uzima

Graphics fail: chocolate shop "In space no one can hear you scream"

2011-04-21T08:13:00.002+01:00

Spotted in London Bridge station underground gallery of "cool" shops, this instantly evoked the poster for the first science fiction horror Alien film, with the catchphrase "In space no one can hear you scream":

Practise what you geek

2011-04-21T07:09:00.020+01:00

Nemi on geek snobbery and hypocrisy, by Lise Myhre, spot on as usual:

By the way, if you haven't seen it yet, don't miss the interview (6 minutes) with Ben Stein where Richard Dawkins defends intelligent design. Yes, seriously, his answer describes intelligent design in all but name, and he goes further to posit extra-terrestrials as the intelligent designers. I would have thought that he would classify aliens along with the tooth fairy and Father Christmas, not to mention the despised Judeo-Christian God. Striking irony. View it here.

Breast cancer campaign fail: it has made no difference because it has not addressed the root causes

2011-04-08T07:48:00.002+01:00

The Pink Ribbon campaign, for all its high profile and huge investment, has led to no detectable reduction in breast cancer, for a simple reason: it is not encouraging women to do the three things known to reduce breast cancer risk:

- have children earlier in life
- refrain from artificial contraception
- avoid induced abortions

The likely reason for this failure is that to encourage these things would be to challenge the very foundations of the sexual revolution.

For better words than I can muster and references to useful sources, see Fr Tim's blog.

Eco-Farming Can Double Food Production in 10 Years, says UN Report

2011-04-05T20:28:00.003+01:00

Masanobu Fukuoka, pioneer of natural farming

GENEVA- 18 March 2011, the Special Rapporteur presented his new report “Agro-ecology and the right to food” before the UN Human Rights Council. Based on an extensive review of recent scientific literature, the report demonstrates that agroecology, if sufficiently supported, can double food production in entire regions within 10 years while mitigating climate change and alleviating rural poverty.

The report therefore calls States for a fundamental shift towards agro-ecology as a way for countries to feed themselves while addressing climate and poverty challenges.

You can download the document and read related material here.

Art discoveries - illustration - Anthony Vanarsdale

2011-04-05T16:41:00.002+01:00

Thanks to the Catholic Illustrators' Guild, St Joseph and the child Jesus:

Fruity computers

2011-04-02T23:45:00.001+01:00

Here's my laptop, a special edition Banana EeePC from Asus. I could not resist this cheerful picture so stuck it on to see if it would cheer up anyone else. So far not a flicker from other commuters on the morning train into London (perhaps they're too busy looking at their Blackberries to notice!).

Update: my little daughter Therese took a liking to the picture and tore it off so I let her keep it. I was touched by her appreciation.

Beautiful Ghibli-inspired short video: Out of Sight

2010-12-28T11:35:00.002Z

The rightness of dancing, and the wrongness of forcing it

2010-12-07T21:07:00.002Z

I heard the interpretation of the tune by Copeland on Radio 3 today, announced as Lord of the Dance. As I prepared to cringe I was pleasantly surprised to hear the following words of Simple Gifts instead of the trite and childish hymn lyrics:

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,

'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain'd,

To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,

To turn, turn will be our delight,

Till by turning, turning we come round right.

Simple Gifts was written by Elder Joseph while he was at the Shaker community in Alfred, Maine in 1848.

It reminded me of the sentiment in Yeats's poem The Fiddler of Dooney:

...When we come at the end of time,

To Peter sitting in state,

He will smile on the three old spirits,

But call me first through the gate;

For the good are always the merry,

Save by an evil chance,

And the merry love the fiddle

And the merry love to dance:

And when the folk there spy me,

They will all come up to me,

With ‘Here is the fiddler of Dooney!’

And dance like a wave of the sea.

"Lord of the Dance is a hymn with words written by English songwriter Sydney Carter in 1967" I've just learned from Wikipedia. Yup, I guessed the date within a year; it reeks of post-Vat 2 sandalism! And don't get me started on Michael Flatley's narcissistic cancan.

