What I’ve been hearing on Radio this week –
Interview with Swedish journalist Elisabeth Asbrink and her dynamic new book:
1947: When now begins.
1947 was the year that WW2 formally ended, with the signing of the peace treaty in Paris. In the same year Simone de Beauvoir started writing The Second Sex, and George Orwell completed ‘1984’. It was a year of momentous change, in Palestine, in India and Pakistan. It saw the development of post-war fascist movements, a new beginning for Jews, and the rise of the Islamic Brotherhood. The formation of the UN was underway, with the post-war mantra ‘never again’.
http://radio.abc.net.au/programitem/pgyGE8PeK7?play=true
Dumbest political comment of the week –
Government frontbencher Christopher Pyne says the 580 men refusing to leave the Manus Island detention centre are “squatters” and he’s urged them to move on.
(like the homeless in Rundle Mall?)
New Music – The gentle Irish singer-songwriter with justice and peace never far from his intent: Luka Bloom, Refuge.
(Includes a new rendition of his anthem, I Am Not At War With Anyone.)
(Original version at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujmkUY4relo)
Moment of the week –
Lunch with Kitty, a homeless 30 year old, who is helping me seed the idea of the homeless caring for the homeless.
(See my last blog, Under the Blanket, for the reason why we have to de-industrialise the welfare sector and to empower people as ‘experts in their own lives’ – Dulwich Centre philosophy.)
What I’ve begun reading this week – An Other Kingdom – departing the consumer culture, by Block, Brueggemann and McKnight.
Our seduction into beliefs in competition, scarcity, and acquisition are producing too many casualties. We need to depart a kingdom that creates isolation, polarized debate, an exhausted planet, and violence that comes with the will to empire. The abbreviation of this empire is called a consumer culture.
We think the free market ideology that surrounds us is true and inevitable and represents progress. We are called to better adapt, be more agile, more lean, more schooled, more, more, more. Give it up. There is no such thing as customer satisfaction.
We need a new narrative, a shift in our thinking and speaking. An Other Kingdom takes us out of a culture of addictive consumption into a place where life is ours to create together. This satisfying way depends upon a neighborly covenant?an agreement that we together, will better raise our children, be healthy, be connected, be safe, and provide a livelihood. The neighborly covenant has a different language than market-hype. It speaks instead in a sacred tongue.
Authors Peter Block, Walter Brueggemann, and John McKnight invite you on a journey of departure from our consumer market culture, with its constellations of empire and control. Discover an alternative set of beliefs that have the capacity to evoke a culture where poverty, violence, and shrinking well-being are not inevitable?a culture in which the social order produces enough for all. They ask you to consider this other kingdom. To participate in this modern exodus towards a modern community. To awaken its beginnings are all around us. An Other Kingdom outlines this journey to construct a future outside the systems world of solutions.
Thank you of the week –
To all my wonderful friends and family from all over the world! I am so inspired to have you all as friends!