Saturday, March 28, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Stupid Watch
There are moments when people of a relatively sane disposition find themselves inexplicably drawn to disastrous courses of action.
History is scattered with examples of IQ-rich individuals who were promoted due to their ability to make decisions but – on one crucial occasion – their fail-safe mechanism goes kaput.
Which advisers made the arguments that Britain desperately needed a cones hotline, demutualised building societies or a poll tax?
But there are times when an idea is so gloriously heterodoxical and counterintuitive that it actually becomes as alluring and irresistibly desirous as a piece of rosy fruit dangling in Eden’s garden.
There were plenty of pundits who warned that a 21st century invasion of Mesopotamia would be a calamitous adventure and historians will scratch their 23rd century heads in bewildered perplexity as they attempt to trace some logic behind the events.
What seems to have happened is that a culture of ideological certainty led hyper-educated people in positions of power to see visions of realities which bore little resemblance to the world as it existed.
The first sign that a political party is doomed is when it claims that the opinion polls do not chime with the “message on the doorsteps”.
In the final episodes of the Thatcher Government there was a refusal to recognise that a dogmatically coherent concept like the community charge was a riot-starter and not a vote-winner.
Similarly, there were intelligent voices warning that the West’s financial system was not a whirring wealth-creating machine but a spongecake sodden with toxic debt.
But the consequences of this Jeremiah-like message of doom were too horrendous to contemplate – boom and bust, it would appear, was not consigned to the past.
It is not that the decision-makers democracies elected were seized by a unique delusional madness or were brainwashed by lizards from Neptune. Rather, they suffered from living in a cloistered world of policy wonks, sycophants, lobbyists for the status quo, party activists and security teams.
They desperately needed someone to tell them the bad news. In the United States, the more ideologically driven a politician is, the more likely he or she is to complain of “media bias”.
And if the only civilians a minister meets are well-fed and prosperous bankers who insist that the economy is as sunny as a peach grove in August, why should he or she believe the doom-monger with the sandwich board?
Wise leaders in any organisation will hunt out the most cantankerous, irreverent, outspoken, independent individuals and put them on “stupid watch”. They should have the task of throwing a spanner in the works of the machine the moment it is programmed by ideological zealots who refuse to believe that people do not want courgette-flavoured toothpaste or a new land war in Asia.
History is scattered with examples of IQ-rich individuals who were promoted due to their ability to make decisions but – on one crucial occasion – their fail-safe mechanism goes kaput.
Which advisers made the arguments that Britain desperately needed a cones hotline, demutualised building societies or a poll tax?
But there are times when an idea is so gloriously heterodoxical and counterintuitive that it actually becomes as alluring and irresistibly desirous as a piece of rosy fruit dangling in Eden’s garden.
There were plenty of pundits who warned that a 21st century invasion of Mesopotamia would be a calamitous adventure and historians will scratch their 23rd century heads in bewildered perplexity as they attempt to trace some logic behind the events.
What seems to have happened is that a culture of ideological certainty led hyper-educated people in positions of power to see visions of realities which bore little resemblance to the world as it existed.
The first sign that a political party is doomed is when it claims that the opinion polls do not chime with the “message on the doorsteps”.
In the final episodes of the Thatcher Government there was a refusal to recognise that a dogmatically coherent concept like the community charge was a riot-starter and not a vote-winner.
Similarly, there were intelligent voices warning that the West’s financial system was not a whirring wealth-creating machine but a spongecake sodden with toxic debt.
But the consequences of this Jeremiah-like message of doom were too horrendous to contemplate – boom and bust, it would appear, was not consigned to the past.
It is not that the decision-makers democracies elected were seized by a unique delusional madness or were brainwashed by lizards from Neptune. Rather, they suffered from living in a cloistered world of policy wonks, sycophants, lobbyists for the status quo, party activists and security teams.
They desperately needed someone to tell them the bad news. In the United States, the more ideologically driven a politician is, the more likely he or she is to complain of “media bias”.
And if the only civilians a minister meets are well-fed and prosperous bankers who insist that the economy is as sunny as a peach grove in August, why should he or she believe the doom-monger with the sandwich board?
