fourcultures

What have you ever learned by heart and was it worth it?

I came across a recent blog post lamenting the loss of rote learning of the Catechism in the Episcopalian Church. It seemed a fairly nostalgic piece but It got me thinking: how good was rote learning? What was the point? And so I made a quick mental list of the things I can remember remembering by heart.

Book 4 of Xenophon’s Anabasis in Greek
Mark’s Gospel in Greek
Aristophanes’ The Frogs
Various Shakespeare speeches
Keats’ Ode to Autumn
The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner (highlights)
Sketches by Monty Python (by mistake)
the lyrics of scores of pop songs, but never the second verse
various orders of worship, Christian and Buddhist
some Psalms

Was it worth it? I’m not sure. Most of these I’ve forgotten (The Frogs, for instance). Some I can’t forget (Python is a kind of brain curse). I won a prize for Keats and passed a Greek exam wih Xenophon. Some I learnt deliberately, others I just memorised without noticing – like plays I performed in , Richard II, Sergeant Musgrave’s Dance and so on.

These days kids learn things by heart because they want to. Last week I asked my daughter’s friends if they could say how many chapters there are in all seven volumes of Harry Potter. I thought that would stump them. Instead they worked it out, then recited the chapter names. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, the first sentence of each chapter. You could tell they were winging it a bit, but on the whole it was pretty impressive.

The last chapter of Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451 has haunted me since I read it. The hero, Montag, whose job has been to burn books, is on the run when he comes across a small group of outlaws who are preserving the culture through this new Dark Age. How do they do it? They have memorised small chunks of literature. Montag is told there are many such people and when they get together a whole book will coalesce in the retelling.

Me, I feel this underestimates the value of a purely oral culture, at the same time as praising a partially oral culture. But all the same, it’s a poignant scene.

So here’s my question:

what have you learnt by heart, and do you feel it has been ‘worthwhile’ (as defined by you)?

Can hierarchical thinking fix climate change?

A recent article about business responses to global warming highlights the extent to which hierarchical thinking can respond adequately to rapid changes in the climate.

And it neatly illustrates the preoccupations of a hierarchical world-view, as understood by grid-group cultural theory.

The article, written by Leon Gettler, centres on the increasing role of ‘Chief Carbon Officer’ in businesses.

‘The job of the future will be the chief carbon officer, or CCO. That’s because global warming is no longer an environmental issue.’

The author sees not only the CCO, but also new job titles like Director of Sustainability Strategy as ‘just the beginning’.

According to grid-group cultural theory, first established by anthropologist Mary Douglas, and expanded by numerous writers in several different disciplines, there are four fundamental world-views, related to social group strength and rule maintenance. The hierarchist position is ‘strong grid, strong group’. In other words it is both highly group-orientated and highly regulated. For this way of thinking, the crisis (any crisis) is less about external factors and more about who is in charge, and how the social structure is to be maintained. Continue reading Can hierarchical thinking fix climate change?

Linking Virtual Worlds

Supposedly, Australians are leaving Second Life in droves.

It seems, though, the researcher Kim MacKenzie’s words were taken out of context, and she’s fed up about the media looking for ‘Second Life is dying’ stories.

Beating the Ghost Town effect

Reading about the ghost town effect, and having experienced it myself in eery lone visits to Australian landmarks, it’s clear that Second life could have done with a few more European-style urban planners or American new urbanists on the team. They would have pointed out that endless sprawl leads not to a feeling of spaciousness but to isolation. Second Life is effectively a lesson in the pitfalls of suburban sprawl taken to its dysfunctional conclusion. To enter Second Life is the online equivalent of moving from Boston or Seattle to Phoenix, Arizona, or from London to Adelaide. It isn’t that there are no people, just that the residents are spread out over an unfeasibly large area. The ghost town effect is a direct consequence of trying to abolish the scarcity of ‘land’. The saving grace here is that it is in fact already possible to do the opposite – to recreate online the super dense urban slum, that allows maximum, if not optimum, conviviality. Second Life already contains a reconstruction of Hong Kong’s famous and no longer existing Walled City – a city quarter that was in its heyday the densest spot on earth. In SL it’s mostly empty. But In a virtual environment one can have all the benefits of density – connection, liveliness, collaboration – with none of the pitfalls – open sewers and hacked power supplies. Now all that’s needed is to lead people to that kind of space by culling the suburbs. It may seem a bit harsh for those users who prefer to camp out on their exclusive islands in splendid isolation and have no visitors, but the commercial alternative for Second Life is Second Death. Fortunately, Linden Labs is already planning to introduce zoning. It’s a start.

