[This is the transcript of a paper I presented at the “Shared Space” conference that occurred in London Ontario this week. Those who have known me for some time, will note some of the ways in which my thinking has shifted and developed. For me, this paper is one that has organically grown out of the talk I presented at the Epiphaneia Conference last year (see here) as well as at a forum I engaged in at Regent College in 2008 (see here). That material is sort of a necessary background for understanding how and why I propose what I do here.]
Solidarity and Resistance in New Creation Communities
I would like to begin by reading a passage from Slavoj Žižek’s recent defense of communism in light of the failures of democratic liberalism and the horrors of global capitalism. This passage relates a joke that isn’t funny but it hammers home a point that I hope will be taken very seriously by those of us gathered here today. Let me quote Žižek:
In the good old days of Really Existing Socialism, a joke popular among dissidents was used to illustrate the futility of their protests. In the fifteenth century, when Russia was occupied by Mongols, a peasant and his wife were walking along a dusty country road; a Mongol warrior on a horse stopped at their side and told the peasant he would now proceed to rape his wife; he then added: “But since there is a lot of dust on the ground, you must hold my testicles while I rape your wife, so that they will not get dirty!” Once the Mongol had done the deed and ridden away, the peasant started laughing and jumping with joy. His surprised wife asked: “How can you be jumping with joy when I was just brutally raped in your presence?” The farmer answered: “But I got him! His balls are covered in dust!” This sad joke [Žižek goes on to say] reveals the predicament of the dissidents: they thought they were dealing serious blows to the party nomenklatura, but all they were doing was slightly soiling the nomenklatura‘s testicles, while the ruling party carried on raping the people…
Žižek tells this vulgar story in order to argue that both liberal and radical leftists have been unable to offer any sort of serious resistance or sustained alternative to the death-dealing power structures of our world. I begin my presentation with this passage, because I would like to suggest that a good many of us involved in some of the more ‘radical’ forms of Christianity are guilty of the same offence. We are so busy congratulating ourselves for moving into poor neighbourhoods, for practicing alternative modes of hospitality, for growing our own food and for living simply that we have lost track of the fact that we’re not really making any significant difference. Perhaps we are able to love and serve a few individual people along the way but nothing we are doing is truly challenging the death-dealing powers of our day, and the degree to which we have become captivated by our own radicality is the same degree to which we have become blinded to our own complicity in the abuse of others. Thus, although I might be inclined to apologize to you if you were offended by the vulgarity of the passage I read from Žižek, I hesitate to do so because the fact is that the people are being raped and this should make us reconsider the significance we ascribe to sharing space with others who generally turn out to be like-minded, middle-class young adults. Self-congratulating attitudes about self-serving efforts are far more offensive than anything Žižek writes.
Now, please don’t misunderstand me, I think that a movement towards a more intentional way of sharing all of life together is absolutely integral to what it means to follow Jesus and serve the God of Life. To simply live the way in which our culture teaches us to live – growing up, getting a job and credit cards, developing debts, buying a home and a couple of cars and settling into the practice of bourgeois comfort paired with bourgeois charity and family values – seems so far away from the pattern of life established by Jesus, Paul, the prophets and the Deuteronomic law that I am baffled that those who live this way find their inspiration in the Christian story. I can only conclude that most of us don’t actually spend any time reading the Bible or, just as likely, that most of us are looking at the Bible through such warped lenses that we can’t even come close to understanding what it says. Reading the Bible should lead us to more intimately sharing our lives, our possessions, our time, and our space with one another. Observing God’s gift of gracious abundance, patterning ourselves upon the life and deeds of Jesus, and relying upon the empowering Spirit of Life, should lead us to engage in practices that our culture will consider to be risky, foolish, and even threatening. This is why I have spent four years living in intentional Christian communities.
Thus, by critically questioning our efforts to engage in alternate forms of intentional Christian community, I am not suggesting that these efforts are fundamentally misguided. However, these efforts are often flawed and are easily perverted. Therefore, in the remainder of this presentation, I would like to highlight three areas that deserve special attention if those who desire to pursue intentional Christian communities hope to do so in a way that is both meaningful and expressive of their commitment to following Jesus.
First of all, I would like to argue that any talk of Christian community must give priority to the question of what it means to move into more intimate forms of community with people who are marginalized, oppressed, and abandoned. This is not to say that every Christian community must be open to all these people – for example, in our community in Vancouver’s downtown eastside, we quickly realized that we couldn’t focus upon being a safe place for both the low-track female sex workers we met, and for a good many of the homeless men from the neighbourhood – but prioritizing one population amongst those who have been abandoned is absolutely essential to developing intentional Christian communities. If, that is, these communities are to be more than self-serving entities that fill the void we have discovered in our own middle-class lives.
Because the truth is that it is incredibly easy to establish a community that others will consider ‘radical’ and ‘inspiring’ but that, in actuality, does little or nothing for anybody apart from making those who live in that community feel good about themselves. I know this, because I experienced this. Granted, it wasn’t my intention to do so, but when I was living in Vancouver’s downtown eastside, I was constantly confronted by how easy it was to move into a poor neighbourhood, engage in a few acts of hospitality (hosting sex workers for dinner, having strung-out kids stop by to come down from bad trips, allowing some people to crash on our couch) but, all in all, continue to live a life of distinctive privilege and near total insignificance… while simultaneously being treated as though I was some sort of Christian superstar. It would have been easy to buy into the hype I was receiving from others – and I know some who live in intentional community settings who have done this – so beware of the respect others will give you. At the very least, it’s a double-edged sword. Recall the ending of the movie, The Devil’s Advocate. If the devil doesn’t get us to serve his purposes through money, sex and power, he’ll get us to serve his purposes by congratulating us on how holy and good we are.
The best test of the praise of others, is honestly confronting the degree to which we have moved into a mutually liberating solidarity with people who have been marginalized, oppressed, and abandoned. This, first and foremost, is what it means to follow Jesus and bear witness to the in-breaking of God’s new creation in our present moment. Practicing this – what some have called a “preferential option for the poor” – is at the heart of Jesus’ ministry, just as it is at the heart of the witness of Paul, the call of the Old Testament prophets, and the Deuteronomic law. If the people of God are living outside of relationships with “the poor” then the people of God are living in a (literally) nonsensical way, and contradicting their true identity in Christ. Therefore, if we are exploring what it means to live within intentional communities that are also Christian communities, the poor must be included and prioritized.
Of course, this movement into a mutually liberating solidarity with people who have been abandoned is not an easy thing for many of us to do. We are all too accustomed to our lives of privilege and comfort, our imaginations and habits have been disciplined in a certain direction ever since we were young, and our spiritual and cultural traditions make it oh-so-easy to rationalize our lifestyles and justify trite and superficial forms of charity. No wonder Jesus says that the way is broad that leads to the destruction of ourselves and of others. It is broad and it is not only lined with bloodstained electronics, food, clothing and children’s toys, it is also lined with such admirable things as a responsible work ethic, family values, safety and security, and the emphasis laid upon being a contributing member of the economy.
No wonder, then, that the way that leads to life, for us and for others, is narrow and hard. Jesus is absolutely clear about this. Thus, in Lk 14.25-33, he states:
Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, “This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.” … So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.
Following Jesus is a demanding task and it is one of the reasons that community is so essential to our life as Christians. It is impossible to follow Jesus on our own. It is impossible to move into relationships of mutually liberating solidarity with people who have been abandoned, if you do so on your on. You will burn out or blow up.
