Musings on the politics of youth work, community work and society at large – dedicated to the memory of Steve Waterhouse and Malcolm Ball, great youth workers, comrades and human beings
As a break from my usual ramblings on the state of the world but not at all at odds with its philosophy, enjoy this brief extract of the quartet, ‘ΤΕΤΡΑΗΧΟ”, playing in the picturesque village of Pollirinia on Crete back in July 2023. I’ve been privileged to hear them breaking boundaries with this unusual combination of instruments and styles. My dear friend, Maria, an outstanding jazz violinist brought together two great figures from the Cretan violin tradition in Michalis and Markos, together with the outstanding lute player, Kiriakos to explore and improvise without any guarantees of whether it would work. The outcome was a joyous, anarchic celebration of intimate music-making founded on listening, always listening to one another. You should have heard their exuberant version of a Brahms Hungarian Dance! It exuded a love of humanity, a mutual affection, which more than ever we need to defend. I’m still trying to ascertain who won the children’s running race taking place in the background! Kids!
It is many years since I read any Edgar Morin and then only in second-hand summaries. It may be my ignorance but he has never seemed as fashionable as the likes of Foucault or Derrida. He describes himself as in fact an anthropologist, in the old sense of the term, exploring the interconnection of all knowledge about man. He notes, ‘This has led me to a transdisciplinary approach’. Born Edgar Nahoum; 8 July 1921 he continues to ponder, 102 years young. I tripped over this stimulating piece published in La Monde only a few weeks ago, courtesy of MoneyCircus, a dissident blogger I follow.
Thanks to lavoz.com.ar
‘The Progress of Knowledge Has Led to a Regression of Thought’
Midnight in the century
When Victor Serge published the novel with this title in 1939, the year of the German-Soviet pact and the dismemberment of Poland, it was indeed midnight and an irrevocable night was about to thicken and extend for five years.
Isn’t it midnight now in our century? Two wars are ongoing. The war in Ukraine has already mobilized economic and military aid from a part of the world, with radicalization and a risk of widening the conflict. Russia has not managed to annex Ukraine, but it maintains its presence in the previously separatist Russophone regions. The blockade has partially weakened it, but it has also stimulated its scientific and technical development, especially in the military field. This war has already had considerable consequences: the variously advanced autonomization of the South with respect to the West and the tightening of a Russia-China bloc.
A new warfront has ignited in the Middle East following the massacre committed by Hamas on October 7, 2023, followed by Israel’s deadly bombing of Gaza. These massacres, accompanied by persecutions in the West Bank and annexationist declarations, have reawakened the dormant Palestinian issue. They have shown both the urgency, the necessity, and the impossibility of a decolonization of what remains of Arab Palestine and the creation of a Palestinian state.
As no pressure is, or will be, exerted on Israel to arrive at a two-state solution, only an aggravation, even an expansion of this terrible conflict can be predicted. It’s a tragic lesson of history: the descendants of a people persecuted for centuries by the Christian, then racist, West, can become both persecutors and the advanced bastion of the West in the Arab world.
Thought has become blind
These wars worsen the conjunction of crises that strike nations, fueled by the virulent antagonism between three empires: the United States, Russia, and China. The crises feed on each other in a sort of polycrisis—ecological, economic, political, social, civilizational—and it is escalating.
Ecological degradation affects human societies through urban and rural pollution, with the latter exacerbated by industrial agriculture. The hegemony of uncontrolled profit (a major cause of the ecological crisis) increases inequalities within each nation and across the entire planet. The qualities of our civilization have deteriorated and its deficiencies have increased, notably in the spread of selfishness and the disappearance of traditional solidarities.
Democracy is in crisis on every continent: it is increasingly being replaced by authoritarian regimes, which, by having the means of computerized control over populations and individuals, tend to form societies of submission that could be called neo-totalitarian. Globalization has created no solidarity and the united Nations are increasingly disunited.
