nevermind the bricolage

clouds illusions

I've been teaching a class on theology and media, focusing primarily on television and digital media, exploring the acceleration of change and the theological implications of living mediated lives. As I come to this class every eighteen months or so I am aware of how quickly things shift and change. We now find ourselves in the era of 'cloud' technology, the digitality of the present/future seems to be this strange notion of the cloud-our information, our lives, disappearing into internet vapour and no longer living on our computers.

Surely one of the more interesting dynamics of digital living is the growing disconnect with materiality when it comes to our stuff--our music library is made up of files rather than tape or vinyl, our photos are digital, our letters and communications are e-mail, text, tweets-seldom tangible, mediated via machines--mobile devices, laptops, ipads etc. And then there is the cloud-we are intensely suspicious of this sudden appearing, because like much of digital technology it appears to us in a finished form and we are caught up in it before we even know what's really go on and our thoughts about it are usually retroactive-it's only when it works against us rather than for us that we realize its dark side--the recent leak of celebrity nude pics, hacked from the cloud basically--you might delete something from your phone, but it's not gone, nothing  is ever 'gone', it's stored in the cloud which surrounds us, consumes, subsumes us in its vaporous nothingness.

Now it seems to me that there is something of a connect here with some forms of theological reflection. There is a history of 'cloud theology,' be it works, like The Cloude of Unknowyng, the anonymous Middle-English book on contemplative prayer, or Nichols Cusa's 'cloud of impossibility' which addresses the concept of learned ignorance (not-knowing to put it in contemporary terms perhaps), a sort of return to Socratic inquiry.

Cloud computing places everything within our reach but removes it from our grasp-we have to access it through a process, it doesn't live on our devices, they become tools of access. 

The interesting thing about cloud technology is that it’s not a place or location, it’s a highway system. Look at the Google data center in the image above-it's all tubes and pipes. The Cloud contains loads of information and files, but that reality only articulates itself when I go to my computer, launch a programme and resume work on something at the point I left it on my ipad earlier. And we are not really supposed to be thinking about this very much, even though every digital outlet from Apple to Google to Amazon is championing its benefits, we’re simply meant to realize that we can have our data where we need it, when we need it.

Socrates declared that "All I know is that I know nothing," which was the inspiration for Cusa's move to learned ignorance, the premise being that what we know is contingent and we cannot know things precisely because what we know of anything is through relations. For Cusa, the cloud is defined by blindness, darkness and ignorance (an apt metaphor it seems to me for our understanding of the digital cloud), and it is this cloud that we must deal with when we consider the sacred--the darkness itself, if you like, is illuminating.

 

The cloud confronts us with contradictions-both the theological cloud of unknowing and the digital cloud---we don't know enough but we are in relation, and we need to reflect on our not-knowing, our ignorance rather than jump to conclusions and simplistic answers.

In his wonderful book, Nudities, Giorgio Agamben writes,

"The ways in which we do not know things are just as important (and perhaps even more important) as the ways in which we know them...it is possible, in fact, that the way in which we are able to be ignorant is precisely what defines the rank of what we are able to know and that the articulation of a zone of non-knowledge is the condition and at the same time the touchstone of all our knowledge...The act of living is, in this sense, the capacity to keep ourselves in harmonious relationship with what escapes us."

It's virtually impossible not to enter the digital cloud these days, unless one opts out of all connectivities related to the Internet, but avoidance and resistance has seldom seemed the right move to me, and when it comes to digitality I think it is not possible, better then to take some time to frame our ignorance. The same would be true for me when it comes to issues of the sacred-a learned ignorance, and informed not-knowing might just be the pathway not only to fresh understandings but also out of old cul-de-sacs.

 

 

from food porn to food deserts

Someone recommended that I see the film, One Hundred Foot Journey, a film set in an idyllic village in France that revolves around two restaurants--you guessed it-one hundred feet and a million miles from each other. It's a sweet film, nothing that profound, a light-hearted exploration of cultural difference, racism, bigotry, traditions and the benefit of learning from each other. An Indian family of cooks moves across the street from a Michelin-starred bastion of French culinary tradition-sparks fly and food is the medium.

As I watched the camera linger over eggs, the sheen of the yolk captured in a transcendental light and watched over and over as characters argued about, tasted, waxed lyrical about mushrooms, the five sauces of French cooking and the delight of Indian spices--I realized that I was watching a 90-minute food porn film! Now, I'm ok with food porn, although I must confess, much of it is lost on me, not sure if it is my lifelong fish-allergy or what, but when it comes to food it is probably the least adventurous part of my life-caution always prevails with me when it comes to food-I'm happy eating a very narrow set of foods, so food porn is watchable and enjoyable, but I am not that turned on by it and hardly a full-on particiapnt and not even much of a voyeur. I have a friend with whom I occasionally go to restaurants on her 'hot-list' and I love her reaction to the food she tastes as much, if not more than the reaction of my own taste buds.

