Do something creative every day to be happy

Another film by Sam Fathallah, who is still making films, both for artistic reasons and for a living. However, I hope the young people we meet are as creative now as they were eight years ago. Enjoy!

 

Harari's list falls short on preparation for next pandemic

London protest against Covid lockdown and masks

Yuval Noah Harari, the author of Sapiens, Homo Deus, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, offers fatally limited advice to readers of Britain's Financial Times on how to prepare for the next pandemic. 

In his February article "Lessons from a year of Covid", Harari rightly praises the scientific effort that has quickly delivered useful vaccines, though he is scathing at the job done by politicians - "All too often the political wisdom has been missing" because of the habitual feuding in the political arena, and the focus on personal and national interests.

However, what counts is that politicians are society's elected leaders and scientists should leave to them the decision-making in the fight against the pandemic. 

The argument Harari presents as he makes his case also highlights from my point of view how essential it is that science and technology be held up to "human" or "social" scrutiny. He explains why science should not be granted the position of ultimate power in matters of life and death:

The Covid year has exposed an even more important limitation of our scientific and technological power. Science cannot replace politics. When we come to decide on policy, we have to take into account many interests and values, and since there is no scientific way to determine which interests and values are more important, there is no scientific way to decide what we should do.

For example, when deciding whether to impose a lockdown, it is not sufficient to ask: “How many people will fall sick with Covid-19 if we don’t impose the lockdown?”. We should also ask: “How many people will experience depression if we do impose a lockdown? How many people will suffer from bad nutrition? How many will miss school or lose their job? How many will be battered or murdered by their spouses?”

Even if all our data is accurate and reliable, we should always ask: “What do we count? Who decides what to count? How do we evaluate the numbers against each other?” This is a political rather than scientific task. It is politicians who should balance the medical, economic and social considerations and come up with a comprehensive policy.

Similarly, engineers are creating new digital platforms that help us function in lockdown, and new surveillance tools that help us break the chains of infection. But digitalisation and surveillance jeopardise our privacy and open the way for the emergence of unprecedented totalitarian regimes. In 2020, mass surveillance has become both more legitimate and more common. Fighting the epidemic is important, but is it worth destroying our freedom in the process? It is the job of politicians rather than engineers to find the right balance between useful surveillance and dystopian nightmares.

He's right in these matters: "there is no scientific way to decide what we should do"; likewise, without safeguards imposed by society, engineers could could end up "destroying our freedom" and delivering the stuff of "dystopian nightmares".  

This analysis is accurate but the advice arising from it as to preventing or combatting a future pandemic  is anemic. Here is the advice in summary:

First, we need to safeguard our digital infrastructure. It has been our salvation during this pandemic, but it could soon be the source of an even worse disaster. Second, each country should invest more in its public health system. This seems self-evident, but politicians and voters sometimes succeed in ignoring the most obvious lesson. Third, we should establish a powerful global system to monitor and prevent pandemics. 

The reason Harari falls short is that he offers no insight on how to lift the standard of human capacity in what citizens and politicians alike are willing to bear with regard solidarity and self-discipline and altruism - each demanding loving generosity and good will to others - and adherence to the common good rather than to the individualistic hedonism now well embedded in most Western nations, and increasingly to be observed elsewhere, such as in Vietnam, from where this blog originates.  

In other words, Harari fails to attend to the need to develop human capacity, which involves the ability of each person to learn across generations and within each society as to how to reason well, how to respect the dignity of others, and how important it is to serve, if that society is to be sucessful in its goal of ensuring human thriving. 

How to make it more likely that humankind will be ready to face the next pandemic or perhaps technological calamity? Buying Sam Harris's Waking Up app will not get to the heart of the human predicament;  nor by reading Enlightenment Now, where Steven Pinker celebrates the achievements of the human family just at the time where his homeland, the most prominent exemplar of enlightenment's child, individualistic materialism, is coming unstuck through the fraying of the bonds of religion, with the consequences of the destruction of discourse by both left and right, and the deluge of cases of early death and of the feeling of meaninglessness in life, which was Pinker's starting point for his book ("Why should I live?" - see his introduction to Part 1). 