A poem to our ectopic child

2010-11-12T09:34:00.001Z

"'til in heaven we take our place" - a poem to our ectopic child, 11 November 2010

("Ectopic: Occurring in an abnormal position or place.")

You began, unsuspected,
held within your mother;
only when you declared yourself in pain,
bursting your small confines,
we guessed
...then medical procedure took its sway.

We glimpsed you in the scan
"a live ectopic", the doctor said
and that was all we knew.

Your mother in theatre unconscious, I in darkness praying;
only dry dark groping thoughts; the moment of death unknown;
then quite sudden, inspiration: now you hold us, all is in its place.

A double loss: no body to see, to grieve;
nothing to bury, no liturgy of passage
only, lost in your mother's blood, anonymous cremation.

How name you, child, boy or girl?
No clue to sex or face, till, all reborn in that final place,
our earthly ectopia ended,
we hold you and hear from your lips
the name He gave you
when we too were but a yearning in the divine heart.

Baby steps towards thrift and wise living in a non-distributist world

2010-11-08T08:48:00.003Z

A list I came across provides a helpful summary of “practical distributism” that may be implemented by families and individuals on a personal level. The list is below.

When I first published this post with the title "baby steps towards a distributist world", someone wisely pointed out that not one of these points is effective at bringing about distributism without systemic changes, requiring radical political work which no one yet knows how to effect. So I changed the title and removed the tag "distributism". I still love the list, maybe because I am at heart a bit of a hippy utopian and so it all looks like a lot of fun to practise, but I think chiefly because it tends to move us in the right direction, whether or not hippy frugality is our thing.

Connections: in a future post - perhaps, if I find the time and energy - thoughts on the life journey of Chris McCandless, thoughtfully portrayed in the film Into the Wild.

1) Create your own job.

2) If you cannot create your own job, join with others to create a cooperative or worker-owned business.

3) If you must work for a company, persuade it to allow you to telecommute.

4) Try to convert part-time employment for wages into a part-time consultancy.

5) Instead of putting all your eggs in one employment basket, ‘keep the day job’ while seeking to create multiple income streams using your own equipment and working with family members in home-based activities, preparing for the day when you can leave the corporate job behind.

6) Bank with a credit union.

7) Avoid corporation debt (borrow from credit unions); tear up your credit cards.

8) Patronize locally-owned stores, microenterprises, cooperatives, and worker-owned businesses.

9) Avoid sweatshop clothing and products.

10) Grow some of your own food.

11) Patronize a farmers’ market, or purchase food directly from farmers/producers.

12) Home school.

13) Avoid commoditized entertainment in favor entertainment such as local baseball, picnics, dances, social events, quilting bees, fairs, etc.

14) Start moving towards alternative, non-centrally generated power.

15) Shop at flea-markets, swap meets and garage sales.

16) Kill your TV, or at least grievously wound it (apologies for the violent language). If you have a TV, don't watch it - study it.

17) Make your own bread. Eat real food, and avoid like the plague the ersatz, mass-produced capitalist food that has ruined the health of millions, including children.

18) Bring forth life abundantly, trusting in God.

19) Breast-feed your babies.

20) Practice the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity, and the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance. The crisis of our civilization is a crisis in virtue.

Obama: Yes we can but I need more time

2010-10-29T14:37:00.000+01:00

Yes, keep hoping for that change, guys. Keep up your faith in science, technology, the human will, the human intellect, the sexual revolution, the this revolution, the that revolution... Utopia is just around the corner.

The spending cuts in the UK: a grim warning

2010-10-26T13:59:00.000+01:00

If G K Chesterton has been alive now, he might have written about these cuts the way Paul Danon has in his blog: The cuts: a grim warning

"If the government spends less of our money for us, there is a grave risk that we shall spend it on what we need and want, rather than on what other people think is best for us. Cuts could mean less superfluous administration in public services and, perhaps, a better attitude on the part of otherwise surly public servants who have slight worries about their job-security."

Read the whole text here.

