Re: [Critical-Realism] Not In My Back Yard

["Tim Murphy" <info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Come on Dave, you can't just wiggle it like that.

Blair was not merely recently "instructed by a Cardinal", that was just
something for P.R.

Blair has been practicing as an almost 99% Catholic (and receiving
Communion) for over 20 years. It was well known that he used to drop in to
the catholic chapel at the House of Commons to hear mass and take communion
there. It nearly became a scandal and the British Cardinal Basil
"I_did_not_know_ about_all_ the_sexual_abuse _at_Ampleforth _
College_even_though_I _was_the_Abbot" Hume, had to write to him when the
media got wind of it and tell him to stop taking catholic communion in
public so often. He continued to do so in private and when away from
Westminster and he was regularly visited at his weekend residence (Chequers)
by his favourite Catholic RAF Chaplin who said mass there for the Blair
family and gave Tony Blair Communion. (Images of flinty RAF Chaplin wearing
cambat fatigues and a dog collar being winched down from a SAS helicopter
onto the rose lawn at Chequers and dashing indoors with emergency communion
wafers in bullet proof container, helicopter turns and spins off into the
early morning english mist, the pilots look at each other and nearly wet
themselves laughing).

Blair was actually already Catholic in all but name and simply delayed the
formalities until he left office as Prime Minister. The reason is simple, no
law has yet been passed to remove the technical impediments to Catholics
serving in that office. Admittedly these are minor details about signing the
documents appointing Bishops of the Church of England and a few things like
that but those are the facts.

The real reason he was received by the RCC with hardly a mummer of dissent
was as the chief Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi remarked "the choice of
joining the Catholic church made by such an authoritative personality can
only arouse joy and respect". In other words "we usually suck up to
rightwing power".

Personally I would have made him sit outside Regent's Park Mosque for 5
years in sackcloth and ashes, in atonement for the innocent Muslim blood he
has spilt before I would accept him into the local bridge club never mind
the world's largest Christian sect. So much for the sermon on the mount. But
I guess an organisation that will give a PayPal Knighthood to Rupert Murdoch
(that doughty defender of black people and the rights of workers who did so
much thougfh his publications to elevate the status of women in society) has
lost all moral sense. What this shows is that the rules only apply to
ordinary people not to people like Blair or Murdoch. I could even mention
that Blair has recently voted for abortion, for stem cell research and for
same sex civil unions, (all of which are contrary to Catholic doctrine) but
what is the point? I suppose they will soon be selling indulgences again and
we are back to square one.

Why do you say "leave a final judgement to God" ? The alleged supreme being
has not got a good track record at judging the guilty, in fact they often
seem to get promoted and die comfortably in their beds in advanced old age.
I don't think we will see Tony Blair ending his days naked and bruised on
the urine stained concrete floor of a cell with his testicles wired up to
electrodes, which is more than can be said for some of those who he claimed
to have liberated from tyranny. No I think we should at least put these war
criminals under life long house arrest.

I can't disentangle your paradigms in the last paragraph, it is so embedded
in a particular religious world view, it is like talking to a Mormon about
when we all used to live on the planet Kolab and how the Israelites built
the pyramids in Mexico. Not trying to be rude or even funny because I think
we are not just different generations but actually different species. If you
are talking about human error in the traditional sense, you are welcome to
it. I'll be post-human... We'll probably make mistakes as well but we won't
blame them on God or the Devil.

-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Dave
Taylor
Sent: 08 January 2008 12:22
To: 'Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List'
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Not In My Back Yard


Mervyn

As a Catholic I am just as unhappy as you about the way Blair has been
received into communion with the Church: by the Pope after instruction by a
Cardinal.  If he had been required to humbly do what other coverts do,
receive instruction from the local parish priest and join in with his local
community, that would in my view have sent a much more appropriate message,
and I would have been much more confident that he had been admitting his
mistakes and not just seeking consolation.  "Would that God the giftie'd gie
him/tae see himself as ithers see him"; but let's leave a final judgement to
God.

Tim, I stayed silent on what you wrote because I go along with most of it.
Where you ARE making a mistake is in neglecting our ability to be mistaken.
That is what the "operating system" of true "re-ligion" is all about:
recognising and putting right what is going wrong.  We agree there are false
understandings of religion which encourage people to seek peace and/or loot
for themselves by blaming other people, but there also those blamed, for
whom "putting right" involves compensating help and encouragement, and good
tries like Buddhism, seeking peace by trying to do nothing wrong.  It
doesn't help to be indiscriminate, condemning the suffering and saints along
with sinners.

