A mark of bad caricature

I was browsing the BBC News site when I came across a story where Archbishop Vincent Nichols was criticizing our love affair with social networking. Despite the fact that I’m writing this on wordpress, and will probably publicize it on Facebook and Twitter, I think I partially agree with him. But that’s a discussion for another day. What was more interesting than the article itself were the comments. Lots of “the church is stuck in the past” and “social networking isn’t as harmful as organised religion” type comments, as to be expected, but there was one which particularly stood out to me:

The church in all its disguises along with government and minority groups have made sure that its breaking some law or other to even get close to another human being without paying a tax,fine or be imprisoned.

I’m sorry, what!? I just can’t begin to fathom how someone would write this and not see how sensationalist and ridiculous a comment it is! The commenter was from Ipswich, a place where I lived for 3 months and made many friendships, none of which (to my knowledge) incurred any form of monetary penalty or jail term. It’s probably indicative of just how free and easy our lives are that people feel the need to fabricate ways that the government is oppressing them, just to have something to complain about.

Also, “The church in all its disguises”!?!? When did we all become characters in a Dan Brown novel? This is one of the straw-men depictions of religion that really gets my goat. I’ll be the first to admit and point out the many mistakes that “the Church” has made, particularly in the days when it was indeed heavily institutionalized and state-controlled but things have changed, a lot, and “the Church” enjoys no real power in the realm of politics, other than being another demographic that politicians sometimes try to woo or placate for their own ends. Like the way I caricatured politicians there?

It’s the anthropomorphism that annoys me. “The Church” in this context is not a singular organism to which we can attribute intention or action. What we have is a collection of denominations, each a collection of local churches, each a collection of people with various opinions, ideas and agendas. I think painting groups of people as sinister organisations like this makes for better fiction than it does discussion.

But “the Church” is an offender as well as a victim here. I’ve seen it particularly in response to the issue of abortion. We would be led to believe that there is some sort of organisation out there that actually takes pride and joy in watching the death toll of unborn babies rise, seeing it as a marker of success in the same vein as rising stocks. It’s almost as if, at the meeting of this organisation, “the Left”, they discuss the week’s “liberal agenda” at the top of which is listed “Kill more babies”. Abortion is a complex and horrible issue, which I don’t intend to wade into here, but I think we can all agree that we don’t do anyone any favours by trying to simplify the arguments or caricature and dehumanize those on the other side of the fence.

OK, rant over!

snoozin’ for a bruisin’

by Inocuo

I’m a big fan of the snooze button on my alarm clock. I’ve cut down slightly recently, but I used to regularly enjoy about 45 mins of snooze time. For the mathematically minded, thanks to Sony Ericcson’s inexplicable 9 minute snooze, I am able to ignore my alarm 5 times every morning before finally hauling my ass out of bed. My flatmate used to ridicule me for this. “Why don’t you just set your alarm for 45 mins later?”. This makes sense – it would be nice to have 45 mins of extra actual sleep. Maybe it’s partially because I like the idea of getting up earlier than I do, and having the alarm always set early at least makes it feel like I’m trying. But I think it’s more due to the fact that I really enjoy that sort of half-asleep, half-awake state I occupy during snooze-time – it’s got all the relaxation of actually being asleep, with the added benefit of being awake enough to enjoy it.

I got a new phone at Christmas, and for the first couple of months of 2009 I decided to use the radio as my alarm clock. Instead of hitting snooze I would just lie in bed and listen to the news until I felt like getting up. It was great. I was au fait with current affairs. I heard a lot of important people say things live that I later read as quotes on BBC news. It felt good knowing the day’s events BEFORE being told by the Metro on the bus. I was familiar with everything that was being talked about on “Have I got news for you”. However, I discovered a massive downside to my new life as a conversant and switched-on young-professional – I wasn’t remembering dreams anymore. I’m not sure whether I was still having them or not, but I started to think that maybe all that snoozing allows my dreams to ferment and lodge themselves in my brain. To be fair, I’ve never really had a particularly active or interesting dream-life (unlike Joseph or MLK), but there was still something scary about thinking you aren’t dreaming at all any more.

So I switched back to the snooze routine, and the dreams have returned. And while they’re mostly just ideas for films that seem amazing at the time but make no sense in the cold light of day, it’s nice to feel more connected to my imagination. I wondered, where else might I be starving my subconscious? (or my soul?) I realised that some days, for most of the day there was some sort of signal blocking out what was going on around me – woken up by the radio, eat breakfast with BBC News 24, travel to work with iPod, work on computer all day, travel home with iPod, watch some TV, surf the internet and then go to bed to be lulled to sleep by the various buzzes and squeaks of pipes and ’sleeping’ electronic equipment. Depressing!