But the film got me thinking about this love affair we are having with food. It's been building for years and in the past decade has poked above the surface of the culture and gone mainstream. it's not just the Food Channel, Cooking Channel, celebrity chef culture, there are magazines, there is a food-truck craze that shows little sign of abating, and so many other avenues down which our culture celebrates, no revels orgiastically, in food. One Hundred Foot Journey is at least the second film this summer that trades in food--Chef, Jon Favreau's homage to food truck eating opened the summer.

I have no issue at all with it, and in fact, I enjoy going to eat with people because it tends to mean that one is with people for whom you care and who care for you in return, and the occasion is usually a really enjoyable one, because food brings us together. I am just wondering what the current giddiness with food reflects about us and about culture at present.

There is no doubt in my mind that foodie-culture is connected to other shifts in our culture that are moving us more and more away from the modern world of utility and convenience. Food isn't just fuel, it is something to take delight in-it's about community, connecting with ourselves and others, connecting with the earth and with the material world in general. Cooking at home has become the new 'going-out,' building a list of go-to restaurants has become de-rigeur for many.

Slow-food movements, the increasing expansion of health food and organics into middle America (and middle-Britain for that matter), farmers markets, all these things point to a new relationship with food in our culture. And it is globally fuelled-food comes from anywhere and everywhere and the rules are broken almost everytime you go to a restaurant-in the 21st century, anything goes-old school, new school, in-between school, no school.

The other side of the equation is the counter to all this. We hear talk of food deserts, of large portions of our cities where there is little access to good food--processed and fast food remain the main diet of many poor and disadvantaged people, particulalry in the inner-city and un-gentrified parts of the urban landscape.

As always, a complicated picture, on the one hand you have a large section of the public enjoying food and exploring new eating and diet horizons in a manner that is mind-boggling, and on the other, people struggling to get access to affordable and healthy food. Food is always about access and economics-it's not that there isn't enough food to go around, it is that food, like everything exists within an economic horizon of profit and loss and it goes where the money is.

So what to make of it? Well, a couple of thoughts. Firstly, I think our new found devotion to food has something to do with a desire for a home, a sense of home anyway, that we have never had. I mean 'home' in the sense of a time in which everything felt ordered, organized and laid-out for us, in a way that we simply cannot experience in our digitally interconnected, globally shaped pluralized world. I think our time is longing, yearning even, for a rootedness and an anchoring--think about our retro-fascination for instance, and that food is a galvanizing place--all this cooking, eating, preparing, it reeks of home.

Secondly, I think it is about re-ordering the new world we find ourselves in by thinking about things that we haven't thought about for years. And food is central in that. Again, think about the 50s and 60s--processed food-tv dinners-fast-food culture-food on the run-colouring, additives, chemicals, dyes, living with little sense of where food came from, what it might represent beyond fuel for our working lives (work being another element of our world that we are reviewing). Now we are starting to think about food, enjoy it, savour it, prepare it, celebrate and take time with it.

As the modern worlds loses its grip on our lives, we are, as I just mentioned, taking the time to re-think many things and this is indicative of a huge cultural shift that we are all experiencing and we come toward the middle of the second decade of the 21st century we are beginning to re-frame our lives, our worlds, with new perspectives and ideas, letting go of ways that shaped us for much of the 20th century and finally finding our way into the 21st.

what happened to the soul?

 

One of the topics that I brought up early on in my latest theology and culture class was the issue of the self and the shifting terrain of the soul. The 'erasure of the self,' a term I used from Mark I. Wallace, is an issue of real importance to the realm of the religious in my opinion. Our understanding of what it means to be human, how we think or perceive of the condition of human nature, and particularly, the body and soul dualism that has generally been regarded as given. For most of our history in Western civilization we have operated with a classic view of the self, gifted to us by the Greeks etc., the idea that the 'soul' is subjective and exists outside of matter. There has been a lot of re-thinking of these concepts, and above is yet another from Iain McGilchrist, asking whether or not the use of the term soul has any value or currency in the world today--spoiler--he thinks it does, but redefines it nicely I think.

(There is a blank spot in the video because of music copyright issues but you can listen to the piece yourself via another source)

This lecture is part of an ongoing series created by the RSA to consider spirituality anew in the 21st century.

