200 WORDS ON - Christian Nationalism

Funded by billions of US dollars, Christian Nationalism hosts conferences in major European capitals, and is a malign influence in third world countries. Building on the concept of Cultural Christianity, it argues Christianity was the making of Western Civilisation and should be its saviour. Overlooking the role Christianity itself played in those so called 'corrupt' liberal democracies. It is anti immigration, racial equality, abortion, gay marriage, woke ideology and permissiveness. It virulently hates Islam, in a self-righteous manner comparable to a medieval crusade. It aligns itself with Capitalism seeing it as synonymous with Christian values. Ultimately wanting to dismantle and supplant democracy with a Christian Autocracy.

Trump and his techno overlords have happily played along with this. Utilising Christian Nationalism as moral camouflage, a vanguard of chivalric knights. Examine closely the true nature of Christian Nationalism, its intolerance, denigration of the poor, weak and disadvantaged, its iconoclastic urges to destroy equality programmes, education establishments, to support genocide and ruthless dictators. This compels you to ask, just what sort of Christianity is this? Not one Jesus would condone in his name. Christian Nationalism is a fundamental perversion of the Christian message. It is essentially White Christian Supremacy in squeaky clean suits.

200 WORDS ON - Cultural Christianity

Christianity slipped into Britain during the Roman occupation in the 1st to 2nd century CE. Since then, for nigh on two millennia, it had a distinct influence upon our beliefs, morality, economics and culture, not always exemplary. Many Christian concepts, have since become commonly held secular beliefs. A sense for fairness, tolerance of difference, helping the poor and disadvantaged, equitable distribution of wealth, the equality of individuals, liberal democracy even, are just a few legacies. Regardless of our current personal belief system, we benefit from these inheritances.

This does not mean we are all automatically Christian practitioners, nor that it magically works better if we all attend church. No one asks to be culturally Christian, you become it simply by being born here. Cultural Christianity above all is the most passive of non-actions. You don't have to do anything. You don’t choose to be that. Becoming a Christian, however, requires an individual choosing to commit to being a practitioner. Its an active decision. It is disingenuous of modern political and religious commentators to make cultural Christianity out to be anything more than the leftover background radiation of our history. One suspects they have an agenda not particularly Christian in intent.

 

200 WORDS ON - Atheism

The word atheism originally meant 'another theism', another form of religious belief. For once upon a time not believing in God was inconceivable. And indeed, Atheism can present itself with a declamatory aloofness similar to that of a Pentecostal Preacher. The urge to brow beat you into submission can feel unrelenting.

Modern atheism’s raison d'etre depends on the eradication of a belief in God. Theism and Atheism facing off against each other, like two bookends back to back in an unedifying duel for supremacy. Atheism finds itself unable to stand alone, unsupported by what it is in opposition to. That it cannot offer us a broader more compelling vision for humanity than that, is fundamentally the problem with it. It’s like being on a stringent diet, without being able to envisage what we’re hoping to achieve through it, we’re unlikely to stick with it.

That we might be much better off without a God, overlooks what an unbridled human nature is capable of without guide rails. Nietsche's declaration that ‘God is dead’ preceded a century of brutal atrocities. The worst of which entirely political in causation. If you turn off the light, it's alarming how quickly the dark sets in.

200 WORDS ON - Patriotism In Drag

If you live in a place you learn to enjoy aspects of it, become proud of it’s institutions and history, feel fondness for it’s architecture and landscapes, love the sense of place and of belonging to it’s people. It's perfectly possible to experience all of that, and simultaneously not enjoy other aspects, not feel proud of what your country has done in the past or the present, not like the way institutions are run, not love everything. To be critical, as well as appreciative, shows you care about your countries future. A healthy sense of pride is founded on that. It’s not unpatriotic to say - we could be better.

You might call yourself patriotic, but that can turn pride into an orthodox set of beliefs, slogans and tropes, blind to self-evident faults. Patriotism has this bastard cousin called Nationalism, where everything has to be overtly expressed, like a badge on a lapel, a declaration of allegiance to a team, group or race, turning pride into cultural superiority and hooliganism. Dressing in swags and flags, union jack underwear, St George bucket hats, luridly coloured bunting. Mistaking  merchandise for 'having pride in one's country'. Making pride a parody, it’s Patriotism In Drag.

