Google Blogs Alert for: mimetic desire
Violence Unveiled--What is this mimetic desire and why does it ...
By Ed Stapleton(Ed Stapleton)
Bailie says that one way that people within groups work out their own risk for violence arising from mimetic desire is to find a scapegoat to sacrifice. This scapegoat can be literal, in the sense of animal sacrifice, ...
Aim Low and You'll Never Be Disappointed - http://ed-stapleton.blogspot.com/
An end to sacrifices
By Lee
For Girard human selves and human desire are structured by what he calls mimesis, which means that we learn to want things by seeing other people want them. The problem is that mimesis all to often takes a rivalrous form: I want what ...
A Thinking Reed - http://thinkingreed.wordpress.com
Monday, March 31, 2008
Friday, March 28, 2008
Black Churches: How They Do Suffer and Sing
There is something awesome about the way faith is experienced in many black communities. Their collective experience of being outcast, looked down upon, persecuted and exploited has created a shared experience that parallels Jesus' own.
I love the worship and the passion of many black American churches. They have learned how to suffer and yet sing.
Suffer and Sing.
I feel that that is about all the experience of faith I can know at this time. My years of studying higher biblical criticism have left me almost bereft of a Bible for comfort. Even the Resurrection of Christ is torn apart by reasoned study....but the hold of a youthful experience of joy and continued exposure to a church that sings have left me with two anchors, and namely the grace and power of a good worship experience and the face of Christ as seen in people who suffer and yet sing.
So as I continue to seek truth, even the kind that undermines the foundations of faith, I still have the example of the Black church which continues to...........
SUFFER and SING.
I will have to try a little harder to do likewise.
A deeply felt worship experience is a hopeful compensation for the ongoing suffering that is common to all flesh.
SUFFER and SING.
LH
I love the worship and the passion of many black American churches. They have learned how to suffer and yet sing.
Suffer and Sing.
I feel that that is about all the experience of faith I can know at this time. My years of studying higher biblical criticism have left me almost bereft of a Bible for comfort. Even the Resurrection of Christ is torn apart by reasoned study....but the hold of a youthful experience of joy and continued exposure to a church that sings have left me with two anchors, and namely the grace and power of a good worship experience and the face of Christ as seen in people who suffer and yet sing.
So as I continue to seek truth, even the kind that undermines the foundations of faith, I still have the example of the Black church which continues to...........
SUFFER and SING.
I will have to try a little harder to do likewise.
A deeply felt worship experience is a hopeful compensation for the ongoing suffering that is common to all flesh.
And until the suffering and sin that was not 'finished' on the cross is finally finished on earth, this will have to be enough for those who are consigned to
SUFFER and SING.
LH
A New Kind of Conservative Evangelical (there is much to like about this guy)
As easy as it is for those of us who are white to look back and say, "That's a terrible statement," I grew up in a very segregated South, and I think that you have to cut some slack. And I'm going to be probably the only conservative in America who's going to say something like this, but I'm just telling you: We've got to cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told, "You have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can't sit out there with everyone else. There's a separate waiting room in the doctor's office. Here's where you sit on the bus." And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had ... more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.
- Mike Huckabee, offering his perspective on the preaching of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. (Source: MSNBC)
- Mike Huckabee, offering his perspective on the preaching of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. (Source: MSNBC)
Friday, March 21, 2008
Thursday, March 20, 2008
A Stare or a Gaze (How we see and are seen can make all the difference)
Kevin Connolly was born in Helena, Montana in August of 1985. Born without legs, Kevin was otherwise a healthy baby and grew up like any other Montana kid; getting dirty, running in the woods, and getting dirty some more.
In the way developments tend to snowball, Kevin began skateboarding and taking photographs for the first time in 2005. His first taste of living abroad came in 2006 when he left to study in New Zealand for one year. It was on the return home - skating down a backstreet in Vienna - that Kevin took his first prototype photo for what was to become The Rolling Exhibition.
www.kevinmichael connolly.com.
Artist Statement
1 year ago I was asked by a little boy in Christchurch, New Zealand if I had been eaten by a shark.
2 months ago I was asked by an elderly woman in Sighisoara, Romania if I had lost my legs in a car accident.
6 weeks ago I was asked by a bar patron in Helena, Montana if I still wore my dog tags from Iraq.
Everyone tries to create a story in their heads to explain the things that baffle them. For the same reason we want to know how a magic trick works, or how mystery novel ends, we want to know how someone different, strange, or disfigured came to be as they are. Everyone does it. It's natural. It's curiosity.