Obviously, this is an exaggeration but it did make me wonder what I’m missing out on. Here are 2 things I think we’re in danger of losing:

1. The art of meditation.
   I’m not talking about yoga or anything, I just mean the ability to actually think about something and process information, before it’s just replaced by another stream of input and forgotten.
2. Connection to our environment.
   The people around us on the way in to work, the sound of birds singing in the morning, the sky, and all kinds of other poetic stuff. Here’s a mewithoutYou lyric about how the natural world often has more to say for itself than all the noises and distractions we surround ourselves with.

And at the water’s edge, Babylon;
As we lay and slept,
The river wept for you, Zion!
The stones cry out,
Bells shake the sky!
All of creation groans…

SHHHH!

Listen to it!

mewithoutYou ~ ‘O Porcupine’

Admittedly, I haven’t really changed anything in my lifestyle since I started thinking about this stuff, and maybe I’ll never be motivated enough to do so. But I’m definitely learning to appreciate those surprising moments of liberation that come with a power cut or a forgotten mobile phone. I guess it’s good to be disconnected sometimes.

the view from the fence

by Duchamp

sit on the fence – to avoid committing oneself, to remain neutral

I’ve never really been the argumentative type. I suppose it stems from having quite a shy disposition, I tend to be more of an observer in discussions than an active participant. I got the nickname “Diplomatic Dave” while on holiday in South Africa because I tended not to take sides in arguments. I was quite happy with the nickname. Everyone loves diplomacy right? But recently, the joke in favour has invariably involved the fence. Sitting on it. Living on it. Getting off it. The connotations of being a fence-sitter annoy me more than those of being a diplomat. Rather than the quietly heroic negotiator that I like to imagine myself as, it implies a sort of wishy-washy, doormat with insufficient self-confidence to invest himself in a point of view, afraid to offend and pandering to the whims of the encircling opinionated. I’m well aware that there is a big part of my temperament than leans towards this caricature. I generally like to avoid conflict and try to be everyone’s mate which, to be honest, has served me well and kept me out of trouble – for example, as of last weekend I’ve officially broken up more fights than I’ve partaken in (1 – 0, if you’re keeping score!).

So is it a good thing to sit on the fence? Here is my defence as to why I have yet to de-fence myself (PUN!).

I know you are, but what am I?

I’ll admit, it can be a lot of fun to just disagree with someone and play devil’s advocate. Not only fun, but useful on many occasions, to highlight another opinion and make sure you’ve thought through the various options. In fact, arguing is really important. Academia, and therefore a lot of development and advancement, depends on it.  And even parts of my degree touched on the role of argumentation in reaching agreement (for “agents” not people, but still!). But let’s face it, alot of arguments are stupid – an attempt to establish a smug sense of superiority that only serves to further entrench two opposing viewpoints. Even arguments about light-hearted things can quickly get out of hand – “could Jesus draw a perfect circle!?”, “can Taking Back Sunday be considered a ‘hard rock’ band!?”, “is it weird to eat soft weetabix AND crunchy cereal in the same bowl!?” – all of these are banterful exchanges that I’ve seen turn into pretty vitriolic squabbles. I’d rather be sitting on fences than building new ones for no real reason.

Death from above!

The time inevitably comes when you have to get off the fence. I guess that’s the moment at which a fence-sitter reveals whether or not they actually have any backbone, and whether all this rhetoric is backed up by action. Malcolm X (thanks Google!) said “If you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything.”. I remember that quote being chucked around at various church YF meetings (though I don’t think they ever revealed the source…), along with references to Ephesians 4:14 about being “tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming”. I firmly believe this; there are some things you need to make up your mind about, and you need to be able to defend your convictions. But I hope that by choosing my battles and not getting bogged down in trivial debates, my voice might carry more weight when I actually need to make it heard. Think of the fence like the top rope in a WWE wrestling ring – sometimes precarious, but from up there you can launch some punishing acrobatic attacks, which often lead to the pin!

Few issues are black and white.

There’s a verse I really love in the book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 7 v 18  “It is good to grasp the one and not let go of the other. The man who fears God will avoid all extremes.” This really resonated with me growing up as a Christian, realising how so many issues require a balanced approach and how there are so many contrasting view points which inevitably get some things right and some things wrong – few things are really black and white (or one side of the fence vs the other). It was equally striking how often we seem to get this wrong, especially in churches, creating labels and divisions that lead to arguments, often over trivial and inconsequential things. C.S. Lewis turns this on it’s head in the Screwtape letters,  where Wormwood writes “All extremes, except extreme devotion to the Enemy, are to be encouraged”, knowing the problems and conflict likely to result from isolated, extreme positions. I find that the view from the fence makes it easier for me, personally, to “grasp one and not let go of the other”.

Maybe I should aspire to be a fence-hopper rather than a fence-sitter… and engaging a bit more with both sides of the debate instead of just observing. Feel free to disagree with me, but don’t be surprised if I just say “good point” and have done with it.