Again, I know this because I have experienced this. When things started going wrong in our community in Vancouver’s downtown eastside and people started dropping out of participating in the work required to run the community, I decided to just take on more and more of that work myself. That was unsustainable and my marriage still suffers from the consequences of that decision.
Therefore, while I am operating with the happy assumption that the people gathered here are eager to participate in God’s ongoing new creation activity in the world, I do want to issue a warning that such participation is extremely difficult and demanding. As Jesus suggests in Lk 14, you had better seriously consider the cost of what you are thinking about doing, otherwise you may just end up hurting a lot of people by pursuing this dream. Often it is our failed efforts to love others that end up being far more hurtful to them than anything else. There is a lot of truth in the old saying that hell is paved with good intentions.
Speaking of participating in God’s new creation in a costly way leads me to the second point I wish to stress. It is this: if we are serious about our desire to share space, share life together, and participate in God’s new creation, then we must seriously reconsider our understanding of and relationship to private property. Indeed, the more I study the Bible and economics, the more I am convinced that private property is at the core of many of the problems we face and is, itself, a fundamentally anti-Christian belief and practice. There are three sources that have been particularly influential upon me in this regard. The first is the book Faith and Wealth by Justo Gonzalez. In this book, Gonzalez demonstrates the ways in which the Church Fathers consistently and strenuously attacked notions of private property and replaced those notions with a biblical theology that stresses that everything in creation and culture exists as a gift of God for the benefit of all. Furthermore, because the God of the Bible is defined by acts of benevolent and abundant giving, the same characteristic should define the people who follow this God. Therefore, if we wish to live in light of the biblical traditions, we would do well to draw our inspiration from the pre-monarchic economics of the Hebrews, from the correctives offered by the prophets, from the type of collectivity practiced by the early community of disciples gathered around Jesus, and from the economic mutuality that comes to the fore in the Collection that dominates the later years of Paul’s Aegean mission. Therefore, Gonzalez convincingly demonstrates that those who participate in the economy of the Christian God should reject any economics premised upon a right to private property.
I’ll provide a few representative quotations. Ambrose of Milan writes: “When you give to the poor, you give not of your own, but simply return what is his, for you have usurped that which is common and has been given for the common use of all.” Similarly, Hilary of Poitier asserts the following: “Let no on regard anything as theirs, or as private. On the contrary, to all of us were given, as gifts from the same Father, no only the same beginning of life, but also things in order that we might use them… Therefore, in order to be good, we must consider all things as being common to everybody.” Finally, John Chrysostom argues that, “The rich have that which belongs to the poor, even though they may have received it as an inheritance,” and he goes on to say that acts of charity are not enough – one will only have given enough when one has literally nothing left to give.
An important point to emphasize in all of this is that the Church Fathers understood Paul’s teaching that all people are equal before God to necessarily require us to ensure that all people are equal before one another, having equal access to material goods and resources. This, it should be noted, is precisely the opposite conclusion to that drawn by many contemporary readers of the Paul who stress the spiritual element of his letters in order to move the focus away from any sort of material application.
This leads me to my second source. It is the book The Fear of Beggars by Kelly S. Johnson. Johnson calls out those who wish to get around the more radical nature of biblical economics by proposing a ‘stewardship’ model. This model affirms private property – a sort of Christian affirmation of ‘capitalism with a human face’ – and fits comfortably with those who benefit from the death-dealing ways of global capitalism (after all, the stewardship model first came to prominence when Christian slave-owners were seeking to justify the practice of slavery). What Johnson does is demonstrate the ways in which this ‘stewardship’ model cannot be made to fit with what the Bible teaches us about property and wealth. Instead, Johnson looks to those like the early Franciscans or the Catholic Workers in order to propose an alternative way of sharing life together.
So, first I learned that private property is an anti-biblical idea, then I learned that Christian efforts to get around this fail to succeed. Therefore, my third source drives this all home by demonstrating just how dehumanizing and fundamentally violent and oppressive systems built around private property will end up being. This source is Karl Marx, whose massive and often dry writings on economics are well worth the effort it takes to read them. Marx demonstrates that within systems of private property, not only do people gain the right to live without any regard for others, people themselves become alienated from their human identity – for private property itself is the objectification of lived labour, and so labourers become a function of private property – and so we become something less than we could be. As Pierre-Joseph Proudhon once said: “Property is theft” and it is not only theft because private property requires us to steal that which belongs to others, it is also theft because it steals our humanity from us. Of course, if one is speaking in biblical terms about those things which make us less than human then one would need to employ the language of idolatry. Which, again, is why Proudhon – an anarchist who trained as a theologian – is onto something when he states that “Property is the last of the false gods”. No wonder then that he interprets the 8th commandment (“Thou shalt not steal”) as saying “Thou shalt not lay anything aside for thyself”. This interpretation fits well with the actual practice of the Israelites in the wilderness, as they were only permitted to collect enough manna to last them one day.
Therefore, I find myself deeply sympathetic to those who are attempting to find ways to re-member communism. As Jacob Taubes asserts when commenting on Marx’s economic theory: communism becomes the positive expression of annulled private property, and the restoration of people from their self-alienation. Thus, “the supersession of private property is the vindication of real human life as [humanity’s] property”. Or as Alain Badiou states in more detail:
The communist hypothesis is that a different collective organization is practicable, one that will eliminate the inequality of wealth and even the division of labour. The private appropriation of massive fortunes and their transmission by inheritance will disappear. The existence of a coercive state, separate from civil society, will no longer appear a necessity: a long process of reorganization based on a free association of producers will see it withering away… It is foolish to call such communist principles utopian; in the sense that I have defined them here they are intellectual patterns, always actualized in a different fashion… our task is to bring the communist hypothesis into existence in another mode.
Of course, this type of communism, much like the communism of which Žižek speaks, is precisely what many people are trying to bring about in their efforts to create intentional Christian communities. However, I believe that most of our efforts to share space and share our belongings have only just scratched the surface of where this could lead us. When some in the community are home owners while others are sharing in the rent, and others are just invited to stay for certain amounts of time if at all, I’m not sure if we’ve really arrived at a biblical model of what it means to share space. When some people are hosts and other people are guests, I’m not sure if we are truly sharing our space in the ways in which God intends – after all, if the space belongs not to us, but to God who intends that it be used by any who have need of it, then it is anachronistic to speak of inviting others in and hosting them. It is, after all, their space just as much as it is ours (if not more so, based upon degrees of need).
Of course, learning to negotiate this is difficult and will take time. However, I raise the issue precisely with the hope of problematizing it, so that we will not be satisfied with the solutions we have found thus far. We must press on. That said, at the end of the day, we may discover that we cannot successfully negotiate this, without actually giving up our property. This is what the disciples of Jesus did, it was what the early Franciscans did, and it is also what a good friend of mine is doing now. After living in some quite ‘radical’ intentional Christian communities for over 25 years, he has decided that even this model is too flawed and integrated into the death-dealing ways of capitalism and private property. So, this fall, he and his wife will be selling their house and moving into a life lived below the poverty line – most likely in a squat, like the anti-Olympic tent city in which he has been living since mid-February.
I will now move on to my third point. It is this: too often those involved in Christian communities are solely focused upon enacting a creative, life-giving alternative and they end up neglecting the concomitant work of resistance to the death-dealing powers of our day.
