Stories

My friend Pingting noting my lack of posting here wonder if I got lost in the garden. I have been busy in the garden the last few months, but I've also been writing elsewhere. One of those places is Ned.com which is a social network I like. Ned.com grew out of the Omidyar Network's experiment with social network sites to help people organize to do good. That experiment closed and Ned uses the coding of the old site. There are a few hold-overs from the Onet days there too.

I like having pages of things I'm thinking about online. My thoughts sort of go around in circles and it's nice to have pages to remind me where I was when I last took up one topic or another. I'm quite forgetful, so I also like having access to old links. These sorts of purposes work against other people engaging with what I put up. In discussion forums people expect others to say more or less on topic. Often my experience at a place like Ned.com is to be thinking about multiple threads so my comments tend to blend topics. This can be very annoying to others. But people sharing a history together, even online, has its advantages; among them is that some people are used to me and my digressions.

Recently at Ned.com a German-Palestinian national introduced a project he's embarking on. By the way the link is to a Page at WiserEarth another social networking site like Ned.com where the purpose is to connect people together for positive action. Al Saad is new to Ned.com, so I didn't want to leave one of my rambling missives on his thread, for fear of putting him off, nevertheless his project sent my mind reeling in many directions.

Al Saad after living in Germany for the last twenty years plans to return to Palestine to help catalyze the creation of a holistic green economy there. I've noticed that Al Saad mentions not infrequently that English is not his home language. I've also noticed that all of the pages he's put up in English are clear. So if you're interested to find out more about his efforts, don't let the English be a reason not to. Wael Al Saad is using online social media to connect to others, so there are plenty of ways to follow and interact with him. I think the WiserEarth page is the best place to start.

I think in stories and I think most people do. Something that stories do is to establish that something is part of a whole and meanings aren't just personal, but created by groups. When I encountered Al Saad's project two different sets of stories started spinning: Stories about Palestine. And Stories about creating a green economy.

The subject of a green economy is one that dominates the threads at Ned.com. My friend Linda Nowakowski introduced me to Buddhist Economics. Nowakowski is not Buddhist, but she had been teaching business related courses in Thailand for many years. I've heard to half-jokingly say that her mission is to take the Buddhist out of Buddhist economics. By that I think she means finding ways to relate the really good ideas contained in Buddhist economics to fellow westerners. The term Buddhist economics is related to E. F. Schumacher who wrote the popular seventies book Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. Schumacher's ideas are still current, not the least of the reasons for that is the work of the E. F. Schumacher Society, which has labored since 1980 to create and promote strong local economies.

Schumacher coined the term Buddhist economics, but it wasn't coming out of deep scholarship about Buddhist theology. Indeed, Schumacher himself was a late convert to Roman Catholicism. And his interest in that general direction came from time spent in India in the 1950's where he developed a keen interest in Gandhian economics. Thailand has a long Buddhist tradition, so the emergent schools of Buddhist economics there. There is a wonderful online resource Buddhist Economics by Buddhist monk Phrabhavanaviriyakhun. Even in Thailand, Buddhist economics remains part of heterodox economic thinking, nevertheless it is part of economic discussion there.

Buddhist economics interests me in large part because it turns thinking about economics towards thinking about the stories we use to make sense of things. There are plenty of posts online of scientist ruminating about religion. I'm sure that thinking scientifically is a very useful invention. My problem with the notion that people should give up on religion and take up science, or essays something like that, has not so much to do with science as it does with how I believe people think: We think in stories. The method of science is to create new knowledge by testing propositions. Yet people need to understand the world as part of a whole and religious stories create a foundation for most people. What's more because stories are socially constructed and ubiquitous in our everyday lives most of the time we don't explicitly think about the stories explicitly. People today confront great challenges. To name just a couple there's the twin challenge of peak oil and climate change cause by among other things carbon in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels.

I'll be the first to admit that my recent writing at this blogs--sparse as it is--is quite awful. It doesn't hold up. I think it's part of wrestling with how we as people know. I'm convinced by science, but the stories remain. So I'm now, and have been clumsily trying to figure out some consilience between the two realms.