Penance

Glenn O'Brien, patron saint of Interview magazine, writer, 80's cable tv host, ' GQ's style guy' and a man of considerable style launched a project in 2012 called Penance. It was a performance piece which involved O'Brien dressing as a faux priest and setting up a 'confessional' at the infamous Chelsea hotel in New York. He was aided by swimsuit model Michelle Vawer who played the part of a nun in a rather fetching latex 'habit' and recorded the confessions. Part tongue-in-cheek, part performance piece and part reflection of the particularities and peccadilloes of modern life, Penance has now been released as a limited edition, 240-page book, filled with images and confessions. In some ways it reminds me a little of David Byrne's project, The New Sins, from a few years back, a different take on some similar threads if you will. O'Brien's is available here. He also tweets at @lordrochester (see Johnny Depp in The Libertine and you will understand).

misunderstanding misunderstood

 

The commercial above for the iPhone 5 has been garnering some critique. As you've seen it's a typical teenager, moping about...but not really, turns out said mopey-teen has been documenting family celebrations after all and has used amazing editing chops, great music and his life-altering mobile device to create a moving chronicle of his families Christmas. One of the critiques I read complained that the boy had to 'adopt an anthropological remove,' to be outside all the events he recorded, and would have been better off participating. This is a critique I hear a lot about technology, 'it stops people from being present...they aren't participating etc.' While I'm sure there are valid shades to that argument, mostly I think its stretched a little too far, and fits too nicely into a preconceived view of things.

The funny thing about many of the critiques of the ad is that the critics are completely caught up in the creators web--they immediately identify with the bored, mopey teen, and tun immediately to their arguments about voyeurism, obsessive disconnection etc., except that on this particular occasion, said teen is playing a role, and is, in fact, paying attention to the larger story going on around him, and he is fully present.

I think the moral of the story is twofold. Firstly, I resist the idea that one cannot be present and capturing moments at the same time (which, of course, is the point of the video, well that and selling you a device!), I do it all the time. People who know me give me Moleskine notebooks because I always carry one and make notes, write down ideas, quotes I'm hearing etc. and in order to do that I pause, and I often 'sit slightly outside' events, it's part of who I am--there is a fine line between voyeurism and observation.

Secondly, I do agree with the old exhortation to moderation in all things, and there are times when particiaption and engagment should be prioritized and anthropological remove negated, but sometimes I think the naysayers are just a bit too quick to critique and are in fact, not in the moment themselves, they are standing outside in a posture of anthropological remove with a preconceived idea ready to lay over whatever comes before them, just like mopey teens.

google after death

"I was born without knowing why, I have lived without knowing why, and I am dying without either knowing why or how." Pierre Gassendi.

Time magazine had a fairly provocative cover article in a recent issue. The article was about Calico, Google's new venture whose commitment is to the solving the 'death problem.' The company brief is that it "will focus on health and well-being, in particular the challenge of aging and associated diseases." Calico's CEO and founding investor is Arthur D. Levinson, the former CEO of Genentech, the biotech corporation, and Apple chairman. The basic drive behind all this is Google's belief that medicine is becoming an information science (something that Mark C. Taylor has noted in his great book, The Moment of Complexity, arguing that it is important to expand our notion of information to make it as inclusive as possible),as the article notes

"Medicine is well on its way to becoming an information science: doctors and researchers are now able to harvest and mine massive quantities of data from patients. And Google is very, very good with large data sets. While the company is holding its cards about Calico close to the vest, expect it to use its core data-handling skills to shed new light on familiar age-related maladies. Sources close to the project suggest it will start small and focus entirely on researching new technologies."

This idea should really come as no surprise, Google is a big company and has its eye on any number of ideas connected to the flourishing of life. Larry Page, one of Google's founders, is also one of the founders of the Singularity University, an institution committed to exploring a future,

"when a superior intelligence will dominate and life will take on an altered form that we can’t predict or comprehend in our current, limited state." So a desire to extend and prolong life might fit nicely with that perspcetive.

Personally I think that the idea of singualrity is more connected to America's fascination with a particular interpretation of apocalypticism, it's not too far away from religious 'end-of-the-worlders' in my mind, but to each his own, and there are some very interesting ideas and technologies coming out of this thinking. The idea that technology can solve the world's ills has always been a part of the human/technology equation, and let's face it, there have been advancements in the state of human affairs greatly benefitted by tech advances, but I am not fully convinced that we will ever fully 'transcend all the limitations of our biology,' as another founder Ray Kurzweil claims, I am in fact, not sure we should even try--life is lived in the shadow of death, and, in spite of our protestations to the contrary, I think that attempting to transcend all the limitations of our biology is a bit of a fairy tale dressed up in scientific-techno-babble for the most part. Of course I could, and probably am, wrong.

There was a quote from Page that I did find a little troubling,

"What’s certain is that looking at medical problems through the lens of data and statistics, rather than simply attempting to bring drugs to market, can produce startlingly counterintuitive opinions. “Are people really focused on the right things?” Page muses. “One of the things I thought was amazing is that if you solve cancer, you’d add about three years to people’s average life expectancy. We think of solving cancer as this huge thing that’ll totally change the world. But when you really take a step back and look at it, yeah, there are many, many tragic cases of cancer, and it’s very, very sad, but in the aggregate, it’s not as big an advance as you might think.”