This paradoxical situation fits into a global paradox inherent to humanity. Prodigious technological and scientific progress in all areas is the cause of the worst regressions of our century. It enabled the scientific organization of the Auschwitz extermination camp; it made possible the design and manufacture of the most destructive weapons, including the first atomic bomb; it makes wars increasingly deadly; driven by the thirst for profit, it has created the planetary ecological crisis.
Though difficult to conceive, we must realize that the progress of knowledge, through themultiplication and mutual separation of disciplines, has caused a regression of thought, which in fact has become blind. Linked to a dominance of calculation in an increasingly technocratic world, the progress of knowledge is unable to conceive the complexity of reality, especially human realities. This leads to a return of dogmatisms and fanaticisms, as well as a crisis of morality with the unleashing of hatreds and idolatries.
The absence of hope
We are heading towards probable catastrophes. Is this catastrophism? This word exorcises evil and gives an illusory serenity. The polycrisis we are experiencing across the planet is an anthropological crisis: it is the crisis of humanity failing to become Humanity.
There was a time – not so long ago – when a change of course could be envisioned. It seems now that it is too late. Certainly, the improbable and especially the unforeseen can happen. We do not know if the global situation is only desperate [désespérante] or truly hopeless [désespérée]. This means that we must, with or without hope, with or without despair, move on to Resistance. The word irresistibly evokes the resistance of the years of the German occupation (1940-1945), whose very modest beginnings were made difficult by the absence of a foreseeable hope after the defeat of 1940.
The absence of foreseeable hope is similar in our own times, but the conditions are different. We are not currently under an enemy military occupation: we are dominated by formidable political and economic powers and threatened by the establishment of a society of submission. We are doomed to suffer the struggle between two imperialist giants and the possible warlike eruption of the third. We are being dragged into a race towards disaster.
Fellowship, life, and love
The first and fundamental resistance is that of the spirit. It requires resisting the intimidation of every lie asserted as truth, the contagion of every collective intoxication. It requires never yielding to the delirium of the collective responsibility of a people or an ethnicity. It demands resisting hatred and contempt. It prescribes the concern to understand the complexity of problems and phenomena rather than yielding to a partial or unilateral vision. It requires research, verification of information, and acceptance of uncertainties.
Resistance would also involve the safeguarding or creation of oases of (agroecological) communities with relative autonomy and networks of social and economic solidarity. It would also suppose the coordination of associations devoted to solidarity and the refusal of hatreds. Resistance would prepare younger generations to think and act for the forces of union of fellowship, life, and love that we can conceive under the name of Eros, and against the forces of dislocation, disintegration, conflict, and death that we can conceive under the names of Polemos and Thanatos [war and death].
It is the union, within our beings, of the powers of Eros and those of the awakened and responsible spirit that will nourish our resistance to subjugations, ignominies, and lies. The tunnels are not endless, the probable is not the certain, and the unexpected is always possible.
When I was about 8 years old my primary school teacher, frustrated by my reluctance to enter, pushed me into the pool at the town’s Baths. I thought I was going to drown but my fellow pupils came to the rescue. How could she have done this? What callousness! Or so the story goes. In truth I’m not sure the incident ever happened. However, I’ve told the tale so many times, often embellished, that I’ve come to believe it. Why the need for this dubious childhood anecdote? Certainly it has served to excuse my genuine fear of putting my head under water. Friends who have sought to teach me to swim can attest to my frenzied splashing in protest. Indeed it appears to explain my life-long struggle to stifle frightening dreams, within which I experience being suffocated, physically with a pillow, or psychologically by guilt, having betrayed my beliefs or people dear to me. I awake dramatically, fighting for my breath. By and large I deal with this, park the neurosis in its place. And then again, perhaps not.
For over the last four years, in particular, I have felt suffocated, drowning in an unrelenting deluge of information, opinion, analysis and gossip. I experience being in a state of alternative asphyxia. It is not that I am starved of the oxygen of ideas, rather I gorge, I binge compulsively on their 24/7 availability. Some sort of diet beckons.
