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Clive James isn’t a climate change sceptic, he’s a sucker – but this may be the reason
George Monbiot, the Guardian
There is no point in denying it: we’re losing. Climate change denial is spreading like a contagious disease. It exists in a sphere that cannot be reached by evidence or reasoned argument; any attempt to draw attention to scientific findings is greeted with furious invective. This sphere is expanding with astonishing speed.
A survey last month by the Pew Research Centre suggests that the proportion of Americans who believe there is solid evidence that the world has been warming over the last few decades has fallen from 71% to 57% in just 18 months. Another survey, conducted in January by Rasmussen Reports, suggests that, due to a sharp rise since 2006, US voters who believe global warming has natural causes (44%) outnumber those who believe it is the result of human action (41%).
…One such is the critic Clive James. You could accuse him of purveying trite received wisdom, but not of being dumb. On Radio 4 a few days ago he delivered an essay about the importance of scepticism, during which he maintained that “the number of scientists who voice scepticism [about climate change] has lately been increasing”. He presented no evidence to support this statement and, as far as I can tell, none exists. But he used this contention to argue that “either side might well be right, but I think that if you have a division on that scale, you can’t call it a consensus. Nobody can meaningfully say that the science is in.”
…In 1973 the cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker proposed that the fear of death drives us to protect ourselves with “vital lies” or “the armour of character”. We defend ourselves from the ultimate terror by engaging in immortality projects, which boost our self-esteem and grant us meaning that extends beyond death. More than 300 studies conducted in 15 countries appear to confirm Becker’s thesis. When people are confronted with images or words or questions that remind them of death they respond by shoring up their worldview, rejecting people and ideas that threaten it, and increasing their striving for self-esteem…
(2 Nov 2009)
The Stories We Tell…
Richard Gamble, Front Porch Republic
If you have read just one of Wendell Berry’s novels or short stories, then you have glimpsed this Kentucky farmer’s love for family, place, and story. In a contemplative section of his 2004 novel, Hannah Coulter, Berry entwines these three enduring parts of the human experience. With your indulgence, I’d like to read about a page from Hannah’s thoughts and eavesdrop on her reflections of how education forms (or too often misforms) the souls of young people.
My object in recalling Berry’s story about a very small place—his fictional town of Port William, Kentucky—is to raise some important questions about the story of a very big place, the story of America. I want to spend the next twenty minutes thinking aloud with you about the teaching of our nation’s history and the cultivation of civic virtue. I am not here this morning to offer definitive answers or to formulate a policy. I have not settled in my own mind the place of the teaching of history in the formation of character and judgment—I mean the place of real history with all its weightiness, and seriousness of purpose, and messy complexity as opposed to romanticized versions of the past that make us feel good about ourselves and serve some narrow agenda. Instead of answers and policy proposals, I want to explore a critical question that I know from experience is on the minds of conservative eighteen- to twenty-one-year-olds, on the minds of the students I teach.
…I would expect that Wendell Berry would similarly question an individual’s ability to belong to a story as large as the United States. Perhaps that is part of what he is doing in his small stories about the Port William membership. A story that’s too large might inhibit the formation of membership and community. The scale of a family story or a neighborhood story might be just the right size for real people, while a national story, and certainly a grand imperial epic, might be too big for ordinary folk and suited only to aggregates and abstractions. I’m not sure.
Whether or not you agree with Berry’s politics or economics or theology, and many of you do not, will you at least grant that through his art he opens our modern culture’s imagination to a fundamental insight about identity, community, and the formation of character? Through the experience of Hannah Coulter, Berry shows us that not only what stories we tell but how we tell them shapes the moral imagination of the rising generation. Education happens in many contexts: in the family from the time children are infants; in the extended family of grandparents and aunts and uncles (including the memory of ancestors long dead); in the alleys and sidewalks and playgrounds of neighborhoods; in the church; and within the classroom walls of more formal education…
(28 Oct 2009)
Building a Better Citizen
David Villano, Miller-McCune
In the late 1980s, Hampton, Va., faced the challenges of many blue-collar cities along its stretch of the southern Chesapeake: rising unemployment, a stagnant economy and the flight of young families to seek better jobs and fuller lives elsewhere. City leaders gambled on a novel response. They would target young people, hoping to cultivate a generation of citizens committed to Hampton’s long-term vitality. In 1990, the city launched Hampton Youth Civic Engagement, a program to instill community pride and leadership skills in young people and engage them in governance. The program was systematic, first fostering civic awareness through local service projects, then building collaboration and leadership skills through involvement with city boards and commissions on issues of increasing complexity. Young people contributed ideas — on better policing, school reform, job training — and helped with policy implementation.