The fundamental questions in Thomas More's trial... and Britain today

2010-10-02T23:14:00.002+01:00

The fundamental questions at stake in Thomas More’s trial continue to present themselves in ever-changing terms as new social conditions emerge. Each generation, as it seeks to advance the common good, must ask anew: what are the requirements that governments may reasonably impose upon citizens, and how far do they extend? By appeal to what authority can moral dilemmas be resolved? These questions take us directly to the ethical foundations of civil discourse. If the moral principles underpinning the democratic process are themselves determined by nothing more solid than social consensus, then the fragility of the process becomes all too evident - herein lies the real challenge for democracy.

words of Pope Benedict XVI in Westminster Hall, 2010

Acknowledgment to Joanna Bogle

Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of your Child - by Anthony Esolen

2010-09-30T14:01:00.004+01:00

We’re extinguishing the minds (and souls) of our children
Play dates, “helicopter parenting,” No Child Left Behind, video games, political correctness: these and other insidious trends in child rearing and education are now the hallmarks of childhood. As author Anthony Esolen demonstrates in this elegantly written, often wickedly funny new book, almost everything we are doing to children now constricts their imaginations, usually to serve the ulterior motives of the constrictors.

Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child takes square aim at these accelerating trends, while offering parents—and children—hopeful alternatives. Esolen shows how imagination is snuffed out at practically every turn: in the rearing of children almost exclusively indoors; in the flattening of love to sex education, and sex education to prurience and hygiene; in the loss of traditional childhood games; in the refusal to allow children to organize themselves into teams; in the effacing of the glorious differences between the sexes; in the dismissal of the power of memory, which creates the worst of all possible worlds in school—drudgery without even the merit of imparting facts; in the strict separation of the child’s world from the adult’s; and in the denial of the transcendent, which places a low ceiling on the child’s developing spirit and mind.
Much like The Wonder of Boys and The Wonder of Girls, and The Dangerous Book for Boys and The Daring Book for Girls, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child confronts contemporary trends in parenting and schooling by reclaiming lost traditions. This practical, insightful book is essential reading for any parent who cares about the paltry thing that childhood has become.

About the Author

Anthony Esolen is the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization and Ironies of Faith, and the translator and editor of the celebrated three-volume Modern Library edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy. He is a professor of English at Providence College and a senior editor of Touchstone magazine. Esolen lives in Rhode Island.

Be prepared: Woldingham scouts do adult comedy

2010-09-28T11:29:00.007+01:00

Yes, I also did a double take when I saw the poster.

The Scouts' motto is "be prepared"; I was certainly not prepared for smut propagated in the name of an organisation which I had always believed stands for virtue.

I first saw this event advertised last year, and thought I'd ignore it: perhaps somebody with strange ideas and too much power on the committee (or however they organise these things) carried the day, and it would be a one-off. But seeing that it seems to be an annual event, I could not let it pass without comment.

Baden Powell wrote in Scouting for Boys:

The Scout Motto is: BE PREPARED which means you are always in a state of readiness in mind and body to do your DUTY.

* Be Prepared in Mind by having disciplined yourself to be obedient to every order, and also by having thought out beforehand any accident or situation that might occur, so that you know the right thing to do at the right moment, and are willing to do it.

* Be Prepared in Body by making yourself strong and active and able to do the right thing at the right moment, and do it.

If adults are supposed to lead by example, and to lead chiefly in virtuous living, how is their organising and attending an "adult comedy night" supposed to help scouts? The only conclusion to be drawn is that somebody thinks the financial gain from selling tickets to this event trumps the core purpose of the movement.

Well, here's one parent - a great supporter of scouting - who won't be sending his son to Woldingham scouts, thanks to this brilliant bit of fund-raising. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot (I hope they were prepared with armoured boots or else lots of first aid dressings)!

Kenyan Popemobiles?

2010-09-14T13:11:00.007+01:00

Fr Tim Finigan's tongue-in-cheek proposal reminded me of the religious art and inscriptions often used to decorate matatus (minibus taxis) in my home from home Kenya.

