Dante, Frank O’Hara & this human journey

Posted by Shane Carmichael in Life, Literature & Quotations on November 10, 2010

To the Harbormaster

BY FRANK O’HARA

I wanted to be sure to reach you
though my ship was on the way it got caught
in some moorings. I am always tying up
and then deciding to depart. In storms and
at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide
around my fathomless arms, I am unable
to understand the forms of my vanity
or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder
in my hand and the sun sinking. To
you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage
of my will. The terrible channels where
the wind drives me against the brown lips
of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet
I trust the sanity of my vessel; and
if it sinks it may well be in answer
to the reasoning of the eternal voices,
the waves which have kept me from reaching you.

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David Cameron – in the footsteps of Marco Polo

Posted by Shane Carmichael in Government, Life on November 8, 2010

Statue of Marco Polo in Hangzhou, China, near ...

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As David Cameron prepares for his two day visit to China (commencing tomorrow, Tuesday 9th November) at the head of the largest-ever official UK delegation to the country, I thought this might be a timely post.

See below for a short insight into how the 24 year travels around China by Marco Polo (as well as his lesser reported father and uncle) changed the very nature of life itself in Europe.

I wonder if DC (or we) dare expect his visit to prove just as seminal?! I’d personally doubt it though given his Bullingdon Club background, the odds on him too returning with a Mongol servant called “Peter” are probably quite short. Could make an interesting addition to the historical catalogue of PM gifts. Certainly better than a box set of 25 American films and certainly more useful around the house.

Anyway, hǎo yùn Mr Cameron.

“[Upon their return from China], the three Polos received respect from their fellow citizens, with Marco singled out for special attention. ‘All the young men went every day continuously to visit and converse with Messer Marco,’ Giambattista Ramusio claimed. ‘who was most charming and gracious, and to ask of him matters concerning Cathay (China) and the Great Khan, and he responded with so much kindness that all felt themselves to be in a certain manner indebted to him.’

“It is easy to understand why Marco attracted notice. The significance of the inventions that he brought back from China, or which he later described in hisTravels, cannot be overstated. At first, Europeans regarded these technological marvels with disbelief, but eventually they adopted them.

“Paper money, virtually unknown in the West until Marco’s return, revolutionized finance and commerce throughout the West.

“Coal, another item that had caught Marco’s attention in China, provided a new and relatively efficient source of heat to an energy-starved Europe.

“Eyeglasses (in the form of ground lenses), which some accounts say he brought back with him, became accepted as a remedy for failing eyesight. In addition, lenses gave rise to the telescope – which in turn revolutionized naval battles, since it allowed combatants to view ships at a great distance – and the microscope. Two hundred years later, Galileo used the telescope – based on the same technology – to revolutionize science and cosmology by supporting and disseminating the Copernican theory that Earth and other planets revolved around the Sun.

“Gunpowder, which the Chinese had employed for at least three centuries, revolutionized European warfare as armies exchanged their lances, swords, and crossbows for cannon, portable harquebuses, and pistols.

“Marco brought back gifts of a more personal nature as well. The golden paiza, or passport, given to him by Kublai Khan had seen him through years of travel, war, and hardship. Marco kept it still, and would to the end of his days. He also brought back a Mongol servant, whom he named Peter, a living reminder of the status he had once enjoyed in a far-off land.

“In all, it is difficult to imagine the Renaissance – or, for that matter, the modern world – without the benefit of Marco Polo’s example of cultural transmission between East and West.”

Extract taken from Laurence Bergreen‘s excellent book ”Marco Polo” (2007)

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An Education – our Primary Focus (Part 4)

Posted by Shane Carmichael in Education, Lambeth, Northern Ireland on November 8, 2010

Feeling almost hopeful today after reading The Guardian piece on Frank Field (former Labour minister, now the Coalition’s “Poverty Advisor”)) preparing review on ‘how to prevent poor children becoming poor adults’.

Apparently, Field said he said he was disturbed by research showing how accurate a prediction can be made as to where a child will be in their 20s, by looking at their ability at 22 months and just before five years. Narrowing divisions in children’s readiness for school at five was central to tackling divisions in later life, he said.

