My new favorite song...

Last nights concert was exceptional for many reasons. One of them was the much anticipated performance of Alexisonfire. The song "The Northern" performed in their inimitable style was a definate highlight. Here is an interesting acoustic version of it. I think there are some pretty fascinating messages behind this adaptation of this old spiritual...

God is in our Brain

So Lionel Tiger says (basically) that God is a creation of our brain. Religion is essentially beneficial to humanity because of the effect that it produces on the neurochemistry of the brain. He contends that people like Dawkins are silly to argue against religion since about 90% of human population finds religion to be beneficial. What Tiger is forced to admit that this in no way can definitively prove or disprove the existence of God. He contends that whether God exists or not the brain is uniquely structured to produce and interact with religion.

This is good news on several accounts:

1. Atheist claims that the belief in God is a less evolved and therefore evidence of a less developed intellect is greatly unsubstantiated. In other words, just because you believe in something doesn’t make you a less intelligent being.

2. Any rigidity (dogmatism) about the nature and content of faith must be challenged against the knowledge of central role that the brain plays in producing religious content.

3. Vital importance can be placed in how religious discourse can inform the common values that will enable greater harmony and peace in humanity.

Of course many will be concerned that this claim only serves to limit God to the manufacturing process of our cerebral cortex. This is a narrow view of this important work. Instead it can hopefully provide an impetus to explore the mysteries of the brain in order to better understand the interaction between the divine and humanity…

Here is an interview on the Current if you are interested…

 

God's Brain: Amazon.ca: Lionel Tiger: Books

Public money to be spent to support Christian project?

Here’s the story:

Winnipeg youth centre run by evangelical Christians wins federal, city funding - Winnipeg Free Press

What do you figure?

Placebos and Antidepressants

 

Please understand that I mean no disrespect to anyone for whom psychoactive drugs are a part of their regimen. This article does not deny that these drugs work but I think it is worth a look. There is a related article in reaction to these findings from a doctor so take it as you like…

Why Antidepressants Are No Better Than Placebos - Newsweek.com

Dangers of the Luddite Resistance

I share a kindred spirit with the luddite approach to the ever expanding technologies in our society. I resonate strongly with the arguments about how emerging technologies are changing our social world (usually for the worse). There are numerous critiques of the impact that these new media have on our cultural frame. The most compelling of these is the problem of an alienated self in a virtual context producing inauthentic communication between subjects. Of course there are significant questions about how use of technology interferes with safety and health (i.e. radio towers and texting while driving). But these more symptomatic problems only mask the larger questions:

How is morality affected when individuals’ main interaction is in virtual formats? Is there any way to mediate the multiple representations that can potentially emerge in these virtual social frames? What are the consequences for transgressions which occur in this virtual reality?

These questions beg answers because by definition the representation that occurs within these media is seen to be a less complete form of reality than pre-technological interactions. One of the natural impulses that surfaces is the luddite sentiment that suggests that new technologies be abandoned to avoid the encroachment of these technologies on more authentic forms of representation. The argument runs this way: Avoid technologies and return to or maintain your authenticity. This argument assumes that there is, in the least a more true version of yourself (the subject) that is achieved without the use of new media forms. But this premise is only supported rhetorically and not logically. It is clear that falsification of personality is possible in any form of interactive representation.

“But,” the critics say, “what is more real? The person on facebook or the person that I sit down for coffee with at Tim Horton’s?” This seems like a legitimate challenge and suggests that the interaction of individuals within each other’s presence is more real. But the question itself is silly. Reality is the perception of a representation. This makes reality a fiction. Fortunately, it is a fiction that we can rely on with a great deal of confidence most of the time. This is not really a problematic premise until one claims that something is more real than something else. This premise (that reality is a fiction that we can have confidence in) also allows us a helpful way to solve our problem about technology.

Using this idea we can argue that a facebook personality can be just as real or unreal (authenticity) as a personally present interaction. This is true because nothing is anymore real than it is perceived to be. Of course people can misrepresent themselves on Facebook but then they can do that in person as well. The level of authenticity is left up to the person viewing the interaction. Its about our perception. So if Facebook is not any more or less real than ‘face to face’ conversations, we can turn to other ways to evaluate the role of new media in our social frames. But let’s leave that there for now.