Unlike Fr Tim, I was driving at the time I took the pictures, but then there is a lot more leeway in how road rules are interpreted in Africa. :-)

More leeway in road rules, but on the other hand there would be so little leeway for the irreligious, perverted and irreverent monstrosities commonplace in our "developed" nation that proselytisers for paedophilia (while hogging the media calling the kettle black) and the modernistic kitsch brigade would be laughed out of court or worse (justice is swift, brutal and spontaneous for those who viciously corrupt children or families).

That is not to say that Africa lacks its own religious kitsch, in abudance, and evident in these pictures, but this art at least has the essentials: it is reverent, it has faith, and it is not agitprop. That is more than can be said for much of what is being offered as fare for the papal "pilgrims".

Undemocratic and biased representation of youth at the UN: you can do something about it!

2010-09-08T09:41:00.005+01:00

The UN World Youth Conference has been hijacked by pornographers, radicals and abortionists: the statement now up for approval is not representative of the majority of young people, but imposed by a radical minority using undemocratic tactics. If you care about this and want to make a difference, you can sign the petition here, in support of a statement more truly representative of the world's youth.

Click here to sign the C-Fam petition by the world's young people to redress the unfair and biased representation at the UN and prevent the phony statement becoming part of quasi-legal guidelines for governments.

Lira - Ixesha

2010-09-07T13:53:00.005+01:00

After the flood of R&B divas and their crass aggressive posturing, it's refreshing to find a video of African womanhood with haunting beauty and understatement. Here's Lira, recently famous for her performance of Pata Pata at the recent World Cup opening, in a different mode.

Classroom scene: religion in the modern world

2010-09-07T10:32:00.001+01:00

A cringingly familiar classroom situation, hilariously executed: Religion in the modern word

Blair and the causes he supports or does not support

2010-09-07T09:52:00.003+01:00

Asked whether Blair, who became a Roman Catholic after he was forced out of 10 Downing Street, had contributed to the costs of Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Britain, his spokesman replied, tersely: "No."

He and his wife Cherie Booth do, however, actively support LGBT causes, including ones which are radically and aggressively against the Catholic church and its moral teachings.

Well, Tony, for all your spin doctoring, ultimately whats in the heart reaches the heart; I think it would be safe to drop the "Roman" from the title "Roman Catholic" and replace it with "Cafeteria" in your case.

Newman on liberalism in the Church

2010-08-25T22:10:00.003+01:00

"[O]ne great mischief I have from the first opposed myself. For thirty, forty, fifty years I have resisted to the best of my powers the spirit of liberalism in religion. Never did Holy Church need champions against it more sorely than now, when, alas! it is an error overspreading, as a snare, the whole earth; and on this great occasion, when it is natural for one who is in my place to look out upon the world, and upon Holy Church as in it, and upon her future, it will not, I hope, be considered out of place, if I renew the protest against it which I have made so often." An extract from Newman's famous "Biglietto Speech", the language is different but the thought could be Benedict XVI

Fr Ray Blake comments in his blog: "Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another, and this is the teaching which is gaining substance and force daily. It is inconsistent with any recognition of any religion, as true. It teaches that all are to be tolerated, for all are matters of opinion. Revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective fact, not miraculous; and it is the right of each individual to make it say just what strikes his fancy..." For further quotations from Newman and the rest of Fr Ray Blake's commentary read here

TIME announces new version of magazine aimed at adults

2010-08-25T21:24:00.000+01:00

See news flash at TheOnion.com

Pope's visit to England, the affirmation of marriage

2010-08-24T11:16:00.009+01:00

England, the destination of Benedict XVI's Sept. 16-19 trip, is the geopolitical epicenter of the culture of death, says Edmund Adamus, but it is also the "Dowry of Mary."

Adamus, director of Pastoral Affairs for the Diocese of Westminster, explained to ZENIT how England's unique Christian heritage and its present vanguard anti-Catholic culture make it a highly significant place for the Pope's upcoming visit.

Whole article

Goal line technology

2010-07-09T15:46:00.002+01:00

The moralist or the moral being: seeking the real person

2010-02-05T22:34:00.002Z

"We know not what to do with this small and noisy moralist who is inhabiting one corner of a great and good man"

Chesterton wrote this about Tolstoi in The Common Man; much of it could apply equally to Daddy. There was a side to Daddy all too familiar for being too emphatic, so much so that it tended to mask his tenderness and vulnerability. He was often angry because he cared so much; he was impatient with himself and others, with fierce desire for the good he perceived as wanting.

