Category Archives: Uncategorized

Square world…

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I went for a meeting today in a posh new hospital. Everything squeaked as if in disapproval of my polluting presence.

I was there to chair a meeting about one of the patients, who had been transferred there recently to receive more specialist care. She had previously spent most of the last 40 years of her life as a resident of the local psychiatric hospital. Things went wrong after the death of her husband, and she somehow lost herself in the grief of it all. The whole range of psychiatric science was rolled out for her benefit – drugs that greyed her vision, Electric Shock Therapy that blew holes in her memory then finally psycho surgery in an attempt to cut grief out of her brain with a scalpel.

And here she remains – toothless, but given to scratching. Occasionally abusive but still with sense of humour intact.

She used to be a worker, a wife, a mother. She used to go on picnics and loved to dance. She enjoyed holidays and gossiped with her friends about the comings and goings of the village.

But that was 40 years ago.

Today we met to discuss her future care – a likely move to a specialist nursing home, and the legal issues around that given her lack of capacity to understand or to give consent.

But in the middle of this, she looked at the ceiling and said;

I hate those squares. Everything is square in here. Put me outside next to the beech hedge. Just put me outside.

And I looked out at the brown beech hedge, with dry leaves still rattling on the close cropped branches.

Through the square window.

And I wanted to wheel her out there, and sit her under the winter sky, wind waving her long grey hair in a curve of protest against all those bloody awful squares.

A day of possibilities…

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They don’t come along often. Sure there are always choices that we can make but most of the time the road leads in one direction. But I am approaching a junction though.

Three ways diverge. One is promotion in my current work, the other demotion. I can choose either of these versions of ‘more of the same’.

The other road is far less certain. Once again, there is a more than even chance of being offered voluntary redundancy. I should be getting a letter by the end of the week asking me to put my cards on the table.

Take the blue pill.

Make the jump into the unknown.

Burn my bridges.

If I take this option there are no guarantees that it will not go badly wrong. We have talked about a variety of other ways of making a living- B and B, art, retreats, writing, crafts and pottery, but these are fairly untested.

The penalty for failure in terms of impact on myself and my family would be catastrophic.

But despite all of this the possibilities of the uncertain road are calling me…

 

Community and the social core…

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I joined this site recently, thanks to a contact on my blog because of an old post about Poverty and the Emerging Church.

‘Our Society’ is helping to join people together for good – to exchange ideas and information and encourage community action, and as such it seems like something to shine light and sprinkle salt on.

The site is focussed south of the border at present, so it would be great to get some Scottish participation.

Gavin Barker sent me this power point in relation to work he has been doing to map areas of social deprivation;

<div style=”width:425px” id=”__ss_11131652″> <strong style=”display:block;margin:12px 0 4px”><a href=”http://www.slideshare.net/Gavman/imd-our-society&#8221; title=”Mapping deprivation and co-production” target=”_blank”>Mapping deprivation and co-production</a></strong>

The slides about the importance of connections and ‘social capital’ are very familiar, but the idea of a ‘social core’ was less so to me.

The measure of our societies depends to a large extent on the community activists at the heart of our towns, which Gavin describes as the ‘social core’ who tend to be

•Middle aged
•Have higher education qualifications
•Owner occupiers
•Actively practice their religion
•Have lived in the same neighbourhood for at least 10 years
•Over 60% of middle aged females would be counted as part of the civic core
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These folk will do 72% of the civic participation, 79% of the charitable giving and 87% of the voluntary hours.
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Gavin also talks about the ‘inner core’ – the 7.6% of the population who do 22%, 40% and 49% of the above.
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I would add to this (from a small town Scottish perspective) that these people are also often incomers- that is, migrants into the area, or ‘white settlers’ as they are disparagingly known.
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You could legitimately argue that the description of the social core above is simply those who can afford to spend time, money and energy on these things. Other people are caught up in surviving. However; whatever the reason, whatever the motivation, thank God for them, particularly in these times of disconnection and fragmentation.

Scottish independence?

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So, the issue of independence for Scotland from Great Britain is at the top of the political agenda.