But before any of us can ponder or speculate - we react. We stare. Whether it is a glance or a neck twisting ogle, we look at that which does not seem to fit in our day to day lives. It is that one instant of unabashed curiosity - more reflex than conscious action - that makes us who we are and has been one of my goals to capture over the past year.
It is after this instant that we try to hazard a guess as to why such an anomalous person exists. Was it disease? Was it a birth defect? Was it a landmine? These narratives all come from the context in which we live our lives. Illness, drugs, calamity, war - all of these might become potential stories depending upon what we are exposed to in connection with disability.
In each photograph the subjects share a commonality, but what does their context say? Looking at each face, I saw humanity. Rolling through their streets, I found the unique cultures and customs that created an individual.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
eloi eloi lama sabachthani.
Bearing the Silence of God
A Turkish theologian finds the image of Christ in the persecuted church.
Ziya Meral |
More Christians are killed than are saved from execution at the last minute. More Christians stay locked in prison, beaten and tortured, than are able to walk free, guided by miraculous escape plans. More Christians suffer lifelong deprivation of their most basic civic and economic rights. More converts from Islam give up their faith than stay Christians, and those who remain in the church struggle with lifelong battles with shame, depression, and isolation, caused by the loss of ties to their families, communities, and nations.
Above all, for the average persecuted Christian, there are unanswered prayers and the absence of peace, strength, courage, and joy. Their humanness in a very earthly plot line finds no place in our modern-day obsession with heroic stories with victorious resolutions.
Where is God when millions of his children are being persecuted in the most brutal ways? Why does he keep silent in the middle of persecution but speak loudly in the middle of conferences with famous speakers and worship bands?
Friday, March 14, 2008
Abuse of Power (a recent wounding)
Society dictates how power is distributed. Institutions and ideologies determine who has privilege to be dominant and who must defer. Some persons are given great power to make choices for themselves and other people and are protected from the consequences of their choices.... Religion serves to define the nature of power and its legitimate uses. Religious leaders must choose whether to collude with the dominant culture as sanctioning agents of abusive power or to be prophetic critics of the way power is distributed and defined.
- James Newton Poling
The Abuse of Power
- James Newton Poling
The Abuse of Power
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
A Good Way to Pass the Time
What shalt thou do? ... Do good. Do all the good thou canst. Let thy plenty supply thy neighbor’s wants; and thou wilt never want something to do. Canst thou find none that need the necessaries of life, that are pinched with cold or hunger; none that have not raiment to put on, or a place where to lay their head; none that are wasted with pining sickness; none that are languishing in prison? If you duly considered our Lord’s words, "The poor have you always with you," you would no more ask, "What shall I do?"
- John Wesley
"On Worldly Folly"
- John Wesley
"On Worldly Folly"
Sunday, March 09, 2008
A glimpse of a nonmemetic (nonavarice driven) future...looks a little like the 'Kingdom' to me
Happiness. The most prized commodity of all. Some people think they will find it in marriage, some look in exotic locales halfway across the globe, while others think it is found in the driver's seat of a Maserati. Where can happiness be found?
Research seems to indicate that it can be found in Denmark.
As in previous years, Denmark emerged as the happiest country in the world. Adrian White, a psychologist at the University of Leicester's School of Psychology, publishes a "world map of happiness," using data from 80,000 questionnaires filled out world-wide, as well as information culled from a bevy of governmental reports and private foundation's databases. Somehow, Denmark, a country whose most notable invention is the herring sandwich, repeatedly makes it to the top of the list. (The US came in 23rd, Germany 35th, the UK 42nd, Israel 58th, France 62nd, and Russia 167th!)
What is the secret of that small country with dreary weather, heavy smoking and drinking, and taxes between 50-70%, that keeps the Danes so happy?
A recent episode of 60 Minutes tried to find the answer. Morley Safer spoke to Professor Kaare Christensen at the University of Southern Denmark, who published a study titled, "Why Danes Are Smug." He discovered that the key to the Danes' happiness is that they don't have high expectations. To illustrate, he claims that if the Danes ranking would drop to 20th instead of first, their response would be, "That's not bad; at least we're in the Top 25!" By having low expectations, explains Prof. Christensen, one is rarely disappointed.