This self-indulgent, breathless cry for relief from the day-to-day assault on my senses inflicted by the media of whatever ilk is very much personal. It is not to be taken in any way as an argument against the widest possible array of views being out there and accessible. I oppose censorship, the suppression of opinion, most of all when I disagree even vehemently with such speculation. I stand against authoritarianism, whether dressed in the cloak of the Left, Centre or Right. Obviously I have no time for the manufactured categories of mis and disinformation through which the powerful seek to silence criticism and opposition. Plainly the charge of misinformation is directed principally at those who question the dominant narrative. It is applied to those who desire to make public what the ruling class wishes to remain private. According to the ever suave Barack Obama, I’m severely mistaken. I’m sinking into the ‘raw sewage’ pumped into the public square by the alternative media. Thus, misled, he opines it’s no wonder I’ve lost faith in society’s politicians, institutions and media and in doing so I represent a disturbing threat – let’s not mince his words – to the future of humankind. Given this apocalyptic charge, it’s no surprise that the 2024 World Economic Forum in Davos is deeply bothered about my dissidence.
In his opening remarks to the conference of the great and good, Klaus Schwab, its founder and chair expressed his concern – “We must rebuild trust – trust in the future, trust in our capacity to overcome challenges and, most importantly, trust in each other.” In order to win back my undying support the elite will continue to encourage the creation of an armoury of so-called ‘independent’ disinformation agencies, funded by a mix of private and public sources. For example the European Union has “a network of anti-disinformation hubs that are part of the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), the independent platform for fact-checkers, academic researchers and other relevant stakeholders contributing to addressing disinformation in Europe”. Forgive the obvious but there is not the faintest scent of humility in these manoeuvrings, the slightest nod of recognition that their arrogant and authoritarian programme of propaganda and restriction might have something to do with our mistrust of their motives.
In the UK’s recently passed ‘Online Safety Bill’ you can see how the government intends to win back our trust. Section 179 section makes it illegal to publish false information with intent to cause harm…..
…..but Section 180 exempts all Mainstream Media outlets from this new law!
Of course I might not be seeing the wall for the bricks but this suggests strongly that the MSM are explicitly permitted to “knowingly publish false information with intent to cause non-trivial harm”. Yet you or I can be imprisoned for a year for committing a criminal act in drawing attention to their conscious deceit. A touch topsy-turvy!
Hence, for my part, I will not be intimidated into accepting the powerful’s rule over what I think or believe. Perhaps you might think me simple but, on a day-to-day basis, I will proceed on the basis of receiving, reading and thinking about information. It will be whatever it is, a product of those who put it together, informed by their expertise or lack of it, their integrity, their prejudices, their beliefs and so on. It is my job as the aspiring, thoughtful citizen of Aristotle’s imagination to interpret and judge what I am told to the best of my faculties. Certainly such an ability, as far as it goes in my case, is born of a splicing of political activism with professional education and a measure of involvement in academia. At my most pretentious I fancied myself as one of Gramsci’s organic intellectuals.
Thanks to avanti.it
In this context, summed up in the world of youth and community work [YCW] work, within which I laboured, as the desire to be a critically reflective practitioner, I didn’t expect to be so isolated as the COVID manufactured melodrama unfolded. I remain perplexed at the extent to which the professional class, including its YCW members, embraced and colluded uncritically with an unevidenced and unethical regime of societal restriction. An emergency was asserted but never proven. Fear provided its justification. Naively, I thought such authoritarianism would spark resistance. In retrospect, I failed to recognise how deeply behaviourism, its apparatus of preordained scripts, prescribed targets and imposed outcomes, was embedded in the professional psyche – not least in work with young people.This acceptance of a discourse of certainty about the correctness of our data-driven, objective models, the righteousness of our impact, the benificence of our worthy goals, spilled over into life as a whole. And, as far as I can see, practitioners remain in denial as to what they were up to. No more than fleeting research confirms that masking, social distancing [made up on the back of a cigarette packet], the closure of children’s and young people’s provision were harmful and unnecessary. I await the National Youth Agency even shyly allowing it was a touch over the top, even as it bemoans a deterioration in young people’s mental health. Evidently it was the virus ‘wot dun it’ not the conscious application by practitioners of draconian social policy. Perhaps, though I’m too harsh, even the much revered Noam Chomsky, ‘an intellectual superstar’, according to the Guardian, succumbed utterly to the smear that the unvaccinated were dangerous and irresponsible, arguing that they should be ‘isolated’.