200 Words On - At The Heart Of Resistance

Whatever the political creed of authoritarian, they are no friend to democratic ideals, beyond the point of getting elected through them. The trickster nature of fascism, is all about the effective merchandising of a fantasy ideal.

Our civilisation is bewildered. We no longer have a lived sense for what drove the post war liberal consensus, a concept we are so easily prone to satirically deride. Our faith in it appears lost. We do still want to have faith in something, to have our faith renewed. What do we now put our faith in?

However, trust has been badly bruised through repeated disappointment. Putting our faith in anything, is easily sabotaged by cynicism. Cautiousness stymies our commitment. When faith has vanished, when we don't know what we are fighting for or don't want to fight for anything anymore. How can we resist?

Buddhism has no direct equivalent for faith, the nearest is sraddha which means - that which you rest your heart upon. To resist the inhumanity of political extremism, requires we reconnect with what we still rest our heart upon. Then to consider how best to resist, defend and fight for that. Our words cannot remain empty of motive and purpose.

200 WORDS ON - The Fascist

Increasing populism, fundamentalism and authoritarianism are red flags, warning of the decline of a democracy. A Fascist administration is slowly slipping into being a possibility.

Described as 'the politics of them & us' what Fascism brings to the table is an unbridled Nationalism. Often attempting to restore a nations pride through mythologising a period when the country was deemed to be great.

Fascism tends to emerge in countries already broken and on their knees. The Fascist leader arrives posing as a man of the people, come to save his country from its destitute state. Desperate people do desperate things, Where a bit of lite fascism might do us all a bit of good.

Fascist's arrive and take a wrecking ball to the countries democratic governance and culture. State persecution, media disinformation, social division, racism, misogyny, homophobia, a climate of fear is cultivated around the idea of enemies within, here dissent itself becomes traitorous, all become prevalent.

Fascists will never leave office quietly, they usually having to be removed by force or assassination.. All Fascist administrations triumph via one man's ego gratification and end in egregious tyranny. The toppling spirit of democratic freedom and renewal can takes quite a while to re-emerge.

200 WORDS ON - The Authoritarian

The Authoritarian is frequently a populist, and a fundamentalist, but not wholly so. The Authoritarian exists on the political extremes left or right. Though elected by democratic vote, they do not believe in liberal permissiveness, accountability, cooperation, fairness or justice. Unless these suit their own agenda. Reforming the political system is done for their own singular advantage.

The Authoritarian leader, possesses charisma in order to bring the will of the people on board and be electable That charisma acting as a charming spell concealing the slight of hand beneath. Upholding freedom of speech only to the extent it gets them heard. Opposition overtime becomes subjugated and slyly silenced. Rights to protest, access to justice, challenging government policy, human rights are curtailed.

The longer The Authoritarian stays in power the constraints of democracy begin to chafe too much. Any sense of being a democracy increasingly becomes a sham, decoupling themselves from the rule of law or need to compromise. A parliamentary majority lets them impose legislation, control the media, demonise minorities in society.

The Authoritarian holds elections merely to further self aggrandise the leaders ego. The voting system is effectively rigged. By stealth an elected dictatorship has formed under your nose.

200 WORDS ON - The Fundamentalist

A Fundamentalist is thought of  essentially as a phenomena of religion. Fundamentalism, however, is a semi-religious inflection manifesting in wider range of contexts. Generally where ever faith and belief in the rightness of anything, becomes an unquestionable absolute.

A Fundamentalist pins their colours proudly on the flagpole of literal truth, of a philosophy, the practical application of an ideal, or an inspirational piece of writing. Whatever is deemed wrong with the world would be cured if these words were literally put into practice, A Fundamentalist is not interested in opinions or nuance, but in these foundational documents being adopted as 'gospel truth' by everyone. Principles or rules, becoming frozen dogma,

A Fundamentalist prides themselves in knowing exactly where they stand. Confident in the rightness and superiority of their beliefs, moral or economic purpose. Rigidly holding to the purest version of a religious, political or economic theory, robs them of humane understanding and basic compassion.

