nevermind the bricolage

zizek first as tragedy

 

I love the format of these animations--they help me process the ideas contained in the talks.

millenials, church and other generalizations

The incomparable Homebrewed theologian Tripp Fuller, tweeted this this little back and forth earlier in the week and for some reason I havent been able to completely shake it off. It's from Andrew Tatum, whom I confess I don't know. This is his post...

Earlier this week, Respected Philosophy professor (and one of my favorite authors), James K.A. Smith blogged the following:

It seems like every other day I'm told another reason why young people are leaving the church: because Christians fight too much, or because Christians are too political or anti-gay or don't care about social justice.  Millennials, we're told, are leaving the church because the church won't bless their cohabitation or provide them with contraception for pre-marital sex. They're leaving because they don't care about fights over creation/evolution or abortion or worship style or what have you.  In sum, it seems we're regularly informed that if the church doesn't change, young people are going to leave. 

And what exactly are we supposed to do with these claims?  I think the upshot is pretty clear.  Indeed, am I the only one who feels like they're a sort of bargaining chip--a kind of emotional blackmail meant to get the church to relax its commitments in order to make the church more acceptable? 

Could we entertain the possibility that millennials might be wrong?

I would agree entirely that millennials are, in fact, wrong on many issues. But I would argue that the reasons listed by Smith above are by no means the most prominent of reasons why young people are leaving the church. It isn't that the church simply needs to "get with the times" or accommodate moral ambiguity. The fact is that young many young people are leaving church because they have come looking for "church" and have found many things -- but authentic church is not among them.

What I mean is that young people are leaving because they have been in attendance at church services, Sunday schools, and other church events and instead of finding a community of spiritual depth and Christ-like love that truly cares about its community, they have found too many people over-concerned with gimmickry, social status, self-interest, and self-preservation. Instead of finding a community of authentic worship of God and sacrificial love for neighbor, they have found a community of fear, anxiety, and tepid pseudo-spirituality.

I believe millenials are searching for authenticity and community and that the church today has, indeed, lost its way. But the problem is not just that the church has refused to accommodate millennials' moral shortcomings by "relaxing its commitments to make church more acceptable" -- it's that the millennials have come looking for a community passionately following Christ in all areas of life and - far too often - we (i.e. Christians) haven't given them what they're searching for. I am not surprised that millennials are leaving church because as I survey the landscape of American Christianity today I don't see that it has much to recommend itself to the next generation -- or any generation, for that matter.

In order to regain the trust of future generations, the church needs to regain its own spiritual vitality, but this will not come through gimmicks, ad campaigns, moral laxity, or any of the other "desperate measures" currently being pursued to stave off the church's decline. If there is to be any hope that the church will regain the next generation, what is really needed is steadfast obedience to Christ's call to sacrificial love and a commitment to be "good news" to our communities born out in concrete acts of service and radical hospitality. We need to be less committed to the "institution" -- our buildings, bulletins, budgets, and social status -- and more committed to Christ and the pursuit of the koinonia that Christ lived, died, and rose again to create.

-------------------

I don't particulalry like to wade into these conversations, but sometimes it seems there are such glaringly obvious things to address. For instance, Smith speaks of millenials perhaps emotionally blackmailing the church to change its commitments. I think blackmail implies an on-going threat i.e. "something will happen if you don't do such and such," this doesn't seem to be the case here--rather, people are simply walking away and in effect saying "keep your commitments" I dont want them--thats very different from blackmail. I think this is what churches often miss, they think they are more important than they are--people don't want to debate these issues, they aren't interested in them. So by all means, keep your 'commitments'--which in this particular case seem to be little more than particular theological and culturally contextual reads anyway, but for many people they aren't sticking around to listen.

In saying that, I am not necessarily agreeing with the 'millenials.' In fact, another point I'd like to make here is the danger of generational theory--which is rooted in marketing and advertising--generations may exhibit certain trends in terms of views and behaviours--but the reality is more complex than that and should not be trusted--we speak way too much in these broad and unreliable terms--and to be honest, the claims made of millenials about the church are not exclusive to them--I hear those comments on multi-generational levels. Yes, younger people are less inclined to favour institutional forms of anything, and to challenge certain views or positions related to cultural issues, but that is a dynamic that has long been at work in western cultures, and for some millenials christianity may work fine, so to write off or speak broadly of any 'generation' is silly--we have to get away from this if there is to be any cogent and worthwhile conversation--it's not just young people who find difficulty with aspects of Christianity.

