in Philadelphia.

A fire has totally destroyed their buildings. 8 families are homeless.

Please read on and consider supporting these wonderful people in this great time of need:

London Olympics Logo | Newness Disturbs?

So, the debate over the new London Olympics brand has raged on for more days than a debate about a graphic really ought to... Hasn't it? Initially it was just the aesthetics, but, while many people mentioned it made them feel sick, but then some of the video pieces really did. The Mayor has waded in, and countless other alternative logos have sprung up too... The Press have refused to let it go, and the vitriolic response to it has been amazing...

But are we going to be proved wrong? Is this actually a bold leap into a new aesthetic that we will, by the time the Olympics come round, think was amazingly design-prescient?

Newness always disturbs us to begin with. The Olympics committee could have gone for something predictable and comfortable. We would not have been disturbed. But, as we know from emergence theory, without disturbance, nothing ever evolves.

With the advent of home-computing, 'everyone is a designer now'. And a peek at some of people's own goes at a logo do tell us just how badly visual ideas can be. So, Nic, tell me - is this a brave new world, is it 'in tradition', or just terrible?

Technorati: Logo | London | Olympics | Disturbing

Is Islam Violent? | Funding Moderation

The government has just announced £1m funding to support Islamic Studies courses at universities, in the hope that wider student bodies and better courses will encourage moderate Islam to prosper where fundamentalism currently reigns.

It's a course I'd be interested in doing, if only to answer some troubling questions even my basic explorations have thrown up. The most immediate is this: is Islam a more basically violent religion than others?

The reasons I keep pondering this question are perhaps many and obvious: there is rarely a day that goes by when some act of terrorism perpetrated by Islamists is reported on the news. I have just been reading What is the What - which details the horrific violence and genocide brought about when fundamentalist Muslims took control of the government in Khartoum.

Of course - these are simply the things that get reported the most, and it only takes a little digging beneath the surface to reveal horrific violence done in the name of all religions: the Lord's Resistance Army, the many years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, Hindu clashes in the Indian subcontinent...

But I'm still left wondering whether something to do with the very genesis of Islam is still problematic: when Mohammed was forced out of Mecca and fled to Medina, he grew the number of Muslims, and, through both conquest and conversions, eventually went back and took Mecca. In other words, there is a military and political force element to the spread of Islam, even under the leadership of its founder.

We can talk about the terrible atrocities of the Crusades - and they were awful - but they were not performed by Christ himself, and we can hopefully look back at them as an abberation of 'true' Christianity. Bloody awful things happened throughout the Old Testament too, but perhaps we might look on those times as almost 'prehistoric', and expect that in the 7th Century expectations of a spiritual leader might be higher, especially given the way Christ himself eschewed violence.

I am genuinely interested in how moderates would treat such events now. Let's be quite clear - there is so much in Islam that is beautiful and clearly pro-peace and justice, and much that I truly deeply respect. Yet that some of these Islamic conquests were very violent is not doubted - so does Mohammed's own violence somehow impact the views of modern Muslims when it comes to violence too? Did he have no other choices? I'd love to know what people think. And sincerely hope someone can tell me without themselves resorting to promising to kill me for even asking...

Technorati: Genocide | History | Islam | Mecca | Medina | Moderate | Violence

Dave Eggers | Valentino Achak Deng | Sudan

I went to hear Dave Eggers in conversation with Valentino Achak Deng at the ICA this evening. It was wonderful, moving and sad and funny.

Deng was one of the Lost Boys in Sudan. After his town was pillaged by militias, he got separated from his family and joined 4000 or so other young boys on a walk to Ethiopia. Some were ate by lions. Others shot. Others just died of hunger. After 3 years in a refugee camp there, Ethiopian militias turned on the boys and drove them out again. So they walked to Kenya. 10 years later, Deng and some 3000 others were taken to the US. He met Eggers; 'What is the What' is the 'fictional autobiography' of Deng's life. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Much as cynical postmodern life tells me they shouldn't, heroes do still exist. Dave Eggers is one. His 'Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius' is just that. Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern is the best vehicle for new writing around, and The Believer the best writing magazine ever. That's before we get to the inner-city work of 826 Valencia, the Voice of Witness human rights oral history project. Faith has never been mentioned. I don't want it to be. He's simply a person of huge spirit.