I do spend a lot of my time gardening. It's a bit embarrassing even with all the effort my garden looks chaotic. Some of my friends wonder why I spend so much time on flowers; Why not stuff you can eat? Part of the reason for flowers is simply serendipitous. There were areas of the property that were hard to maintain and growing stuff there seemed the easiest thing to do. I have had a long interest in organic gardening, and certainly have grown food over the years. I am also interested in permaculture. Permaculture agricultural techniques mimic natural ecologies. But permaculture is not only about growing things, it's also about culture. Part of the allure of permaculture is the sense that it's easy. There are tales of people growing all they need to live with just a few hours of labor a day. I don't really think such stories are apocryphal, but I do think it's hard work to invent and get systems like that up and running.

Agriculture with fields of one crop in neat rows mimics what happens after a fire or a flood when a more complex ecosystem is disrupted. Such monocultures aren't really sustainable over a long time. And of course monocultures are very vulnerable to being wiped out by pests and the weather. Agriculture is hard risky work and over the 10,000 years or so people have been practicing, we've come up with clever ways to deal with the risks and downsides. Permaculture seeks to make growing systems that are more durable and resilient and yet still productive. Wonderful work is being done in this direction and I'm all for it. In a way my flower beds allow me an opportunity to explore and learn about this type of growing.

Something I spend too much time on is mowing grass. I would like to move towards much less of that. But my elderly father owns this property and I'm not going to change the stories of grass in his mind. He's also got very much of a farmer's idea of how growing food is done. That's good and I've learned much from him. But to some extent his vegetable garden represents a bunch of chores I don't particularly like. In particular, I just don't get his fascination with tilling the ground so much. Anyhow, the reason I do some of my gardening activities has to do with stories. These sorts of stories are along the lines of: That's how it's done. That's what they say. Mostly we never go into the whys of neatly sheared grass or denuding the soil to grow things.

Wael Al Saad's ideas for Palestine are closely related to permaculture ideas of mimicking complex ecosystems not just in agriculture, but also in business enterprises. So part of the challenge is to find ways for people to hear these new stories without the old stories of "They say" and "That's the way it is done" precluding them.

Palestine is an ancient and holy land and the religious and political stories often work against collaborative approaches to solving problems. Indeed one of the first thoughts that popped into my head--not thoughts really--were maps and pictures of the area from a book of Children's Bible stories I had as a child. Somehow in my mind these images were yellow from age, even though I haven't seen the book in probably forty years and I have no idea whether the pages have actually yellowed. That was a big clue to me that some of my stories of Palestine are tired stereotypes. There are always real pitfalls to stereotypes, and the perceived affection for the land from childhood acculturation may be a serious pitfall. In any case thought were running as I read some of the materials Al Saad has posted.

I've become really fond of the Web site Religious Dispatches. A couple of recent articles are interesting in re stories about Palestine. The first is more obviously connected than the second, Time for Jews to Abandon the Old Foundation Myth of Israel? by Ira Chernus. It's worth reading the whole article. Chernus in part of the piece talks about the work of Brit Tezedek v'Shalom, an American peace and justice organization. The group addresses head on the foundational myths of modern Israel and explores new foundations as a way towards peace.

The second article is Disco-Reggae at Abu Ghraib: Music, the Bible and Torture. Author Erin Runions explores the question:

What does it mean when a country that likes to proclaim itself a defender of freedom plays a song about liberation to people it is torturing?

The essay perhaps isn't directly related to Palestine or Wael Al Saad's project, but is related to the foundational myths of the USA.

The 2000 presidential election in the United States was not settled immediately, so there was a period for debate. I did not vote for G. W. Bush, because he seemed quite frightening to me. At a party shortly after the election--I think, it could have been just after 9/11--an old acquaintance lit into me about my raising concerns about Bush's millenarian beliefs. I think part of the ferocity of his reaction was the sense that in making it I was being disingenuous. I was sincere about my concerns, so as the administration proceeded I was attuned to events premised on such thinking. Nonetheless even now I'm startled by some revelations of what happened dribble out. Gentleman's Quarterly's slideshow of Pentagon intelligence briefs sent to President Bush in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq surprised me. As did the fact that Bush told France’s President Jacques Chirac:

This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.