I understand, I think, the larger context in which this is being said, and I might agree to a degree if my lens were simply data, but that's not the lens through which we uniquely see life is it? Life is not measured by data, it's measured by moments, by breath, encounter, experience, dust, dirt, grime, joy, sex, work, play and all the other immeasurable elements that make up what it means to be alive and spread out over mathematical equations and statistical probabilities these become inconsequential.

So perhaps he's right, maybe in the grand scheme of things a cure for cancer is small fish, but it's worth it if you ask me. It seems to me there are lots of things that could be done before resources are devoted to this pursuit--life expectancy could be addressed by things as simple as re-distribution of wealth, food, or health and medicine resources, but that cuts into systems of power and control?

Anyway, I don't have any real answers, I thought it was a very interesting article ( I am not even that down on the idea), that raises important questions about how and in what way we deal with the challenges of life and what we might perhaps prioritize in our pursuit of human flourishing.

design jargon bullshit

A new tumblr, Design Jargon Bullshit, skewers the ridiculous use of language in design circles. It's nothing new or even unique, you could probably build a tumblr devoted to any segment of the industry/public interface, but it's worth a look, as it might help us to edit ridic-speak out of our own worlds--could I be bothered I would be tempted to devote one to religious jargon!

 

sacred secular transitions

 

Sam Cooke began his career as a gospel singer and like many made his troubled journey into the pop market by taking one of his gospel hits and re-making it--it's a sort of reversal of what happens today when 'secular' songs get sacralized. I think I prefer it when it goes in Mr. Cooke's direction. He's So Wonderful became Lovable and a pop career began.

 

I got the Nobel-Higgs-Boson blues

 

Who better than Nick Cave to celebrate the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Physics to Peter Higgs, who discovered the particle, named after him. Someone needs to buy Mr. Higgs some 'yellow alligator shoes' before he goes to Stockholm.

in between spaces

Much of my adult life has been wrestling with the complexities of religion, and how it plays out in my own life and the world around me. Last night at dinner someone asked me what my core value was, expecting I think, some kind of religious statement. To be honest, I felt a little stuck because for one thing, I don't really conceive of life in terms of 'key statements' that I live by, but also because I was aware that my 'core beliefs' if they exist, aren't necessarily that religious, which might be surprising given that my life has been so intimately wrapped up in religion. First I said, 'there is no god and we are his disciples,' but then I figured I should offer a bit more so I said something about that living a life of love will do you no harm, and followed it up with a coda that it won't do you any harm, but it will cost you--a bit of a bind really, what I meant was that I really believe attempting to live a life that is marked by graciousness and loving kindness will fuck you up, it will expose flaws deep in your psyche, will present daily challenges to ones sanity, will expose hypocrisies, weaknesses, and blatant bullshit like nothing else, and there will often be little in the way of positive result, because I think, as Amy Winehouse decreed, Love is a Losing Game--sure she was singing about romantic love, but I don't think its very different with any other kind of love.

What I probably should have said is I am just trying to be a slightly nicer person, because that's the truth--there are so many arseholes in the world, and I don't want to be one if I can help it. I have let go of so many lofty religious aims, mainly because I don't think they work in people's lives, they just become baggage and I don't really think about life in terms of religious conceptions--redemption, salvation etc. it doesn't interest me to approach things that way. I have been thinking a lot about repentance lately, there have been a series of stories in the lectionary gospels that have utilized this idea--to me it means seeing what you have chosen up to now to not to see (because I think we spend our lives editing what we see-in ourselves, in each other and in the world around us)--and then doing something about it--I don't want to dress it up in language and ideas that have followed that thread for so long that they have nullified its invitation--in Jesus' accounting it seems that the people who have the hardest time with the concept are the ones who proclaim it, those who presumably have 'repented' but they haven't they have entered into some kind of religious blindspot-the 99 he jokes who have no need of it--as if 99 even exist-those to whom they direct their calls for repentance are already seeing differently. Why is religious so often such a blinder to reality? This is a question I ask more and more.

On Mark Vernon's blog recently there was a link to a new project being conducted by the RSA that I think looks quite interesting. It's called, The Brains Behind Spirituality, it is definitely worth a read. I realize it addresses these issues from a British angle, and that the American situation is somewhat different, however, I think there are resonances addressed in this initial article that make its finding of interest. The essay names something that I think should get more attention--contemporary spiritual embarassment--a lot of people I encounter wrestle with this on a regular basis--to claim spirtitual affiliation is often attended by hearers with visions of rabid fundamentalists etc. and having to clarify what one means by that over and over can be wearing. Anyway, the article is helpful I think and the findings will be interesting to engage with next year.