Tory leader, David Cameron decided to force the issue and in the process managed to give a political boost to the Scottish Nationalists – any posh London Tory who tries to flex his or her muscles up in Scotland is going to be resisted by 90% of the population up here. As someone said, there are more polar bears in Scotland than Tory members of parliament!

I have written before about my own take on all this which is pretty much along these lines-

  • I am an English/Irishman, living in Scotland. Most of us are part of a similar mix when you scratch the surface.
  • I have an innate suspicion of nationalism as I can’t think of a single instance of nationalism being a force for good
  • Rather nationalism is often associated with ‘us first’ – defended boundaries, exclusivity and sectarianism.
  • This is particularly the case in when politics starts to use history as a justification. It all becomes distorted and dishonest

Does this mean that the 5.2 million people who live in Scotland (8.5% of the total UK population) could not benefit from independence? The answer to this of course is that no one really knows. The economic case is yet to be argued, not to mention the wider political implications for the whole of the UK. The argument has been really stuck at some kind of romantic notion of ‘Scottishness’, which is of course defined AGAINST as much as defined by.

Defined against the English that is.

Typified by the proposal (by the Scottish Nationalist Party) to hold a referendum on the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn. Because Robert the Bruce has more to teach us about our politics than all those intervening years of Empire and conquest (apparently.)

Is it possible to love your country without seeking to denigrate your neighbours? I hope it is for the sake of the future of these islands. I hope we can promote the politics of reconciliation and respect. I suppose nationalists in Scotland would argue that this is only possible when there is an equal partnership, or even genuine self determination.

I read this recently, which paints a strange picture of views on this issue either side of the border –

The poll shows that while a substantial proportion of Scots (40 per cent) back independence, 43 per cent want to remain inside the United Kingdom.

However, among English voters – who would not get a vote in any referendum – there is a clear lead for those who support independence for Scotland (43 per cent) over those who want the Union to be preserved (32 per cent).

Most Scots admit their nation would be worse off after independence (41 per cent) than better off (38 per cent), while 51 per cent of English think the Scots would be worse off.

Some 61 per cent of English people, moreover, say the current formula which sees higher government spending per head in Scotland is unjustified – a similar finding to 2006.

Among Scots, 53 per cent think that the spending system, known as the Barnett formula, is justified while 21 per cent do not agree.

So will it happen?

At the moment I would say that the odds are against, but I hope that over the next year the questions asked will be much more sophisticated ones, rather than just the agenda that is set by the Edinburgh Tartan Elite.

Looking forward to a few things…

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This photo was taken looking out from the viewpoint at the top of Benmore Gardens today, where we took a picnic today, along with some friends. It somehow made me think of the year to come; looking forward into 2012. It suddenly seemed so hopeful and exciting to look forward, rather than looking back…

I love to have things on the horizon – distant goals/projects/destinations that I can move towards, even if getting there involves some graft. I think this is always even more important to me in the dark months of the year. So I started to write a list.

Yesterday we worked hard in our cellar, to continue the process of converting the space down there to a working pottery. Michaela and Pauline’s Blue Sky Craft Workshops will be planning some sessions down there. Watch this space if you are interested. I’ll post some photos when I have managed to build some of the workbenches down there.

Talking of craft/art we have  been asked if we want to use the exhibition space in Benmore Gardens- to fill it up with carvings and craftings. This is a lovely challenge, as it is a big space, and so it will need some big pieces, possibly combining work from different members of our group. Time to get in the workshop, and tidy all the things that have come out of the cellar into some kind of order!

Then there is the distant Greenbelt festival- which has become increasingly important to me also. I have a few ideas for poetry/audio installations that I am gathering soundscapes and ideas for. Not sure if it will happen, but the creativity it sparks in me is grand.

In all this mix is lots of uncertainty. A job that has been under threat for two years but may be about to finally end. Other plans to downshift and start all sorts of other micro enterprises have been long in the planning, but this will be the year one way or another, when things will change.

Then there is the Wilderness Retreats that I am planning with my mates Simon, Nick and Paul. I am really looking forward to these. I hope some of you will join us.

Then there are all the activities of the community I am part of – Aoradh. We meet to eat and laugh and pray, and to plan creative ways to celebrate our faith. Next year we are already talking about collaborations with others, bench meditation spots, community gardens, labyrinths, prayer rooms.