Ironically and thankfully, Chomsky along with much of the Left recovered his balance as the seemingly endless tragedy of Gaza erupted, as genocide stared us in the face. Almost overnight we rediscovered our ‘instinctive mistrust of the state’, of careerist and opportunist politicians, of undemocratic, unelected bodies of experts. In particular, perhaps, having swallowed whole the COVID propaganda spewing from the mass media, we remembered belatedly our relentless and scathing critique of the bourgeois press, which goes back at least in academic and activist circles to 1974 and the creation of the Glasgow Media Group.
Enough is enough. I’ve peddled this perspective before without reaction, which is fair enough. Who on earth am I? My insignificance acknowledged, it does mean therefore that I must take a deep breath about my suffocating immersion in the currents of available opinion. It is extraordinary but I’m ‘sut on mi bum’ to use a Lancashire expression more than ever in my whole life. True, I still drag myself out more or less every day to indulge the narcotic of my lingering athletic obsession. I persuade myself I feel better for having done it. Yet, outside this hour or so of exertion, I’m sometimes spending up to eight hours hunched over the laptop in a pompous search for the Holy Grail containing ‘the Truth’! Inevitably it’s always just out of reach. I need a break from this self-inflicted imprisonment.
To cut my usual ramble short I’m determined to work out a fresh approach in my declining days. I need to get out more as the saying goes.
I won’t abandon Chatting Critically but, in addition to my occasional originals, I want to use it more as a conduit to challenging thinkers and activists who you might not trip over. In doing so I’ve already culled the number of people I’ve been following because I can’t keep up. A future post will single out blogs and websites, which continue to stimulate me. You might well shake your head at my choices. On the ground I remain committed to our local Chatting Critically group.
I shall spend more time on a project to record the history of the Lancashire Walking Club , of which I am a life member. It gives me pleasure, believe it or not, to do so.
I am close to giving up on even being the In Defence of Youth Work [IDYW] archivist, the initiative of which I was once coordinator. Few seem interested. To all appearances its open-ended philosophy has been defeated – see the inanities of its supposed Facebook page, which ought to be closed out of respect to IDYW’s corpse.
I’m going to ramble and cycle as I wish without feeling the need to rush back home.
I’m going to spend more time singing and becoming musically literate.
I’m going to spend more time musing for the sake of musing in our village kafeneion.
I cannot promise but I ought to improve my Greek.
On reading this afresh it ends up looking like a belated set of New Year’s resolutions. Given my past track record in keeping to such sensible proposals as cutting down on the village wine, the omens are not promising. We will see.
Tony Taylor
To end positively, let me introduce you to the writings of W.D. James, who teaches philosophy in Kentucky, USA and his substack Philosopher’s Holler
He explains:
Egalitarian Anti-Modernist philosophical ruminations on our contemporary conundrums. In my native dialect, a ‘holler’ can refer to a hollow (empty space), a yell, or a work song.
I’m thinking my way through our current times and I tend to do that by digging into the ‘classics’ of Westen political philosophy to see what light they can shine on the contemporary moment.