A Fundamentalist turns the economy into a pseudo-religious belief system. A pure capitalist system best operated completely free of restrictions. This turns wealth creation into an arbiter of what is good and has value, and the inordinately wealthy individual into a wise prophet or minor deity.

200 WORDS ON - The Populist

Populist politicians present policies as popular expressions of 'the will of the people'. This cannot be claimed by any party when it draws its legitimacy from a third of the population. At best exhorting the ‘will’ in a majority vote first past the post system,is only partial in its efficacy. Drawing upon tropes of the populist is a political strategy centuries old.

The Populist adopts whatever they believe has wide popularity in the general public, or within their imagined core voters.

The Populist will often say one thing to be popular, and speak the exact opposite later the same day. In a different context and time, contradictory ideas are given equally enthusiastic voice. Resulting policy inconsistency brings chaos in there wake. Truth becomes chained to context and place, not the facts of the matter.

The Populist is compelled by their own innate inconsistency, to argue they never said something, have been misquoted, or taken out of context. If these fail to stick, they lie or attack whoever is pointing out the cognitive dissonance.

The Populist stands for nothing substantive, except their own popularity and pampering of their ego. They are tragically, the consequence and crude manifestation of Post-Modern relativism.

200 WORDS ON - Monarchy

Once upon a time being monarch was a role conferred on you by your tribe. Based on strength of leadership, fighting prowess or possessing a semi-magical lucky charm. Monarchs came to a swift end if famine, pestilence or humiliation befell their people. Executed, buried alive in a bog or ritually dismembered to pacify the wrathful displeasure of the gods.

Overtime who was monarch became a hereditary position. It ceased being conferred on an indfividual by the people, but was 'divinely appointed' to one family. This self serving slight of hand made the monarch, as ‘god’s annointed representative,’ unquestionable.

From Magna Carta onwards, history details the protracted efforts to contain royal power and prerogative, putting boundaries around their 'authority to rule'. Increasing parliamentary sovereignty adjusted the monarchy into a constitutional role. Whilst retaining power through its wealth and as symbolic head of church and establishment.

In terms of a people’s right to chose this was a fudge. Leaving in place the monarch as the representative upholder of enshrined privilege. Its clear the only way citizens of a 21st century democracy could remove the monarch, would be to dismantle the whole hierarchy of self entitled elites of whom she sits as head.

200 WORDS On - Free Speech

Free speech is the foundation of a free, fair and democratic society. We’ve the right to express what we think, but its not just mouthing off, then walking away. Though willingness to engage in debate is a condition of free speech, we tend to dodge the slippery matter of justifying our opinions. Being held to account is not an optional extra, viewpoints need to be challenged.

You can say anything you wish, yet it’s not consequence free, nor absolute. Individual rights come with collective duties. If you encourage hatred, physical harm, death, defamation, sedition, or undermine the nations security or democracy, there's a consequence to that. Free speech has never come completely unfettered. The balance is re-struck all the time between self-expression and its legal limits.

Open discussion of issues is an ailing art. Fallacious views are best punctured through effective debate. Preemptively silencing those whose views we disagree with, evades the duty to establish what is true and of value. Social media, has created public forums for ignored sectors of society, though frequently fails the consequence, challenge and accountability test. If freedom of speech is to thrive in this digital age, we must better understand what its there for.

200 WORDS ON - The Double Bluff Fraud

When you misrepresent who you are, what is happening, what other people need to do, you commit fraud, a con upon an individual, community or country. It's most commonly financial fraud, but can be political, sexual or institutional. It is lying for personal advantage. Fraud is corrosive because it not only betrays trust but undermines faith in what is true.

When fake news, fraud and brazen lying becomes as endemic as they are now, it is harder to ascertain exactly what is true. It corrupts political discourse when political leaders spread stories they know to be untrue, deliberately deploying misinformation into the public sphere.

The effectiveness of a fraud depends on the conviction with which the perpetrator tells the lie and how easily other individuals believe and spread it. Human kind is so easily self deluded, we often so want something to be true we'll turn the tables on the truth bearers and say it's they who are the fraudster's. But such delusion is different in intent to the double bluff fraud that's perpetrated by Trump and his political ilk. To knowingly spread malignant untruths to maintain political power, lays the foundations for the democratic fraud that is fascism.