And to mark progress towards the new season, today Will and I attended the first of the years indoor cricket net sessions. We spent a couple of hours bowling, being bowled at and facing a bowling machine. Magic. It is hard to imagine the warm days full of the sound of leather on willow, but this too will come.

As I look at this little (incomplete) list, I feel blessed, excited, hopeful, humble, grateful. And perhaps just a little overwhelmed.

May your horizons be full of good things too!

Personal growth and the rise to the top…

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Life is for living – for drinking deep from the well of experience. That is why many of us believe that wild places are so special; they take us out of our narrow protected bubble and open up something deeper, more eternal.

A fulfilled life is a difficult thing to measure. Very soon we start to use nebulous words like ‘well being’, ‘happiness’ and ‘satisfaction’.

We may also have to acknowledge that life is a process – a journey. Some would call this journey a process of ‘maturity’, others would say ‘enlightenment’, others still would call it ‘personal growth’. All these ideas contain the idea that life, in all its joy and difficulties, should embrace transformation; movement from one state of being to another. Standing still is unlikely to be healthy and ultimately it will likely prove impossible.

For a while, many of us (particularly men) come to believe that a fulfilled life is one characterised by success. And because we are competitive creatures there has to be some means of measuring this success so we are always heading for the next achievement, the next conquest, the next acquisition.

I was reminded of this again today listening to a radio discussion about psychopathy with Jon Ronson, author of this book–

The word ‘psychopath’ is one of the most overused and emotive terms employed by the media in relation to mental illness, but Ronson’s book goes far beyond the stereotype. He qualified to use the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, and became, by his own admission, something of an obsessive Psychopath spotter.

Whatever you believe about the usefulness of labels like this, the fascination with the sort of people who can commit such acts of appalling cruelty apparently guilt free is almost universal. All the more sobering then is the statistic that roughly 1% of people can be regarded as psychopathic.

Rather than getting stuck with all the high profile serial killers and despots, Ronson’s interest takes us more towards the very place of madness at the heart of our society. At the same time as vilifying psychopaths as not-human ‘others’, he argues that there is something psychopathic about our society, and that many parts of our society actually reward psychopathic tendencies.

Consider this – one of the two ‘factors’ in Hare’s checklist–

Factor 1: Personality “Aggressive narcissism”

It is easy to see how an individual with these kind of characteristics could succeed in much of society. It is impossible not to start thinking of people we know, bosses we have had.

I went to hear psychologist Oliver James speak at Greenbelt Festival last year (you can download the talk here.) One of the things I remembered him saying was that in all his dealings with the rich and powerful, including several Prime Ministers, he had yet to meet many who he would regard as psychologically healthy.

However, Ronson goes further than this and suggests that the very institutions of our society can become psychopathic. Banks that loan what they know can never be repaid, therefore condemning people to financial indebtedness for the rest of their lives. Health systems that thrive on the sickness of the population. The creation of all sorts of addictions to gadgets and shiny product in order to ensure profit.

It is almost as if the process of becoming – whether we understand this as a spiritual, psychological or simply biological development – has been replaced by a process of conquest, where success at almost any cost is the only thing that matters.

But success is fickle. The journey to the top is often followed by the journey back down again.

Back to this maturity/enlightenment/personal growth thing. Most of us come to a point when we realise that success is rarely a route to any kind of lasting happiness (even if this is a legitimate aim for any of us.) A life that cuts us off from the social animal that we humans are and replaces this with narrow acquisition is a kind of madness – all the more so for the fact that it is a collective madness.

So for those of us who are climbing to the top, may we succeed. May our enterprises go from strength to strength. But may we also remember that success without ethical responsibility and without the mess of all that humanity may indeed still be success, but it may also be the cause of our own destruction – both individually and collectively.

The Wayseer Manifesto…

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I watched this today (courtesy of the Emergent Village ‘minimergent’)

This from their website

All over the world there are Wayseers who struggle, who hide their gifts, because they don’t realize what they are. We are here to find Wayseers throughout the world and let them know how important they are to humanity. We are here to turn Wayseers on to their rare aptitude for leading transformation.

