Keeping Things Simple.

Cut Through: A complex world is incompatible with a simple world. Explanation is incompatible with acceptance. Contrariwise, the ability to distinguish the majority view of reality from reality itself is arguably the most vital adaptation of human evolution, it’s what drives our species forward.

TO EXPLAIN IS NOT TO JUSTIFY. How astonishing, that in 2022 so few people appear to grasp this simple truth. It’s as if expending the mental energy required to understand what is happening in the world will, in some mysterious way, rob us of the capacity to make judgements about it.

And, therein, lies the problem: judging the world is now much more important than understanding it. Complexity has become the enemy of clarity – especially moral clarity. “Keep it simple, stupid” has become the motto of the modern politician: proof of just how dangerous complexity is now perceived to be. Such fetishization of simplicity certainly explains that other great political motto: “Explaining is losing.”

If the world really was a simple place, then the demonisation of those who attempt to explain it would not be necessary. It has always been a problem for those exercising authority over us that the longer we live in the world the more obvious it becomes that it is very far from being a simple place. The more ordinary people begin to appreciate the world’s complexity, however, the harder the job of ruling them becomes. While philosophers may argue that to know all is to forgive all, most rulers take a very different view. In their experience, the more people learn about the reasons behind the rules, the angrier they become.

Perhaps that is why it was generally considered wise, by the rulers, to bolster the authority of the state with the authority of organised religion. Nothing beats organised religion for whittling down the awesome complexity of the world to a few hard, fast, and – most importantly – simple rules. Moses made do with just ten!

Enslave people to the simple “truths” of their faith, and any need for them to come to terms with the complexity of human existence is averted. Omniscience is restricted to God. Only He is able to comprehend the entirety of His universe. Men and women need only know that the Lord moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. Keep his commandments and all will be well. (Oh, and it’s probably a good idea to keep the commandments of your earthly rulers as well!)

A partnership made in heaven, you might say. Or else, that heaven is the partnership’s most successful invention. Works either way.

The problem with organised religion and its simple truths is that the human imagination, combined with human species’ insatiable curiosity, are forever throwing up individuals who refuse to believe in the comforting fictions of their secular and religious rulers. They can, of course, be suppressed. (Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!) But the irritating thing about these seekers after knowledge is that they all-too-frequently come up with ideas and techniques that are simply too useful to ignore. Organised religion takes a hit. Living gets more complicated – and so does the whole business of governing an increasingly complicated population.

The answer to this new problem turned out to be relatively simple. Replace the voice of the priest in the pulpit with the voice of the teacher at the front of the class. Replace the wonder of God’s creation with the “nothingbutism” of science. Human-beings are “nothing but” the product of millions of years of evolution. Morality is what works. Evil is what works in ways that make no evolutionary sense. Bad equals broken. Good equals the absence of damage – and difference. The best thing to be is the same as everybody else. Uncomplicated.

The Internet makes simplicity easy. Thanks to social media, the voice of the teacher at the front of the class can be retired in favour of the voices on the individual’s Twitter feed, Facebook Page, Instagram or Tik-Tok. Sophisticated algorithms ensure that practically all of these voices are saying exactly the same thing – keeping the conversation as simple as possible. Never has it been easier for people to know what they think. Never have people had less cause to be tolerant of those who think for themselves.

Attempting to explain to others why they may be mistaken in their thinking is fast becoming a dangerous exercise. For many people, being wrong is an outright impossibility. How could it be otherwise when everyone they know is telling them they’re right?

Introducing the concept of complexity: the idea that in any given situation there are a host of competing factors at work; is interpreted by an increasing number of twenty-first century humans as a criticism of both themselves and their friends. Moreover, since they and their friends are always right, the person “explaining” can only be trying to justify being wrong. And pretending to be right when you’re not right, doesn’t just make you wrong, it makes you bad.

A complex world is incompatible with a simple world. Explanation is incompatible with acceptance. 

Contrariwise, the ability to distinguish the majority view of reality from reality itself is arguably the most vital adaptation of human evolution, it’s what drives our species forward.

Unfortunately, it can also get you killed.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 24 March 2022.

Uncompromising Thinking.