Best

Dave

-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mervyn
Hartwig
Sent: 08 January 2008 10:45
To: 'Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List'
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Not In My Back Yard

Thanks for this Tim. There's a lot in common with what you say and Bhaskar's
works of the spiritual turn. If you haven't already done so, you should read
them. Don't let your antipathy to organised religion (some of which I share
- whatever the Catholic church says, reception of Tony Blair into its bosom
has the effect of sanctioning his war crimes...) deter you. The
thematisation of 'god' or 'the ultimate structure and dispositionality' of
the cosmos is intended to be compatible with an atheist as well as theist
orientation, and I certainly find it compatible with my agnosticism; and
'spirituality' is basically what you're talking about below. Most
importantly, the arguments for a fundamental change in outlook stack up in a
really impressive way.

Mervyn


-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Tim
Murphy
Sent: 07 January 2008 17:58
To: Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Not In My Back Yard

Agreed, we have always been too timid, reactive and gradualist or wild
eyed and promethean.

We need to take the initiative and speak a language of radical
transformation that addresses our situation in it's full reality, not
another "changing of the guard", Blair for Thatcher, Brown for Blair,
Cameron for Brown, Clinton or Obama for Bush! Not liberal or left nit
picking at "the establishment", nor throwing ourselves on the wheels of
the omnicidal juggernaut in a violent spasm.



We also need to understand that there is no real difference between the
USA/UK dropping a MOAB from a Stealth bomber onto a "nest of insurgents"
in an Iraqi or Afghan village and the thousands of futile and disgusting
human sacrifices of captives performed by the Aztecs to propitiate their
greedy Sun god. What has changed is that they employed obsidian flint
knifes and we have jets, GPS and high explosives or nuclear weapons but
the paradigm is exactly the same.

I sense a change that is gathering at the margins of feelings, knowledge
and mind, a change that will move via necessity and cooperation to
implementation and a global cultural paradigm shift.

The fundamentalists want end times supernatural interventions via war,
looting and a historical rupture. The techno idealists want the
technological singularity (the rapture for nerds), psuedo-immortality
via nanobot.

We have a chance to bypass both these power fantasies and achieve a
different kind of singularity, actually a transition into a mature and
self aware democratic emancipation where we all begin take
responsibility for who we are and what we do, to and for each other. To
do this we need space... breathing space, thinking space, talking space,
meeting space, working space. We need to liberate time, space and work
which have all been occupied and colonised.

The first step is to decolonise our minds (get rid of your TV),
disconnect your old "operating systems" (religion, privilege, money,
race, class, nationalism, ethnicity) because whatever you like to think
these are what govern your mind.

The second step is to reach out to "the other" and start talking and
acting our intentions as real experience, not as something to be hoped
for, but as something that is lived now.

The third step is to build the means... the networks of peace and
reciprocity, communication and trade which will express the ends we
seek.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Mervyn Hartwig" <mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "'Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List'"
<critical-realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, January 06, 2008 11:30 PM
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Not In My Back Yard


Some thoughts from a genuinely radical thinker on the politics of
change,
1997:

"We need an end to 'the politics of disenchantment', the politics of
Nietsche and Weber and the politics of social democracy, and which has
so
profoundly influenced the politics of the Left. We need to produce a
different conception of ourselves in the world. The revolution will be
nothing less than this: the transformation of our understanding of
ourselves
and of the whole world in which we live, our situation in the cosmos."

(Bhaskar, From Science to Emancipation, 200).

Mervyn

-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mark
Methven
Sent: 04 January 2008 15:11
To: Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List
Subject: [Critical-Realism] Not In My Back Yard

As one of the Americans on this list, let me assure
you that the concept 'radical thinker' is completely
foreign to presidential candidates in general and this
 group in particular. The last 30 years have been
embarrassing enough, nay downright shameful, for
having endured the certified and certifiably moronic
from all political parties wearing and tearing down
the political and civil infrastructure on this
country.  However, what is more shameful is that that
same 'American Spirit' that is so commonly ballyhooed
about and rubbed in others' faces - the spirit of 'The
Boston Tea Party', the courage of D-Day, the
indomitable Can-do, is gone. What has replaced it is
an insufferable, complacent arrogance not unlike its
whithering British counterpart, being of the same
common stripe, being equally as deadly and destructive
to the world while bestowing 'democracy' and
'Anglo-Saxon law'.  Rereading Milton Mayer's "They
Thought They Were Free" resonates with an eerie
familiarity. One can only wonder when we will have our
own Nuremberg conducted by the Chinese or Brazilians
perhaps - The Wall St. Trials?  But even that pithy
irony would be lost on the rusted sensibilities of the
majority.   Sadly, blood is running in far too many
streets across the world; sadder still is that
Pennsylvania Ave. is not one of them.  But radical
thoughts are not part of the national political
discourse, only NIMBY.
-
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