This is a point I have inherited from cultural theorists and philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida. If, in the context of death, we wish to participate in something that is new and life-giving, then we must simultaneously, if not first of all, engage in the destruction of that which is death-dealing. So, for example, taking feminism seriously requires us to not only ensure that women and men are accorded the same status and judged by the same standards; it also requires us to abolish previous structures, attitudes, and discourses that were patriarchal and androcentric. Or, to take a second example, we can see how the worship of YHWH necessarily requires the Israelites to destroy their idols in the Old Testament, and necessarily requires Jesus to overturn the tables of the moneychangers in the New Testament.
Therefore, if we are hoping to be involved in communities of new creation, committed to life, love, solidarity, and justice; then we must also be committed to resisting and destroying that which is given over to death, hatred, alienation and injustice. It is not enough for us to simply focus upon being a creative alternative to the status quo. We must also attack the status quo. Doing so does not mean that we have given in to a “false soteriology”. I once thought this, given the way I have been influenced by the Duke School and scholars like Stanley Hauerwas and William Cavanaugh. Both Hauerwas and Cavanaugh have made convincing arguments that liberal democracies operate with a false soteriology and look to the State for salvation… when in actuality salvation is found in Christ and in the Spirit-empowered community of those who follow him. However, accepting this thesis does not mean we refuse to engage or confront the death-dealing powers of our day. We confront these powers, not because we are seeking to reform them so that they may save us; no, we confront them because they have been conquered by the crucified and resurrected Jesus. Their time is up. We seek not their reformation but their destruction. It is folly to seek the reformation of Death. We seek the death of Death, the resurrection of the dead, and the uprising of those left for dead in society. And we seek these things here and now.
Therefore, we should realize that constructive activity also requires deconstructive activity. Creativity must be paired with resistance. It is not enough for us to simply envision our resistance as ‘speaking truth to power’ – a term I’m sure most of you are familiar with. Sure, the speaking of truth to power can be a threatening and potentially liberating act, but it is not enough on its own. The powers fear truth because it opens the space for different actions. It holds the potential to mobilize people to pursue goals and engage in society in different ways. Thus, if we are speaking truth, then we must also be engaging in the actions that go along with those truths. If we are telling the powers that their time is up, then we must also be engaging in the actions that demonstrate this.
Furthermore, if we focus solely upon the creative side of things then there is a very good chance that we are not doing much at all that is creative but are, despite our best intentions, actually contributing to the perpetuation of the death-dealing status quo. This is a lesson I have learned from reading what anarchists have written about nonviolent movements of resistance, and from reading criticisms of non-profits and their role in our societies.
Regarding the anarchists, I wish to highlight two texts, Pacifism as Pathology by Ward Churchill and How Nonviolence Protects the State by Peter Gelderloos. What Churchill and Gelderloos convincingly demonstrate is the ways in which successes credited to nonviolent movements in history were actually dependent upon the existence of other groups who were struggling violently to achieve the same goals. Thus, for example, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the American Civil Rights Movement were only able to achieve credibility and gain a voice within American politics because the Black Panthers were simultaneously arming the ghettos. Similarly, Gandhi’s nonviolent revolution in India only achieved its limited success because of British fears about more violent uprisings that were occurring in the Middle East and because the British Empire had been weakened by two consecutive World Wars and was unable to maintain colonial power. To provide a third example, we can note how Jewish movements of violent resistance to Nazism during WWII were actually capable of saving more Jews than any of the Jewish nonviolent movements, which only resulted in the staggering ‘success’ of the Holocaust. Finally, we can look at a fourth example – the total impotence of the practice of nonviolence in occupied Palestine. In an op-ed piece that appeared in the New York Times at the start of this year, Bono wrote the following:
I’ll place my hopes on the possibility — however remote at the moment — that…people in places filled with rage and despair, places like the Palestinian territories, will in the days ahead find among them their Gandhi, [and] their King…
In a scathing reply to Bono, Alison Weir points out that Palestine does have it’s Gandhis and it’s Kings… it’s just that they are all dead or in prison. The Palestinian people have a long history of practicing nonviolence, it’s just that it hasn’t gotten them anywhere.
From this we learn that advocates of nonviolence rewrite history to exclude the important contributions of those who practice violence, while also overlooking the stunning failures of nonviolence.
Thus, as Churchill and Gelderloos point out, an exclusive or ‘pathological’ focus upon the accepted nonviolent means of resistance (like our work in creating intentional Christian communities) can simply end up being a means of alleviating our white, middle-class, Western guilt, while simultaneously leaving the state of things unchanged. A particularly good example of this is the largest nonviolent protest in human history – that which was staged against the Iraq war. In January and April of 2003, more than 36 million people took part in over 3000 protests around the world. I was personally involved in the protests that occurred at that time in Toronto. But what did these protests accomplish? Precisely nothing. However, a good many of those who participated in the protests went home feeling good about themselves and feeling as though they had made some sort of difference. In actuality, the most successful protest against the Iraq War was the Madrid train bombings that occurred in 2004. These bombings led to a change in the Spanish government and led an entire nation to withdraw from the war.
Now I mention all of this because I think that those of us involved in communities of creation and resistance must reconsider our relation to violence. What exactly constitutes violence and is there any form of violence that we may consider Christian? Personally, I believe that Jesus’ act of overturning tables in the Temple was an appropriately Christian form of resistance and violence. Similarly, I think we can find inspiration in the Old Testament narratives about the destruction of idols. Or, to pick a third example, we can find inspiration in the actions of the Jewish revolutionaries who immediately burned the records of debt after gaining control of the Jerusalem Temple in the first century (Josephus writes about this – although it probably reminds the modern reader of the conclusion to Fight Club!).
In light of these things, we may wish to think about destroying logging machinery or bombing condo developments that are being built on land that used to contain affordable housing. While I as a Christian pacifist cannot consider the Madrid train bombing to fall within the range of actions that may legitimately be described as ‘Christian’, I am no longer convinced that the destruction of mere property – specifically property that is stolen, idolatrous, and death-dealing – constitutes the sort of activity that Christian pacifists are called to avoid. But regardless of what I think, these are still topics that should not be excluded a priori from discussion in our communities.
Of course, engaging in this type of resistance is certainly costly – it may cost us our lives, our freedom, and relationships with people near and dear to us – but, as I stated before, following Jesus is genuinely costly. Paul understood this. The brandmarks of Christ that he mentions in Gal 6 are the scars he received from being beaten, whipped, stoned and imprisoned by the Roman Imperial Powers, due to his active resistance to their values, economics, and political theology. Who amongst us can say that they bear similar brandmarks due to their resistance to the Empire of global capitalism? And, really, this is the point I want to stress here. Rather than diverting our discussion into what will likely end up being utterly inane conversations about violence, just war, and absurdly framed “What would you do if…?” scenarios, I simply want to emphasize that our resistance, like our creativity, must be expressed in a costly way. If there is no price being paid – either by us or by the Powers that be – then the chances are that the forms of resistance we are practicing are superficial and irrelevant.
So much for the anarchists. I also mentioned criticisms of contemporary non-profits, and I would likely to briefly mentioned the text, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, compiled by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence. What the authors in this text demonstrate are the many ways in which our introspective focus upon the local, the individual, and making a difference in this-or-that person’s life, end up perpetuating broader structures and cycles of poverty, oppression, and inequality. The authors stress that we need to move beyond our focus upon one particular space or one particular issue and begin to explore ways of building up a social movement that creates a deeper and broader change.