Cosmic Contradictions: In New Zealand and across the world, the incidence of what is often referred to as “Manichean” thinking is steadily rising. Manicheans see the world as being locked in a perpetual struggle between the Forces of Light and the Forces of Darkness, or, more simply, between Good and Evil.

THIS WEEK has been filled with speculation about what Judith Collins might have been saying to God. Many of the suggestions offered will have been neither couth nor kind. Over the past few decades, New Zealanders have become increasingly uncomfortable participants in religious conversations. With less than 40 percent of us now willing to own up to being Christian (2018 Census) that reticence is, perhaps, understandable. The number of people with a working knowledge of Christianity (or any of the other great world religions for that matter) continues its steady decline.

Which is odd, because the incidence of what is referred to as “Manichean” thinking is steadily rising. Manicheans see the world as being locked in a perpetual struggle between the Forces of Light and the Forces of Darkness, or, more simply, between Good and Evil.

The founder of this dualistic religion, Mani, prophesied that the ultimate outcome of this cosmic struggle would be the emergence of two worlds: one wholly good and the other wholly evil. The world of light and spirit would be ruled by God. The world of darkness and matter by the Devil.

Now, the people described as Manicheans today know nothing of Mani and his Third Century religious movement. But they are very much believers in the idea that there is one body of ideas, principles and values that is “right”, and another body of ideas, principles and values that is “wrong”.

Manichean thinking is on display everywhere. Neoliberals dismiss all those who refuse to accept the supreme efficacy of market forces as Marxists. Ecologists write off all those who refuse to accept the “incontrovertible” evidence of anthropogenic global warming as Climate-Change Deniers. Feminists who refuse to abandon biological science’s division of the human species into “men” and “women” are castigated as Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists – TERFs. (J.K. Rowling, creator of Harry Potter, has been branded a TERF and her books burned.) Pakeha who decline to attribute all the ills of contemporary New Zealand society to the impact of colonisation are dismissed as racists.

The key aspect of Manichean thinking is that it eschews absolutely the possibility of compromise. It is simply not possible for the World of Spirit to compromise with the World of Matter; Light with Darkness; Good with Evil. The very idea must, perforce, come from the Devil. (Also known as Capitalism/Communism, Big Oil/Greenpeace, Harvey Weinstein/MeToo, David Seymour/Marama Davidson.)

The apotheosis (an old-fashioned religious term meaning the condition which cannot be exceeded) of Manichean thinking is, of course, the United States of America. Republicans and Democrats confront each other over a seemingly bottomless abyss of mutual mistrust, unable to concede the existence of even the tiniest measure of common ground. The victory of the opposing party simply cannot be countenanced. Any failure to prevail is proof only of the other side’s willingness to “rig” the contest.

Those who call themselves “progressives” and who range themselves unequivocally with the Forces of Light against the dark evils of racism, sexism, transphobia, laissez-faire capitalism and environmental despoilation, would do well to contemplate Mani’s endgame. Because, radical Gnostic that he was, Mani despaired of Good’s capacity to triumph over Evil in the material world. In fact, he saw this world not as God’s creation, but as a place fashioned by the Devil: a realm in which God’s writ does not run.

The Gnostics (from the Ancient Greek word gnosis, meaning knowledge) were Christians of a profoundly heretical stripe, who took as their departure point Jesus’s statement to Pontius Pilate: “My kingdom is not of this world.”

There’s a profound and tragic wisdom here. For how does light drive out darkness without negating the meaning of light itself? How does spirit overcome matter without partaking of the very qualities that encompass its enemy? How does Good defeat Evil without taking up the weapons responsible for inflicting the wrongs it is seeking to right?

The Ancient Greek playwright, Sophocles, understood this long before Jesus, or Mani. In his tragic play, Antigone, he has the Chorus ask: “Who is the slayer, who the victim? Speak.”

The Ancient Greeks despised the dualistic mindset. They sought always the middle way where values mingle. They knew that the owl, sacred to Athena, goddess of wisdom, shuns alike the uncompromising sun and the all-consuming dark, preferring to fly when neither reigns – at twilight.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 9 October 2020.

The Maker Of “Men” – Masculinity and its Origins

The God Above: It is in the indistinct depths of prehistory that the first and most profound revolution in human affairs; the overthrow of the servants of the Earth Mother, by the worshippers of the Sky Father; took place. At the heart of this masculinist revolt lay a deep-seated fear and resentment of all things female – and a burning desire to master them.