He is right to be disturbed. But he shouldn’t be surprised.

Certainly this has been known to the wonderful Sutton Trust Charity for some time and even an uninformed observer such as myself has been bemoaning the lack of interest in and commitment to progress interventions aimed at supporting the development of disadvantaged children in their most formative years. My three previous posts over the past year on the subject: here, here and here.

This has been a particular concern of mine in Northern Ireland where most of last year was spent arguing on post Primary education when the real prize is – as the Sutton Trust continually point out – closing the cognitive and associated aspirational gap among children way way before we start to concern ourselves with means of post primary selection.

Anyway, maybe Field is starting to listen and will follow through on the plans outlined in the article. If so that’s commendable but I also hope this is only the start.

In Northern Ireland I hope @conallmcd and NI Minister for Education, Caitríona Ruane take notice. Closer to home I hope that @cllrstevereed and @chukaumunna pick this up and recognise it is for this very reason that local residents are so concerned about plans for an extension of the Ofsted rated Outstanding Sudbourne Road Primary School (and nursery).

What I wrote in March of this year seems still to be relevant today. Shame. But saves me re-typing:

“Consistently on this blog I have maintained that while some form of streaming or selection is a must in any mature and inclusive education system, our real focus should be on primary education; on ensuring our administration of that education is innovative and inclusive enough to support pupils from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds and encouraging an ethos of and commitment to  ”concerted cultivation” of our young children among parents and local communities.  We are currently failing our young people during their most formative years”.

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Let the Great World Spin (and Tweet)

Posted by Shane Carmichael in Life, Mindfulness, Social Media, Technology on November 6, 2010

169. Let the great world spin
Image by c_l_b via Flickr

I’m becoming a compulsive Twitter user – a “Twitterite” (clumsy but preferable if you will to David Cameron‘s proposed nomenclature – “Too many Tweets make a….”).

It’s becoming something of a love affair, albeit late to bloom and against my better judgement. Twitter really (really) works for me. It’s my intellectual, social media shaped, hit of KFC.  And like the Colonel, it’s a cunning beastie – because it appeals to my unabated curiosity and inferiority complexes in equal measure. This is both good and bad.

It’s good in that I feel more exposed and connected to the possibilities of the world courtesy of the genius of many of my fellow inhabitants – which is exhilarating and empowering.  It’s bad in that it’s hard to turn the tap off, to look away for fear of missing ‘the next thing’, to accept that there will always be more. That ‘This is Enough’.

Just now I had a slightly different but equally uneasy realisation about how my relationship with Twitter – like all good love affairs – was filling me with just a little more melancholy than an almost fully grown man should be feeling on a Friday evening.  For it occurred to me that although Social Media (in its many guises) oft gives us a sense of  unfettered access and untempered reach, on occasion it can also cruelly remind us of our all too real limitations (and frailties) in the face of  the sheer scale of our world and all that sails in her – most of which we can never hope to know, see nor understand.

And yet hasn’t this forever been a universal truth? Perhaps; but unlike the generations that have gone before us, whose aspirations for universal enlightenment (and connection) were naturally constrained from the outset by the dull facts of time, space and technological limitation, today the tools at our disposal create – every now and again, however fleetingly – the illusion that connection to all human knowledge and experience is truly within our grasp. That we might in fact one day, “slip the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God“.

The reality of course is somewhat different. And potentially challenging to accept as such.

The epigraph from the wonderful Colum McCann book – Let the Great World Spin – sprang to mind as I pondered this. It’s a quote from Aleksandr Hemon’s The Lazarus Project:

“All the lives we could live, all the people we will never know, never will be, they are everywhere.  That is what the world is”.

At first reading there is a deep sadness in these lines. An inevitability of experiential poverty; of denial and regret.  But in the context of McCann’s book in particular they are presented at the outset (in hindsight) as a challenge to us. A challenge which evokes the central tenet of interdependence (a concept made live for me by my unwitting spiritual curator Rohan Gunatillake) – which lies at the heart of many religious traditions and faiths, not least Buddhism, and is the reality of human existence.