One of the implications for those of us involved in intentional Christian communities is that we must be more deliberate about building relationships and networking with others who, although they might not share all the same beliefs as we do, share similar goals and objectives. To quote Žižek once again, “Christianity and Marxism should fight on the same side of the barricade”. This is one of the reasons why I chose to participate in the black bloc anti-Olympic/anti-capitalism protest that occurred in Vancouver on February 13th. This is also why I have deliberately been interacting with a number of non-Christian voices in this presentation. There is much fruit to be borne from engaging in that dialogue and building up those relationships. After all, the anarchists have been doing ‘new monasticism’ a lot longer than the new monastics – we’ve all heard of the Simple Way, but how many people know the history of anarchist or communist communities in Greece and Italy? How many of us are aware of the anarchist collectives and efforts to ‘share space’ that occur in our own cities? There is much we can learn from these brothers and sisters and many bridges that must be built. These are steps we must take if we, like Jesus and Paul, are genuinely interested in the new creation of all things. We should not just be creating local communities, we should be creating a social movement. Or, more precisely, we should be communally participating in the movement of God’s Spirit that brings new life and conquers death in all areas of society.
In sum, I am absolutely convinced of the necessity of exploring ways of sharing space and living in intentional Christian communities. However, as I have progressed down this road, I have become convicted that our efforts in this regard must be more intimately linked to solidarity with the abandoned, to the abolition of private property, to potentially more ‘violent’ means of resistance, and to the greater goal of building a social movement. Furthermore, I have tried to emphasize that our efforts in all these areas should become far more costly than most of us have allowed them to be. But I hope we realize just how worthwhile they are. Such a life is the ‘pearl of great price’ that Jesus mentions, and I hope that we will not hesitate to abandon all else for such a prize. So I have shared these convictions with you today, in hope that you will come to share them with me.
Confronting Stereotypes Regarding Street-Involved Youth
[This is the transcript of a talk I gave tonight to a group of third year nursing students at the University of Western Ontario, in my hometown. I sometimes forget how un-obvious this information is to a lot of people, and so I thought I would post it here. Many thanks to the lovely students and talk organizers who invited me. It is good to see people who want to get more intimately involved in such things.]
Confronting Stereotypes Regarding Street-involved Youth
When it comes to homelessness and poverty, I am constantly surprised by the amount of the blatant lies and violently discriminatory attitudes that pervade public dialogue on these matters. Over the last forty years, a great deal of good work has been done – both in the Academy and in the public square – about matters related to systemic violence and discrimination against people with diverse ethnicities, genders, sexual preferences, and mental or physical abilities, but little has been done to overcome the systemic violence and discrimination that continues to impact people who are poor. Thus, for example, one would be rightfully challenged for saying, “So-and-so is black; therefore, she must be lazy” but few people seem to question the equally false and offensive assertion that “So-and-so is poor; therefore, she must be lazy”.
It is worth asking ourselves why systemic violence and stereotypes related to economic issues have remained so entrenched in our social imaginaries. I am inclined to think that this is partly the case because our institutions of higher education are very closely connected to structures that perpetuate a divide between the wealthy and the poor, and that even the more liberating work being done in the public square has mostly benefited wealthy members of diverse ethnicities, wealthy women or transgendered people, wealthy members of the LGBTQ community, and wealthy people who are differently-abled. Thus, while a person may become sensitized to his or her own experience of oppression and injustice, that person may still remain blind to other structures of violence, in which he or she unwittingly participates. So, for example, a wealthy white woman may be appropriately upset when she is overlooked for a management position based upon her gender, but she may be completely unaware of the great difference between her life experiences and that of a poor aboriginal woman. Consequently, while fighting for the rights of women more generally, she may end up adopting attitudes about poor members of First Nations communities that are violent and oppressive. Similarly, one could be a middle-class health care student, committed to contributing to the health and well-being of others, yet one may also violent and death-dealing attitudes about some members of our society – notably, in this instance, people who are poor.
Therefore, in the few minutes that I have tonight, I would like confront some of the stereotypes that function as self-evident truths within public dialogue on the subject of street-involved young people. The common perception appears to be that ‘street kids’ are rebellious teens who like doing drugs more than they like living at home. They tend to be seen as people who would rather be out partying and causing a ruckus rather than learning how to be responsible members of society. As a corollary of this, the parents of these ‘hooligans’ tend to be viewed as loving and worried adults who ‘just don’t know what to do anymore’ and who are being victimized by their bullying, drug-addicted children.
Of course, that this sort of picture is the one that tends to dominate public discourse should not surprise us. Parents, as the adults in the situation, tend to have the power, resources and life-skills to manipulate the ways in which others understand what occurs when a youth becomes homeless. Teens, particularly those who have been abused – a point I will develop in a moment – tend not to have the same power, resources, and life-skills and so they become vulnerable to having others impose a particular narrative upon them. Thus, parents will – like most of us – find ways to justify themselves and their actions (kicking out a child and so on), while simultaneously blaming their child and attempting to control how others view that child. Add to this the fact that most of us are scared of people simply for looking poor – wearing torn clothing, having dirty hair, sporting work-boots, and so on – and it becomes pretty easy for us to be convinced of the message we receive from the parents. Not only do we tend to think that ‘scary = bad’ but we then distance ourselves from street-involved teens and never get the opportunity to hear their side of the story. Of course, this fear is simply one of the manifestations of the economic stereotypes I mentioned, and it demonstrates how these stereotypes are self-perpetuating. When ‘poor = scary = bad = avoid like the plague!’ then we never get the opportunity to learn about what is actually going on.
Because the fact is that the stories told by street-involved teens, along with the information gathered by social services, suggests a very different picture – and one that directly contradicts common perceptions on this matter. For example, a study in which I participated with street-involved teens in Toronto, found that over 75% of these teens identified domestic violence as the primary cause of their homelessness. This fits with other statistics taken at the national level which show that over 70% of homeless youth identify physical or sexual abuse as the cause of their homelessness. So, here is the truth: the vast majority of teens on the street are there because they were being verbally, physically, and/or sexually abused in their homes by their parents.
Of course, not everybody who is abused ends up being homeless, but this is often because there are other resources or people to whom some can turn when being abused – perhaps another family member, perhaps another caring adult, perhaps a friend’s family, and so on. However, for those who are being abused and who do not know anybody who might help, the street becomes a valid option. For example, I am a friend of a young woman whose father used to sell her to his friends for beer money. If you had to choose between that and a life on the street what would you choose? Sadly, her story is not uncommon. I’ve seen the scars from the cigarettes a mother would put out on her daughter’s legs. I’ve seen the teeth that were missing in the mouth of a son whose father beat him with a hammer. And on and on it goes.
Of course, it is after this experience of violence that drug addiction and substance misuse often enter into the picture. Certainly, as with most teens, some recreational drug use may have been a part of their prior life, but addiction and serious misuse only tend to arrive after a young person has moved onto the streets. This is for good reasons: trying to cope with the fall-out of previous physical and sexual trauma is hard enough, but trying to cope with these things while facing all the challenges of street-life is extremely challenging. Spending a night on the street can be scary – especially when you are new to the streets – and so drugs like crack and crystal meth become appealing because they give a person the energy they need to stay awake and a much needed sense of self-confidence and courage. Similarly, dealing with the nightmares and flashbacks of traumas is exhausting and drugs like heroin and other opiates can offer a much-sought-after rest and sense of numbness or peace.