WHO MAKES “MEN”? With the behaviour of movie magnate, Harvey Weinstein, dominating the headlines, the nature and origins of masculinity have become a hot topic. At issue is whether all expressions of masculinity are to a greater-or-lesser extent “toxic” – or only some? And, whether the ultimate liberation of womankind is contingent upon the unequivocal elimination of the culturally constructed beings we call “men”?

In many ways the battle for control over the construction and meaning of gender is the greatest revolutionary struggle of them all. Indeed, it is possible to argue that until this critical issue has been resolved, all of those historical upheavals to which the term “revolution” has been applied have been mischaracterised.

The key question to ask in relation to these historic transitions is whether or not, after the power relationship between master and slave, lord and serf, capitalist and proletarian shifted, the relationship between men and women; between the masculine realm and the feminine realm; was similarly changed? Or, was it still very much a matter of, in Leonard Cohen’s words, “that homicidal bitchin’ that goes down in every kitchen to determine who will serve and who will eat.”? After the “revolution”, did masculinity (like “whiteness”) continue to confer a huge societal advantage upon all who fell within its definitional boundaries – regardless of their personal beliefs and/or inclinations?

But perhaps “revolution” is the wrong word to describe the longed-for dethronement of masculinity? Perhaps the near universal institution of patriarchy (rule by the fathers) is actually the product of the first great social revolution in human history. Perhaps what feminist women are seeking to achieve isn’t a revolution – but a restoration?

And here we must step out of the hard-copy world of recorded history and enter into the much less solid realm of pre-history and mythology. Because it is here, in the indistinct depths of time, that the first and most profound transition in human affairs; the overthrow of the servants of the Earth Mother, by the worshippers of the Sky Father; took place. At the heart of this masculinist revolt lay a deep-seated fear and resentment of all things female – and a burning desire to master them.

Rule by the mothers – Matriarchy – drew its justification from the self-evident need for all living things to submit to the implacable statutes of Mother Earth. Hers was the endless cycle of birth, death and re-birth from which no living creature escaped. And the vessels within which all living things are nurtured, and out of which all new life emerges into the world, are female. Such was the deep magic of generation and fruition which flowed from the timeless creator of all things: The Goddess.

But the sons of the Goddess were lesser beings than their sisters. Helpmeets and protectors, certainly; seed carriers also; but from the deep magic of the mothers they were perforce excluded. Men were the takers of life: the killers of beasts and other men – their brothers. This, too, was a dark and powerful magic, but dangerous and destructive of the settled order. It was a force which the Mothers were careful to keep in check.

It is easy to guess where this story is going.

Men looked skyward, away from the Earth. They observed the gathering darkness in the heavens and heard the deep rumble of the sky’s anger. They witnessed the brilliant spears of light that stabbed the Earth, their mother. In awe they watched her burn, powerless beneath the thrusts of a deity who owed nothing to the slow cycles of growth and decay. Here was a magic to surpass the impenetrable secrets of femininity. Here, in light and fire, they found the power of beginnings: the shock and disruption of all that was new. Not the circles of the Earth Mother, but the straight lines of the Sky Father – the Maker of “Men”.

Masculinity is the world’s disease, and civilisation is its symptom. Patriarchy is the product of the first, and the only true, revolution in human history – and endures as its most malignant legacy.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Monday, 16 October 2017.

God’s Bigots: The Religious Origins Of Homophobia.

Owen Jones Takes Offence: Dismayed at British Sky Television's handling of the Orlando Massacre, left-wing author and LGBTI activist, Owen Jones, gets ready to disengage from the live media review in which he is participating. Owen's viewpoint, that Orlando should be seen purely and simply as a homophobic atrocity, not an Islamic terrorist attack, while understandable, is, nevertheless, an oversimplification.

 

OWEN JONES: democratic socialist, LGBTI activist and Guardian journalist: takes homophobia seriously. So seriously, that earlier this week he pulled off his microphone and stormed out of Britain’s Sky News studio in protest at the network’s treatment of the Orlando massacre.