Nearly two decades later, the program is still in operation and recognized as a national model for fostering civic engagement. A study of Hampton’s college-age residents has found they outperform peer groups in three key measures of citizenship: the ability to engage in civic discourse, passion for their community and leadership skills. Fewer families are fleeing the city, crime is down and Hampton’s voting rate is about 20 percent higher than similar communities. In 2005, the city received the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s annual Innovations in American Government Award. In 2007, Money magazine rated the city as one of the “Best Places to Live” in the U.S.
“What Hampton shows us is that local government can prepare its leaders of tomorrow, but it also shows that government can engage people, of all ages and backgrounds, to bring real value — things of substance — to the community today,” says Carmen Sirianni, a professor of sociology and public policy at Brandeis University, whose new book, Investing in Democracy: Engaging Citizens in Collaborative Governance, provides an in-depth case study of the Hampton program. “Enlightened leaders recognize that public issues are getting more complex. Civic engagement today is far more complicated than just showing up at a city council meeting and raising your hand.”
…Yet, as Putnam has noted, indicators of citizenship in America continue a long and, in some cases, precipitous decline, leading Levine and others to question why government officials aren’t more receptive to programs that invigorate their citizenry. Over the past 50 years or so, studies show, Americans have become less knowledgeable of local and national affairs, less likely to engage in public discourse, less willing to join a group or civic organization, less likely to interact with neighbors and more likely to perceive fellow citizens as dishonest and immoral. Three years ago, the National Conference on Citizenship, a congressionally chartered nonprofit advocacy group that measures, tracks and promotes civic participation in the U.S., produced its first national Civic Health Index, a comprehensive assessment of civic well-being compiled from 40 indicators such as voting rates, frequency of public meeting attendance and confidence in government.
…Most troubling, NCoC executive director David Smith notes, is an ongoing erosion of what he believes to be the most fundamental indicators of good citizenship: trust in neighbors and institutions and connectedness to community and religious organizations. Trust and connectedness is lowest among the so-called Millennial group — 14-to-29-year-olds. “To me this is one big red flag,” Smith says. “The very foundations of our democracy are threatened if our youngest citizens do not maintain the fabric that has connected us the past 200 years.”…
(2 Nov 2009)
Sacred Activism: An Unprecedented Marriage
Carolyn Baker, Speaking Truth to Power
When I was a young activist in the late 1960s and early 70s, simultaneously finding myself engaged in a burgeoning metaphysical quest, I sometimes felt nearly schizophrenic as I encountered other activists who disparaged the metaphysical, even as I engaged with other students of the metaphysical who had no interest in social or political issues. For years, it was challenging and frustrating to integrate these two poles of reality in my own life, and I noticed that I was not alone in my frustration. Increasingly, however, I saw activists pursuing spiritual quests and spiritual practitioners becoming more engaged in championing social justice causes. Nevertheless, it was not until 2009 that the exquisite union of activist passion and spiritual ardor was articulated by the brilliant author, activist, spiritual teacher, and Rumi scholar, Andrew Harvey, in his extraordinary book, The Hope: A Guide To Sacred Activism.
The Hope is above all, a vision of a marriage-a union of radical action on behalf of social justice and human dignity complemented by a spiritual quest for meaning and purpose in a world that all too often feels excruciatingly absurd. More specifically according to Harvey:
When the inner joy Mother Teresa spoke of, the joy of compassionate service, is married to a practical and pragmatic drive to transform all existing economic, social, and political institutions, a radical and potentially all-transforming holy force is born
A Sacred Activist is someone who is starting to experience the inner joy and outer effectiveness of this force, who knows that the profound crisis in the world is in is challenging everyone to act from our deepest compassion and wisdom, and who is committed to being, in the face of growing chaos, suffering, and violence, what Robert Kennedy call “a tiny ripple of hope” and a “center of energy and daring.”
While this may sound abstract or irrelevant, the author launches all 15 chapters with one entitled “Ten Things You Can Do Right Now.” Some are a combination of suggestions that invite the reader into “deep, nourishing connection” with his/her spirit, and others awaken the reader to tangible action in the world.
…According to Harvey, working with one’s own shadow is imperative in the journey of sacred activism. Otherwise, one may betray the very principles for which one is struggling. For example, the peace activist may disown her propensity for violence and project it onto imperialist warmongers, only to find herself inexplicably erupting in rage at one of her activist colleagues.
Shadow work, the author emphasizes, is not for sissies-and it is vitally important if one is committed to becoming a Sacred Activist. The first essential experience in the process is to open to the sacred and the unconditional acceptance of oneself that lies therein. Harvey himself was profoundly influenced by his relationship with a mentor and friend, Father Bede Griffiths, a British-born Benedictine monk who lived and died in South India. Some months before Griffiths’ death, Harvey spent many hours with him and listened as the aged monk spoke freely of the evolutionary threshold on which he believed humanity stood at the end of the twentieth century….
(5 Nov 2009)