Unfortunately, what begins as a coping mechanism often turns destructive and, although drug use may not have led these teens onto the street, it does trap many teens there. That said, we need to remember that the problem here is not the drug use, but the traumas that made drug use turn into addiction and a harmful form of misuse. The solution, then, is not to criminalize youth who use drugs, or stigmatize street-involved teens; rather, the solution is to begin to address those underlying traumas by developing loving personal relationships and supportive social structures, while also doing much more to address the massive amount of domestic and family-based violence that occurs in our society. Furthermore, rather than simply focusing on this-or-that abusive parent as the problem, we need to look at the ways in which things like domestic abuse are related to broader social structures and matters of wealth, poverty, colonization, and privilege. It is not surprising that a Canadian study found that 63% of street-involved youth identified as coming from a family that struggled to maintain housing.
So, the most important thing to remember is that violence is the greatest cause of homelessness amongst youth. Three other significant causes should also be mentioned. The first is the sexuality of youth. Again, in the survey done in Toronto, 40% of the youth interviewed identified their sexual orientation as a primary cause of their homelessness, and this figure is pretty close to other national studies done in the US and the UK. A good many of these people were simply kicked-out when they ‘came out’ to their parents. Others were beaten and abused because of their sexual orientation (hence the overlap with the statistic regarding violence) and then chose to leave. Again, when the choice is the streets or your father kicking you down the stairs and calling you a faggot, what would you choose?
The second cause that should be mentioned cuts to funding for programs for people with mental health concerns. This had a much greater and much more devastating impact upon adult populations, but it continues to impact street-involved teens because it adds a further barrier to services and a further challenge to be overcome when trying to exit street life. Thus, a person in psychosis or experiencing the symptoms of some sort of chemical imbalance will have a more difficult time transitioning from being street-involved to living a different kind of lifestyle. This is only further exacerbated when we recall the violence experienced by street involved teens, and studies that suggest a connection between childhood violence and trauma and certain mental disorders (like dissociative identity disorder or borderline personality disorder).
Finally, one should also mention the foster care system and the removal of children from their families, from their place of heritage, and from their languages and cultures. One Canadian study shows that 40-47% of homeless people in general identified as having been in foster care or a group home, but another study focused solely on youth places that number as high as 68%. Of course, when one looks at the disproportionate number of aboriginal youth now placed in care – not to mention the disproportionate number of aboriginal people experiencing homelessness –one can’t help but wonder if this shift in numbers simply reflects the ways in which foster care has replaced residential schooling. After all, what we often see in foster care (despite the good things that can happen there) is the traumatic separation of families, coupled with – once again – quite a lot of violence and lack of accountability.
So, enough of the stats. I have mentioned four major items that contribute to youth homelessness. These are: (1) violence in the home; (2) ongoing prejudices against any form of sexuality that is not hetero; (3) inadequate supports for people with mental health problems; and (4) the violence that appears to be ingrained in our foster care system. All of this paints a very different picture than the one offered to us in popular opinions about irresponsible teens who like to party, get high, and rebel against their parents.
By way of conclusion, I will share some of my own story with you. My story is unexceptional – it’s a pretty average sort of story, and I’m a pretty average sort of person, and that’s the point. The experience of homelessness as a teen is something that can happen to anybody. If a few things had gone down differently in each of your own lives, you could also have ended up on the street.
My story is that I grew up in a home with a father who was mentally unstable, emotionally manipulative, and sometimes physically abusive. I inherited a pretty sensitive disposition from my mother and so this was fairly traumatic for me and, when I recall my childhood years, I mostly remember being afraid and anxious. Because of this, and because of my conservative Christian upbringing, I tried hard to be a ‘good kid’. I was an honour student, I stayed out of trouble, I got my first job when I was thirteen, and my social life mostly consisted of hanging-out with the youth group at my church. The sort of thing that got me knocked around was if a church event ended up going later than planned. Suffice to say, I wasn’t a particularly rebellious young person!
However, as I got into the middle years of high school, I found that I was getting bored in class and I learned that I could maintain high grades without attending most classes. So, I began skipping a lot of classes and, like any respectable high-school student, I learned to do an excellent imitation of my parents’ signatures on the notes I would forge. At this time, I also started standing up to my father’s abuse and manipulation more than he liked and so our relationship was quite strained. Consequently, the shit hit the fan when I eventually got busted for all the classes I skipped. I went home from school that day, and my father sat me down and said: “You have one hour to get your things and leave. Anything you leave behind will be thrown out.” When I asked if he wanted me to phone or anything, he replied: “No, just get out of my life.” An hour later I was walking down the street with a couple of garbage bags and a backpack. I did some couch-surfing but mostly ended up living with a close friend of mine and his mom. Of course, they had their own issues and he would sometimes get kicked-out and on those nights, I felt uncomfortable staying at his place. Instead, a few of us would get together and just walk the streets all night, or try to crash on the jungle-gym at a suburban park.
As for drug use, I think that I had recreationally used alcohol on one occasion prior to being kicked-out, and I think I used marijuana once before as well – this level of use, I should note, is well below the recreational drug and alcohol use practiced by non-street-involved teens. So, this was how a pretty timid, bookish church-kid (who wanted to be a missionary for Jesus), ended up as a street-involved youth. That’s a pretty far-cry from the stereotypical things we hear about street kids. But really, in my own life, that’s what I’ve seen. Are street-involved people any different than anybody else? No. Everybody has their issues and their areas of brokenness, and everybody has something breathtakingly beautiful about them. This is just as true of a street kid as it is of the people gathered here tonight and I hope that we can remember that, not only in the ways we treat one another, but also in the ways we interact with those who know a lot more about poverty, violence, and loneliness than a good many of us. Not only that, but perhaps we can also move beyond isolating and blaming individuals in order to engage in more systemic and structural analyses in order to ensure that the next generation of kids will not have it just as bad as the previous generation and, just as importantly, in order to ensure that we are not contributing to the abuse and oppression of others, despite our best intentions.
Thank you for listening. I enjoy a reciprocal exchange more than just talking at people, so I’ll stick around afterwards if anybody has any questions or comments for me.
Link: Fuck the Police?
[Somebody I know quite well wrote the following blog post on the Vancouver Media Co-Op website. It is a reflection based upon some of the events that occurred at the anti-Olympics/anti-capitalism diverse tactics protest that occurred in Vancouver on February 13th. I thought I would reproduce it here, as it does a fairly decent job of summarizing some of my own thoughts on things. Note that my friend has written this anonymously so any comments related to what my friend’s identity might be will be erased.]
Fuck the Police?
I have been doing some thinking since the action that occurred on February 13th. I was at that event and participated in the black bloc. While participating in that event, I was struck multiple times by police officers (when the riot police moved in and tried to cut the bloc in half) and I was later tackled to the ground, arrested, and detained.
Furthermore, I am no stranger to police violence. Having both been street-involved as a teen and having worked with street-involved and marginalized people for the duration of my adult life, I have witnessed what can only be described as the systemic corruption and violence that is integral to the police system. I have known underage female sex workers who were raped by police officers; I have known young men who were hog-tied, pepper-sprayed, then tossed in the trunk of patrol cars; I have witnessed the bruises and missing teeth, along with the physical, emotional, and psychological scars that have marked the bodies and minds of those who are easy targets for police officers. Of course, the multitude of marks I have witnessed tend to be considered too inconsequential to make the news, but one can also recall more public events like when police officers murdered Robert Dziekanski at the Vancouver airport in October 2007.