My basic stance is characterized by:
Anti-Modernism
Anti-Globalism
Deep respect for pre-modern wisdom traditions, including religious traditions
Liberty
Defense of the opportunity for a good life for everyone
A critique of the modern state
Grounding in nature/reality, intellectually, morally, and existentially
For my part, TT speaking, I would recommend you download and dip into the free pdf, Egalitarian Anti-Modernism
CONTENTS Foreword by Paul Cudenec Part 1: Was Jerusalem Builded Here? Part 2: Jean-Jacques Against the Pathologies of Civilization Part 3: Rousseau and the Evils of Inequality Part 4: Rousseau’s Revival Part 5: William Morris and the Political Economy of Beauty Part 6: William Morris – Dreaming of Justice and of Home Part 7: What is Wrong With the World? Part 8: Chesterton Against Servility Part 9: Catastrophe Part 10: Egalitarian Anti-Modernism and the Contemporary Political Landscape
I enjoyed and was challenged by its content and argument, given that for a long time in my political life I believed in the inexorable relationship between progress and the continual development of the productive forces. I’m less confident nowadays.
As an antidote to what some might see as a lapse into ahistorical sentimentality from an avowed irreconcilable atheist – my previous post, Bah Humbug – I recommend viewing this powerful video or reading the transcript of the pastor’s sermon. His impassioned call transcends religious and secular divides. It is a heart-rending appeal to our shared, common humanity.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. The copy may not be in its final form.
REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: Christ Under the Rubble.
We are angry. We are broken. This should have been a time of joy; instead, we are mourning. We are fearful.
More than 20,000 killed. Thousands are still under the rubble. Close to 9,000 children killed in the most brutal ways, day after day. One-point-nine million displaced. Hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed. Gaza as we know it no longer exists. This is an annihilation. This is a genocide.
The world is watching. Churches are watching. The people of Gaza are sending live images of their own execution. Maybe the world cares. But it goes on.
We are asking here: Could this be our fate in Bethlehem? In Ramallah? In Jenin? Is this our destiny, too?
We are tormented by the silence of the world. Leaders of the so-called free lined up one after the other to give the green light for this genocide against a captive population. They gave the cover. Not only did they make sure to pay the bill in advance, they veiled the truth and context, providing the political cover. And yet another layer has been added: the theological cover, with the Western church stepping into the spotlight.
Our dear friends in South Africa taught us the concept of the “state theology,” defined as “the theological justification of the status quo with its racism, capitalism and totalitarianism.” It does so by misusing theological concepts and biblical texts for its own political purposes.
Here in Palestine, the Bible is weaponized against us — our very own sacred text. In our terminology in Palestine, we speak of the empire. Here we confront the theology of the empire, a disguise for superiority, supremacy, chosenness and entitlement. It is sometimes given a nice cover, using words like “mission” and “evangelism,” “fulfillment of prophecy,” and “spreading freedom and liberty.”
The theology of the empire becomes a powerful tool to mask oppression under the cloak of divine sanction. It speaks of land without people. It divides people into “us” and “them.” It dehumanizes and demonizes. The concept of land without people, again, even though they knew too well that the land had people — and not just any people, a very special people. Theology of the empire calls for emptying Gaza, just like it called for the ethnic cleansing in 1948, a “miracle,” or “a divine miracle,” as they called it. It calls for us Palestinians now to go to Egypt, maybe Jordan. Why not just the sea?
I think of the words of the disciples to Jesus when he was about to enter Samaria: “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” they said of the Samaritans. This is the theology of the empire. This is what they’re saying about us today.
This war has confirmed to us that the world does not see us as equal. Maybe it’s the color of our skins. Maybe it is because we are on the wrong side of a political equation. Even our kinship in Christ did not shield us. So they say if it takes killing 100 Palestinians to get a single “Hamas militant,” then so be it. We are not humans in their eyes. But in God’s eyes, no one can tell us that.
The hypocrisy and racism of the Western world is transparent and appalling. They always take the word of Palestinians with suspicion and qualification. No, we’re not treated equally. Yet, on the other side, despite a clear track record of misinformation, lies, their words are almost always deemed infallible.
To our European friends: I never ever want to hear you lecture us on human rights or international law again. And I mean this. We are not white, I guess. It does not apply to us, according to your own logic.
In this war, the many Christians in the Western world made sure the empire has the theology needed. It is thus self-defense, we were told. And I continue to ask: How is the killing of 9,000 children self-defense? How is the displacement of 1.9 million Palestinians self-defense?