I am tempted to start speculating about a slavic character, sensitive, intelligent and melancholic, which also tends to the crusading, the grand romantic gesture, the tragic cavalry charge against the enemy with non-existent odds of success, but it would be too easy to fall into caricature. Chesterton makes the point better.

Daddy's moralising and "shoulding", for all their evidence, were only a part of a life whose deepest moral was not in its proclamations but in its very fabric.

I also love Chesterton's point about moralising art, but I'll leave it for another post.

    "...the truth of the matter is that an artist teaches far more by his mere background and properties, his landscape, his costume, his idiom and technique--all the part of his work, in short, of which he is probably entirely unconscious, than by the elaborate and pompous moral dicta which he fondly imagines to be his opinions.

    The real distinction between the ethics of high art and the ethics of manufactured and didactic art lies in the simple fact that the bad fable has a moral, while the good fable is a moral. And the real moral of Tolstoi comes out constantly in his stories, the great moral which lies at the heart of all his work, of which he is probably unconscious, and of which it is quite likely that he would vehemently disapprove. The curious cold white light of morning that shines over all the tales, the folklore simplicity with which "a man or a woman" are spoken of without further identification, the love--one might almost say the lust-- for the qualities of brute materials, the hardness of wood, and the softness of mud, the ingrained belief in a certain ancient kindliness sitting beside the very cradle of the race of man-- these influences are truly moral.

    When we put beside them the trumpeting and tearing nonsense of the didactic Tolstoi, screaming for an obscene purity, shouting for an inhuman peace, hacking up human life into small sins with a chopper, sneering at men, women, and children out of respect to humanity, combining in one chaos of contradictions an unmanly Puritan and an uncivilised prig, then, indeed, we scarcely know whither Tolstoi has vanished. We know not what to do with this small and noisy moralist who is inhabiting one corner of a great and good man.

    It is difficult in every case to reconcile Tolstoi the great artist with Tolstoi the almost venomous reformer. It is difficult to believe that a man who draws in such noble outlines the dignity of the daily life of humanity regards as evil that divine act of procreation by which that dignity is renewed from age to age.

    It is difficult to believe that a man who has painted with so frightful an honesty the heartrending emptiness of the life of the poor can really grudge them every one of their pitiful pleasures from courtship to tobacco.

    It is difficult to believe that a poet in prose who has so powerfully exhibited the earth-born air of man, the essential kinship of a human being with the landscape in which he lives, can deny so elemental a virtue as that which attaches a man to his own ancestors and his own land.

    It is difficult to believe that the man who feels so poignantly the detestable insolence of oppression would not actually, if he had the chance, lay the oppressor flat with his fist.

    All, however, arises from the search after a false simplicity, the aim of being, if I may so express it, more natural than it is natural to be. It would not only be more human, it would be more humble of us to be content to be complex. The truest kinship with humanity would lie in doing as humanity has always done, accepting with a sportsmanlike relish the estate to which we are called, the star of our happiness, and the fortunes of the land of our birth."

From G.K. Chesterton, The Common Man.
I have taken the liberty of adding paragraph breaks and emphasis.

Education, the next best thing to a record deal!

2009-10-08T21:05:00.003+01:00

Naive aspirationism or postmodern irony? You decide ... or ask the growing hordes of unemployed graduates.

Haiku

2009-10-06T16:16:00.006+01:00

Autumn cyclamens

Up through dead leaves
faint ozonic scent
Ghosts of spring

Happy birthday, Daddy

2009-10-06T12:47:00.006+01:00

Henry Kobus (sr) would have been 90 today. Here he is on Caldey Island with Bro James and Eustace. Na zdrowie! Na milele!

Back from Kenya

2009-10-05T10:01:00.005+01:00

An unexpectedly early return from our experiment at working in a high-cost boarding school near Nairobi, sad, disillusioned and in disarray. On the positive side, we have a new daughter and a wealth of new experience.