Now, one might be inclined to think that all of these acts of violence are performed by a few ‘bad’ people who abuse their power, and are not representative of the police force as a whole. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Again, pointing to the Robert Dziekanski murder, one can see how officers were coached to lie on the stand, how they attempted to withhold evidence, and so on. Or one can simply look at the (false) statements made by the Vancouver chief of police after the action that occurred on February 13th. The truth is that something is wrong on a much deeper level, and more detailed studies exist that confirm this (one thinks, for example, of the books Our Enemies in Blue by Kristian Williams and The Story of Jane Doe: a book about rape by Jane Doe; both do a fine job of demonstrating that police corruption is a systemic issue).
With these things in mind, it is no wonder that at the action on February 13th, people were chanting: “No justice! No peace! Fuck the police!” It is also no wonder that the police were able to so easily incite some of the protesters. I witnessed more than one person who was tripped or struck from behind by an officer, who then responded by lashing out – either verbally or physically – at that officer. This is all quite understandable, and it might even by commendable.
Yet, I believe that it would help our objectives if we were more deliberate about the ways in which we engaged with the police. While I make no claim that my objectives for pursuing social change are the same as those of others, I do have the impression that most of us would agree that we are striving for a world where abundant life is available to all people and not just to some. It seems to me that most of us are striving for a world where all people have equal access to resources, to labour, to leisure, to freedom, and to justice. We are striving for a world where the glorious humanity of all people is recognized – where nobody is dehumanized and abandoned into the hands of poverty, illness, isolation, and death. I reckon that these are some of the key things that led people of diverse faiths, ethnicities, languages, and sexual orientations to put on black clothing and stand in solidarity with each other.
However, if this does describe something of our common goals, then we must remember that, within the context of oppression both the oppressed and the oppressor end up being dehumanized. Oppressed people are dehumanized because they are not provided the opportunity to flourish and share in abundant life. However, those who engage in oppressive acts are also dehumanized because abusive and violent actions are not reflective of those who are living out their full human potential. Therefore, we must always remember that, in the pursuit of liberation, we must be committed to the liberation of all people. Thus, without ever losing sight of the priority that must be granted to the oppressed, we should also seek the liberation of the oppressors.
Consequently, I have no problem chanting, “Fuck the Police!” but I always remember that ‘the police’ is not a person – it is a system and a culture that is given over to violence, exploitation and death. As such, it is a system that must be abolished if we are to live an abundant life together. However, the destruction of ‘the police’ does not require the destruction of individual police officers. Rather, each police officer is also a human person who has been made into something less than he or she could be due to his or her participation within (and enslavement to) this death-dealing system.
Therefore, although I chant “Fuck the Police!” I also try to treat each officer I encounter as a brother or sister in need of liberation and life – just like the rest of us. This is why I did not strike back, when I was struck by police officers on the 13th. In my work, I have been struck more than once by a person who was strung-out on drugs or whose actions were the result of a chemical imbalance. I would never consider striking back in that situation – striking an addict or a person with a mental illness is not the way to bring about freedom from addiction or mental illness. Similarly, when struck by the police – who are not in bondage to addiction or mental illness (at least not always…), but who are in bondage to the death-dealing ways of Police culture – I do not strike back. The answer, to all these situations, is not blows but a willingness to love and do the hard work required to bring about liberation and life for all, not just for some (even if that means I will continue to get struck along the way). Perhaps if we kept this in mind, instead of allowing ourselves to be provoked, we might yet see the day when officers drop their truncheons and join us on our side of the barricades. On that day, our dreams might begin to be realized.
There Can Be No Truce While the People Are Raped: Exorcising the Spirit of the Games
Last week, a co-worker drew my attention to a foundation that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has created. It is the International Olympic Truce Centre (see here for the official website, and for the sources of the various quotations that follow… also note the way in which the IOC dominates the Board of Directors). Even thought the Centre was founded in 2000CE, it traces it’s origins back to the first Olympiad (c.776BCE) when a truce (ekecheiria) was established between the various Greek city-states for the sake of the Games, and also roots itself in the events of 1894CE, when the IOC was established “with the goal of contributing to a peaceful future for humankind through the educational value of sport”. Thus, the Olympic Truce calls “upon humanity to lay down its weapons and to work towards building the foundations of peace, mutual respect, understanding and reconciliation” and calls “for all hostilities to cease during the Olympic Games and beyond”.
Now, in my opinion, this is a fantastic example of ideology at work in the worst possible way. I’m not just talking about their fascinating historical narrative; rather, this becomes blatantly obvious when one realizes that the Olympics themselves are a fundamentally violent event (a lot of literature and websites exist detailing how this is the case, but you could start here for some easy reference points). The Olympics are consistently employed to destroy poor communities and environmental safe havens, steal real estate, criminalize poverty, erode civil rights, and place a vast amount of wealth in the hands of the already wealthy, while forcing tax payers to pick up the bills.
So, we notice the extremely narrow definition of violence employed by the Olympic Truce. Violence is understood as doing things like striking another person, destroying property or pulling down security barriers (erected on public land). However, things like destroying precious natural habitats, tearing down poor communities, and stealing housing from those with low incomes are not considered violent. Perhaps, an appropriate illustration of this sort of thinking would be to consider a scenario wherein a man is raping a woman and telling her not to fight back because more people should be committed to peace and the cessation of hostilities! Essentially, the IOC wishes to rape us and our resources, while imposing an ideology upon the public that preempts and counters those who wish to fight back.
Not only this, but the IOC, via the Olympic Truce Centre, is rooted in a position of power and influence so that it can impose its narrow definition of violence upon others. This is why the Olympic Truce Centre and the IOC can speak the language of peace and nonviolence and call for an end to hostilities during the Games… while simultaneously spending around $900 million on its security budget, bringing in 4500 soldiers, over 5000 private security guards, and masses of police and RCMP from all across Canada (the total number of people on the force is something like 16000+). Not only this, but the Olympic Security forces are also authorized to use a number of weapons upon civilians — teargas, pepperspray, fists and boots being fairly standard, but the recently developed ‘Long Range Acoustic Device’ has also been cleared for use on protesters. One might be inclined to take the Olympic Truce Centre more seriously if they were simultaneously disarming the cops — who have a proven track record of employing force in anything but moderation at protests of the sort that are expected to occur in the next week. But, of course, the rhetorical power play is that these forces and weapons are necessary to maintain our safety and security. Nobody stops to consider that the protesters themselves are acting out of their concern for the safety and security of the environment, the marginalized, and the general public. To further the illustration used above, the Olympic Truce Centre is like the man who threatens a woman and tells her she’ll “get it twice as bad” if she fights back while being raped, so best just roll over and take it.
But, thank God, there are many people who will not roll over and take it. The truth is that there can be no truce while the people are being raped — the precursor to peace is the cessation of the Olympics in their current manifestation (if not altogether). That is to say, we will stop fighting back when we are no longer being raped. It’s that simple. So, this is why I will be participating in some of the mass actions that are taking place by those who wish to disrupt these Games, reveal their true Spirit and, as much as possible, shut them down (see this schedule for more on those). I encourage anybody in the Vancouver area to come out and show their solidarity with the people — and come not so that you can say you ‘were there’, and not to be more hip than your roommate, and not to engage in some simulacrum of action or some counter-cultural spectacle that eases your conscience; no, come to succeed and be prepared to take some risks and pay a price to get there (although this information might help). I hope to see you there.
January Books
Just a few:
1. Occidental Eschatology by Jacob Taubes.
If you’re ever feeling a little cocky and starting to pride yourself on your intellectual abilities, I suggest you read this book and recall that Jacob Taubes wrote it when he was 23 years old. Holy shit. That’s a good reality check.