One of the things that we can say about reality is that it functions well. That is to say that reality works and is useful. This is what allows us to live out our days in relative bliss. We ‘know’ that whatever happens in the kettle produces perceptible steam and when poured over ground coffee produces a delicious beverage. We call what happens in the kettle – boiling. Boiling is real to us because it works. From this perspective we can say some interesting things about new media. Interaction on Facebook is real because it is used (primarily as a communication tool although Farmville might be a close second) and because it is used it shapes our perception of reality. Facebook then becomes part of the perception of reality and intrinsic to it. Facebook, twitter and the like are ubiquitous in society and so have come to be significant factors relied on as useful in social interaction. To not be using Facebook then means that one is choosing to disengage from a significant tool of perception used in the public social sphere to produce reality. The argument then can be made that this disengagement is in fact an appeal to less reliable construction of reality since it is avoiding a prominent tool used to perceive reality by society.

What we can and should be doing is seeking to understand the ways that these new media inform our perceptions of reality so as to be able to participate more fully in the prevailing discourse that exists in our social frame. This begins with careful critique of the dynamics of morality, disclosure, identity construction, subjectivity, rapidity of information as produced in the systems that these emerge from these media. This could not be more relevant than to those who would seek to influence the rhetoric that runs through our society. Teachers, clergy, politicians and journalists are obligated to be present in these media or risk losing opportunity to contribute to the frames of our culture.

I return to my sentiments at the beginning. I lament the perceived changes produced by these new media forms. But I must acknowledge that these laments are perhaps my sense of loss of the exercise of power that once was available through the older forms of interaction. It is like learning a new language. In the old language there was an ability to persuade but now with new vocabulary and new sentence structure I must learn to make meaning in different ways. I must relinquish my claim on authority (which I must admit I am uncomfortable with –even if it was my own deluded sense of authority). I can choose to keep on speaking my old tongue and I will certainly get by but I will be a reduced person unless I can master the new language to regain my former identity.

I am open to critique since there is a strong underlying sentiment to reinforce my luddite sympathies. There likely is flaw in all this mess so wail away…

Here is an interesting experiment that was conducted along this vein.

Journalists perform Big Brother media experiment | Science & Technology | Deutsche Welle | 01.02.2010

CBC’s Q radio program interviewed Janic Tremblay – it was a provocative interview – i hope they post it soon. I will link to it if I see it come up…

Watching the Super Bowl with Stanley Milgram

As you all cuddle up to your favourite television set, eager to inhale the vacuous advertising goo (‘cause let’s face it we really are not that interested in the actual game being played), perhaps these three short videos will provide a cunning foil to the event’s delicious advertising candy.

Stanley Milgram preformed some experiments back in the early 60’s where he tested participants willingness to obey objectives even at the risk of delivering deadly shocks to other people.

It should not be lost on us that Milgram’s parents were Jewish survivors of the Nazi death camps. While this study has since received substantial criticism for its ethical standards it is nonetheless a phenomenal study of human capacity for obedience.

Given the right set of conditions people, it seems will obey the authorities in their lives. It might be surprising that this is a common feature of human nature. It certainly raises significant issues of about the way we construct morality and how free will functions practically in the realm of everyday functions.

But perhaps the most stunning revelation that this experiment illuminates is the underlying tendency for us to obey. It seems if we can somehow defer responsibility away from ourselves we are can rationalize some pretty horrific actions.

So when those commercial dance and sparkle in front of us – will we allow their authority activate our obedience? Will we defer our responsibility for our participation in the evils of consumerism to some other higher authority or will we take our own finger off the switch that decapitates our world?

The Value of Nothing

Consider this…

Driving to school today I listened to this interview with Raj Patel (scroll down to “The Value of Nothing” section and listen to the whole interview). Listening to this interview made me think about the confession that I made in the previous post.

Patel’s premise is this: we have come to understand the value of something to be equal to the price we pay for it. On the surface this seems like a reasonable premise. We buy two burgers for 4 dollars at A&W and think we are getting great value because these two items are priced so cheaply. But we do not give even a thought about the costs that are hidden in producing those two burgers. The fact for instance that we can have fresh tomatoes on those burgers means that there are people around the world who necessarily work as indentured slaves to pick those tomatoes. The cost of those burgers also does not include the cost that eating those burgers has on our health – and subsequently our health care system and our ‘productivity’ as employees. These costs are born out in ways that we have come to ignore.