Linking 3D with 2D

Having said that, the real problem with all these virtual spaces is Continue reading Linking Virtual Worlds

Does ‘belief’ matter? A Coda

What is the relationship between belief and rule-keeping? Which matters more in religion? These comments follow from a previous post on this matter.

The Guardian’s Face to Faith column has an interesting comment by Geoffrey Alderman on the life of Benzion Dunner, a prominent member of London’s Orthodox Jewish community, who died earlier this year.

Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks said: “Benzion Dunner was an outstanding exemplar of Jewish values and Jewish responsibility. He was a person of exceptional chesed, much of whose work was done quietly behind the scenes and was all the more impressive for that. Our hearts go out to the members of his family, whose grief we share. His memory will endure as a source of blessing and inspiration.”

According to the Guardian article (and that’s my main source), while Dunner was very wealthy and very charitable, he was also a user of cocaine and may have died under the influence.

The question is how the community of which he was a part should respond to this. Alderman seems to think it’s sad “that practically no one among the sectarian-orthodox is prepared to condemn his behaviour”.

The issue seems to be how someone who doesn’t keep the rules is to be regarded. Is condemnation appropriate?

It seems there is more to it than merely belief or obedience. There is also belonging. This matters enormously. And in the case of Benzion Dunner, his standing in his community, not his rule-keeping, is what he is being remembered for. And this standing comes from exemplary chesed, not from perfection.

No one can be good at everything; all of us have our weak points. In this case, it seems, fatal drug-taking.

But belonging, as much as believing or obeying, may be the mark of a good, if flawed, life.

Magic needs rules

Magic requires rules. Here is what anthropologist Marcel Mauss has to say:

‘Far from being the simple expression of individual emotions, magic takes every opportunity to coerce actions and locutions. Everything is fixed and becomes precisely determined. Rules and patterns are imposed. Magical formulas are muttered or sung on one note to special rhythms …Gestures are regulated with an equally fine precision. The magician does everything in a rhythmical fashion as in dancing: and ritual rules tell him which hand or finger he should use, which foot he should step forward with. When he sits, stands up, lies down, jumps, shouts, walks in any direction, it is because it is all prescribed. Even when he is alone he is not freer than the priest at his altar… Moreover, words are pronounced or actions are performed facing a certain direction, the most common rule being that the magician should face the direction of the person at whom the rite is aimed.’

Marcel Mauss, General Theory of Magic [1950] tr. Robert Brain, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972, p.58. Quoted in Ian Hunt 2002, ‘Escape Routine’ accessed at http://www.simonpattersonart.com/essays/essays_escape.html

Calling all Unthinking Anglicans!

The Thinking Anglicans website, http://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk, is worth a look. Curiously I have been unable to locate its sister website, unthinkinganglicans.org.uk and wonder if there might be any takers out there. While the dnsserver claims: ‘the domain name does not exist’, I am tempted to ask whether this statement is epistemologically defensible.

How important is ‘belief’? Three questions and a tentative answer

A while back Rabbi Jonathan Romain wrote thoughtfully on some Jewish approaches to the existence or non-existence of God.

The heading of this article is ‘Jews don’t have to believe – if they do what he says’. And clearly this needs a little unpacking.

It may make a certain sort of sense to ‘do what he says’ if you believe in the kind of God who expects obedience. But what if you don’t? If there is no ‘he’ what is the justification for keeping his law? Three questions arise in particular.