 

To Jones, what happened in Orlando was very simple: more than a hundred people had been killed or wounded by a gun-wielding assailant because they were gay. Before it was anything else, Jones declared, Orlando was a homophobic atrocity – the worst since the Second World War. Alleged connections with ISIS; the assailant’s religious beliefs; these were secondary to the killer’s primary motivation, which was, according to Jones, the violent erasure of LGBTI identity.

 

Watching the video, it is easy to see why Jones became so irate. There is an unmistakeable tone of correction in the presenter’s voice when he emphasises the victims’ humanity over their sexuality. It was almost as if he felt unable to identify with the dead and wounded until they had been redefined into persons for whom he could legitimately grieve. Not queers, but “human-beings”.

 

Jones had been invited into the Sky studio to discuss the way the news media had presented the tragedy. This was, of course, why Jones was so angry. The dominant theme of the British and American coverage was that Orlando represented yet another Islamic terrorist assault upon the “freedoms” and “tolerance” of the enlightened and democratic West. The homophobia which drove Omar Mateen to gun down the LGBTI patrons of the Pulse nightclub was thus elided in favour of a more comfortable narrative: “They [ISIS, Radical Islam] hate us [The West] because of our freedom.”

 

What must also be acknowledged, however, is that Jones’ determination to keep the focus squarely on Mateen’s homophobic motivation, itself begs the question of what made Mateen a homophobe in the first place? In this regard, Jones’ determination to dismiss the killer’s religious beliefs – along with his declared allegiance to ISIS – as matters irrelevant to his homophobic actions, is, almost certainly, misguided.

 

If we reject the proposition that homophobia is genetically predetermined, then we must accept it as a socially constructed phenomenon. In the simplest terms: homophobes are not born, they are made.

 

And if homophobia is a social construction, then we must acknowledge the important roles played by powerful societal institutions – including organised religion – in its creation. The Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam; all of them militantly monotheistic and aggressively patriarchal; have always dealt harshly with homosexuality and lesbianism. Those found guilty of such “abominations” were to be put to death.

 

It is only in the course of the last half-century that Western statute law has ceased to offer powerful secular reinforcement to these religious strictures. Meanwhile, in the overwhelming majority of Islamic countries, homosexual conduct continues to rank as a capital offence. Even where more liberal and permissive penal codes now prevail, the legacy of organised religion’s condemnation of homosexuality is a strong one. In a great many parts of the supposedly “tolerant” West, anti-homosexual prejudice – homophobia – continues to lurk just below the surface.

 

How disturbing the apprehension of this intolerance must be for those whose sexual orientation is other than heterosexual. In communities where homophobic antagonism is construed by family and friends, employers and workmates, as obedience to the will of God, the situation for LGBTI individuals is much, much worse. Constantly being made aware of one’s “otherness”, while not being able to either acknowledge it, or escape it, can only generate the most acute psychological stress.

 

Was Omar Mateen gay? Quite possibly. Patrons of the Pulse nightclub remember him, but only as a loner, someone who held himself aloof from the club’s easy-going conviviality. His first wife remembers him as an angry man, from whose violent behaviour she had ultimately to be rescued by her family. Looking at his many brooding selfies, the world will remember Mateen as someone determined to present his best possible face to the world.

 

And that could never be his gay face. Was this the crucial negation which fuelled his anger and twisted his perceptions? When he saw two men kissing in a Miami street, did he envy their freedom or resent it? Unlike him, they appeared to fear neither God’s punishment, nor their families’ rejection. How had they done it? How had they moved beyond sin, beyond shame? He could not be such a person. He would not be such a person. He would ask God to make him a different person – a righteous person. He would wage a jihad against his own desires.

 

In the end, did he despair of ever defeating those desires? Is that when he began to fantasise about martyring himself in the holy war against Western corruption? In the online communities of Islamic fundamentalism he would have found plenty of encouragement. Paradise awaited those who fell in the battle against the sinners; the unbelievers; the enemies of God.

 

The operator who took Mateen’s 911 call, just minutes before he unleashed hell at the Pulse nightclub, described him as sounding “calm”. In his final moments, before a hail of Police bullets cut him down, witnesses similarly recalled his calm, untroubled demeanour.