One of the questions after the talk was about how much of him is in the book, and how much is Deng, and whether there was a theme running through his work. He commented quickly that he didn't think there was, in particular, and that he had tried to be as 'invisible as possible' in What is the What.

In some ways I'd like to disagree: I think there is a theme. HBOSG is essentially a work of the ego. It is about him-Self,

about getting to know the Self, if you will. His second book 'You Shall Know Our Velocity' tells the story of a suddenly rich American guy going to Africa with the naive intention of giving money to the poor - a project that spirals into disaster, and his own death. And now we have 'What is the What'.

My thoughts? That the trajectory of his writing has been, having examined the Self, putting the Self to death, and disappearing into the service of the other. And that's good enough for hero status for me.

Please buy What is the What. All the money is going back to Deng's town to build a Secondary School and a Library. And please visit his site to find out what you can do to put pressure on governments to act to stop the violence in Sudan and Darfur in particular.

Technorati: Eggers | Sudan

Freedom of Information ¦ Sodom and Gomorrah ¦ Power and Accountability

'Thought for the Day' this morning was an excellent piece  by Martin Palmer.

MP's have recently voted to exclude themselves from their own Freedom of Information legislation - a move that has angered many. It seems the law-makers want everyone else to be accountable save themselves.

Palmer made an interesting connection with Abraham's bartering with God over Sodom and Gomorrah. As he whittled God down to 'I'll not destroy the city if there are 10 just people there', Abraham inquires of God "Will the Judge of all the earth do right?"

Palmer saw this as an absolute benchmark: justice must be done justly, and those with power must be clearly seen to be acting justly. "If this was true of God, how much more true must it be of our human leaders."

Absolutely. This "pernicious little amendment" must be stamped out if trust and accountability are to be preserved in our legislature.

Mary Douglas Has Died

Mary Douglas, whose work 'Purity and Danger' I am heavily indebted to for the 'dirty' bits of Signs of Emergence, has died.

Obituary here.

"In 1966, Douglas published her most celebrated work, Purity and Danger: an Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. This book is best remembered for its stylish demonstration of the ways in which all schemes of classification produce anomalies: whether the pangolin for the Lele, or the God incarnate of Catholic theology. Some of this classificatory "matter out of place" - from humble house dust in her Highgate house to the abominations of Leviticus for the Hebrews - was polluting, but other breaches of routine classification had the capacity to renew the world symbolically."

First Pilotless Police CCTV Drone Launches

Following up on the recent post about CCTV, I just had to post this story.

Am I alone in thinking this is seriously worrying? That we are sleepwalking into a Stasi-style surveillance society?

Get your catapults and air guns loaded my friends, the battle starts here.

Technorati: BBC | CCTV | Drone | Police | Surveillance | Stasi

Oops...

How prescient of me. Or not.

Falwell is now the most dangerous guy in heaven. Or somewhere.

I feel bad. Only this evening I was chatting with my mum about the BBC report in the last post, and quipped I wished he was dead. Oops.
Sorry.

Technorati: Dead | Falwell

Death-Wish | Don't Demonise Cho

The release of Cho's video all over the media is just another example of technology being used without proper restraint, not unlike the shooting itself. It's a horrific violation of those suffering.

In a previous post, and in the comments that followed, I was trying to probe a link between these killings and the spate of gun and knife attacks between black teenagers that have beset London. I wonder now, having seen Cho's video, whether the link is that they have a death-wish. Meaning they wanted to die?

No. But when a society devalues someone's life so systematically, then it can seem that dying - or killing - is the only way to find some sort of 'worth', however twisted that worth might be.

This is not, as he might think, death as sacrifice - giving oneself, but death as transaction - the highest price to pay to make people sit up and notice this troubled self that thinks itself invisible. And the tragedy of his tirade against Christians is that it is precisely these people who follow one who gave himself in death to bring us worth, did not pass on that grace to him.

We should not demonize him, but search ourselves and try to empathize. It's only out of empathy that this will be stopped from happening again. It takes courage, but, once again, it's about taking a visit to our own 'dirt pile', seeing what we've excluded, and bringing some redemption from it.

Technorati: Cho Seung-hui | Death Wish | Empathy | suicide