But back to the millenials (whoever they are)--so are they right? Yes and No. I applaud the search for 'authenticity and community'-but they are far from the first crowd to want that--can it be found in church? Sometimes, but we have to get over generalizations about all this. I also think it is a littler naive to dismiss church experiences as inauthentic or lacking communal aspects--it can just be particular forms and expressions of both those things and they may or may not work for people--but they can't just be written off on the basis of some generalized and idealized sense of what authenticity and community mean--those words have many interpretations and iterations, What is needed here is an expansion of the moral imagination on both sides. Times are changing, that much is sure. Different values, ideas and views are re-shaping the world. The church holds onto to history as it's determinant way too much--history cannot be ignored, but the future isn't embraced or necessarily engaged by a commitment to the past as if the past had it all together--the shifting sands of church views on creation, sexuality, marriage, worship etc, should be guide enough for any of us to realize the need to recognize temporality in what we hold all too tightly sometimes. I'm a bit tired of people linking their present state to the 'historic' faith--they tend to become guardians of a certain history and proponents of a sort pseudo-orthodoxy rather than a radical one.

In fact, I'm a bit tired of most of the debates around religion. It's filled my life for the past thirty years and I am getting very close to be done with it all. I could walk away from 'the church' (again, what the fuck does that mean when we speak in such generalizations?!--there is no 'the church' it's just like politicians who speak of the 'american people'--it's a fiction, and not a very helpful one anymore) just as some millenials do, over exactly the same issues, and more. Actually, thats probably not true, I wouldn't leave over these issues or the postitions certain people hold about them, it's bigger than that for me---I just think that church has become about little more than niche iterations of certain interpretations of what christian faith means and most of them don't strike me as particularly interesting anymore--that certain people think this or that or adopt this or that form of expression? who cares? I don't anymore.

So why did I respnd to this little back and forth then? Well, in between my feelings and my actions exists a little disconnect that I am actively working on and this stuff falls into that space for right now.

corpus mysticum: performing the body of christ

Today (Thursday) is the celebration of the Feast of the Ascension, acknowledgement of the final phase in the physicality of Jesus, from birth, growth, tranfiguration, breaking, crucifying, death, resurrecting, and finally, ascending. I have been thinking a lot about bodies lately-(I have been working on a book idea about technology and bodies)-I think many people in church life have been--not just around issues of gender and sexuality, but beyond that towards new thinking about things like materiality and subjectivity, make-up--body/soul/spirit etc, consciousness--you name it, it all seems up for grabs. So I have been giving particular thought to the body, both of Christ and 'us' in this post-Resurrection period.

The transformation or phases of Jesus' physicality are of interest. I mean, sure all God, all man--but his physicality always seems to be the site of fairly unusual activity and possibility throughout the gospels--walking on water, healing by word or touch, multiplication of resource--the list goes on, but once you get to the Tranfiguration things take an even deeper path-from that point, his walk towards death, and then life again, puts Jesus' body in the centre of the action--his body, his flesh, becomes the sight of some interesting exchanges which culminate in this final exchange--he ascends and then re-emerges, in us as the body of Christ. This is paul isn't it? We perform the body of Christ. I think what is coming to fruition in my thinking is a new valuation of the body--I think it has been generally undervalued in my particular church and theology experiences--it's a dangerous thing, the human body---it's subject to 'vile passions' and in a culture where the immaterial, subjective part of humans (spirit/soul) have dominated theological thinking and process, the body is all too easily dismissed, discounted etc. I realize that we hear lots of talk about the 'body of Christ'--the church, the community of faith, but I am scratching at something more than that--human physicality--the value of flesh--what are we doing with our bodies and why? The actions of our bodies connect us to the meaning of our bodies I think--sex, illness even, somehow these things point to the worth, the value, the beauty of embodiment, of physicality.

Graham Ward wrote about the gendered body of Christ overcoming and transcending its gendered and ethnic limitations, and posited this as a pathway to understading human sexuality or gender issues in a new light or way. I think there is a lot there, and I have spent a long time reflecting on that idea, but that kernel of an idea has morphed into wider areas and possibilities for me--anyway, its Ascension Day and I'm thinking about that in different ways today than I used to.

Lightbulbs

I don't know how much attention has been paid to the 'lightbulb wars' but in the past few months there have been a number of debates surrounding a 2007 law that essentially brings an end to old lightbulb technology and replaces it with newer, more energy efficent, longer lasting and slightly more expensive incandescent lightbulbs. This has touched a nerve, bringing up issues of government control and the like. Michele Bachmann for instance said, "The American people want less government intrusion into their lives, not more, and that includes staying out of their personal light-bulb choices"(there we go with the mythic 'american people' that politicians of all stripes claim to speak for!).