For having opened with these lines McCann then sets about ripping them (and their gloomy sentiment) apart by weaving a set of stories which capture the very real human possibilities and hope which our inherent interdependence make available – and inevitable (when we are truly awake to it) – to each of us. Possibilities in and hope for this life, this person, this moment.

And in doing so McCann in fact offers us a reminder and extends an invitation: to disavow the chase (and regret) for what must necessarily be a constructed reality of what might have been or never will be and instead embrace (and cherish) the sometimes challenging but ultimately organic reality of the lives we are/can live, the people we/will do know, the person we are and can become.

So what’s that got to do with Twitter or “social connectivity” tools? I’ve probably failed to articulate this at all well, but for now what I think I mean to say is: yes, these tools can amplify the sadness that accompanies the recognition that in the finite course of a human life there will be many experiences, ambitions, realisations and relationships we shall never know. However long we remain online. But to regret these many imagined illuminations which Twitter and her social media kin could have/should have/may have bestowed upon me is nothing less than to regret all of the very real illuminations they already have. Illuminations for which I give thanks and which remind me of the need to remain awake and mindful in and of my own incredible reality.

I think this is an important challenge for our age – one I touched on previously here: the ability to remain mindful and conscious of the potential (and related interdependence) of the here and now in the face of almost limitless connectivity and the perceived alternate (and often idealised) realities which that exposes us to.

This is an ability we (and I in particular) must strive to master otherwise these social connectivity tools can – at their worst – become sources of suffering and regret, not liberation. And that would be a terrible tragedy.

When I had my moment of “Twitterite sadness”, an image of the connected “social-sphere” sprang to mind. Anyone with an interest in Neuro-Linguistic Programming would be unsurprised to learn that the subconscious had depicted a vast sphere of connections, with myself represented as a tiny orb, far flung and remote from the “centre” – the perceived heart of things, the place where this idealised view of my universally connected and enlightened self should/would ideally reside. Cognitive Behaviour Therapists or an enlightened mind would of course point out that how we see the world determines how we respond to the world. If I hold that image too long, allow it to become my reality then of course I’ll feel sadness at my perceived  inconsequence in the great scheme of things.

But thankfully I have the words of Marge Piercy to hand to remind me that:

“No one is at the centre, but each is her own centre”

I love that sentiment. It is empowering. And a reminder of the challenges, possibilities (and responsibilities) for each of us in a connected world.

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The new era is already here

Posted by Shane Carmichael in Government, Leadership on September 25, 2010

Current logo of the Labour Party
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Tonight Ed Miliband was elected Leader of the Labour Party. I am proud to say that as a fully paid up member of the Labour Party I voted for him as my first preference for leader during the week.
 
I voted for his brother David as my second preference after much soul searching but from the outset I’d always felt Ed was the closest embodiment of the values that make me a member of the greatest progressive political force in British politics. For better, or lately, for worse.
 
Time, of course, is the greatest arbiter. Only she can tell if we have elected the right person. But we have such great hope, not just from his victory, but from how this contest has been conducted. It should remind all of us of the rich and experienced pool of talent available in the modern Labour Party and that is as much a cause for celebration as anything.
 
As I watched Ed Miliband’s victory unfold I kept thinking of one of my favorite poems. I have copied an excerpt below and I offer it humbly to Ed Miliband and to all those who share the values of our party.
 
The new era is indeed already here. And there is work to be done……the invitation has been extended……Let’s march…..     
 

 

Turn on your light - an excerpt (by Ben Okri)

The new era is already here:
Here the new time begins anew.
The new era happens every day,
Every day is a new world,
A new calendar.
All great moments, all great eras,
Are just every moment
And every day writ large.
Thousands of years of loving, failing, killing,
Creating, surprising, oppressing,
And thinking ought now to start
To bear fruit, to deliver their rich harvest.  

Will you be at the harvest,
Among the gatherers of new fruits?
Then you must begin today to remake
Your mental and spiritual world,
And join the warriors and celebrants
Of freedom, realisers of great dreams.  