Wise leaders in any organisation will hunt out the most cantankerous, irreverent, outspoken, independent individuals and put them on “stupid watch”. They should have the task of throwing a spanner in the works of the machine the moment it is programmed by ideological zealots who refuse to believe that people do not want courgette-flavoured toothpaste or a new land war in Asia.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Coney Island Morning
Wow! I just found this amazing music video. Is it early Tom Waits? Gosh, it rocks like an igneous phenomenon on a Saturday night.
Actually, this is what happens when a hack at the end of a long day encounters Microsoft Songsmith... A program and once horrifying and enthralling!
Monday, March 23, 2009
Soren and the Scheming Swindlers
When a church experience starts to resemble a variety show or a self-help seminar I often have the urge to flee the venue. But there's also another extreme to avoid, and Soren Kierkegaard had a timely warning against excessively scholarly detachment.
The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obligated to act accordingly.Thanks to Trevin Wax, a blogger who exhibits the very best of generous orthodoxy.
Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship.
Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close.
Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Irish Times
Last night 100,000 revellers were on the streets of Cardiff last night in the hours after Ireland won the Six Nations rugby championship. Two great teams fought for every point. To read the definitive Irish reaction, click here.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Britain and the Bottle
Just as medieval Britons dreaded inexplicable plagues which cut through villages with the unsparing ruthlessness of a reaper’s scythe, the country continues to fear phenomena which baffle and threaten.
We have latched onto the “credit crunch” as a catch-all explanation for anything that can go wrong, but economic distress has not erased ongoing concern about binge drinking. The spectacle of young citizens attempting to recreate scenes from the fall of Rome in town centres after dark exerts an awful fascination.
The man with a traffic cone on each arm and his female companion who is dressed as a pterodactyl are the inheritors of a culture which produced the myths of Arthur, the Mabinogion, Shakespeare’s plays and the pneumatic tyre.
Clearly, the alcohol they have imbibed during the course of the evening has shaped their decisions.
It would not have seemed a good idea to attach a garlic-heavy kebab to the aerial of a BMW if they had spent the day drinking 7Up.
But easy access to mind-altering substances is not something new.
For centuries monks have brewed some of the strongest wine ever to splash onto a cassock, but there are few records of abbots riding in shopping trolleys at 3am.
The notion that making alcohol more expensive will impede binge drinking is hard to compute. The tragedy of drug use demonstrates that addicts are capable of marshalling enormous sums of cash to feed a lethal desire.
People are not compelled to drink past the point of incoherence because alcohol is cheap. Rather, our culture has created a situation in which there is a longing to shed responsibility, escape gnawing anxieties, and party like it is 1789 and the Bastille of pressure-cooker Britain is about to fall.
The answer to the question of why people do not drink in the relaxed fashion we see in France and Italy may be that our continental cousins actually live in more relaxed societies. Holidaymakers return to these shores with tales of happy families enjoying rhapsodic red wine at knockdown prices while children scamper like cheerful goats. The happiness and cohesion of the family has less to do with licensing laws than with the values and opportunities enjoyed by the unit.
Learning a craft was once a passport to steady and skilled employment. But the vanishing of traditional jobs has resulted in a society built upon neo-serfdom where failure to excel academically condemns workers to a succession of utterly uninspiring occupations.
A national conversation is needed about a new way of working, now that the old system is fundamentally broken.
This is a time of opportunity, and if the proprietors of vertical drinking establishments want to encourage this debate, they could buy some chairs, turn down the volume and serve tapas.
We have latched onto the “credit crunch” as a catch-all explanation for anything that can go wrong, but economic distress has not erased ongoing concern about binge drinking. The spectacle of young citizens attempting to recreate scenes from the fall of Rome in town centres after dark exerts an awful fascination.
The man with a traffic cone on each arm and his female companion who is dressed as a pterodactyl are the inheritors of a culture which produced the myths of Arthur, the Mabinogion, Shakespeare’s plays and the pneumatic tyre.
Clearly, the alcohol they have imbibed during the course of the evening has shaped their decisions.
It would not have seemed a good idea to attach a garlic-heavy kebab to the aerial of a BMW if they had spent the day drinking 7Up.