I don't really want to wade into that debate as much as use it as an access point for thinking about some shifting cultural moments. I was reading an interview with media ecologist Douglas Rushkoff on the always enlightening TNI, in which he used lightbulbs as a way of understanding how media functions,

"So it’s like the lightbulb is a media environment, right? You turn on the lightbulb, and you have a different environment because of that medium. But print is a media environment that encourages certain ways of looking at the world. Television changes us. Internet is a media environment. Somehow our media environment, combined with our economic environment, can really amplify one another’s effects in dangerous ways."

He also spoke about the important shift of the past few years which in his mind is a shift from futurism to what he terms presentism, that essentially we aren't a forward-looking society anymore (this could be a sign of the final end of modernity or not, but it would seem to signal a significant shift in the cultural psyche away from a dominant perspective rooted in the Enlightenment project). Elsewhere, Rushkoff has defined presentism as this,

"We shifted to this leaning forward futurist viewpoint to a “woah we’re here” presentism, it’s the shock of “Oh my gosh, we’re alive right now, but I’m not living for the now.”Nothing changes where you are right now, but we don’t think that way. The new thing that’s supposed to change our lives, when it doesn’t, we don’t know what to do."

Now, I think of two competing, or at least parallel, ideas about the present here. The one is the 'spiritual' discipline of being present in the world, and the idea that it is an important thing to be alive to the present moment, and we use any number of techniques, meditation, prayer and the like to condition ourselves to being 'in' the present moment. It's interesting to me that Rushkoff finds that living in the present, in the now, seems to eradicate the potential for change, and perhaps more importantly, challenges the idea that we are supposed to be changing. Presentism seems to be about media demands for us to paying more attention, and this partly seems to be a bit of a negative for Rushkoff and he goes on to posit that things like Asperger's and ADD are perhaps resistant mechanisms to the demand from media to be more attentive? The Sex Pistols line, 'no future' was going through my head whilst I was reading the article.

Again, I don't want to debate that as much as point out, that however we parse it, something is changing in the cultural psyche and that this is important. There are going to be any number of ideas about the present moment, but I do think Rushkoff is pointing out something important here--the path he takes with it has appeal and non-appeal for me--but nonetheless, there seems to be a tangible shift in the way we are processing the world around us and a certain inertia accompanies that--noone seems to know what to do, or is perhaps afraid to make a move. I can only apply this anecdotally to my own small worlds, that of a certain acedemia and the diverse church environs and economies that I inhabit--all of them characterized by inertia as the future-lean gives ways to presentism.

 

ch-check it out

There has been a great outpouring of love and sadness at the passing of Beastie boy Adam Yauch, who died way too young, way too young. His story was a transformative one, a former hard-partying fiend who becomes an advocate, supporter and devotee of Buddhism and buddhist causes. A serious contender for the most important figure in raising of awareness to the plight of Tibetans to young people as founder of the Free Tibet Concerts and Movement, filmmaker, and, by all accounts, all around lovely guy. This is a letter he wrote to the New York Times in response to a critique of a Beastie Boys video.

To the Editor:

I had the great pleasure of reading your unsolicited critique of the “Ch-Check It Out” music video [”Licensed to Stand Still” by Stephanie Zacharek, May 16]. It took some time to get to me, as it had to be curried (sp?) on goatback through the fjords of my homeland, the Oppenzell. And in the process the goat died, and then I had to give the mailman one of my goats, so remember, you owe me a goat.

Anyway, that video is big time good. Pauline Kael is spinning over in her grave. My film technique is clearly too advanced for your small way of looking at it. Someday you will be yelling out to the streets below your windows: “He is the chancellor of all the big ones! I love his genius! I am the most his close personal friend!”

You journalists are ever lying. I remember people like you laughing at me at the university, and now they are all eating off of my feet. You make this same unkind laughter at the Jerry Lewis for his Das Verruckte Professor and now look, he is respected as a French-clown. And you so-call New York Times smarties are giving love to the U2 because they are dressing as the Amish and singing songs about America? (Must I dress as the Leprechaun to sing songs about Ireland so that you will love me? You know the point I make here is true!)

In concluding, “Ch-Check It Out” is the always best music film and you will be realizing this too far passing. As ever I now wrap my dead goat carcass in the soiled New York Times — and you are not forgetting to buy me a replacement! Please send that one more goat to me now!

Nathanial Hörnblowér
Manhattan

The writer, whose real name is Adam Yauch, is a member of the Beastie Boys. He directs their music videos under the pseudonym Nathanial Hörnblowér.