Think about this question: Is the work of raising children valuable to society? Few would say no. Yet where in the capitalist system is that work incorporated into the price of what we pay for things? In fact the trend still exists to pay women less for work of equal value and to limit their ability to access the same the type of jobs due largely to the fact that they (women) are mostly asked to be the ones to raise children. Yet we have a climate as Patel suggests where the singular factor that controls our sense of worth is the price (wage) that is achievable by an individual. It is impossible to get away from this notion. The prevailing notion that drives our social system (especially in Western society) is that price = value. What this does is marginalize every other tool that is available to measure worth.

Is the ability to bear children valuable to us? Absolutely! But when was the last time you heard someone talk about the value of a womb or the value of the time required to effectively parent a child.

Perhaps it is time to take a grim look into how we fix value in our world. Maybe its time to revisit the tools Jesus used to measure the value of things and to forsake our pre-occupation with price… 

Raj Patel » Blog Archive » The Value of Nothing

For Facebook readers please visit my blog site using the link at the bottom of this post to view the video included in this post.

In case you were wondering the today the CBC did not run a story on Haiti as its headline news…

Repentance

Haiti, I mourn your loss. I grieve your pain.

My television shows me the scars on your body but it can not convey the deadly toll this takes on your emotional, and mental well-being. Haiti, your fatherless daughters and motherless sons are wailing in my ears but I can conveniently shut them off with click from my remote in my well-worn chair. Haiti, your broken bones and amputated bodies are a fabulous spectacle that keeps me wrapped in undivided attention till I find some other distraction. There is nothing I can do to conjure up how your amputated spirit must be writhing in pain – without anaesthetic!

Yet I see you dancing and singing in the streets – foolish resilience it would seem. I have heard some say that you deserved the devastation brought upon you – for your Godlessness. God’s judgement they claim. Yet you sing and praise this God in ways few expected. Please forgive those arrogant remarks for we in our own Godlessness should have summoned the unleashed gates of hell itself upon us compared to your contrite heart.

A man said today that earthquakes do not kill but buildings do. The buildings you built were the best you could afford but they weren’t the best that could have been built. Haiti, your international debt was so staggering that your government was powerless to enforce the proper building codes. It was a puppet of the ‘global’ interests of large multi-national corporations. These corporations came in to your country and demanded cheap labour from you because you were so deeply indebted to them and their ‘monetary fund’. So you worked for them for less than $2 a day.

You worked cheap for them so that I could buy a $10 T-shirt at Walmart to cover my obesity. You worked cheap to harvest bananas so that I could eat ripe ones on any day of the week in January. In fact the bananas that you wanted to buy from your own farms were more expensive than the ones from Delmonte. So you bought their bananas instead of the ones your neighbour grew. You even cleaned up your beaches to let my countrymen come and play on them. You cleaned up your women so that they could sleep with them as well – for cheap. You let these big companies build extravagant resorts so that my fellow countrymen could play there – indulge there. You got to go to these hotels as well to clean up after our indulgences. And then you got stuck there. Barely able to eek out a living you fought your friends for the ‘best’ jobs. And your life became dependant on our desire to visit your beautiful island. Your good fortune was married to our whim.

So you did not have the money to build the kind of houses they build in LA that can withstand the shaking of the ground. No one even suggested that a better way to build your homes, your country and your nation might be available. Now you scramble to find a tent to live in under the blazing sun and unrelenting rain.

I am your disaster. I am the cause of your demise. The earth shook but I was the one responsible for your pain. My greed. My consumption. My ignorance. My indifference. My oversight. My quest for pleasure. I am the force that crushed your mother. I am the reason your sons are gone.

Please forgive me.

I repent of my gluttony and I confess my obsession with consuming. I look down the long list of things that mark the entries of my Mastercard bill and I am ashamed to tell you that last week I spent $4 on two hamburgers for myself. I see how corrupt I have become and the pain I have caused you without even really intending to. I swear to you and the God we plead to for help that I will change. I will root out the spectre of consumption in my life. My monthly statements will be different.

Please, Haiti, do not hold hatred in your heart for me or my fellow countrymen. We did not intend harm to you. And we are starting to see our own hearts in the light of your tragedy and in the light of the great Master who once said, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness! No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.”

I pray someday your nation will be restored.