But easy access to mind-altering substances is not something new.
For centuries monks have brewed some of the strongest wine ever to splash onto a cassock, but there are few records of abbots riding in shopping trolleys at 3am.
The notion that making alcohol more expensive will impede binge drinking is hard to compute. The tragedy of drug use demonstrates that addicts are capable of marshalling enormous sums of cash to feed a lethal desire.
People are not compelled to drink past the point of incoherence because alcohol is cheap. Rather, our culture has created a situation in which there is a longing to shed responsibility, escape gnawing anxieties, and party like it is 1789 and the Bastille of pressure-cooker Britain is about to fall.
The answer to the question of why people do not drink in the relaxed fashion we see in France and Italy may be that our continental cousins actually live in more relaxed societies. Holidaymakers return to these shores with tales of happy families enjoying rhapsodic red wine at knockdown prices while children scamper like cheerful goats. The happiness and cohesion of the family has less to do with licensing laws than with the values and opportunities enjoyed by the unit.
Learning a craft was once a passport to steady and skilled employment. But the vanishing of traditional jobs has resulted in a society built upon neo-serfdom where failure to excel academically condemns workers to a succession of utterly uninspiring occupations.
A national conversation is needed about a new way of working, now that the old system is fundamentally broken.
This is a time of opportunity, and if the proprietors of vertical drinking establishments want to encourage this debate, they could buy some chairs, turn down the volume and serve tapas.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Irish Ghosts
St Patrick's Day is this year overshadowed by the return of a type of violence many hoped was gone for good.
If you're the praying kind, send up a supplication that the madness of the past doesn't return and a new generation won't be familiar with the dark absurdity my friend Mike recounts:
If you're the praying kind, send up a supplication that the madness of the past doesn't return and a new generation won't be familiar with the dark absurdity my friend Mike recounts:
When I shattered my kneecap (in a car accident) some 13 years ago, I was taken to the Royal Hospital in Belfast. There, in a dark ward, in the early hours of the morning - alone - I caught the eye of a suspicious-looking gent in the bed opposite me. He looked like he was in for the same condition as myself.He eyed me coldly before nodding to my bandaged knee and muttering: "What did you do?"
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Coke and the Itch for Reality
Today, 105 years ago, Coca-Cola was sold in bottles for the first time and an icon of globalisation was born.
When archaeologists pick over the remains of our global civilisation they will puzzle over the ubiquity of Coke artifacts and perhaps conclude they were objects of religious devotion.
Throughout the history of humanity, eating and drinking has been made a spiritual experience. Different cultures in every time-zone have performed sacrifices and celebrated ceremonial meals.
The Hebrew exodus from Egypt is commemorated in the annual Passover, and for the last 2,000 years thousands of Christian groups have celebrated an adaptation of this ritual in the form of communion.
Religions which emphasise moments of feasting can jump into new cultures because membership of a community is not only defined by cerebral ascent to a doctrinal code but participation in a meal. The actual act of gathering together allows the individual to transcend whatever doubts he or she may have and connects a spiritual idea with the utterly physical and quantifiably real experience of eating and drinking.
What is fascinating about the spread of Coca-Cola is that its marketing so closely mirrors the message of a religion. It promises not just a refreshing taste but a moment of euphoria which is at once transcendent and authentic.
The 1969 slogan “It’s the real thing” and 1982’s “Coke is it!” linked the carbonated pleasure drink to some profound reality.
The company continues to promote its key product as a springboard to harmony and fulfilment without any irony. This year it has launched a campaign in which it invites “billions of people around the world who love to pause and refresh themselves with a Coke to ‘Open Happiness’ and continue to enjoy one of life’s simple pleasures”.
In Catholic cultures for centuries people have been encouraged to pause at specific times of the day to meditate on the miracle of the incarnation. Muslims worldwide are united through daily prayers.
The “happiness” promised by Coca-Cola is a fusion of personal peace and international friendship, as articulated in the 1971 advertising song “I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)”.
As the success of Coke’s marketing among its 1.5 billion daily customers demonstrates, there is an international thirst for shared community at a time when traditions which once united people can become tools for division.