In the shadow of the empire, they turned the colonizer into the victim, and the colonized into the aggressor. Have we forgotten — have we forgotten that the state they talk to, that that state was built on the ruins of the towns and villages of those very same Gazans? Have they forgot that?
We are outraged by the complicity of the church. Let it be clear, friends: Silence is complicity. And empty calls for peace without a ceasefire and end to occupation, and the shallow words of empathy without direct action, all under the banner of complicity.
So here is my message: Gaza today has become the moral compass of the world. Gaza was hell before October 7th, and the world was silent. Should we be surprised at their silence now?
If you are not appalled by what is happening in Gaza, if you are not shaken to your core, there is something wrong with your humanity. And if we, as Christians, are not outraged by the genocide, by the weaponization of the Bible to justify it, there is something wrong with our Christian witness, and we are compromising the credibility of our gospel message.
If you fail to call this a genocide, it is on you. It is a sin and a darkness you willingly embrace. Some have not even called for a ceasefire. I’m talking about churches. I feel sorry for you.
We will be OK. Despite the immense blow we have endured, we, the Palestinians, will recover. We will rise. We will stand up again from the midst of destruction, as we have always done as Palestinians, although this is by far maybe the biggest blow we have received in a long time. But we will be OK.
But for those who are complicit, I feel sorry for you. Will you ever recover from this? Your charity and your words of shock after the genocide won’t make a difference. And I know these words of shocks are coming. And I know people will give generously for charity. But your words won’t make a difference. Words of regret won’t suffice for you. And let me say it: We will not accept your apology after the genocide. What has been done has been done. I want you to look at the mirror and ask, “Where was I when Gaza was going through a genocide?” …
In these last two months, the psalms of lament have become a precious companion to us. We cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken Gaza? Why do you hide your face from Gaza?”
In our pain, anguish and lament, we have searched for God and found him under the rubble in Gaza. Jesus himself became the victim of the very same violence of the empire when he was in our land. He was tortured, crucified. He bled out as others watched. He was killed and cried out in pain, “My God, where are you?”
In Gaza today, God is under the rubble.
And in this Christmas season, as we search for Jesus, he is not to be found on the side of Rome, but our side of the wall. He’s in a cave, with a simple family, an occupied family. He’s vulnerable, barely and miraculously surviving a massacre himself. He’s among the refugees, among a refugee family. This is where Jesus is to be found today.
If Jesus were to be born today, he would be born under the rubble in Gaza. When we glorify pride and richness, Jesus is under the rubble. When we rely on power, might and weapons, Jesus is under the rubble. When we justify, rationalize and theologize the bombing of children, Jesus is under the rubble.
Jesus is under the rubble. This is his manger. He is at home with the marginalized, the suffering, the oppressed and the displaced. This is his manger.
And I have been looking and contemplating on this iconic image. God with us precisely in this way, this is the incarnation — messy, bloody, poverty. This is the incarnation.
And this child is our hope and inspiration. We look and see him in every child killed and pulled from under the rubble. While the world continues to reject the children of Gaza, Jesus says, “Just as you did to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.” “You did it to me.” Jesus not only calls them his own, he is them. He is the children of Gaza.
We look at the holy family and see them in every family displaced and wandering, now homeless in despair. While the world discusses the fate of the people of Gaza as if they are unwanted boxes in a garage, God in the Christmas narrative shares their fate. He walks with them and calls them his own.
So this manger is about resilience. It’s about sumud. And the resilience of Jesus is in his meekness, is in his weakness, is in his vulnerability. The majesty of the incarnation lies in its solidarity with the marginalized. Resilience because this is very same child who rose up from the midst of pain, destruction, darkness and death to challenge empires, to speak truth to power and deliver an everlasting victory over death and darkness. This very same child accomplished this.