200 WORDS ON - Belonging

In life we belong to many things without at any point choosing them. Born into humanity, a gender, a race, a class and a culture. In all our other relationships we’re mostly free to follow up whatever we desire for ourselves. We belong to groups, gangs, clubs, political parties, religious organisations, a marriage even, because we find there similar people with similar interests or beliefs to ourselves. Its here we feel we may belong, may be content, happy even.

Occasionally though, even here, we find ourselves torn between our desire to belong and to be free. To belong often requires some curtailing of our freedom to think, behave or desire outside whatever terms for belonging we've placed ourselves in. If feelings, beliefs or desires change or chafe against this, we can always leave. Perhaps the desire to belong might keep us there, out of loyalty, the need for friendship, camaraderie or simply connection. Yet belonging without a shared belief or affinity propelling it, will be infertile ground to grow and blossom in.

At some point we need to go beyond even 'the desire' to belong. It's our freedom to desire or our freedom from desire, which is it to be?

200 WORDS ON - Not Belonging

We believe we’re free to belong or to not belong To opt in and out of engagement with ordinary life, society and other people. Maybe it’s essential for our wellbeing to take a holiday from everyone else. Yet even our 'not belonging' confirms us as being in the like-minded company of 'those who do not belong'. Everyone belongs somewhere, to something. Not belonging can be this useful pose we adopt.

To place ourselves as this maverick outsider, the ostracised, the unacceptable is a form of self-constructed belonging. Our own unique way of being a disconnected personality. Somewhere to hide ourselves away from the strictures of connectivity. The internet is a great place to hide in plain sight, to thrive in its aloof alienated state. Appearing not to belong to anything or anyone.

There are times in life when we can no longer countenance conforming, we are that proverbial misfitting wheel. Close proximity to communal life isn’t what we need right now. We have to reconnect with our individual freedom to chose. Be a free spirit, free in mind, conventions, commitments, connections, restrictions, free of the lot of them. Not belonging is existing outside of intimacy with others, in order to be more intimate with ourselves.

200 WORDS ON - Statues

Statues present a flawed view of history. The great and good portrayed unlikely to have been paragons of virtue in everything they did. To become extremely wealthy often requires the use of dodgy ethical behaviours, which are then laundered retrospectively through philanthropic gestures and charity work. Remember all the statues of Jimmy Saville subsequently destroyed, someone else who hid his moral turpitude behind very public charity work. Perhaps we should exercise greater restraint in whom we immortalise in stone in public spaces. If we do so at all.

Toppling statues is highly symbolic. An expression of disdain, that provocatively edits what can be publicly lauded. Removal is one way to correct the misrepresentations of our history. We can also re-label, providing a greater breadth of information about who someone was. The scope of our history teaching can be broadened. Statues are just dumb monuments otherwise.

Westminster Abbey, a supposedly sacred building, now resembles a storage unit filled with herds of plinths and carved marble statuary. Statues should enhance a space, but there they make it cluttered. Parks are lined with commemorative bronzes to people, either no longer worthy of respect, or mostly forgotten. Historically and aesthetically statues are piss-poor representatives

  

200 WORDS ON - The Pursuit Of Happiness

The pursuit’ of happiness, sounds as if we are hunting happiness in order to capture and hold it prisoner. If happiness ‘eludes’ or ‘escapes’ us, it’s because it wont be tied down or we don’t recognise it when it arrives. If we were eternally happy how would we know? Happiness could turn into a special state of hell. Knowing you’re happy is bound up with knowing you were unhappy. To take pleasure requires the dark shadow of pain to stand over it.

What makes us happy? A deep satisfaction in an achievement, in a person, situation or place that helps us feel fulfilled and content. Everything in our world seems suddenly to be alright. Happiness invariably arrives unannounced, further surprising and pleasing us because it did so unexpectedly.

Whether happy or unhappy we can become over-intoxicated with it, in the heights of our glee or the pit of our misery, this unbalances us. From a point of morbid despair ‘the pursuit of happiness’ can feel ridiculous. Unbounded happiness can become stifled by its own greed.