Theologians led by Hans Küng at the Global Ethic Foundation are on a mission to find a more rigorous code which can achieve such an aim.
The ephemeral utopianism of Coca-Cola is unlikely to replace any major religion unless it can address questions such as life after death and the problem of evil. But the quest for a global ethic which can unite people of radically different backgrounds in some form of non-fluffy “open happiness” is worth pursuing.
When archaeologists pick over the remains of our global civilisation they will puzzle over the ubiquity of Coke artifacts and perhaps conclude they were objects of religious devotion.
Throughout the history of humanity, eating and drinking has been made a spiritual experience. Different cultures in every time-zone have performed sacrifices and celebrated ceremonial meals.
The Hebrew exodus from Egypt is commemorated in the annual Passover, and for the last 2,000 years thousands of Christian groups have celebrated an adaptation of this ritual in the form of communion.
Religions which emphasise moments of feasting can jump into new cultures because membership of a community is not only defined by cerebral ascent to a doctrinal code but participation in a meal. The actual act of gathering together allows the individual to transcend whatever doubts he or she may have and connects a spiritual idea with the utterly physical and quantifiably real experience of eating and drinking.
What is fascinating about the spread of Coca-Cola is that its marketing so closely mirrors the message of a religion. It promises not just a refreshing taste but a moment of euphoria which is at once transcendent and authentic.
The 1969 slogan “It’s the real thing” and 1982’s “Coke is it!” linked the carbonated pleasure drink to some profound reality.
The company continues to promote its key product as a springboard to harmony and fulfilment without any irony. This year it has launched a campaign in which it invites “billions of people around the world who love to pause and refresh themselves with a Coke to ‘Open Happiness’ and continue to enjoy one of life’s simple pleasures”.
In Catholic cultures for centuries people have been encouraged to pause at specific times of the day to meditate on the miracle of the incarnation. Muslims worldwide are united through daily prayers.
The “happiness” promised by Coca-Cola is a fusion of personal peace and international friendship, as articulated in the 1971 advertising song “I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)”.
As the success of Coke’s marketing among its 1.5 billion daily customers demonstrates, there is an international thirst for shared community at a time when traditions which once united people can become tools for division.
Theologians led by Hans Küng at the Global Ethic Foundation are on a mission to find a more rigorous code which can achieve such an aim.
The ephemeral utopianism of Coca-Cola is unlikely to replace any major religion unless it can address questions such as life after death and the problem of evil. But the quest for a global ethic which can unite people of radically different backgrounds in some form of non-fluffy “open happiness” is worth pursuing.
Monday, March 09, 2009
Rowan Williams and the Meaning of Life
The Anglican Church's answer to Gandalf was in Cardiff at the weekend to give a talk on the global economy. When asked what life was "for" he referenced the Westminster Confession but continued:
One of my favourite writers on religion, Paul Elie, has an excellent essay on Williams in the Atlantic. And as for his views on the world economy, click here...
I would say we are made to be artists... We are made to make a difference to our environment - not to be just passive, but to make something communicable, beautiful, compelling about where we are and who we are. Second, we are made to be politicians. I don’t mean we are all designed by God to stand for parliament... We’re made to work creatively at our society, to make it reflect more fully that pattern of interdependence, interrelation, which God willed for us. And thirdly, we are made to be what I call contemplatives. We are made, that is, to be capable of reflecting, digesting, absorbing the richness of reality, without immediately asking ‘What use is it?’ I think these three things suggest a fairly robust, I would say rather joyful, picture of what humanity might be. For me, they are anchored absolutely in my religious commitments, but I don’t think they are wholly alien to people who wouldn’t necessarily share them.
One of my favourite writers on religion, Paul Elie, has an excellent essay on Williams in the Atlantic. And as for his views on the world economy, click here...
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Dating the President
If you hate speed-dating, don’t run for the US presidency.
Imagine the scene: Bleary-eyed, you step into the Oval Office gnawing a half-eaten bagel left over from last night’s reception for the American League for the Cultivation of the Purple-Bearded Giraffe.
Your in-tray contains a security briefing about 27 different CIA reports of certified Elvis-sightings and a memo from the Surgeon General about a hallucinogenic strain of elderberry which has entered Minnesota’s food chain.