Of course, Harari might expect us all to wait around until we reach the state of homo deus, but that book is as baseless as Pinker's on the big picture, on what is most important about human life. Let Harari build on his success in hitting the target on what needs to be done to avoid future catastrophes and focus on ways to solidify the moral foundation of human life, and on ways to generate the unending eruption of mutual love and respect. Enabling the divine spark to engulf each and every person's heart and mind is the certain way to "determine which interests and values are more important, [since] there is no scientific way to decide what we should do".  

Interested in reading more? Visit my Substack blog and subscribe. 

Eastertime and key facts of the empty tomb

Bishop Robert Barron. CNS photo/courtesy Word on Fire

Some people are attracted to the graves of the famous. Hundreds, even thousands of people go to graves to muse and meditate.

One such person is Catholic Bishop Robert Barron, who serves in the Los Angeles area. He studied in Paris and spent many hours in the cemeteries holding the graves of Chopin, Abelard and Heloise, and even Jim Morrison. In a video talk, Barron says of graves: “They're places of finality. They're places of peace, of contemplation.” However…

Then there's the grave that the Gospel writers are fascinated by. I'm talking about the grave of Jesus, to which three women go early on Easter Sunday morning. They've gone with oils to anoint the body, according to the Jewish custom.

They worried about who would roll the stone back, but I'm sure they were planning there to perform this ritual, and to muse and to ponder, remembering the great things that Jesus had said and done, probably feeling some anger at those that had betrayed him and denied him, probably weeping in their grief.

But they arrive, and to their infinite surprise, they find first, the stone rolled away. Has a grave robber been at work? But their astonishment only increases when, looking inside, they see not the body of Jesus but rather a young man in a white garment, who says to them, "You're looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place where they laid him."

The young man's message, to put it bluntly, was not that someone had broken into this grave, but rather that someone had broken out of it. What was their response to this shocking news?

And this is the first account we have in Mark's gospel. What's the reaction of these women?

"They went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them." Yeah, graves, sure; they're places of quiet contemplation, places to muse, places to think. Then there's this grave, from which these women run in terror.

And thereupon, brothers and sisters, hangs the tale of Easter. Jesus is not a fondly remembered figure from the past. He's not a great spiritual teacher whom we recall with fond contemplation.

We participate in the terror that these women felt as the absolute novelty and shock and surprise of Jesus' resurrection dawned upon them.

What I love about this story is it militates against all attempts to domesticate the resurrection. And there's been a lot of this up and down the Christian centuries, and certainly in our own time.

When I was going through seminary — this is some years ago — these were the kinds of books that we read in the seminary.

"Oh, Jesus’ resurrection; oh, don't read that as something that really happened. Rather, the disciples after the death of their Master, knew that his cause would go on, and so they invented this story of an empty tomb and appearances to symbolize the fact that his cause goes on."

Or this view that was held by a very prominent theologian when I was going through school — after the terrible death of Jesus, the disciples nevertheless felt forgiven, and so they expressed this conviction with the stories of the empty tomb and the appearances.

Come on. I mean, this is impossibly thin gruel, and it does not correspond to the clear sense of shock, novelty, and excitement that runs through every page of the New Testament. Can you really imagine Paul tearing into Corinth with the news that "Hey, the cause of a dead person that I admired goes on."  They would have laughed him out of town.

Can you imagine all the apostles, they go careering around the world to their own deaths — with the message that they felt forgiven? I mean, give me a break.

These attempts to flatten out and domesticate the resurrection are undermined by this fundamental witness of the facticity of the resurrection.