Mostly we’re just doing OK, and maybe that is, paradoxically, a much happier way of living your life, than endlessly pursuing the chimera of happiness.

200 WORDS ON - Contentment

An ideal of contentment fuels the endless battle with bits of our life we dislike and cannot sit easy with. Eradicating discontentment when it appears doesn't leave us with contentment. Relationships, careers, a luxurious home bring satisfaction, but such circumstances, like ourselves, are changeable. Despite longer life expectancy our era bitches and moans constantly from discontent.

Contentment evades us. Before lock-down we had busy lives with barely enough time to do what we needed to do, we craved a simpler relaxed lifestyle. The lock-down forced us into a simpler more relaxed lifestyle, yet we crave to be busier. External circumstances are dictating our sense of well-being. Not content with then, not content with now. The solution for contentment resides with us.

Children believe in magical thinking, the harder they wish for something, then it'll happen. Adults believe in merit, if we behave and work hard we’ll be rewarded. Reality, however, doesn't respond to our beck and call, its actually indifferent to our wishes and wants. Every human lifestyle is unstable, uncontrollable, unsustainable, everything coming to an end eventually. If we’re able to face this full on, to calmly accept things as they are, the foundations for true contentment will be laid.

200 WORDS ON - Solitude

'I never found a companion who was so companionable as solitude' - Thoreau

We all need time alone. Solitude is a restorative experience. Removing ourselves from our high density urban world, slowing down, close to nature and away from the usual hubble-bubble. We may arrive bearing the existential bruises of city living, but through experiencing solitude we begin healing the wounds to our sense of who we are and how we relate to others. Its as though we are a computer that needs regular de-fragging of all the useless junk clogging up it functioning better.

Today we’re always in communication and available, the thought of even a day away from portable devices can feel alarming. Being alone brings worries and fears to the surface, but most recede once we sit looking out of a window at a wind tossed landscape, taking in nature, taking in ourselves. Doing nothing for as long as possible.

Solitude needs to be chosen. Self-isolating in a pandemic, feels imprisoning because it wasn't at our instigation. Solitude need not be viewed as starvation, but as nutrition. Learning how to enjoy being with just you, the only desire to be in better touch with oneself, content within solitude.

200 WORDS ON - Boredom

'boredom, is the desire for desires' Tolstoy

Boredom arises when we become distanced from, or disinterested in, the familiar litany of our desires. What we really want is harder to fathom. The nature of desires is their transience, ceasing to satisfy us shortly after achieving them.  Does boredom mean we’re essentially boring? Quickly we switch the existential focus around, it’s the world that is boring and we who are bored with it.

It’s perfectly possible to be alone and not be bored, we desired to be alone and now have it. When isolated not through choice, because a pandemic makes it necessary, we become socially distanced from a variety of things, one is having our desires fulfilled. Isolation from this was never a desired outcome. We become frustrated not just with the situation, but with ourselves for being bored.

We can do little about the current situation, apart from be patient within it. Can we also be patient with our boredom for a few minutes, without hurling ourselves towards what pops up on Instagram? We are capable of being bigger than mere vehicles for the fulfilment of our desires, and this is what fully experiencing boredom can face us towards.

200 WORDS ON - Thoughtless Consumption

'the time for thoughtless design, for thoughtless consumption is over'

I came across this quote from Dieter Rams recently. I'd been looking through Netflix for any film not already seen or wasn't a piss poor duplicate of a more famous film, finding nothing. The genre lists appeared to hold the same roster of films but in different order. I became quite frustrated at the empty-headed distractions offered. I wanted something that could offer a more thoughtful level of engagement.

It's clear the film industry loves thoughtless movies, they produce a good return. Lots of fast moving action, dramas and high tech Science-Fiction films which, enjoyable though they are, are basically hollow entertainments. Easily half watched on the sofa whilst eating food, making out, checking what else that actor has been in or film gossip about its production, all from the comfort of your I Pad.

These films put minds and emotions on pause, to be mildly entertained by experiences that leave no trace upon us afterwards. They leave little in the form of substantive meaning, depth of emotional response or mark upon our human imagination. Once the consumption is over we are still left hungry for a richer form of sustenance.