First, It’s fairly obvious that if you insist on obeying the commandments of a deity whose existence you deny, and have no considered reasons for doing so, you are in an untenable position in the long-term. So could there be good and sustainable reasons for this behaviour?

Second, there is an aporia in Romain’s piece – a question going begging. At the start he writes as though a decline in synagogue attendance is some kind of problem to be lamented and he identifies Jewish atheism or agnosticism as the culprit.

‘No wonder they do not come back to pray to a God they reckon is absent.’

But by the end, he seems to be excusing the non-attenders on the grounds that Judaism isn’t consensually about belief in any case. The lingering question, then, is whether it matters that synagogues are reportedly emptying. And if it does, would a return to dogmatic belief be any kind of solution, or just promote further alienation?

Third (or eighth and ninth if you’re actually counting), the tradition itself does seem to have an ongoing debate about the significance of attitudes to rules, which Romain seems to skip over rather lightly. This was why the Christian Reformers critiqued what they saw as the ‘legalism’ of the Roman Catholic Church. As they read the Bible for themselves, especially the Prophets, they became exposed to a strand of religious thought that prioritised disposition over practice, epitomised by the rather ungainly but significant metaphor of the law written in the heart. This debate continues into the present. Is it enough merely to keep the letter of the law? Don’t you also need at least a little respect for its spirit?

One partial resolution of these questions might be to see religious observance as a kind of game to be played.

Like any game it’s more fun if you have a set of rules, and almost impossible to continue if you don’t. It’s interesting that almost no one claims a supernatural being invented the rules of games, and yet game-playing is massively and enduringly popular. Conversely, the experience of being coerced into playing a rule-based game, as in a million school sports lessons in the rain, is usually very negative; it’s only when we freely consent to the rules, without authoritarianism, that the game becomes enjoyable. As anyone who has played games will tell you, the rules look fixed but really they’re contestable, and the evolving debate about the rules is a significant part of what makes the game socially worthwhile. Finally, and perhaps more than anything else, it’s a social thing: if you won’t play along, you’re missing out on all the fun.

Perhaps if synagogues and churches were more like that – more ludic in their disposition – they’d have more punters.

In case it is supposed that the analogy between religious practice and a game is frivolous, it should be remembered that games, as well as religious practice, can be very serious things.

The forthcoming TV drama God on Trial gives an example of a seriously playful approach to the problem of evil.

Objectors might argue that a really significant difference between a religion and a game has been overlooked: the difference being the divinity itself. After all, who ever heard of people getting together to behave as though fictional beings really existed? Actually, this is the main premise of fantasy role-playing games. These have taken the Internet and what used to be called ‘the younger generation’ by storm and may well point towards a viable future for religious practice. A concern would be that these ‘massively multiplayer games’ seem to encourage, to put it mildly, a certain lack of ethical seriousness. But hasn’t this always been the dilemma of religionists in an ethically frivolous world? And in any case, with a few notable exceptions this concern probably mistakes form for substance. Beneath the pixie dust and hidden deep in the alien bases lies a far-reaching ongoing experiment in character formation (a phrase the fans of Ignatius Loyola and Gary Gygax would be equally comfortable with). Far from denigrating ethics, games and their rules can actually establish an environment in which ethical behaviour is modelled, learned, and even mastered. In realising this aspiration the games known as religions can and should play an important part.

Ironies of the Netbook

The book is a relative newcomer in western society. It began its career in the mid-15th century and its future is no longer certain, threatened as it is by new inventions based on different principles.’

These words come from Lucien Fevre’s preface to The Coming of the Book, published in French in 1958. I’m reading them sixty years later, sitting on a train using a portable computer, with the aid of a repository of electronically scanned volumes, which makes instantly available an unreadable number of published works, not to mention millions of pages of ‘unpublished’ electronic texts.

The irony of this situation is remarkable.