You can’t remake the world
Without remaking yourself.
Each new era begins within.
It is an inward event,
With unsuspected possibilities
For inner liberation.
We could use it to turn on
Our inward lights.
We could use it to use even the dark
And negative things positively.
We could use the new era
To clean our eyes,
To see the world differently,
To see ourselves more clearly.
Only free people can make a free world.
Infect the world with your light.
Help fulfill the golden prophecies.
Press forward the human genius.
Our future is greater than our past.  

© Ben Okri, 1999.
Found in Ben Okri, Mental Fight, Phoenix House: London, 1999  

 
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An Education – for the 21st Century

Posted by Shane Carmichael in Change, Education, Mindfulness, Social Media, Technology on September 22, 2010

Facebook logo
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I went on a bit of a “rant” today in response to some worryingly narrow responses to an excellent piece the wonderful Euan Semple had posted on his blog The Obvious, criticising a school (which the son of his friend attends) for withdrawing/banning the use of Facebook in school time.

I’ve copied the relevant exchanges/pieces below. I hope I didn’t upset Helen or Christian but sometimes you have to say what needs to be said. There is little more important than progressive education….we should continue to encourage a progressive discussion.

This seemed somehow apt today as I went along to the local Primary School to hear about the possibilities for becoming a Governor. I’ll be checking they harness social media in the classroom before I sign up to anything!

I’m glad to say that most of the posts that preceded and followed mine agreed with Euan’s original sentiment. So all hope is not lost….I was really touched by his kind words following my post. That, for those of you who don’t know the influence of the man, is praise indeed.

Anyway, here it is (was?) albeit a spell checked version (old habits..) starting with Euan’s original post. You can find the full exchange with all comments at his excellent blog which I’ve linked above.

Some thoughts on schools banning Facebook

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2010 AT 7:21AM

Banning Facebook is like banning the telephone. What people in authority don’t realise is that it is just a tool. Any tool can be used or misused. What they should be focused on is harnessing its potential not being paranoid about what people do with it.

Facebook, like so many social tools, is actually primarily about learning. Yes learning what people had for breakfast – but also learning news, learning what works, learning what books are best to read, learning where to find the right bit of information.

It is particularly ironic when schools ban Facebook as they are the very ones who should be teaching effective use of this technology – not keeping their pupils stuck in some industrial, factory model of learning.

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Reader Comments (25)

When you’re at school, you are there for learning. Learning the important stuff – and the even more important stuff about being social in the first place, by talking to friends, face to face.

Social sites don’t help with this, which is why this ban (to which I can relate very well) is so interesting: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/sep/17/us-college-facebook-blackout

September 22, 2010 | Christian Guthier

Guns are just things.

Porn is just pictures.
Crack is just a substance.

“Facebook, like so many social tools, is actually primarily about learning. ”
This statment strikes me as absurd and untrue.
Absorbing random bits of information piecemeal is actually the opposite of learning and is, as we are finding out, having a very negative impact on young minds ability to function in reality.

Is information synthesised on facebook or twitter? Are worthwhile discussions ever had?

September 22, 2010 | helen clattenberg

Huge assumptions being made there Helen and Christian. I wonder how much experience you have actually had of these tools or of the way people and kids use them?

Yes those things are just things and can be used for good or ill. Demonising the things without dealing with our issues ducks the issues.

Social tools enable millions of us to meet, build relationships, and have better informed and enriching conversations about all sorts of things.

Otherwise what are we doing now and why did you leave a comment?

September 22, 2010 | Euan

Am not assuming anything, just reporting my direct experience (I work part-time with teenagers – outside the US) and I see that constant distraction and inundation with trivia from electronic impairs cognition (not just while the devices are being used).

Depth of consciousness and patience are learned attributes. Most of us older folk grew up in environments where that was instilled and valued.

The social environment has changed vastly and our teenagers now, will reap the whirlwind.

Of course Social Networks “enable” many positive things, but just because something is “enabled” it does not follow that it actually happens.

