Birds without Wings: a musical interlude

Brett sent me these lyrics (music available for download), saying they seemed to echo some of my sentiments here. I agree.

Wishing that something would happen
A change in this place
'Cos I'm tearing off the fancy wrapping
Find an empty package

Take for a while, your trumpet from your lip
Loosen your hold, loosen your grip
On your old ways that have fallen out of step
In a changing time

Hoist a new flag
Hoist a new flag

Angry sun burn down
Judging us all
Guilty of neglect and disrespect
And thinking small

And death by boredom
And death by greed
If we can’t stop taking
More than we need

Well across the fractured landscape
I find the same things
Tired ideas
Birds without wings

Birds without wings
Birds without wings

And these are just thoughts
On lack-luster times
I've no interest
In excuses you can find

Like you've had a hard day
Now you've too tired to care
Now you're too tired to care
You've had a hard day

Well across the fractured landscape
I see the same things
Tired ideas, broken values
Many with the notion that to share is to lose

A hollow people bound by a lack
Of imagination and too much looking back
Without the courage to give a new thing a chance
Grounded by this ignorance
(And the cat comes)

We're just
Birds without wings
Birds without wings
Birds without wings

- David Gray, "Birds without Wings", 1993.

Future Ethics: Climate Change and Apocalyptic Imagination

Future Ethics: Climate Change and Apocalyptic Imagination is a new(ish) collection of essays reflecting on climate change and perceptions of the future that seem right up my alley (I haven't read it yet). The foreword by Alastair McIntosh is available online. Here's a small taste:

"'How do we create the means to empathise with people we may never meet, in a future we may never inhabit?' The rich have never before done this for the poor. So why should they act for the far away and the mostly as-yet unborn, unless the water's already lapping at their own castle walls? In which case tipping point scenarios suggest it would be too late. What the 'rich' have to understand is that, this time, we're all in it together. Addictive consumerism is the cutting edge driver of climate change and we can run from such reality, but never run away - because we've only got one planet."

Ecology, fascism and democracy: imagination and advertising

"The future of environmentalism is in liberating humanity from the compulsion to consume. Rampant, earth-destroying consumption is the norm in the west largely because our imaginations are pillaged by any corporation with an advertising budget."

- Micah White, "An alternative to the new wave of ecofascism".

This is the kind of debate that we need more of. The irony of political agents who fight any ecological protection legislation on principle is that they are likely setting up conditions for more authoritarian regimes in the future when desperation gains a strong hold on the public imagination.

In short, this piece argues that the corruption of desire performed by the dominant strand of contemporary liberal (hyper)capitalism will undermine the conditions of possibility for liberalism. And so only a renewal of the imagination can lead to true reduction of the consumption levels that are choking the life out of the earth. We need a compelling and attractive picture of human life and flourishing that is not predicated on endless acquisition and consumption.

Where on earth can we find the sources for such a renewal of the imagination? I doubt it will be simply be through reclaiming billboards (though the usefulness of creative acts of civil disobedience cannot be ruled out). Perhaps our good news for new times may come from old sources.

God and the Artist: Hart at New College lectures 2008

Last year's New College lectures by Oliver O'Donovan on moral wakefulness were excellent. This year, another top notch scholar (also from Scotland) is coming to present what may well be an equally fascinating series. Trevor Hart, Professor of Divinity & Director of the Institute for Theology and the Arts at the University of St Andrews, Scotland will deliver the 22nd annual New College lectures on 2nd-4th September. Here is the series outline:

God and the Artist: human creativity in theological perspective
1. ‘The lunatic, the lover and the poet’: divine copyright and the dangers of ‘strong imagination’
2. The ‘heart of man’ and the ‘mind of the maker’: Tolkien and Sayers on imagination and human artistry
3. Giveness, grace and gratitude: creation, artistry and Eucharist

Unfortunately, I'll be in Rome listening to O'Donovan again at the time, so I'll miss them. More details to come on the New College website. Given that I am about to begin studies at a (slightly older) New College, things could get a little confusing...

Individualism as a herd mentality

Why should we in Australia reduce our emissions when China and India are so much bigger? Why should I avoid littering/speeding/wasteful consumption when everyone else does it and I can nearly always get away with it? Why should I be honest on my tax return when much bigger incomes are dishonest? What can one person do?

Individualism as a way of life inculcates a stunted imagination. I lose the capacity to see myself as one of many, as a member of a body. By limiting my sphere of influence and responsibility to myself, social issues become insurmountable, or at least endlessly deferrable as "someone else's problem". But where everyone lives for him or herself, everyone loses.

The church as the body of Christ, the household of God, the temple of the Holy Spirit is a real taste of salvation from the echo-chamber of a life lived curved in upon itself. I discover how much more spacious life is when I stretch out in loving openness to my neighbour. I find in them the image of God, the Breath of life, a brother or sister for whom Christ died. I no longer live and die for myself.