This is Christmas today in Palestine, and this is the Christmas message. Christmas is not about Santas. It’s not about trees and gifts and lights. My goodness, how we have twisted the meaning of Christmas. How we have commercialized Christmas. I was, by the way, in the U.S.A. last month, the first Monday after Thanksgiving, and I was amazed by the amount of Christmas decorations and lights and all the commercial goods. And I couldn’t help but think: They send us bombs, while celebrating Christmas in their lands. They sing about the prince of peace in their land, while playing the drum of war in our land.
Christmas in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, is this manger. This is our message to the world today. It is a gospel message. It is a true and authentic Christmas message about the God who did not stay silent but said his word, and his word was Jesus. Born among the occupied and marginalized, he is in solidarity with us in our pain and brokenness.
This message is our message to the world today, and it is simply this: This genocide must stop now. Why don’t we repeat it? Stop this genocide now. Can you say it with me? Stop this genocide —
CONGREGATION: Stop this genocide now.
REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: Let’s say it one more time. Stop this genocide —
CONGREGATION: Stop this genocide now.
REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: This is our call. This is our plea. This is our prayer. Hear, O God. Amen.
In the last few months during my rambles through the undergrowth of the alternative media, I discovered a writer, W.D. James, who teaches philosophy in Kentucky, USA. He tells us that:
I’m thinking my way through our current times and I tend to do that by digging into the ‘classics’ of Westen political philosophy to see what light they can shine on the contemporary moment.
My basic stance is characterized by:
Anti-Modernism
Anti-Globalism
Deep respect for pre-modern wisdom traditions, including religious traditions
Liberty
Defense of the opportunity for a good life for everyone
A critique of the modern state
Grounding in nature/reality, intellectually, morally, and existentially
I find him accessible, challenging and entertaining. From time to time I will draw your attention to stuff of his that touches one of my fragile nerves. He can be found at https://wdjames.substack.com/
Anyway, he’s just produced a post in praise of Christmas, which caused me to scribble this comment. ‘As a curmudgeon and miserablist, I’m in shock! I loved the piece and I might well be having a Scrooge-like conversion. I might well go out and buy a Christmas Tree.’
There’ll be parties for hosting Marshmallows for toasting And caroling out in the snow There’ll be scary ghost stories And tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago
It’s the most wonderful time of the year There’ll be much mistletoeing And hearts will be glowing when loved ones are near It’s the most wonderful time of the yeari
I believe that Christmas is a magical time. It is my favorite time of the year. I love the lights, the songs, the foods, the presents, mistletoe, holly (which remains green and oddly bears fruit in the winter), Santa, reindeer, snow, elves, holiday films, and the bringing of trees indoors. I am aware that from a cynical post-everything perspective, I would be seen as a sappy sucker for my naïve appreciation of the holiday. I can only plead guilty to being sappy and to loving Christmas. I agree that it is commercialized and that capitalism perverts everything it touches. But I also believe Christmas is too resilient and in tune with the human spirit to be completely subverted.
So, below all the accoutrements listed above, what do I think Christmas is really all about? I believe it is about the promise of new life. Further, I believe it is a holiday. A Holy Day. I take it that the ‘holy’ represents an aspect of our experience where we feel the transcendent breaks into our ordinary world, shining light upon its ultimate meaning and purpose. In that sense, Christmas might just be the holy day. In what follows, I will attempt to look a little more deeply at what is holy about Christmas and also look at Christmas as a thing we do (an old expression speaks of ‘keeping Christmas’, i.e., celebrating it) which means that it is a social practice that has the power to shape us in various ways.
and closes:
Therefore, perhaps we should keep Christmas. Or, we can call it the Solstice, or Saturnalia, or Hanukkah, or Yalda, or Kwanzaa, or whatever we might term it. However that turns out, may you experience a goodly measure of peace and cooperatively bring about some goodwill this season. The main thing is that it involves a tree; the old-fashioned kind made of wood.
Sadly the links to the Charlie Brown movie don’t work but as nostalgic and heartwarming compensation, what about the 1951 version of Christmas Carol with the wonderful Alistair Sim as Scrooge?
CHATTING CRITICALLY 