(ht to James Frey for this)

There is also a very tender version of Fight for Your right To Party by Coldplay floating around the web--worth checking.

sex with nietzsche

pOLITICS AND POWER

 

I am in a couple of reading groups. one of the book's we are taking up is Simon Critchley's Faith of the Faithless. Someone from the group forwarded a link to an essay by Critchley in Adbusters about the current state of politics and power. Much of it rang true to me. I was particularly struck by a short comment in response to an engagement with is son in which Critchley addressed his son's disillusionment with these words,

"...I had a conversation with my 19-year-old-son in a favorite London pub last Saturday – the Lamb on Lamb’s Conduit Street. He cares about the state we’re in and is really worried and really fears and to some extent hopes that something big might happen. He sees what is happening across the world and doesn’t know what to do. He is part of a huge culture of disillusionment and disappointment among youth. (And if there is one central issue that the last year of global uprisings has raised, then it is that of youth. The question of youth is the question of the future, and that future has disappeared. We who are no longer young have to try and understand this and not simply adopt a patronizing attitude toward youth). My son is disillusioned and doesn’t see what good it would serve if he got involved. He feels powerless. I think this is a general feeling of his generation."

Worth a read, and an opportunity to feature the vocal stylings of Peter Tosh, founding member of the The Wailers, "You can't blame the youth," but we do.

(ignore the bob marley and the wailers tag--they were the wailers until peter and bunny left)

melancholy boundaries

 

A quite beautiful meditative video from graphic student Saskia Kretzschmann. Its a contemplation based on a quote from Poe, "The boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and  vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?” It's lovely, and fits my mood today. Found it at The Cool Hunter.

no news is good news?

According to a little blurb on Mental Floss, on Good Friday in 1930, the BBC announced that there was "no news" and proceeded instead to play some piano music. In our age of information glut, where 'news' is so diluted that it seems to mean 'information of any kind however banal, that somehow we think we all need to know this' the idea that there would be 'no news' is incomprehensible. What a relief on some levels. It gets more and more difficult to imagine a time when information was in short, or shorter, supply. Now it's been said that the amount of information in the New York Times alone exceeds the amount of information a person in the 17th century would have received in their entire life--I don't know if that is even a valid reference point, a  more telling one might be the difference between the amount of information one received or was exposed to in 1930 versus today, which I am sure could be determined if one were to just 'google' it!!

Of course, in the 1930s information came to us in a smaller number of ways, and at an entirely different speed. it was the age of radio, so things could be relayed quickly, but what was deemed worthy of relay was significantly different I would imagine-information,I mean there is always something happening, but whether or not we 'need' to know about it is another question. And, like many other things, 'news' was in the hands of a different kind of control mechanism, much more centralized, probably government run etc, this was way before the democratization of many of the things-and it was also defined differently.

I am deep into Geert Lovink's Networks Without A Cause and one of the things he briefly touches upon is the idea of the 'politics of traffic.' He applies that term to the link culture in web 2.0 environments but it seems to me that there is resonance here--a different kind of traffic politics was in play on good friday 1930--one that perhaps should occasionally make an appearance in our world, but what would we all do with that silent time and how would we cope with the anxiety of not-knowing??--but piano music as a substitute? I'm thinking OK Computer might be a better musical choice for a no news moment in 2012.

plenty

"Do not ask yourself if you can or cannot cope. It is not about adaptation or choice. The Greek god of hunting and rustic music, pan, is a symbol of plenty and abundance and has never been stigmatized as a problem. Humankind was always impressed by the billions of stars shining in the clear night sky-and never was in a panic about its plentitude." Franco Berardi

I was impressed by the ideas drawn from Italian philosopher Franco Berardi, in one of the books I am presently reading--Geert Lovink's, Networks Without A Cause--which I am finding very stimulating. The book is a critique of social media, but it is also a critique of theories around social media and the way ideas or opinions get traded with little critical reflection on their holistic engagement with issues at hand. Berardi's quote at the top of this post comes in a chapter on the Psychopathology of Information Overload and I really appreciate the way Lovink tackles it--mainly by challenging the idea that too much information is the problem--again, quoting Berardi, "the problem is not in the technology. We have to come to terms with it. The killing element is the combination of info stress and competition. We have to win, and to be the first. The real pathogenic effect is the neo-liberal pressure that makes the network condition so unlivable-not the abundance of information itself."

This book is one of the first social media critiques that actually stimulates my own thinking about it. I have found many of the books on this subject just a little too confident of their own veracity and I haven't fully bought the arguments put forth. This one, however, is really working for me--I find myself generating a new resource pool in terms of thinkers, books and concepts---semio-capitialism/personal information autonomy/hedonic lassitude/soft narcosis/depressive hedonia--(just in one chapter).

It's a good read and may challenge some ideas already firmly ensconsed in your own reasoned reflections on this topic, but one of those books that should be included in any comprehensive reflections on this topic.