 

These descriptions do not conform with Owen Jones’ characterisation of the killer as some sort of enraged, frothing-at-the-mouth, homophobic thug. It does, however, sound remarkably similar to the descriptions of the early Christian martyrs as they waited to be torn to pieces in the amphitheatres of Ancient Rome.

 

It is what religion does to people: it transforms their world.

 

For the early Christian martyrs, the evil arrayed against them was not a barrier, but a portal, to the presence of God. For the contemporary soldiers of Islam, dutifully slaying God’s enemies, Paradise awaits.

 

On that terrible Sunday morning, where did the broken human vessel that was Omar Mateen believe himself to be standing? At the gates of heaven? In God’s favour? Or, was the Pulse nightclub simply the place where he killed himself – forty-nine times?

 

This essay was posted on The Daily Blog and Bowalley Road on Saturday, 18 June 2016.

The Eyes Of An Absent God

Externalised Consciences: Old, Presbyterian, Dunedin possessed no surveillance cameras. It needed none. Back then the only watcher that mattered was already in people’s heads. In 2016, God’s eye looks down upon Dunedin’s students from the nearest wall.

 

“IT’S LIKE HAVING Mum and Dad on the street watching you.” The idea of the University of Otago’s CCTV surveillance cameras observing the comings and goings on Hyde Street, one of the Dunedin student quarter’s most notorious addresses, has not been met with universal approval. The prospect of having an additional 50 cameras strategically located at other “hot spots” (burn a sofa in the middle of the street and that is what you get!) in the student “ghetto” has raised additional concerns.
 

With the shock of Friday’s balcony collapse still fresh in the local authorities’ minds, however, student umbrage at intensified CCTV surveillance will likely carry less weight. The City and the University must now be reaching for every available tool to maintain safety in the streets of North Dunedin.
 

We can only sympathise with Mayor Dave Cull and Vice-Chancellor Harlene Hayne, who find themselves in a predicament analogous to that of Larry Vaughan, the unfortunate Mayor of Amity Island in Steven Spielberg’s classic movie Jaws. The Great White Shark of student disorder cannot be decisively beaten in Dunedin without putting at risk the very institution that keeps the city alive and kicking.
 

Ten-to-fifteen thousand students pour into Dunedin every year (a huge number of them from Auckland) on the strength of its reputation as the most student-friendly city in the country. Life in the student ghetto of Dunedin is a vital aspect of the University of Otago’s allure. “Closing the beaches” (to pursue the Jaws analogy a little further) would spoil all the fun.
 

Comprehensive CCTV surveillance, continuous and aggressive policing of the student quarter, and an unforgiving application of both the law and the university regulations would certainly prevent the Great White Shark from inflicting further casualties. But it might also prompt a great many prospective Otago students to ask themselves whether the long journey south was any longer worth it.
 

Dunedin’s dismal weather and dingy flats are currently offset by the warmth and vitality of its “Scarfie” lifestyle. Take that away and the place risks being written-off as a cold hole far too far from home and far too close to the Antarctic.
 

At some point, however, the depredations of the Great White Shark become so horrendous (one of the most seriously injured victims of Friday’s balcony collapse may never walk again) that turning a blind eye ceases to be an option – and installing 50 new electronic eyes begins to sound like a great idea.
 

The historical irony of this move towards “God’s Eye” surveillance in the student ghetto is that it is taking place in New Zealand’s preeminent Calvinist city. In 1901, when the University of Otago was already 30 years old, 98 percent of New Zealanders were Christians. In Dunedin, many – perhaps most – of those Christians were Scottish-born or descended Presbyterians.
 

At the heart of Scottish Protestantism was an unceasing and exhausting dialogue between the individual sinner and Almighty God. The comforting intermediations of the “Roman” clergy had long since been anathematised by these dour inhabitants of lowland and border. For them there was no veil to thwart the perception, and no intercession to soften the judgement, of the all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful Jehovah.
 

People still talk about “the fear of God”, but today it is almost always meant rhetorically. In a world where nearly everybody believed in an omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent deity, and where that belief was whetted to a self-harming sharpness every Sunday in the pews of a thousand churches, the fear of God was all too literal.
 