When the Wayseers of the world are awakened to their true calling on this planet, a massive shift in the human condition will occur.  Wayseers are the change agents of humanity – the innovators, the healers, the visionaries, the spiritual leaders, the entrepreneurs, the ones who are here to lead humanity into alignment with the Way.

I think I like it. Or at least some of it

I like the idea of the need for agitators, damaged malcontents who will not be defined by their limitations. The passion for something better, something other, something more creative and beautiful.

What I am not so sure about is the degree to which we exalt the ‘event’ over the ‘ordinary’, and the idea that we can all be ‘extra ordinary’ if we believe strongly enough.

And perhaps the ‘out there’ charismatic presentation is just a bit too God channel to sit easily with most of we Brits. The handsome bloke who comes and tells us that we are part of the special 10%. And he has product to shift.

There is also this strange feeling of activism as an end in itself – divorced from dogma, or from ideology, or cause. We want transformation, but we do not define what we are transforming to- this will work itself out if we follow ‘the way’. ‘The way’ is enough- the ‘calling’ we all carry. As I think of this, it seems to me to reflect a real shift in society – even a shift in me.

Society is less interested in what you believe, more in what lights you up. And just about anything goes man, what ever turns you on. And right now, we all need to be turned on to something new- the old stuff is over, bring on the next…

But I too feel the pull of this thing called ‘the way’. It seems to me that the Kingdom of God (as I would call it) is located within and without the followers of any one religion. Jesus broke all those barriers for ever. The way is enough- the calling to follow, to journey with love in an uncertain direction.

It seems to me that the Kingdom of God beats like a pulse in all of those things associated with ‘the way’ listed above.

Perhaps I should take up skateboarding.

The myth of equality…

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Just had an interesting discussion with my daughter. Emily is 16, lovely, intelligent, part of a middle class nuclear family, surrounded by good friends and enjoys a situation of safety and security. She lives in a quiet, relatively crime free part of the UK, one of the richest countries in the world.

In many ways, you could say that she has won the life lottery.

This would be unfair of course-life has this way of challenging all of us in some ways- she is having to learn to cope with dyslexia, and to develop her own individual self confidence, which is difficult enough for any of us.

But what this highlights to me is the issue of equality. Equality of opportunity is the watch word for our current political elite. Borrowed perhaps from the American dream, we cling to the idea that in a vibrant market driven capitalist economy, our measure of success is determined by our ability, more or less.

I suppose in many ways I stand as some kind of evidence of this- the child of a single parent, brought up by the welfare state, educated to degree level, now more or less middle class. However…

There is a devastating critique of this idea by Deborah Orr in today’s Guardian. Here are a few extracts-

The idea is that as long as there is “equality of opportunity”, then a highly competitive economic system that naturally sorts people into “winners and losers” – let’s call it a meritocracy – is perfectly reasonable. But the rhetoric is laughably fallacious. In a system that divides people into winners and losers, you can’t have “equality of opportunity”. The children of the winners will, broadly, always have the advantage. The children of the losers will, broadly, always have the disadvantage, theinability, if you will.

Welfare dependency is not a cause of society’s problems, but a consequence of them. Sadly, it is in the febrile interest of all mainstream politicians to continue pretending that it’s the other way round. The belief that you can transform society by prodding at welfare is similar to the belief that you can untangle knots by pushing at the ends of string.

What might this mean for those of us who are about to hand over our responsibilities to Emily’s generation? Will we saddle them with the same addictions to capitalist excesses? Or will we (and in turn they) find a different way untie the knots?

It is difficult to know where to begin on the macro scale- back to earlier discussions about the Grand Correction. But it is perfectly possible (if extremely challenging) to begin on the individual scale…

Some of this might be about an attitudinal shift, away from blaming the victims of our system-

Humans are not born equal, and individual vulnerabilities are not always easy to identify or to repair. Those who are stronger need to look after those who are weaker. It is precisely because humans are not good at doing this – it’s not in our aggressive, predatory natures – that so many people shrug at their inability to clothe, feed and house themselves. At the very least, this failure of the able should be recognised, rather than dressed up as a failure of the unable. Until it is, it’s hard to see how a better future can be imagined, let alone planned for.