Anyway, in this book (the only one Taubes published during his lifetime… although he did publish a number of articles), Taubes demonstrates the impact that (an inherently revolutionary) apocalyptic eschatology has had upon Western philosophy, politics and spirituality. In order to do this, he traces the ways in which the apocalyptic eschatology of early Judaism is caught up by early Christianity, revived by medieval theologians, and secularized by Lessing, Kant, Hegel, Marx and Kierkegaard.
I quite enjoyed this book, given that I’m currently writing my chapter on Paul’s (revolutionary) apocalyptic eschatology and contrasting to the consummated eschatologies of imperial Rome and contemporary Capitalism. It appears that Taubes is always fun to read, and I look forward to continuing on with him.
2. Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies by David Bentley Hart.
I have almost entirely avoided the conversation that has circled around the so-called ‘new atheists’. I have done this, to be honest, because I find most of that conversation to be dull and overwhelmingly stupid. This is not to say that I think that atheists are stupid — all of the atheists (and agnostics) I know are quite bright and, in fact, far more intelligent than Dawkins et al. (and, to be fair, far more intelligent than a good many who waste their time responding to Dawkins et al.). Thus, while I have poked around a very little bit in books by Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris, watched a few online lectures by Dennett, and read a couple great articles in response to these fellows (see here and here), I have mostly thought that this conversation was so obviously missing the point and so full of inaccuracies that any person with a minimal level of intelligence — regardless of their own a/religious views — would write off the whole thing.
So, when I noticed that David Bentley Hart — who is probably up there amongst the most well-learned and intelligent people in the Academy today (which means that Dawkins et al. probably couldn’t even understand the words that he uses, let alone follow the argument he makes in a book like The Beauty of the Infinite) — had written a book engaging this conversation, I got curious as to why he bothered and so I finally picked up a copy last month.
Basically, Hart is a little bit offended and a little bit puzzled by the ways in which the new atheists reconstruct the history of Christianity and its impact upon the Western world. Basically, according to this reconstruction, Christianity has been an entirely violent, negative, destructive, and oppressive force (religion spoils everything, according to Hitchens). Now while this may be true in some ways, and within some places in the West, to paint the entire history of Western Christianity in this way is blatantly false. Thus, what Hart does, is demonstrate to the reader that Christianity has done more good than harm to the development of our culture, ethics, and sense of personhood. Along the way, he also demonstrates that the Classical Greco-Roman culture wasn’t nearly so great as a good many of the new atheists imagine, that the new atheists themselves are depending upon a Christian heritage for the ethics they expound, and that the history of irreligious modernity has actually been much more violent than Christianity has been.
Of course, none of this is to say whether or not atheists or theists are correct to posit the non/existence of God. Hart’s point is not to convert anybody to Christianity. Rather, leaving such questions to the side, Hart is simply engaging in an historical exercise and reminding the reader of what actually has and has not gone on since Christianity began. His conclusions, I think, are no surprise to anybody with a basic knowledge of history but they are, perhaps, are useful reminder to a good many who are drawn to the new atheists and who lack any awareness of history.
Oh, and after finishing the book I thought I would see if anybody amongst the new atheists had responded to Hart’s argument. All I could find was one posting on Richard Dawkin’s webpage, regarding a radio interview Hart did about the book. This is what Dawkin’s said:
Did ANYONE manage to listen to this all through without nodding off? Surely theology must be the ONLY academic subject in which such a stupefying bore, with such yawning chasms of intelligence-deficit, could rise to the top (see here for the whole thread).
Yep. That’s all. As far as I can tell, the new atheists haven’t responded to the substance of Hart’s argument because it is about as irrefutable as arguments from history can get.
3. The Recognitions by William Gaddis.
One of the reading goals I set for myself about a year ago was to not worry about reading so many books and instead focus on books that I have been putting-off due to their length. Consequently, when the folks over at AUFS started a reading group about The Recognitions, I decided to join in.
I’m glad that I did — this is one helluva good book. Of course, this doesn’t mean that it’s an easy book to read — Gaddis is fairly demanding of his readers, so don’t expect to open it up and skim through it while watching repeat episodes of ‘Jersey Shore‘ (trust me, I tried… and, yes, I don’t care what you have to say about ‘The Wire’, ‘Jersey Shore’ is probably the best show to ever air on television). But it is worth the effort. Gaddis’ prose is fantastic both in sustained sections — like the conversations that occur at a certain Christmas party — but also in some really brilliant short lines — as when one character says to another: “Sincerity becomes the honesty of people who cannot be honest with themselves” (any experienced liar — i.e. most of us — should be able to immediately identify with that!).
Basically, in this novel, I understand Gaddis to be exploring the various ways in which identity is both constructed and masked — by ourselves and by others, but also by our participation in things like art, religion, and business. Very quickly, it becomes difficult to discern between the ‘true’ identity of a character and between a mask that is worn or any identity that others (including the reader) project onto that character. Just as significantly, it becomes difficult to determine which is of greater value — the ‘true’ identity, the mask, or the projection (hence, moments of ‘recognition’ produce rather mixed results). Despite what Gaddis may or may not have intended when writing this, reading it certainly made me draw closer to Baudrillard’s variation of nihilism (i.e. all we can engage are simulacra devoid of any originals), or to Zizek’s assertion that the trauma of the Real is that there is no Real (i.e. the Real is a gap or absence). This has got me doing a lot of thinking around truth and lying, constructions of reality, notions of self, and all that fun stuff. Really, this novel is the first I have read in awhile that has really caused me to seriously revisit and attempt to clarify some of my own thoughts on matters extending beyond the text (so props to the guys at AUFS — but I think your next discussion group should be based on ‘Jersey Shore’!).
4. Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut.
I recently lent a couple of Vonnegut books to a brother of mine (who ended up enjoying them quite a lot) and so I thought I would pick something up as well. Armageddon in Retrospect is a series of pieces — some letters, some stories, some speeches — published posthumously. As with most things Vonnegut writes some are better than others, but I was particularly interested in reading the letter he wrote to his family in 1945 (shortly after living through the fire-bombing of Dresden) as well as the speech he was to deliver in 2007 (he died shortly before the event and so his son delivered the speech for him). Those were really the best two sections in the book, and most of the short stories were kind of ho-hum.
I’ve been thinking about what it is in Vonnegut’s writing that appeals to me and I think a lot of it has to do with the manner in which he approaches his subject matter. To begin with, I appreciate what I take to be Vonnegut’s honesty. He doesn’t sugarcoat the nature of the world we live in — it is a monumental clusterfuck, wherein cities like Dresden get fire-bombed for no particular reason, and there isn’t much we can do about it (when commenting on the net effect of the Vietnam war protests, Vonnegut concluded: “We might as well have been throwing cream pies”). However, instead of this leading him to abandon all hope and give into rage or despair, Vonnegut persists in the pursuit of love in the midst of all the craziness. And not just love, but love with a little humour and a twinkle in the eye — even though, while loving and laughing, one never forgets the clusterfuck.
So it goes… and that about sums it all up, eh?
A Link (re: Haiti)
Since a lot of people are talking about Haiti these days, I thought I would highlight an important article.
This describes exactly what I thought would happen as soon as I first heard about the earthquake in Haiti. The United States and Canada have a long history of attempting to overthrow Haitian efforts to achieve democratic self-rule and I knew that the earthquake would be used as an opportunity to stage a military take-over under the guise of providing international aid. While the earthquake was absolutely devastating, I suspect that we will make sure that the Haitians are paying for this for many generations.