The young people of the past were as familiar with the Bible’s catalogue of sins, as today’s young people are with the apps on their I-phone. In those days, any occasion for sinning must also have been, in the minds of youngsters convinced that their most private thoughts and furtive deeds were at all times laid bare to the gaze of an all-seeing and judgemental god, occasions for the most paralysing fear and guilt.
 

Among student revellers basking in the fiery glow of Castle Street’s burning sofas, fear and guilt displayed precious little purchase. Their parents (or, more likely, their grandparents) might retain vague memories of church services and Sunday schools, but with less than half of New Zealand’s population now identifying itself as Christian, they almost certainly do not.
 

The optimists among us will be hoping that the voices of Mum and Dad, and the moral imperatives they imparted, still feature in their children’s internal deliberations. In this respect, that young inhabitant of Hyde Street’s comment about the surveillance camera being akin to her parents watching is instructive.
 

Old, Presbyterian Dunedin possessed no surveillance cameras. It needed none. Back then the only watcher that mattered was already in people’s heads. In 2016, God’s eye looks down upon Dunedin’s students from the nearest wall.
 

This essay was originally published in The Press of 8 March 2016.

Good Friday Meditation: The End Of The Line?

Breaking Free: The God of Israel’s story was not one of endless repetition. Each human life was to be understood not as the fleeting rehearsal of a drama whose essential plot was unchanging; but as a step, however small, towards an end that humankind itself was fashioning. Jehovah’s representation of the world was historical, not cyclical. We, his human creations, were headed towards something that had not happened before.

DEATH AND RESURRECTION lie at the heart of the Easter story. But Christianity’s preeminent religious festival also echoes a much more ancient celebration; that of Spring’s triumphant overthrow of Winter’s deathly reign. Viewed from this perspective, Jesus of Nazareth is but the latest in a long line of divine revolutionaries whose sacred lives are bound, irretrievably, to the slow-turning wheel of the seasons; the relentless cycles of birth, death, and rebirth.

 

Where Christianity departs so decisively from the nature religions that preceded it is in its claim to have broken free of their circles. Jesus’s startling message held that the ferociously jealous sky father, Jehovah, was a linear god. The God of Israel’s story was not one of endless repetition. Each human life was to be understood not as the fleeting rehearsal of a drama whose essential plot was unchanging; but as a step, however small, towards an end that humankind itself was fashioning. Jehovah’s representation of the world was historical, not cyclical. We, his human creations, were headed towards something that had not happened before.

 

In the pre-industrial world that Jesus and his followers inhabited, it is difficult to overstate how radical this idea must have seemed. To people whose very existence depended on the orderly sequences of sowing and reaping; engendering and slaughtering; the notion of individuals stepping away from the relentless cycles of the world must have seemed, at best, fanciful, and, at worst, blasphemous.

 

Once grasped, however, it is easy to see how this idea might encourage notions of being among God’s chosen people. To embrace Jehovah’s linearity was to become a being in history – a shaper of events, rather than their inevitable victim. It’s what makes Jesus’s trade such a potent metaphor. For what else is a carpenter but a person who shapes things to a purpose? Someone who builds things to a plan?

 

The overwhelming image that emerges from all the Jesus stories is that of a man on a journey. The great events of his ministry are but stations: points which he is at once moving towards and departing from; points on a line.

 

Reading the Gospels it is impossible not to see Jerusalem as the city of endings: the inescapable terminus of Jesus journey; the place towards which every step he takes is leading him. It’s as if he knows that in this great crucible of faith and politics – of faith as politics – all the twisted threads of his life will be pulled, finally, into a single bloody knot.

 

Only in Jerusalem will he have an answer to the question that has been dogging him ever since he set out from Galilee. Is Death the end of the line?

 

Crucifixion is Death at his most cruel. We read that in the last, agonising moments of his earthly life, Jesus cried: “My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” And then: “It is finished.” As if, in the brutal reality of his own demise he finally understood the futility of his faith in straight lines.

 

From the perspective of Calvary did Jesus realise, at last, that space is curved? That what we perceive to be a straight line is, in fact, just a tiny section of a circle so vast that the brief span of human existence is simply too short to comprehend its immensity.

 

Or did he, hanging up there against the sky, understand that life is both linear and circular? That the quest for understanding, for meaning, leads us always straight on. But, also, that the quest itself is repeated endlessly. That every generation is driven forward by the power of all the lives lived before it. Like those voyaging spacecraft, flung ever further into space by the gravitational heft of the planets they pass by.