The government helps this low-expectation lifestyle by taxing people highly while providing an enormous amount of social services. Health-care is free, people are paid to do well in college, and even graduate school is free. After having a child, both parents get paid leave for at least half a year, and Denmark spends more per capita on child and elder care than any country in the world. The government even helps subsidize friendships by providing funding for any group of people who want to cultivate a hobby like model airplane building or quilt croqueting. About 92% of Danes belong to at least one of these social clubs.
With high taxes limiting the earning power of the wealthy and phenomenal social services keeping people out of debt, there is very little wealth disparity in Denmark. Since the after-tax income of a banker and a carpenter are not far apart, people choose professions based on preference, not expectations of higher salary. There is very little drive to live up to the Joneses, as the Joneses are Jante-luv, just like you.
Tal Ben-Shahar, a veteran of the IDF, was the most popular lecturer at Harvard University. Last year over 1,400 students took his class in Positive Psychology -- the Science of Happiness. He explains that the US has a very different dynamic than the one displayed in the Danish culture. "In America, part of the ethos, part of the American dream, is that more is better, and the more is better usually applies to the material realm. And that doesn't pan out.... It doesn't make us happier."
About 94% of college students in the US report that they already feel "stressed and overwhelmed," the result of high expectations. Wanting it all is a disease that stays with us from youth to old age -- wanting a bigger house, fancier car, more stuff. But, as the Sages of the Talmud taught regarding the physical realm, "He who has 100 wants 200, he who has 200 want 400." The more you have, the more you want. This begins a vicious cycle of expectation, desires, and mounting needs.
One of the most striking results of the "American Dream" was discovered by Israeli economist and Nobel Prize winner, Daniel Kahneman. He found that, generally speaking, American women did not enjoy spending time with their children. The problem wasn't that they didn't love their children. It was simply that while spending time with their children, they were so busy doing other things such as checking email, paying bills, or shopping, that the time together became irritating and tedious to them. Playing your two favorite songs at the same time would be grating, even though when played individually they give you great pleasure. In the rush to accomplish many tasks at once, mothers are losing their ability to properly do any!
Two sources of happiness that are often overlooked are family and religion. In a poll of 1,280 American teens conducted by the Associated Press and MTV, 73% said that what makes them most happy is a good relationship with their parents. Over half said that religion and spirituality is very important to them, and that the knowledge that there is a Higher Power that watches over them and controls their world makes them feel happy and secure. Interestingly, almost no one said that money makes them happy.
All this research into the science of happiness has resulted in some suggestions for boosting happiness, and not surprisingly, you can find roots for these ideas in Torah teachings, the instruction manual for living the most happy and fulfilling life.
Let's run through some of the suggestions:
• Keep your expectations low. Simplify; don't try to achieve too much at one time. The Talmud frequently tells us "tafasta meruba lo tafasta, tafasta mu'at tafasta." If we try to grab too much we end up with nothing, but if we try to accomplish a little, we will surely achieve it. To help us with this we have a special day called Shabbat -- 25 hours to stop trying to grab, and instead focus on the most meaningful things in our lives: our family and friends, our spirituality, and ourselves.
• Exercise. The Torah told us 3,300 years ago that we must watch our health carefully, and recent studies confirm that it can actually increase your happiness. Exercising three times a week for 30 minutes has the same effect as some of the most powerful psychiatric drugs being prescribed today.
• Keep a gratitude diary. Every day Prof. Tal Ben-Shahar writes down five things in his diary. Some of them are big things like his happy marriage or his successful career, while others are small, such as a really good ice cream sundae or the ability to cheer up a co-worker. As Jews, we stop three times a day to thank God for the goodness in our lives, and gratitude is the focus of one of the most important blessings in every Amidah. However, a diary is a great way to add to our gratitude bank. The Jews are called Yehudim, (the word from which Jew evolved), because that word connoted thankfulness, which is one of the most fundamental traits of the Jewish people.
The Sages tell us that the current Jewish month of Adar is the happiest month in the calendar, a time for increasing our joy. And a perfect time to try out some of these tips.
This article can also be read at: http://www.aish.com/spirituality/growth/Nothing_is_Rotten_in_the_State_of_Denmark1.asp
Research seems to indicate that it can be found in Denmark.
As in previous years, Denmark emerged as the happiest country in the world. Adrian White, a psychologist at the University of Leicester's School of Psychology, publishes a "world map of happiness," using data from 80,000 questionnaires filled out world-wide, as well as information culled from a bevy of governmental reports and private foundation's databases. Somehow, Denmark, a country whose most notable invention is the herring sandwich, repeatedly makes it to the top of the list. (The US came in 23rd, Germany 35th, the UK 42nd, Israel 58th, France 62nd, and Russia 167th!)