The book endures

The first irony is that the computer I am using is called a notebook. That is, conceptually the new invention is not ‘based on different principles’ but explicitly pays homage to the old, even as it radically undermines it. Now that the netbook craze is upon us, we are doing the same thing. The striking thing about the new cut-down mini-notebooks such as the Asus eee PC and now the Dell Inspiron 910 is that they are trying very hard indeed to be the same size and weight as a paperback book (remember that the paperback was the new reading technology of the 1930s). And we seem to be desperate to keep calling them books. As with the last major shift – from scroll to codex – it seems that while the technology may change, the name remains the same. If we call it a book, even though a netbook, does it remain one?

The scribes endure too

The second irony is that mindful of legal considerations the electronic repository in question – Google Books – has artificially hobbled a piece of already existing technology that would effortlessly allow copying of the text. The result is that when I want to reproduce a quotation, as above, I need to copy it out by retyping it manually, letter for letter, word for word, in a manner strongly reminiscent of the working practices of the monastic scribes who dominated the book industry before the coming of the printing press, let alone the coming of the computer. Now, through the use of the reCAPTCHA security process, this activity of scribal rewriting has been massively distributed, so that every time someone spends ten seconds verifying they are human, they contribute to digitally transcribing the equivalent of one hundred and fifty printed books per day. (according to Luis Von Ahn of Carnegie-Mellon University).

Appearing to arrive

Third, it’s easy to overlook the ambiguity of the original French title. Translated as the ‘coming’ of the book, the original French word is ‘l’apparition’, which can equally be translated ‘appearance’ and which has a double meaning in both languages. Does the e-book you hold on your lap actually amount to a real book which has almost magically ‘arrived’ inside your computer, or does it only have the ‘appearance’ of a book?

So who’s imagining whom?

Is the netbook a book just because we say it’s a book? Perhaps, conversely, there is something so compelling about the concept of a book in our culture that it simply refuses to lie down and die, transmuting instead into something very different, but eerily the same. As James Wood says,

‘a good proportion of reality consists of what we freely imagine; and then, less happily perhaps, we discover that that reality has imagined us—that we are the vassals of our imaginings, not their emperors or archdukes.’

References

Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, The Coming of the Book: 1450-1800. Trans. David Gerard. London: Verso, 1984)

James Wood, ‘The Unforgotten. Aleksandar Hemon’s fictional lives’. The New Yorker 28 July 2008 Accessed at http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/07/28/080728crbo_books_wood?currentPage=all

Truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth (at least in Swedish schools)

The Gaol Chapel at Lincoln Castle http://www.flickr.com/photos/theholyllama/

According to the Guardian newspaper Sweden is going to ban the teaching of religious doctrine ‘as though it were true’. It may well be a move to try to crack down on Islamic schools, about which Swedes seem either worried or paranoid, depending on your viewpoint.

Could they not try teaching the critical skills necessary to judge for oneself whether something is likely to be true?

Religious schools don’t indoctrinate children by giving them a diet of facts, true or untrue. They do it by creating a community of faith and learning to which students become emotionally attached. In a sense, then, it doesn’t matter what is taught overtly, the mere existence of a network of relationships is enough for a religious school to impact strongly on its students and their families.

One way of making this relational influence difficult was tried in the Nineteenth Century in Lincoln Castle Gaol in England. The chapel was designed so each prisoner would be able to see the preacher, but be completely unaware of the existence of their neighbouring prisoners. That way they would have the good influence of religion without the negative influence of other criminals.

Would we be better off without religion?

I’m planning to attend a public debate on religion, organised by Intelligence Squared. The motion is ‘We’d be better off without religion’, and the speakers include Victor Stenger, who wrote God, the Failed Hypothesis – How Science Shows that God does not Exist. I checked this out recently.

The blurb about Professor Stenger says:

Stenger maintains that plausible natural explanations exist for for all observable phenomena and there is strong scientific evidence against anything mystical or supernatural in the universe.

The book claims:

Not only does the universe show no evidence for God, it looks exactly as it would be expected to look if there is no God.

I would frame this slightly differently and suggest that the evidence in favour of the existence of God is exactly the same as the evidence against the existence of God. It may seem like a small difference but I think it’s important. Here’s why. Continue reading Would we be better off without religion?