Like schools, nightclubs also “enable millions of us to meet, build relationships, and have better informed and enriching conversations about all sorts of things”.

Should schools be converted to nightclubs so that the kids may enrich their minds. communicate, network, bond and “learn” dance moves, chat up routines etc etc?

You first assertion that social tools are about learning, gives a very skewed idea of what learning is.
(Assuming he is adolescent) its natural, that your son is more interested in learning social / romantic skills etc etc, rather than other skills that might be of value later on, but we as parents, I think would serve his generation better, by demonstrating that not all learning has the same value no matter how cool and groovy.

September 22, 2010 | helen clattenberg

Great debate Euan. I do want to also pick up on some points raised by Helen and Christian (thanks for stoking this conversation both).

“The social environment has changed rapidly”. Agreed and if we don’t help to equip our children to learn and thrive in that environment then both we and our schools are abdicating all responsibility as educators for their future well-being. If we don’t teach our children how to use all available resources safely and efficiently – for their own good and the good of wider society – then we set them and society up to fail in what is becoming a true knowledge intensive “attention economy”.

“Depth of consciousness and patience are learned attributes. Most of us older folk grew up in environments where that was instilled and valued”. These are still learned and valued attributes. If ever we needed to help our children learn the power of mindful attention and patience then this is the age. But we must teach them within, not without, the social environment in which they will live otherwise it just won’t stick.  It is interesting to me that some of the most powerful and joyous advocates of “social technology” are those who are already deeply conscious and mindful.  Simply because it provides opportunity for a growing awareness of our infinite and inherent “interdependence” as Ethan Nichtern calls it. Check out Bhuddist Geeks or 21Awake or The Here and Now Project for what is a much more mature and evolved consideration on this:  it is a necessary invitation and opportunity to explore what it means to be conscious and patient within (not outside of) the 21st Century. The aspiration is still the same but our children are growing up in a different time so it must a slightly different question.

“All learning is not equal” but why do we persist in suggesting that we – any of us – know what learning is most relevant and to whom? Even the way we study is being challenged as we learn for example that (as musicians already know) repetition of a single discipline/area of study in discrete chunks does not work well for sustaining retention and cognitive development. Rather, regular short bursts of a range of subjects/tasks/disciplines in one sitting yields much more. Even the recognition that so much of our best learning is social is underpinned by science.  But back to my original point – not all learning is equal/as important as other learning. Agreed, but who is best placed to decide that? We continue to prepare so many of our students for a world we appear not to have noticed is changing in front of our very eyes. The capability to source, discern, synthesise and connect to both information and people (in a mindful and patient manner) are among the key skills we will need for the future. As Steven Berlin Johnson says: “chance favours the connected world”. But it also favours the connected (and skilled) person therein.

If that’s not among the “important stuff” then I worry for our young minds. The Battle of Hastings and long division will only get us so far.

I’m fully behind Euan on this. How we learn/teach should reflect how we understand our young people to live. Without that much learning can (and will) feel redundant and stifling. Like everything else, Facebook isn’t bad, but there are bad users of Facebook. Apparently some of our schools are among them.

September 22, 2010 | Shane Carmichael

I love it when comments are way better than my post! :-)

September 22, 2010 | Euan

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A little bit of “nudging” on London’s South Bank

Posted by Shane Carmichael in Change, Government, Life on September 21, 2010

Image of the human head with the brain. The ar...
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Regular readers of this blog (?!?!?) will be well aware of my interest in all forms of human/social psychology and in particular my interest in the role of behavioural and social psychology in managing change.

It’s an area of study that’s become quite sexy of late, perhaps with the poster child being Steve Hilton himself, stripped bare and holding a well thumbed copy of “Nudge” in a strategic position for the annual Conservative Party’s WI calendar.

It’s all rather simple really. Just a recognition of what psychologists have been telling us for some time. How we make decisions/choices is a much more subconcious and often malleable process than we might like to imagine – a process which might be influenced (deliberately or otherwise) by a myriad of  subtle (or not so subtle) factors including deliberate commercial or political “nudging”.