Once again, Naomi Klein’s theory in The Shock Doctrine is confirmed.
Typical…
So there is a (semi?) regular event that occurs in Vancouver every year called “Missions Fest” which is hosted by an international Christian corporation that travels around the world hosting these events and trying to connect Christians to various ‘mission’ opportunities around the world. This year’s event happened about a week ago and the keynote speaker was a fellow from International Justice Mission (which is, according to their website, “a human rights agency that secures justice for victims of slavery, sexual exploitation and other forms of violent oppression”). Oh, and the event was hosted in a megachurch — it has a multimillion dollar budget, building funds the run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, that sort of thing.
Anyway, a friend of mine who runs a local community-based social justice-oriented group called Streams of Justice was invited to come and do a workshop at this event. Although this sort of thing is a bit outside of their usual sphere, some people from the group decided to go ahead and take a stab at it. So, they did a presentation on some of the factors that create and perpetuate poverty, oppression, violence, and slavery in Vancouver. As a part of their presentation, a homeless fellow who struggles with an addiction was invited to come and share his story. The presentation went well enough, I guess. They received the standard sort of Conservative Christian response (i.e. one fellow stood up and said: “But don’t you think that the real solution to all of these problems is a personal relationship with Jesus?”).
Anyway, my friend ended up taking off shortly after the presentation was finished and he caught up with the homeless fellow a few days later and asked him what he thought of the event. Well, it turns out that the homeless fellow got kicked out. After the event, he began to go around collecting empty pop cans (this is how he makes money). While doing so he was confronted by some sort of staff member (either of the church or of the conference, it’s unclear which), who told him that the cans were the property of the church and who then required him to leave.
Yep, so here we have a bunch of rich Christians dropping thousands of dollars on a conference about missions and justice, and the one homeless guy who is invited to attend gets kicked out because, dammit, the church is going to get the money for recycling those cans. Sadly, while this is atrocious, I don’t find it altogether surprising.
Something Different (Movies)
Well, I’ve written about books and about music, so I thought I’d write a post about the top five movies I watched last year.
The movie that jumped out at me the most is a documentary that first aired in 2003 called “The Origin of AIDS“. This documentary tells the story of how the AIDS pandemic was quite likely created by a Polish-American doctor who was experimenting on African populations in the 1950s in order to try and win the race to create the best Polio vaccine. This doctor, Hilary Koprowski, did in fact create the vaccine that was used to eradicate polio and he has been treated as a hero in the medical community. Naturally, then, there has been a lot of controversy around this documentary, but I find it’s thesis — and the evidence is presents — compelling. It’s all quite devastating. Not only did Western colonialism create deep poverty in Africa but it quite possibly created the AIDS pandemic (the same pandemic it refuses to address seriously, given the way Western pharmaceutical companies continue to hold on to the copyrights of medication that can be used to properly treat HIV/AIDS).
The second film that jumped out at me was “Hunger” (2008), which tells the story of Bobby Sands, a member of the IRA who led a prison-based hunger strike in 1981, in an effort to have the IRA become recognized as a political (and not criminal) faction. There is some really fascinating dialogue in this film, including one long uncut conversation that occurs between Sands and a Catholic priest. I almost never watch movies multiple times, but I watched this one three times last year. It’s a very moving portrayal of a person whose commitment to life — and life for all — leads him to embrace death (Sands starves to death along with several others). Further, the portrayals of others involved — like one prison guard who appears to be the guy designated to beat the prisoners — is one that refuses to take sides, but portrays the humanity of everybody involved.
Another documentary that I found interesting was “Born Rich“. It also aired in 2003 and was created by Jamie Johnson, the heir to the Johnson & Johnson Inc. empire. Jamie is friends with other young people who grew up amongst the super-rich — heirs of giant media, sports, or real estate empires, members of European royal families, and so on. It’s a fascinating glimpse into the brokenness, loneliness, opulence and even guilt experienced by those who grow up in this rather limited social circle. In fact, I even found myself feeling some sympathy towards a number of the young people who appear in this film. It would be very interesting for a discussion group to watch this film in conjunction with the more famous documentary, “Born Into Brothels“.
Finally, my fourth and fifth picks are “Darkon” (2007) and “Guys and Dolls” (2007). Both of these films look at groups of people who, in one way or another, have created a ‘fictional’ world full of alternate relationships, and wherein they find their deepest sense of meaning and identity. So, in “Darkon” we follow group of “Live Action Role Players” (i.e. LARPers) — everyday people who go off questing in the woods on the weekend dressed like wizards, warriors, and amazons (I know, right? It doesnt get much better than this!). It is as these characters, the the members of Darkon are able to truly live life. Similarly, in “Guys and Dolls” we encounter some men who have developed relationships with “Real Girl” sex dolls (which sell for around $10,000). It is these relationships that these men experience as the most fulfilling aspect of their lives. I found both of these documentaries to be entertaining and fascinating and they led me to ask questions about the ways in which all of us structure the world in which we live. I mean, are these people really doing anything different than Christians who go to church and undestand themselves to be ‘beloved children of God’? Or, to pick another example, are they different than corporate business people who go to yoga classes in order to affirm their internal goodness and transcendence (despite the brutal material actions they take in their day-to-day jobs)? Maybe, maybe not. A conversation worth exploring.
Hostipitality
I was chatting with a good friend the other night and he made an interesting statement. Having spent the last 20 or more years seeking to practice hospitality by sharing his home with others (i.e. he was living in a ‘new monastic’ community, long before that term was coined), he has become increasingly dissillusioned with the efficacy and value of this model. Instead, he and his wife will be selling their home and will begin living below the poverty line (perhaps in a squat, or in a van, or somewhere else). When reflecting upon this, he stated that he has come to the conclusion that hospitality can only be practiced within the context of justice. Living as we do within the context of deeply rooted injustices, he concluded that hospitality is not possible. Therefore, we agreed that talk of hospitality needs to be reframed around the concrete practice of mutuality, just as talk about charity needs to be reframed around the concrete practice of solidarity. I think such a reframing has potential. Any other thoughts?
Something Different (Music)
Well, a lot of people and places were busy posting lists of top songs and albums of 2009 over the last few weeks. For the most part, I found 2009 to be a slow year in music but there were a few albums that really grabbed me — “Hospice” by The Antlers (which now ranks amongst my top albums of all time) and “Dragonslayer” by Sunset Rubdown. However, instead of posting album reviews, I think I’ll just put up some links to my five favourite songs from last year (limit of one per band). As is usual for me, the way I connect with the lyrics of songs plays a very large role in how much I enjoy those songs. I think that the lyrics to all of these songs are fantastic (the first two were literally breath-taking for me) so you may want to look them up.
1. “Epilogue” by The Antlers.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQwkbRVqqxU]
2. “Nightingale/December Song” by Sunset Rubdown.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eh6jWLmKcc]
3. “Daniel” by Bat For Lashes (she’s singing this song for me, ya know?)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfWzmSelCis]
4. “Rocking Horse” by The Dead Weather (I’m not usually a fan of Jack White and his many projects, but this song is fantastic).
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtoL7y9jEyQ]
5. “1 John 4:16” by The Mountain Goats.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KocfvqK_4yM]
And one honourable mention — “The Economy is Suffering… Let It Die” by Anti-Flag!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-NqzIRmQjc]