This story gives the main reasons why we were forced to leave: "Corruption and access to finance are the two biggest challenges to doing business in East Africa, the World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness report 2009-2010 indicates..." (Uganda New Vision 30 September 2009)

Just about recovered from the mess, and beginning to feel able to blog again. Let's see how it goes...

Understanding the financial crisis

2008-10-17T10:06:00.000+01:00

Chirag's blog has a funny and sobering explanation of the crisis which does not need an MBA to understand:

"A lot of people have been asking me what this whole "economy in crisis" situation really is. How can banks in the world's most prosperous countries run out of money? Is it because the houses were overvalued? Is it because the people aren't saving? Or is it because of a variety of reasons like health-costs, unemployment, inflation, gas prices, or political instability? On the surface, it would seem prudent to say that it is a deadly combination of all of the above that's causing the financial crisis. We hear statistics being quoted on the news constantly that inflation rose, unemployment rose, new-home sales fell, auto-sales fell, and stock prices crashed. As I see it, these are the effects of the financial crisis not the causes. The causes are far too murky and boring in details for the average person to identify and enumerate. Luckily for you, I have all the time in the world and I love talking in metaphors instead of confusing finance terms when explaining something, so here it goes..."

For the whole article, go to Chirag's blog

Kenya's only gothique boutique

2008-10-11T18:26:00.005+01:00

We dropped in on twin sisters Toni and Tonia Matundura, at their shop in Westlands, Nairobi. It turned out to be a gothic clothes shop - the only one in Kenya. The twins had been bridesmaids at our wedding in 2005 - just across the road in Consolata Shrine - but not in these outfits.

The red-eye in the picture rather complements the gothic image; I decided to leave it in. (Sorry, girls, I hope you don't mind!)

I promised them a commercial plug. The shop is on the second floor of The Mall in Westlands, and is, literally, the only place to go if you are in Kenya and you want gothic attire. The prices are very reasonable too, and you'll receive a far from chilling welcome!

Echoes of Dune

2008-10-01T20:10:00.003+01:00

Do any of you Dune fans get a frisson of recognition as Somalis, warlike desert people, carry out a daring raid to capture high-tech weaponry, in the process threatening the balance of power? A little too much water around, I'll admit, but even so...!

We've arrived in Kenya

2008-09-23T18:46:00.005+01:00

Arrived in Kenya mid-August but only now found some free time to start blogging again. This still life (found in kitchen area, not arranged) evokes something about it - to me, anyway.

Whose voice counts in the end?

2006-05-30T11:33:00.002+01:00

"Socialism collapsed because it did not allow the market to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow the market to tell the ecological truth."

Oystein Dahle, former vice president, Exxon Norway and North Sea.

To put the world in order...

2006-01-23T11:08:00.002Z

To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order;
to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order;
to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life;
and to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right.
Confucius

Bono's take on African issues: something fresh, deeper and more human

2005-11-15T15:49:00.002Z

"Once you see not only the problem, but the solution, there's no escape. You see it, you can't look away from it. I want it to feel like an adventure, not a burden. I don't mean just for me, I mean for the movement. This is an extraordinary thing, an uplifting thing. This is not, 'Oh my God, all the poor starving Africans with flies around their faces.' They are very noble, royal people, full of easy laughter and very innovative. This is about us, too. It's about who are we? What are our values? Do we have any? Its exciting."

- Bono Interview with Rolling Stone, November 2005

Meeting 'Kenya's Terri Schiavo'

2005-11-13T21:27:00.001Z

By Muliro Telewa
BBC, Nairobi

The court case over the life and death of American Terri Schiavo which made headlines all over the world has led to parallels being drawn with a patient in Kenya.

Wanjiru Kihoro has been bed-ridden and barely conscious in a Nairobi hospital for more than two years.