What is the secret of that small country with dreary weather, heavy smoking and drinking, and taxes between 50-70%, that keeps the Danes so happy?
A recent episode of 60 Minutes tried to find the answer. Morley Safer spoke to Professor Kaare Christensen at the University of Southern Denmark, who published a study titled, "Why Danes Are Smug." He discovered that the key to the Danes' happiness is that they don't have high expectations. To illustrate, he claims that if the Danes ranking would drop to 20th instead of first, their response would be, "That's not bad; at least we're in the Top 25!" By having low expectations, explains Prof. Christensen, one is rarely disappointed.
The government helps this low-expectation lifestyle by taxing people highly while providing an enormous amount of social services. Health-care is free, people are paid to do well in college, and even graduate school is free. After having a child, both parents get paid leave for at least half a year, and Denmark spends more per capita on child and elder care than any country in the world. The government even helps subsidize friendships by providing funding for any group of people who want to cultivate a hobby like model airplane building or quilt croqueting. About 92% of Danes belong to at least one of these social clubs.
With high taxes limiting the earning power of the wealthy and phenomenal social services keeping people out of debt, there is very little wealth disparity in Denmark. Since the after-tax income of a banker and a carpenter are not far apart, people choose professions based on preference, not expectations of higher salary. There is very little drive to live up to the Joneses, as the Joneses are Jante-luv, just like you.
Tal Ben-Shahar, a veteran of the IDF, was the most popular lecturer at Harvard University. Last year over 1,400 students took his class in Positive Psychology -- the Science of Happiness. He explains that the US has a very different dynamic than the one displayed in the Danish culture. "In America, part of the ethos, part of the American dream, is that more is better, and the more is better usually applies to the material realm. And that doesn't pan out.... It doesn't make us happier."
About 94% of college students in the US report that they already feel "stressed and overwhelmed," the result of high expectations. Wanting it all is a disease that stays with us from youth to old age -- wanting a bigger house, fancier car, more stuff. But, as the Sages of the Talmud taught regarding the physical realm, "He who has 100 wants 200, he who has 200 want 400." The more you have, the more you want. This begins a vicious cycle of expectation, desires, and mounting needs.
One of the most striking results of the "American Dream" was discovered by Israeli economist and Nobel Prize winner, Daniel Kahneman. He found that, generally speaking, American women did not enjoy spending time with their children. The problem wasn't that they didn't love their children. It was simply that while spending time with their children, they were so busy doing other things such as checking email, paying bills, or shopping, that the time together became irritating and tedious to them. Playing your two favorite songs at the same time would be grating, even though when played individually they give you great pleasure. In the rush to accomplish many tasks at once, mothers are losing their ability to properly do any!
Two sources of happiness that are often overlooked are family and religion. In a poll of 1,280 American teens conducted by the Associated Press and MTV, 73% said that what makes them most happy is a good relationship with their parents. Over half said that religion and spirituality is very important to them, and that the knowledge that there is a Higher Power that watches over them and controls their world makes them feel happy and secure. Interestingly, almost no one said that money makes them happy.
All this research into the science of happiness has resulted in some suggestions for boosting happiness, and not surprisingly, you can find roots for these ideas in Torah teachings, the instruction manual for living the most happy and fulfilling life.
Let's run through some of the suggestions:
• Keep your expectations low. Simplify; don't try to achieve too much at one time. The Talmud frequently tells us "tafasta meruba lo tafasta, tafasta mu'at tafasta." If we try to grab too much we end up with nothing, but if we try to accomplish a little, we will surely achieve it. To help us with this we have a special day called Shabbat -- 25 hours to stop trying to grab, and instead focus on the most meaningful things in our lives: our family and friends, our spirituality, and ourselves.
• Exercise. The Torah told us 3,300 years ago that we must watch our health carefully, and recent studies confirm that it can actually increase your happiness. Exercising three times a week for 30 minutes has the same effect as some of the most powerful psychiatric drugs being prescribed today.
• Keep a gratitude diary. Every day Prof. Tal Ben-Shahar writes down five things in his diary. Some of them are big things like his happy marriage or his successful career, while others are small, such as a really good ice cream sundae or the ability to cheer up a co-worker. As Jews, we stop three times a day to thank God for the goodness in our lives, and gratitude is the focus of one of the most important blessings in every Amidah. However, a diary is a great way to add to our gratitude bank. The Jews are called Yehudim, (the word from which Jew evolved), because that word connoted thankfulness, which is one of the most fundamental traits of the Jewish people.