I'm not sure why I'm surprised, but the surprise is related to the cognitive dissonance that the sordid facts of torture under my flag provoke.

The "Disco-Reggae" song in Runions' piece is Rivers of Babylon (YouTube) by Boney M. Years ago I was entertaining two of my aunts with a trip to the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh. We stopped to eat at the "Dirty O" a hot dog shop. The real name is the Original Hot Dog Shop, but the "Dirty O" gives hint that the place is slightly dangerous. I avoided sitting upstairs near the bar, but was still worried a little about the whole idea of eating there. The hot dogs and especially the French fries are great, so my aunties were enjoying it. Over the juke box the original Melodians rendition of "River's of Babylon" came on. One of my aunts heard "Zion" in the song and said that the song is why a grandchild is named Zion. I mentioned for the edification of the other aunt, who knows her Bible, that it was a psalm put to music--it's psalm 137. Runions points out the irony of forcing an Iraqi POW to listen to loud repetitious playings of the song:

When US interrogators chose songs with references to Babylon linking Iraq and ancient Babylon, they were also tapping into a lengthy apocalyptic tradition in which Babylon becomes a mythical figure of evil; the biblical account of Babylon conquering Judah, exiling the people of Israel, and destroying the temple has long been read as part of an enduring spiritual struggle. In the United States, Babylon is often used to represent what the nation opposes.

Yet at Abu Ghraib, the allegory of “Rivers of Babylon” works uneasily, contradictorily. In the usual pattern of apocalyptic and national biblical interpretation we would expect the ancient Israelite captives to represent the United States, under threat by Babylon. But in this case, it is the Iraqi (“Babylonian”) detainees weeping by the waters of Babylon, while US soldiers are the cruel captors.

Reason is very important to finding a way out of the mess humanity faces today, but reason alone seem insufficient. We also must become more aware of the stories which guide our lives and share new stories. Doing that is much easier said than done!

In thinking about the thread at Ned.com about Wael Al Saad's efforts to create green economies in Palestine, that's the point I wanted to make. But it took my roundabout rambling to come to the point. I'm still not sure what to write in thread because the focus is on "practical" issues. Mostly it seems raising the topic of stories seems to be a trivial concern: just stories. Still I'm convinced stories motivate much of what we do. Stories , what "they say" are fundamental to why I mow so much grass and do a hundred other things in my daily life. Stories animate our economies and determine the shape of markets. Stories lay behind why Americans torture.

Theologian Walter Wink in an essay Facing the Myth of Redemptive Violence wrote:

This Myth of Redemptive Violence is the real myth of the modern world. It, and not Judaism or Christianity or Islam, is the dominant religion in our society today.

There surely are peacemakers who are atheist and agnostic; just as surely there are religious peacemakers. Engagement across this divide of differing perspectives is a daunting challenge. Still the importance of working towards more peaceful coexistence is so important to be motivating. And to me it seems that taking stories seriously is an essential element in building such bridges. All of us are influenced in what we do do by stories. It is essential that we engage them.

An Offering

Photo by mknobil Creative Commons 2.0

A friend was talking the other day about the Internet and putting stuff online. He remarked that it makes all the difference if one proceeds as if placing an offering on an altar. I love seeing new pictures when Mark Knobil posts them, oh and the pictures posted by all my contacts. Everyday postings at social networking site and blog posts enrich my day. The fact of the matter is that there are some very talented people, but they're rare. Talent isn't descriptive enough because what makes some blog writers so worthwhile is depth of scholarship.

Keguro Macharia is home in Kenya and writing about it. Kegurao is a scholar. Gukira is one of my must-read blogs. He has introduced to me cultural studies, and more particularly an outsider's view of American culture. That's a picture that's hard for me as an American to get clear focus. So after studying long in the USA it's great to read his posts from home.

In thinking about American politics and religion the last few days, I've got far more questions than answers. Sarah Palin has made things interesting to me because so many of my questions are not ones easily answered.

At a social network I haunt a question in two parts was asked: First, Was Gandhi an anarchist? Second, How does the rule of law fit into Gandhian theories? I enjoy ongoing social discussions both for great questions like that, and for the contexts surrounding such questions. I don't have informed views on either part of the question. What I have is just a bit of collected knowledge about Gandhi, enough so that I can make some sense of articles posted online. Searching around I found an essay in The Hindu by Anil Nauriya Gandhi on Secular law and state.