Can I just draw three implications, friends, from the fact of Jesus' resurrection? First of all, it means that Jesus is Lord. You'll find this phrase often in the writings of St. Paul. In his Greek, "Iesous Kyrios," Jesus is Lord. And we might say, "Well, that's a blandly spiritual thing to say." But that was deeply subversive in the first century. Why? Well, because a watchword of that time and place was "Kaisar Kyrios," Caesar's the Lord. He's the one to whom my allegiance is due. He's the one in charge of my life.

How wonderful: the first Christians, in light of the resurrection, they purposely twisted that language. Not Kaisar Kyrios; Iesous Kyrios. Mind you, someone whom Caesar put to death, but whom God raised from the dead, he's the true Lord. He's the one to whom your allegiance is due.

And furthermore, how wonderful that they proclaimed this long before there was anything like an institutional Church, long before there were armies and armies of believers. These are a handful of people who were declaring this deeply subversive message of the lordship of Jesus.

Here's a second implication of the resurrection — again, not as some thin gruel, some vague symbol, but the fact of the resurrection — that Jesus’ claims about himself are now ratified.

Unlike any of the other religious founders, Jesus consistently speaks and acts in the very person of God. "My son, your sins are forgiven."

"Who's this man think he is? Only God can forgive sins."

Right. That's the point. Jesus is speaking and acting in the very person of God. "Oh, you've heard it said in the Torah, but I say…" Well, for a first-century Jew, to claim authority over the Torah, which was the supreme authority — the only one that could possibly do that would be God himself. Uh-huh. "You've got a greater than the temple here," Jesus says, in reference to himself. Again, for a first-century Jew, the temple was the dwelling place of God. Who could possibly say he's greater than the temple, except the one who in fact dwells in the temple?

In fact, this is why Jesus is brought to the cross: this apparent blasphemy, this man claiming to be God.

And then, see, when he died on the cross, even his most ardent followers were convinced that he was a sort of a sad fraud. Think of those two disciples on the road to Emmaus. "Yeah, we thought he was the one, but clearly he's not because there'd be no greater proof possible that someone was not the Messiah of Israel, than his death at the hands of Israel's enemies. Clearly he isn't God. Clearly he was just a deluded figure."

But when he rose from the dead — and I don't mean some vague feeling they had of being forgiven; come on — when he rose from the dead and appeared alive again to them, they knew now he is exactly who he said he was. They knew that Jesus' divinity, his claimed divinity, is ratified. And therefore, we have to give our lives to him.

If he is who he says he is — not one teacher among many, but God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God — what choice do I have? I must give my life to him.

Here's a third and final implication of the Resurrection: that God's love, everybody, is more  powerful than anything that's in the world.

What brought him to his cross? Cruelty and violence and hatred and injustice and stupidity and all forms of human dysfunction. It's on that cross, he bore all of this. The sin of the world came upon him. He went into the muck and the mud of the human condition. In fact, it closed over his head.

But then in the resurrection, when Jesus says "Shalom," and he offers this peace on the far side of all the dysfunction of the world, he shows thereby that God's love is more powerful than any of it.

That's why Paul can say, "I'm certain that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither height nor depth, nor any other power could ever separate us from the love of God."

He knows it because of the resurrection, because he saw the risen Christ. That's where we find our hope, everybody. That's where we find our salvation. That word just means our healing. What's wounded us? Well, all the darkness and sin of the world; that's what's wounded us.

In the resurrection of Jesus, we find our salvation from all this, we don't take the resurrection as some, "Oh, that's an interesting fact from long ago." Come on; come on. We take it in as the definitive sign of the lordship of Jesus, the definitive sign that he's God from God, Light from Light, the definitive sign that God's love is more powerful than anything in the world.

See also on Substack here 

Something beautiful - it's your decision

A beautiful face, an untouched stretch of beach are often more than rivaled in their impact by beautiful actions or beautiful decisions. For example, a person who has someone in their power can do something beautiful by not exercising that control over the other when it would be a simple matter to use them for their own advantage. 

The beauty arises from the decision to regard as a better thing the gifting of respect and freedom to the other person. That gift allows the other to then grow and blossom in their own right. 