No point in me regurgitating a century of study here. Just pick up an one of: “Nudge”, “The Tipping Point“, “Blink”, “59 Seconds: Think a little Change a Lot”, “Freakonomics” or “How we Decide“ (the list is potentially enormous) and indulge yourself.  In my opinion anyone embarking on a career in advertising, political policy, sales, marketing, change management, branding or religious outreach (Amen) should be forced to read all of these tomes and a few others besides before they darken the door of any self respecting employer in any one of those “industries”.  An interest in and understanding of the psychology and subtlety of human behaviour should be de-rigour for all.

I’ve been interested in the varied work of the http://www.theenginegroup.com/ in London for some time. Not least because I get to spend hallowed time most weeks in the company of one of it’s leading brand thinkers – Sean McKnight. At the end of last week The Engine Group (EG)  had this little piece on their web-blog: http://www.theenginegroup.com/news-and-blog/?p=1985&cat=-3 on the subject of behavioural psychology (or behavioural economics if you will). I thought it was good that EG are exposing more of their disparate teams to this discipline (although I’d blithely assumed they’d all be light years ahead in their public reflections) but more importantly it did make me think about a lovely example of behavioural nudging in action which I saw on Friday in London.

Opposite Gabriel’s Wharf on the South Bank, you will, during the course of the year, find a group of folks who use the small sandbank there to sand sculpt. They’ve been dong this for years. I’ll occasionally throw 50p down into the circle they’ve drawn in the sand to collect tips but never more. But of late they have adopted a new tactic to nudge us into giving “more generously”. They have set up two yellow buckets with a small portable bicycle bell set inside each one. There is a little note beneath each bucket inviting onlookers to throw some tips and “See if you can ring the bell”.

I invite you to pop along and watch what happens. Based on the last two five minute visits I’ve made, I  predict their tips are up maybe 300% minimum.

But why?

Because now not only are people throwing coins (tips) to reflect their appreciation of the sand sculptures; they are throwing coins to – much more importantly (and in some cases it seemed, exclusively) - see if they can make a small bell, in the bottom of a yellow bucket go ‘Ding’. It is a nudge to one of our strongest instincts and motivations – to succeed in a task that should be eminently achievable but is often frustratingly not. Add the public setting (no one likes to look bad in public and the ‘herding’ influence of others on our behaviour is more powerful than we may accept!), the fun atmosphere created as we try (and try) and the satisfactory feedback/reciprocation provided by the simple “ding” of a bell in the bucket and you have the ingredients for the perfect nudge.

I watched today as one lady asked “What happens if I hit the bell?”.  Having been told – “nothing, it makes a “ding”", she spent 3 minutes throwing coin after coin at the bell in the bucket to no avail; I threw a sum total of £1 in coins trying to hit said bell, as did my lowly paid companions.  Even more interesting was watching how a group of 6 people, who had almost walked past the sandbank, turned on hearing a faint “ding” (followed by great cheering from the friends of the aforementioned lady who, £5 down I reckon, had eventually hit the “jackpot”). Said party then each proceeded to throw coins at the yellow bucket with barely a glancing appreciation of the sand sculptures and so on until we decided to leave.

I bet if you asked 50% of those people 5 minutes after they’d left the scene what the two sand sculptures were that day, they wouldn’t even be able to tell you*. It was one of the most simple and stunningly effective applications of behavioural nudging that you’ll see in a social context in London today. For any male readers – it’s bit like those little flies on the back of certain “progressive” urinals (a subliminal target for you to aim at to reduce the amount of “splash-back”)…simple, yet deadly effective.

All those industries I listed, but most importantly, political policy, are (it would seem and we should hope) learning much from moving behavioural psychology and economics to the heart of what they do in both Policy formulation and execution. In an era when we have scarcer resources with which to encourage, facilitate and deliver some Big Society shaped national scale behaviour change then every arsenal in our weaponry much be drawn down.