But while Schiavo's husband, Michael, went to court to secure his wife's right to die, Dr Kihoro's husband and relatives are unanimous that she should live.

click here to view the whole article

The meaning of sex: fertility and the recovery of human sexuality

2005-11-02T22:25:00.001Z

Few dare talk about it, but beneath the surface of elite opinion there's growing unease about the sexual revolution. Not only hasn’t it delivered happiness, it’s brought the opposite. Juli Loesch Wiley explains why misery is the natural result of severing the connection between sexual fulfillment and fertility, and what it will take to restore whole sexual love between men and women.

click here to view the whole article

'Speciesism': a specious argument

2005-08-02T12:20:00.000+01:00

In his new book In Defense of Animals, Peter Singer reduces the value of human life to a tick-list of capabilities.

The value of human life - and complex questions about life and death - cannot be reduced to simple arithmetic. It is a sign of a civilised human society that, even if severely disabled, an individual can be included in our common humanity. The value of human life cannot be reduced to a tick-list of capabilities. As Oscar Wilde might have said, that would be the outlook of a cynic: someone who 'knows the price of everything and the value of nothing'.

click here to view the whole article

Africa: a stage for political poseurs

2005-06-13T10:17:00.000+01:00

This summer's crusade is driven more by a crisis in Britain than 'over there'

Why Africa, why now? How has the continent suddenly come to dominate the political agenda in Britain, so that a boring old G8 summit inspires a concert, Live 8, that has somehow become the news story of the summer?

Of course Africa is still blighted by serious problems of poverty and conflict, malaria and AIDS, and remains the most oppressed continent on the planet. Yet there is no headline-grabbing crisis in Africa today, on the scale of the Ethiopian famine that gave rise to Live Aid in the 1980s. So what has prompted the sudden outpouring of interest in African affairs?

It seems that the crisis that has brought all of this about is not in Africa, but in Britain. There is a crisis of authority afflicting the political class, and a crisis of common values in our society. There is a poverty of leadership at every level, and a dearth of any sense of purpose that is bigger then oneself...

click here to view the whole article

Peter pandemonium: the retreat to childhood; it's cool to be juvenile

2005-05-19T11:06:00.000+01:00

Here are some excellent surveys of a culture pandering to adults' refusal to grow up. Wise growth towards child-likeness abandoned in favour of childish regression.

"Our society is full of lost boys and girls hanging out at the edge of adulthood. Yet we find it difficult even to give them a name. The absence of a readily recognised word to describe these infantilised adults demonstrates the unease with which this phenomenon is greeted. Advertisers and toy manufacturers have invented the term 'kidult' to describe this segment of the market. Another word sometimes used to describe these 20- to 35-year-olds is 'adultescent', generally defined as someone who refuses to settle down and make commitments, and who would rather go on partying into middle age.

"It is important not to confuse adultescents with those referred to as 'middle youth'. Middle youths are a generation ahead of adultescents. They are 35- to 45-year-olds who regard themselves as being at the cutting edge of youth culture; they are going through a phase known as 'middlescence' - a state of mind that fiercely resists the usual trappings of encroaching middle age."

Michael Jackson trial: nobody's innocent
Outside the Californian court, we're witnessing a show trial of the most sordid aspects of contemporary culture.

The children who won't grow up
Peter Pan-demonium, kidults, boomerang kids.... A sociologist examines the phenomenon of lost boys and girls hanging out on the edge of adulthood.

Benedict's relevance to modern Europe

2005-05-12T19:57:00.001+01:00

Angela Tilby's Thought for the Day for 25 april puts it succinctly: democracy, holistic living, wise management, champagne, social services to the poor... Europe owes all of them to Benedictine monasticism. Fascinating thought to one such as myself familiar with the benignity and peace of Caldey island.

Home, land and belonging

2005-05-12T13:37:00.000+01:00

Anne Atkins' Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4 this morning set off a line of inspiration going through David Schidler's Communio article on homelessness as the modern condition, Wendell Berry's Hidden Wound and Fr John Kaiser's If I Die

John Kaiser, who dedicated himself to rural Kenyans to the point of martyrdom, witnessed their distress when forced from their land by corrupt politicians:

"I think it is impossible to exaggerate the suffering caused to a peasant farmer when he loses his land, which he deeply loves and with which he identifies. Many of the farmers had sold everything they owned to purchase small pieces of land in Enoosupukia. They had no other place they could call home. To them, being uprooted from their homes was worse than death itself."