Ghosts in the mist…

There are capsules of memory that exist where people used to dwell. They have gone and we play in the haunted caves of their mannerisms and personalities. We’re convinced that they left some unfinished business that we determine to reclaim in our recollective spelunking. So we play with their ghosts in the dark caverns of memory – we dance with them, we chase them furiously, wrestle and pin them to the ground (we finally can pin them to the ground – take that), we smile at them furtively and pretend not to notice. All the while we play the game that seems to appease our conscience – recovering what they have left undone. If we can discover and fulfill their discarded destinies than perhaps the reality that we are alive and they are not is somehow justified.

He would have wanted it this way…

She always kept a rose garden in the back…

He was always telling jokes…

We hang on to them by giving them some incompletion. We drag them with us through our own insufficiencies. Ghosts on a leash. So then goodbye seems cruel and disrespectful. Move on – let go – they tell us. Impossible.

Tonight I walk in this rare Alberta fog with my ghosts and the mist on my face is enough…

Tonight the ghosts are easily recognized…

Friends with shining faces so clear in this dark cave…

Greetings are warm and familiar…

But the cave is crowded tonight…

Tonight I take up a mantel that has slid low on my shoulders…

Tonight life is heavier and more determined…

Tonight thousands of faceless unfinished lives are scurrying around in the cave…

Religious Discourse of Disaster

The story goes like this: A Christian couple landed in Port au Prince just hours before the earthquake. They were delayed at the airport and did not reach their hotel before the devastation began. This was a good thing for them – the hotel was destroyed in the quake. Had they been in the hotel at the time they would have surely been dead along with everyone else in the hotel. So what do you say about this? A case for God’s intervention in their lives?

There have been a number of times that I have heard these sort of comments made about these type of events. Had events carried out as they should have circumstances would have indicated a much more disagreeable result. But because events occurred in the manner that they did – there is an attribution to God’s intervention in the situation to produce a different result than should have occurred. Terms like miraculous are attached to these type of situations.

It occurred to me that when we speak of events like this using this type of language we accept a particular discourse about the nature of God and the privilege that is experienced by certain kinds of people – in this case Christians.

Take in account that in the same earthquake a prison holding over 4000 rapists, murders, and thieves was struck. the quake killed some of the inmates but most found the destruction the perfect opportunity to escape the prison. So did God intervene here as well? Was this not also a miracle?

Haiti Earthquake News: Main Prison Destroyed, 4,000 Prisoners Escape - Crimesider - CBS News

Now I have no particular contention with idea that God might be in the business of picking certain people to benefit from avoiding disaster or calamity. There is ample scriptural evidence that could support such a claim – especially if one is interested in using the classic proof-texting methodology. There are other verses similarly isolated which tell us that rain and sunshine fall on the just and unjust equally. If we put claims God’s specific intervention in particular cases, what does that tell us about who we believe God to be? But as interesting as that question might be to debate it is not nearly as revealing as the questions that arise around our use of terminology like miracle, or intervention in these types of cases.

Setting aside the debates about the nature of God, it occurs to me that our use of this terminology tell us something important about how we construct notions of privilege. I contend that we are engaging in a powerful discursive exercise (often without really being aware of it).

It is interesting that we would not refer to the new found freedom of the inmates to be the hand of God at work while we would attach that provision to the Christian couple whose airport delay was their greatest fortune. The discourse paints one group as able to access the benefit from God’s hand while the other group does not have that same access. Consider that the held belief is that none should perish and that by sparing these inmates from destruction God gave them an extension on their opportunity to avoid damnation. Salvation was offered to them. Is that also not a miracle? That is tricky business…

The couple on the other hand receives by our judgement the mercy of God on their lives with an easy and natural assessment. Their story of good fortune is God at work but the prisoners do not get that label – at least not so easily.

I wonder if this does not actually reveal some of the more dangerous parts of religious arrogance that we all too easily fall into. Do statements like these actually belie some unspoken assumptions about the deserving nature of the type of people who might be awarded God’s favour? Do we actually think – for instance – that Christians in this disaster had more of an advantage of being spared than those who did not follow Christ? And that is only the surface, I suspect if we were courageous enough we might reveal some of the same power laden colonial attitudes that characterize our Western sense of privilege but that might not be very comfortable for us to swallow.

So let’s open up our wallets and dump some cash to ease our guilt and sympathy – but keep enough to go see that latest animated flick that has really cool religious overtones…