There is of course more, much much more, to facilitating large scale human change than dropping a few bells in the bottom of a bucket (another blog on that subject is due) but it does demonstrate that for all our self congratulatory sophistication, we are simple animals in so many ways, driven by a few fundamental primitive instincts. The challenge is to harness that simplicity and those instincts to assist society in making smarter decisions about our health, wealth and happiness. In all those industries a fundamental question we must ask in shaping products, offerings or policies is this: which of our basic human instincts/longings/aspirations does this play to and therefore how best shall it be framed to lead “customers” to the most “appropriate” response.

There is a fascinating debate to be had about whether subliminal nudging is enough (or even immoral) or whether “customers” need to be granted a more active understanding of and participation in how certain choices impact both ourselves and others if behaviour change is to be sustained (and moral) but that’s for another day. For now, I’m off to sort out my bell and yellow bucket. You can find me outside the Ritzy in Brixton between 10am – 4pm; making daisy chains for tips….

*A rather fetching lady’s face and a starfish like creature were the order of the day….once you saw past those yellow buckets.

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Losing my Religion – 4:29

Posted by Shane Carmichael in Life, Northern Ireland on September 16, 2010

Pope Adrian VI (Hadrian VI) (Pope Adrian VI)
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The Pope, God’s representative on earth according to those of the Catholic faith (to which I nominally belong), comes to London in just two days. You may have heard it mentioned on the TV or in a newspaper. Low key stuff in the main.

I don’t know why exactly, but his visit has really hit me hard as a measure of how far removed I have become from the faith that (as a cruel consequence of growing up in a society largely divided along arbitrarily religious lines) shaped such a large proportion of my life until I was 18 years old: my schooling, my sports, my friendships, my political leanings and a strange fetish for incense.

Today I continue my search for meaning and enlightenment. But I am certain that I will not find it in the confines of any traditional ‘western’ religious tradition. For some time even before my Indian adventures I’d already sensed I was slowly nestling somewhere in the wide expanse that lies betwixt the Humanist and Hindu. Though perhaps not that wide in the absence of prescription (spiritual or practical) in both. I hate not having some wriggle room…and I certainly don’t feel the need for institutional guidance on morality thank you.  I think perhaps I realised some time ago that John Lennon struck on something when he said: ‘I don’t like God much when I get him under a roof’.

I’d already drifted from any real sense of Catholicism by the time the recent bout of child abuse scandals broke. I was, like many, so deeply saddened, if not at all surprised.  I was saddened not just for the suffering so many had endured at the hands of those we were taught to trust in above all others as children, but saddened also because I know there are many many good people still within the Catholic Church whose efforts to reach others and share a faith that truly sustains those who believe (as I know it sustains many I hold close) have been made so much more difficult now;  tainted by the shame of not just insidious personal physical abuse of innocents, but by institutional complicity on a grand scale.

I do not suggest that the Pope is a paedophile. But I do believe it is clear he is complicit in failing to take the necessary actions that a man of God, the leader of a Christian faith, would be expected to take to address such desperate and systemic abuse. It is beyond appalling that today Channel 4 reported that almost 9 years on from their conviction for sexual abuse, more than half those Priests found guilty in a court of law in the UK are still practising clergymen. In that alone I believe he has failed his faith, his church, our society and indeed humanity itself.

I could not help but wonder if Chris Patten felt any sense of irony today with his appeal to Rev Norman Hamilton to shake hands with the Pope rather than behave in a fashion more suited to the religious schisms of “the 16th Century”. Leaving aside whether or not The Moderator (great ring name, no?) should in fact extend a hand of religious charity to the visiting Pontiff, I was more interested in Patten’s evocation of the 16th Century….

For those of us familiar with that quiet religious epoch will know that it was a time when religion was used on a grand scale as a cloak for the unapologetic pursuit of many of man’s worst vices by those within (and without) the church – power, wealth, satisfaction of the physical senses, subjugation of the masses and the repression of any dissenting voice.  Although strictly a work of collaborative fiction, I commend to you the extraordinary book “Q: Dance of Death” (written by a number of Italian students under the wonderful pen-name, “Luther Blissett”) which paints a largely accurate (based on contemporary historical accounts) picture of a century of religious excess, intolerance and abuse. A century when the sort of horror which has stained this century already for the Catholic Church was commonplace.