The Sages tell us that the current Jewish month of Adar is the happiest month in the calendar, a time for increasing our joy. And a perfect time to try out some of these tips.
This article can also be read at: http://www.aish.com/spirituality/growth/Nothing_is_Rotten_in_the_State_of_Denmark1.asp
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Rene Girard..... Revealer of Cultural Genesis and 'Way Pointer' to a Christ Centred Future
I must thank Steve Berg of 'GROW MERCY' for turning me onto the writings of Rene Girard whose ground breaking thesis presents the most hopeful case for a Christ centred world view I have ever encountered. This view is so powerful because it makes sense of our past present and future in a way that is vastly superior to the old sacrificial understanding of the Gospel that has dominated our thinking for two millennium.
Girard is a man whose breadth of vision has taken in the history of mankind from the time the first collection of homanoids became conscious of themselves as different than the animals we emerged from, through our development as religious and cultural beings and right up to our present secular (sometimes)nihilistic time and beyond to a future where we can become aware of our full humanity shared with Jesus the the son of God.
The process of homanization (becoming human) is explained as the need to channel the mimetic process of desire (without which no learning or culture could come into being). There has been no greater need than to control and direct that overwhelming force so as not to allow it to wash over and destroy the human experiment.
Girard came to his revolutionary ideas by studying literature. He discovered the human heart revealed in books by such great authors as Proust and Dostoevsky. The mimetic heart that most longs for the things that others have is seen in all our competitive desires and our inability to value things in themselves without reference to how others (often falsely) value them.
LH
Girard is a man whose breadth of vision has taken in the history of mankind from the time the first collection of homanoids became conscious of themselves as different than the animals we emerged from, through our development as religious and cultural beings and right up to our present secular (sometimes)nihilistic time and beyond to a future where we can become aware of our full humanity shared with Jesus the the son of God.
The process of homanization (becoming human) is explained as the need to channel the mimetic process of desire (without which no learning or culture could come into being). There has been no greater need than to control and direct that overwhelming force so as not to allow it to wash over and destroy the human experiment.
Girard came to his revolutionary ideas by studying literature. He discovered the human heart revealed in books by such great authors as Proust and Dostoevsky. The mimetic heart that most longs for the things that others have is seen in all our competitive desires and our inability to value things in themselves without reference to how others (often falsely) value them.
The memetic process allows us to learn and to grow but also to come into the most heated and deadly forms of competition. Old sacrificial rituals and even the substitutionary slaying of a sacrificial victim has often been necessary to control the destructive/creative force of memesis. Girard shows us how the life and death of Jesus gives us the tools needed to overcome the deadly flaw of this process and allow us to enter a more hopeful, more peaceful and more human future.
Beyond expositing literature Girard has become a cultural anthropologist of the the first order and someday (if there is any justice) will be given a place of honour at least as great as Charles Darwin. Like Darwin in the natural world Girard has in the human world synthesized so much so well and has seen more clearly than anyone before that he represents a watershed in our intellectual and spiritual development.
I just finished Girards' "Things Hidden From the Foundations of the World" and am eager to begin his other works.
Thanks Steve for turning me into a Girard fan. I hope that someday Christians all over the world will know and value the insights and truths revealed by this great thinker.
Beyond expositing literature Girard has become a cultural anthropologist of the the first order and someday (if there is any justice) will be given a place of honour at least as great as Charles Darwin. Like Darwin in the natural world Girard has in the human world synthesized so much so well and has seen more clearly than anyone before that he represents a watershed in our intellectual and spiritual development.
I just finished Girards' "Things Hidden From the Foundations of the World" and am eager to begin his other works.
Thanks Steve for turning me into a Girard fan. I hope that someday Christians all over the world will know and value the insights and truths revealed by this great thinker.
LH
a better kind of go (ape) and do likewise
Justice demands that we seek and find the stranger, the broken, the prisoner, and comfort them and offer them our help. Here lies the holy compassion of God.
-Mechtild of Magdeburg
John1 3:11
Dear friend, do not imitate what is evil but what is good. Anyone who does what is good is from God. Anyone who does what is evil has not seen God.
-Mechtild of Magdeburg
John1 3:11
Dear friend, do not imitate what is evil but what is good. Anyone who does what is good is from God. Anyone who does what is evil has not seen God.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