At this moment of crisis, just when you need to summon those powers of reason and clarity you spoke about on the campaign trail, your chief of staff pirouettes in to announce the imminent arrival of a Scotsman who claims to be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
You frown: “The UK – you mean, England?”
The chief of staff nods.
“Man, I was just reading about them. Didn’t they set fire to this very building at fourteen minutes past six?”
The chief of staff shakes his head.
“No, Mr President that was in 1814.”
“Oh right, before the invention of colour television.”
“Yes, but they do have nuclear missiles.”
“Loose nukes?!” You put down your bagel. “Did they get the warheads from the Russians?”
“No, we sold them. The Brits are on our side now, and you’d better get ready for Mr Brown.”
An aide arrives with an urgently needed cup of coffee which you gulp.
“Their PM has the same name as the dude from Reservoir Dogs? Cool.”
A frantic scene then ensues with the president cramming up on facts about the British Prime Minister.
But an even more intense session will have taken place aboard the aircraft shuttling Mr Brown across the Atlantic. He knows he is one of a multitude of world leaders, state governors, beauty queens, and celebrity turkey groomers who will enter the White House before lunch.
It’s easy to picture the PM in Bermuda shorts and clutching a surfboard as he seeks to make an instant impact on the Hawaiian-born president. But it’s not so likely that Barack Obama would take the trouble to don a kilt to put Mr Brown at ease, although he could arrange for a secret service agent to toss a caber in the Rose Garden.
But as in love, political partnerships can be fused in the moment when leaders recognise one another as the soul mates they have longed for since their first childhood game of Risk.
In the friendship between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the Captain Kirk of Cold War capitalism found his British Spock.
Did such magic crackle in the Brown & Barack handshake? It’s too early to say, but when the US president asks his valet for a nightcap tonight, perhaps he will say: “Make it a Scotch.”
Imagine the scene: Bleary-eyed, you step into the Oval Office gnawing a half-eaten bagel left over from last night’s reception for the American League for the Cultivation of the Purple-Bearded Giraffe.
Your in-tray contains a security briefing about 27 different CIA reports of certified Elvis-sightings and a memo from the Surgeon General about a hallucinogenic strain of elderberry which has entered Minnesota’s food chain.
At this moment of crisis, just when you need to summon those powers of reason and clarity you spoke about on the campaign trail, your chief of staff pirouettes in to announce the imminent arrival of a Scotsman who claims to be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
You frown: “The UK – you mean, England?”
The chief of staff nods.
“Man, I was just reading about them. Didn’t they set fire to this very building at fourteen minutes past six?”
The chief of staff shakes his head.
“No, Mr President that was in 1814.”
“Oh right, before the invention of colour television.”
“Yes, but they do have nuclear missiles.”
“Loose nukes?!” You put down your bagel. “Did they get the warheads from the Russians?”
“No, we sold them. The Brits are on our side now, and you’d better get ready for Mr Brown.”
An aide arrives with an urgently needed cup of coffee which you gulp.
“Their PM has the same name as the dude from Reservoir Dogs? Cool.”
A frantic scene then ensues with the president cramming up on facts about the British Prime Minister.
But an even more intense session will have taken place aboard the aircraft shuttling Mr Brown across the Atlantic. He knows he is one of a multitude of world leaders, state governors, beauty queens, and celebrity turkey groomers who will enter the White House before lunch.
It’s easy to picture the PM in Bermuda shorts and clutching a surfboard as he seeks to make an instant impact on the Hawaiian-born president. But it’s not so likely that Barack Obama would take the trouble to don a kilt to put Mr Brown at ease, although he could arrange for a secret service agent to toss a caber in the Rose Garden.
But as in love, political partnerships can be fused in the moment when leaders recognise one another as the soul mates they have longed for since their first childhood game of Risk.
In the friendship between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the Captain Kirk of Cold War capitalism found his British Spock.
Did such magic crackle in the Brown & Barack handshake? It’s too early to say, but when the US president asks his valet for a nightcap tonight, perhaps he will say: “Make it a Scotch.”
Sunday, March 01, 2009
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