 

And isn’t this the true meaning of Jesus resurrection? That the all-too-human truths he wrenched from his own life lie waiting to be rediscovered in every generation. That the carpenter’s invitation, to step outside the dull circles of our lives and shape the world to some purpose, is one we all hear, but by no means all of us heed.

 

Perhaps only a God born in the desert could place such faith in the act of journeying. Where water is abundant, it is easy to forget how far people are willing to travel to quench their thirst.

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Thursday, 2 April 2015.

Re-defining Empathy

Barack Obama: "The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor."

IT was one of those throwaway lines that sets an alarm-bell ringing in the back of your mind. A sneering, belittling tone which makes you wonder. "What was that all about?" Or ask: "Who rattled his cage?"

The line in question appeared in an article by William Langley, a conservative political correspondent for the right-wing British newspaper, The Sunday Telegraph. He was writing about President Obama’s nominee for the US Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, and how she exemplifies the human quality the new American President prizes most: Empathy.

"The word – ", wrote Mr Langley, "a longstanding pop-psychology and self-help manual standby – has been heavily in play since Obama last week proposed Sonia Sotomayor, a New York appeals court judge, as his first Supreme Court pick."

"Whoa there, Billy Boy!" I thought to myself, as I read those words. Since when has "empathy" connoted something as frothy and ultimately superfluous as "pop psychology"? And who, exactly, has decided that the moral impulse which lies at the root of all the world’s great religions; the defining quality of the most exalted human behaviour, should be downgraded to the status of a "self-help manual standby"?

I didn’t have to read much further to discover the answer. According to the man who scripted most of the George Bush Jnr presidency, Karl Rove: "Empathy is the latest code word for liberal activism, for treating the constitution as malleable clay to be kneaded and moulded in whatever form justices want."

Aha! So that’s the caper. President Obama, in the tradition of America’s greatest presidents, is attempting to infuse his countrymen’s’ political discourse with a moral language more nuanced and sophisticated that the Bush Administration’s crude division of the world into a Manichean "Us" (the good guys) versus "Them" (the evil-doers).

This sort of language:

"We need somebody whose got the heart, the empathy, to recognise what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges."

Good Lord! No wonder the Right is all a-twitter. For the past thirty years they have enjoyed a virtual monopoly over the use of religious rhetoric. Never mind that it was Old Testament rhetoric – full of "thou shalt nots", and trailing the fire and brimstone of the Pentateuch God. So long as the Left refused to plough this most fertile of all political fields, the Right couldn’t lose.

But President Obama is only too happy to toil in the fields of the Lord, and to confront the Republican Party’s Old Testament rhetoric, with the emancipatory and, yes, empathic language of the New.

It’s there in his Inaugural Address, when he talks about the contribution of the men and women "obscure in their labour, who have carried us up the long rugged path towards prosperity and freedom".

Who can hear those words and not be reminded of Christ’s: "straight is the gate and narrow is the way, that leadeth unto life, and few there be who find it"?

Consider, too, President Obama’s Georgetown University speech, in which he draws explicitly from the Sermon on the Mount:

"We cannot rebuild this economy on the same pile of sand. We must build our house upon a rock."

The President’s New Testament rhetoric strikes at the heart of the Right’s political project in a way that is peculiarly American – and peculiarly effective.

In a nation whose visceral fear and hatred of "Godless Communism" is legendary, Christ’s liberating theology of love and justice has long supplied the American Left with a potent alternative to the class-ridden rhetoric of Marx and Lenin. When that great American revolutionary, Dr Martin Luther King, made out the case for racial emancipation and social solidarity, he did so using the language of the Bible – not Das Kapital.

Empathy – the ability to put yourself in another person’s shoes – is fundamental to President Obama’s redemptive project. By recruiting Jesus to the Democratic cause, and setting him against the Republican’s Jehovah, The President has forced the Right into a theological and political battle it cannot win.

Unless, of course, it first persuades us that empathy – the attribute without which we cannot truly be called human – is nothing but "pop psychology" and a "self-help manual standby".

A version of this essay was originally published in The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Evening Star of Friday, 5 June 2009.