But my greater hope is in Emily, and the desire for us to yet live together in a way that is less concerned with protecting what we have as we seek to gain more, and more concerned with sharing and supporting others, and living our lives in connection.

If anyone can do it, she can.

Living without electricity…

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We are increasingly utterly dependent on what comes to us through cables. I know this to be a fact, as I have spent most of today coping with the consequences of what happens when the cables stop delivering.

Since the big storm on Tuesday, parts of Argyll have had no electricity. Other parts have had an intermittent supply. It has  taken a whole army of blokes spending three days and nights in the hills and forests tracing fallen lines, disentangling them from trees, reinstating the masts that were blown down and the transformers that burnt out.

The consequences of this are obvious- or at least is seems so at first. The lights will go off. And the TV- oh, and the computer of course.

But then you start to remember other things- the telephone system, even if the supply that keeps the line is live, probably will not work as your telephone will require power, as we expect it to do lots of things other than just being a telephone. You will get cold as the heating system will be controlled and pumped by electricity.

Slowly you start to realise that everything is controlled by computers. And computers are great, but get very sulky if you remove their supply of amps. They are very greedy for amps. So (as we found out) trying to set up an emergency kitchen, as the gas supply was still working, was futile as all the appliances need electricity too- even the gas hob, which shuts itself down without the extractor hood working.

I also heard that the phone lines on Bute stopped working as the emergency generator was kept behind a door controlled by- electricity. Oops.

Then, the longer the electricity is off, the more serious things start to get. You can not buy food, as no one pays with money any more- we all pay by computer. Also, all the chilled food in the supermarket goes off immediately.

Finally, there is the fact that even the care that we provide to many people is dependent on technology. Increasingly we care for our frail elderly by computer. It is cheaper. We use door alarms, pressure mats, intercom systems, and all sorts of other sensors and switches.

The effect of this on our communities has been interesting- in some it brought out the best. Neighbours who went the extra mile, supermarkets who opened their doors, people sharing warm firesides and warm soup. But then there were those who would ring the council and demand to know why we had not visited them or someone else to make things OK in some way- as if we had endless resources, and perfect knowledge.

The lessons for us as individuals are sobering- the weather seems to be changing here, and we can probably expect more of the same. Simplify your life from some of the gadgets. Keep some candles and cans in the cupboards. Make a note who which of your neighbours might need a bit of extra help, and knock on the door to have a conversation (you remember those- from before Facebook and MSN.)

And in cases of extremis, decide which one is going to get eaten first.

The bottle in the roots…

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The other day I walked past some of the many trees  blown over at the weekend, including this one-

As the tree fell, it pulled up some of it’s roots as if in a last clawing attempt to stay upright, and in doing so, it kicked up some soil.

As I walked by, I saw a glint in the soil, and so I stooped and pulled out this bottle-

This little bottle is a window into lots of different stories.

First of all, we know that the fallen tree has to have been planted after 1917 (as the bottle has that date on the bottom.)

Next, the logos on the bottle are a glimpse into the refreshments of another generation. “J A Reid, Chemist, Reid’s Lily Springs, Pure as a Lily, 500 feet deep, Helensburgh.”

Around 1883 J.R.Reid set up as a chemist and aerated water manufacturer with a shop and factory at different addresses on Clyde Street, and several years later he moved manufacture to the Lily Springs in James Street. This was later owned by the well known Garvie lemonade firm, closing in 1957 because of alleged contamination of the water and moving to Milngavie until they closed that factory around 1985.

(From here.)

This is what our parents parents parents were drinking on their picnics. Carbonated, sweetened spring water of questionable purity.

This is what caught me- at some point, around 100 years ago, someone opened up this rather posh looking bottle during a wee holiday trip ‘doon the watter’. They were more adventurous than most, as they were not drawn in by the fleshpots of Dunoon– which during this period was a bit like Blackpool- cinemas, theatres,  ice cream parlours and all sorts of amusements. They chose a trip along the coast of the Holy Loch.

Perhaps they were cyclists slaking their thirst.

Or perhaps part of a family group settling down on the grassy shore line whilst the kids played in the water.

We will never know.