Nauriya's essay about Gandhi brought to mind a best selling book in the 1960's, The Secular City by Harvey Cox. I read the book in the early 1970's and still have the paperback. Skimming over the book I was impressed how relevant it seemed to the questions about religion and politics Palin's vice presidential candidacy has brought to the fore in my mind.

Many of my African friends are quite religious and I've found myself describing myself as a "secular humanist." One of my friends is a devote Evangelical Christian and Kenyan. He studied for a while at University in the USA. And I appreciate that even while we "talk" by typing he gets there's a slight twinkle in my eye and wry smile when I say that. Secular Humanism for many on the political right is assumed to be a part of "the axis of evil." My good Christian friend has sophisticated views about his religious faith, so there's a ease to our arguments that's very often lacking with fellow Americans. In the Introduction to The Secular City Cox wrote:

Pluralism and tolerance are the children of secularzation.

There are many in America in 2008 who would respond to this assertion saying pluralism and tolerance are bastards. They insist that Americans is a Christian nation and as such our enemies are easy to find--Those bastards!

My Evangelical friend in Kenya makes a distinction between seculariztion and secularism. He certainly is quite eager for pluralism and tolerance in Kenya. A headline in yesterday's LA Progressive reads: Alaskans Speak (In A Frightened Whisper): Palin Is “Racist, Sexist, Vindictive, And Mean” (hat tip: The Editors). On reading the headline the sarcastic voice in my head sputtered, "Yeah, and those are her good points!" Many love Palin precisely because she's so good hacking red meat. Sarah Palin's selection is widely viewed as a sop to the Evangelical Christian base of Republican Party politics. I wonder what is it that make "mean" so appealing to this base?

We in the West believe strongly in self-interest, or more broadly that people act in terms of their self-interest. Richard A. Epstein, a libertarian scholar, observes:

That self-interest can manifest itself in one of two ways when dealing with strangers; through either aggression or cooperation.

Palin represents the aggressive choice, but that still leaves the question why aggression seems so overwhelmingly thought the right choice among so many Evangelicial Christians in the USA.

One of the reasons to link to the Amazon page on The Secular City is there are two reader reviews, a two-star and a five-star. The author of the two-star review is Gary Scott. The review is well crafted with his thesis statement right at the start: "Basic liberal Christian apology." With mainstream attention on rightist Christian politics, it's tempting to take "liberal Christian" as an oxymoron. But Barak Obama's abiding Christian faith reminds us not to be too hasty.

When we think about it, it's easy to come up with plenty of examples of liberal Christians. "Liberal" as a "brand" has become unpopular lately, and the term "progressive" seems more current. I'm afraid either label doesn't really do justice. In part because to most religious convictions are personal, and the partisan politics in the secular realm. The Christian right form a deliberate political movement, distinct from progressive Christian movements in the USA in the close alliance with and even forming the base for the Republican Party.

Theologian Walter Wink has written about the "myth of redemptive violence." Wink provides as one of the sources of the myth of redemptive violence in the Babylonian creation myth Enuma Elish. Wink writes:

Religion exists to legitimate power and privilege. Life is combat. Any form of order is preferable to chaos, according to this myth. Ours is neither a perfect nor perfectible world; it is theatre of perpetual conflict in which the prize goes to the strong. Peace through war, security through strength: these are the core convictions that arise from this ancient historical religion, and they form the solid bedrock on which the Domination System is founded in every society.

That sounds close to the world view I hear often expressed by the religious right in America today. It also seems in accord with George Lakoff's "strict father" frame of conservatives. With the centrality of the war in Iraq to Palin and McCain's campaign, Winks connection to the Enuma Elish and their world view is ironic.

I still want to look more closely at Pentecostalism and its relationship to the religious right, but that will have to wait for another time. For today what I wanted to establish was an idea that Christianity does not necessarily equate to Republican Party politics. In addition that secularlization is not inherrently opposed to religion, nor are religious people necessarily opposed to secularlization.