Patten chose his centuries badly. But in this or any other time, Pope Benedict – and the rest of the Church’s hierarchy - should have spoken out. They should have been unapologetic about rooting out this evil from within it’s midst. No stone should have been left unturned. An age of renewal (as the 16th Century is oft referred Mr Patten) for the Catholic Church; a purging, a prayer for forgiveness and for the restoration of it’s moral authority. Alas, alas…

I am minded of the words of Indian author, Arundhati Roy:

“The trouble is that once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There’s no innocence. Either way, you’re accountable”.

Accountability. Infallibility. Two age old concepts of this Papacy and perhaps the Catholic Church as a whole, that appear to be terribly and irrevocably broken (ice cream advertising excepted of course).

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Alex Higgins RIP

Posted by Shane Carmichael in Northern Ireland on July 25, 2010

Alex Higgins (r) at Queen's University Belfast...
Image via Wikipedia

One of the earliest memories I have is of being allowed to sit up with my Da one night in 1982 to watch Alex “The Hurricane” Higgins win his second and unbelievably his last World Snooker Title. I clearly recall my Da and I sitting on the edge of my bed rooted to the screen as the, even then, sleight figure of Higgins twitched and bewildered his way to glory.

Higgins was my hero on the green baize in the same way George Best was on the green turf. I’d spend hours playing their finest moments over and over, a running commentary in my mind for company. Studies suffered but the imagination (and for a while, my talents) prospered.

Both men came from a different religious tradition to my own. Both were products of the city, I of the rolling country around. Both were flamboyant and self assured, I was shy and uncertain. Both had an eye for a good time and a beautiful woman, I lived in hope.

I saw both play in the flesh strangely. Best in 1983, in a “pay to play” game for Tobermore United vs Ballymena United in the Irish Cup. They lost 8-1. Best was incongruous (tanned, shaggy haired, unmuddied) and anonymous throughout. It was exciting but it was never the same again for me. Higgins I saw in an exhibition series in Belfast when his decline had also already taken hold. The sparks were there but the fire had long gone out.

As someone once wrote: “Being a hero is about the shortest-lived profession on earth”.

While it is hard for us to watch our heroes unravel before our eyes, it must have been harder still for them. Both achieved so much, they each changed their sports and how we understood them to be played. Yet they must have known that they could have achieved so much more.

The long decline is something we must all come to terms with. But for some, there is much further to fall. To live out a life once the talent that defined it entirely has begun to fade must be a cruel thing. The subsequent frustrations of that decay and the ill health brought on by the addictions of high celebrity (and no doubt a particularly N Irish penchant for excessive indulgence) an added ignominy to be borne out in the public domain. This is not to excuse the worst of their behaviour – Higgins in particular left his hero status at the door when the cue was set down as far as I was concerned.

Yet still, it is a real sadness that yesterday Alex Higgins packed his cue for the green baize of the next life. The very real emotional and physical damage he had suffered of late had left him a mere shadow of the twinkle eyed genius who’d kept so many of us entertained for so long. It was hard to see that regression, to see a hero reduced by the confines of mere mortality. However, if accounts of his final days are to be believed then it may be a merciful conclusion.

Like Best, Alex Higgins was a NI working class hero. He upset a few, was reviled by some but loved and cherished by so many many more for what he did for his sport. For anyone who was alive to see Higgins in his pomp you will understand what I mean when I say that sport lost one of it’s true, unabated, unbowed and unabashed genius’ yesterday.

Higgins is once quoted as saying after one of his many career knock-backs: “I’m a realist. And me being a realist…I’ll be back”. Not this time Alex. But you’ll be missed. And never forgotten by many, not least by the young man who sat sleepy eyed with his father on the edge of his bed 28 years ago and knew he’d seen something very special; something untamed, something true, something fleeting, something flawed.

A bit like life itself.

Oíche mhaith, codladh sámh. Síochán leat.

 

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Paramilit-tea

Posted by Shane Carmichael in Northern Ireland on July 25, 2010

Majeek.

Teapot. NI style.

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