Similarly there are those beautiful decisions people find able to make in extreme circumstances where they offer even their own life for the good of another. A case in point is the sharing of a kidney. 

Just as flowers need good earth and rain and fertilizer, beautiful decisions need a good imagination,  a strong mind, and a heart that has learnt to be generous and brave.

Live Not By Lies: A Manual For Christian Dissidents

"We live in a world of lies, whether we want it or not. That's just the case. But you shouldn't accommodate to it." That statement, a reflection on the present as much as the past, is from Maria Wittner, a hero of the 1956 Hungarian uprising against the Soviet occupation. 

With the developed world infected by an intellectual and spiritual poison that rivals that of the thought-control beloved within the Communist system, such insight into how to remain free is a valuable message.

Wittner is one of the survivors of the Soviet-backed totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe after World War II that writer Rod Dreher interviewed for his book titled Live Not By Lies: A Manual For Christian Dissidents published in the United States late last year.

A Communist court sentenced Wittner to death when she was 20. However, this was commuted to life imprisonment. You have a choice, she says: "If you want to live in fear, or if you want to live in the freedom of the soul. If your soul is free, then your thoughts are free, and then your words are going to be free."

Dreher called on the experience of European dissidents such as Wittner to learn how Americans in the first instance can prepare for what he sees as a soft form of totalitarianism, epitomised by wokism and the cancel culture, where the elite of academia, the mainstream media, and the corporate world, use all the levers of power at their disposal to control what is to be regarded as morally correct and socially acceptable.

As an observer in a distant land, I grieve at the way American society has become so toxic with the decline of Christian civilisation that made the nation so attractive in the international context. Now, it's easy to identify the marks of of a rapidly developing dictatorship in the United States, which seems to go beyond that what exists or is developing in Western Europe. The social sickness so evident daily, the lack of meaning in life among the young, and the failure of older Americans to display moral strength, all point to social collapse being not far away. 

This is how Dreher summarises his well-supported thesis:

The essence of modernity is to deny that there are any transcendent stories, structures, habits, or beliefs to which individuals must submit and that should bind our conduct. To be modern is to be free to choose. What is chosen does not matter; the meaning in is in the choice itself. There is no sacred order, no other world, no fixed virtues and permanent truths. There is only here and now, and the eternal flame of human desire. Volo ergo sum - I want, therefore I am. 

Women in sport suffer concussion more than males

Australian Football Rules player Chelsea Randall after a collision with an opposing player this year

Experts say sportswomen are at higher risk of concussion than male athletes, and the effects of concussion in women tend to be more severe.

Dr Adrian Cohen, an emergency and trauma physician in Australia who researches concussion prevention, says women sustain more concussions than men in high-impact sports such as rugby league, rugby union and Australian rules football. Women also take longer to recover.

One possibility is that women may be more likely to report concussion. But Dr Cohen says there are complex physiological factors at play.

"There are structural differences between men and women's brains," he says. "They actually have a slightly faster metabolism than male brains, and they have slightly greater oxygen flow to the head.

"The cells themselves can be thought of as being slightly hungrier. So in the context of an injury that disrupts the supply of glucose and oxygen, it can help explain why they suffer more damage."

He also says women are joining high impact sports without years of tackle training and have had less opportunity to build up the strong neck muscles crucial in protecting against impact.

Dr Rowena Mobbs, a neurologist at Australia’s Macquarie University who researches and treats the effects of concussion in sportspeople, says there is truth to suggestions that women experience concussion symptoms more severely.

"But there is this really important overlap of chronic migraine after trauma, and the term for this is post-traumatic headache," she says.

"When we talk about migraine ... they're the same multitude of symptoms that can occur in concussion.

"So you can be dizzy and clouded in your thinking, lethargic and have double vision. And we know that women are at three times the risk of chronic migraine than men."

Read the whole piece here

For a 2019 article titled “Australian research shows female athletes have a higher rate of concussion and a prolonged recovery time”, go here

 

Love - as understood by high school students 2013