Schindler and Berry demonstrate that western man's angst is because he is homeless: he feels he does not belong - in the national society as a whole, in the local community, in his workplace, and tragically often in his own home; there is a permanent sense of exile. Though possessing a "home", it is not the chief focus of meaning for his life, and the house itself is alienated from land, work and even family in increasing numbers of instances; it is a commodity to be traded and a base to prepare the worker to work for another, away from home; the urban dweller has a minimal contact with local community, not sufficient to call it living in any proper sense. Even economic activity is no longer centred on the home or the land which is the seat of the home. Thus western man experiences the same anguish as the dispossessed Kenyan farmers, but as a chronic and normal condition.

Condom Coca Cola culture: the myth of product-as-solution

2005-05-09T17:36:00.000+01:00

The myth of "product-as-solution" underlies most advertising including the disguised advertising which so much of the AIDS talk in fact is; it implies that human problems are reducible to material and mechanistic terms, thus implicitly denying the spirit, the person, human freedom and thus the very roots of morality.

This is why the condoms-against-AIDS lobby and the abstinence-against-AIDS lobbies are at cross purposes: one deals with people as machines, the other as souls.

A product can at best be only a part of a solution, and then only if it is correctly conceived as part of a human solution addressing a human problem.

Instruction in the use of contraception - in theory as well as actual practice - is worlds apart from the education of the heart required for chastity and abstinence. cf the abuse of the word "education" in the term "sex education".

When comparing the missionary and the NGO approaches, if it was possible to find a way of comparing their respective "benefits", the figures might well speak for themselves, even in plain economic terms. This could be interesting in motivating donors to give more to traditional charity organisations run by religious rather than to NGOs. Not an easy task I imagine, especially given the reality that in the main NGOs and donors are interested in promoting certain agendas rather than being open to holistic notions of human development.

As you go to the polls, think of the family ...

2005-05-04T13:51:00.000+01:00

Is the family or the state the fundamental cell of society? Both are good, but European governments have got their priorities upside-down. G.K. Chesterton once again has prophetic insights into our situation now: it is sufficient to neglect to support the family, he suggests, and the government machinery will see to it that the family is abused, invaded and weakened.

There is one important difference: in Gilbert's time, there were no concerted efforts to pervert the family by redefining it in gender-free and child-free terms; no one questioned the perennial truth of the family as father, mother and children. What a field day he would have had with the same-sex "marriage" ideologues!

For "Socialist" substitute European bureaucratic governments, for their fundamental ideology is socialism:

"You mend a thing because you like it ... To mend is to strengthen. I, for instance, disbelieve in oligarchy; so l would no more mend the House of Lords than I would mend a thumbscrew.

On the other hand, I do believe in the family; therefore I would mend the family as I would mend a chair; and I will never deny for a moment that the modern family is a chair that wants mending. But here comes in the essential point about the mass of modern advanced sociologists. Here are two institutions that have always been fundamental with mankind, the family and the state. ... Socialists are specially engaged in mending (that is, strengthening and renewing) the state; and they are not specially engaged in strengthening and renewing the family.

They are not doing anything to define the functions of father, mother, and child, as such; they are not tightening the machine up again; they are not blackening in again the fading lines of the old drawing.

With the state they are doing this; they are sharpening its machinery, they are blackening in its black dogmatic lines, they are making mere government in every way stronger and in some ways harsher than before."

G.K. Chesterton What's Wrong with the World

2005-04-30T13:39:00.000+01:00

Ahimsa, you might be interested in the Ask Gandhi site, which has quotations from him nicely organised as questions and answers.

Here is his statement about ahimsa

Welcome

2005-04-30T11:47:00.000+01:00

Greetings. After chatting with Andrew about blogs, I thought why not start my own straight away and learn by experimentation. It took about ten minutes to set up and costs me nothing (I have yet to find out if this implies I must put up with ads on my blog site ...)

Wow, my first blog!

UZIMA is the Swahili word for wholeness / vigour / life / vitality / maturity / perfection...