Pistis reclaims Advent (weekending December 21st 2019)

‽istis reclaims Advent (weekending 21^st December 2019)

‽istis, peered through today’s door of the Advent calendar and sighed a deep sigh of gathering gloom and wondered what we were waiting for; wondered to be honest whether, a supposed two thousand and nineteen years’ ago when BC had become AD, it had made a scrap of difference?
  

‽ just how bad might the past two thousand years perhaps have been? Could it be worse than the Holocaust, the deaths from Spanish flu following the First World War, the war itself and all the others, the preventable deaths, the murders and suicides and lives lived through abuse and illness of body and mind, lived through a glass darkly?

  

‽ would the loss of a bit of supposed ‘free will’ have been quite so bad? better to have got it right from the start, possibly – if one believed in a Creator? even turning it off and turning it on again with Noah and ‘humanity 2.0’ might surely have worked?

  

‽ and maybe, just for one day – say Christmas Day – wouldn’t it be possible to make a new gesture: the barrels of the Kalashnikovs and the assault weapons turning to liquorice? the blades flashing in anger on the streets turning to rubber? the landmines party-popping with glitter?

And perhaps, possibly, maybe those who profess and carol and rejoice could just live to prove Emanuel; the spirit of Christmas become real - and not just for Christmas. Yet we wait, trying to imagine desperately how different the world might be… 
  
© Pistis

Pistis reclaims the view through the Overton Window (weekending 14th December 2019)

‽istis reclaims the view through the Overton Window (weekending 14^th December 2019)

‽istis, still tired from the late night ‘watch’ over the workings of democracy; from the channel- and station-surfing from pundit to pundit, graphic to graphic, cliché to overworked metaphor; from superlative to hyperbole and every position spun between; from the triumphant acclamation to deflated resignation – and peered at the view through the Overton Window[i]…
   

‽ perhaps, as if by magic, the wisdom of the crowds/small groups (delate as appropriate when the turnout figures are known) - well at least those that had made it through the rain – had cleaned the raindrops, the smears and the dirt to give a view of the road ahead?

‽ possibly, even now the radical and unthinkable that lay behind the window (lurking in the corners of the room obscured by questions evaded, unlit by the light of interviews avoided, hidden behind numbers untested and assertions that seemed to gain veracity through the sheer volume of their proclamation and repetition) was being planned and plotted: the path from idea, to policy, to practice, to impact?

‽ maybe ‘the system’ had once again grounded itself on the sandbanks of the not-so-Good’win’ mathematics…
    

And perhaps, possibly, maybe it was time to rethink the two-swords length adversarial architecture of a crumbling edifice; to review the all-permissive power of a mandate that could be claimed from no more than 50%+1; to consider all representatives as ‘the government’ acting on behalf of everyone through consensus and co-operation; to take the best ideas, more evidence-based than ideological; and to require the elected to swear to be faithful and bear allegiance to those who have entrusted their futures to them - well at least until the next time that the Overton Window is opened.

© Pistis   

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[i]  https://www.mackinac.org/OvertonWindow

Pistis reclaims Election Interviews (weekending 7th December 2019)

‽istis reclaims Election Interviews (the results show - or no show)  [i] (weekending 7^th December 2019)

‽istis woke with a start – still sitting on the sofa, in the wee small hours when even the 24hr news channel was longing for the night to end and the headlines and the weather to change.

Uncharacteristically clear-headed, ‽istis tallied the points from the dream interview, fresh in the memory: 

‽ perhaps at least 50, from a maximum +10 points for each of 5 answers that addressed the specific question asked: directly, immediately, succinctly and with fact-checked content

‽ possibly 3 examples of a clear and genuine apology for sins of omission or commission, errors of judgement personal and professional, past or present – and not just an apology if anyone had felt aggrieved or taken offence (+21 points total) 

‽ maybe no examples at all of:

·       exaggerating and rubbishing the policies/behaviour/ record/personality of either opponents, erstwhile colleagues or predecessors (-5 points for each)

·       three-word slogans that could mean everything but may mean anything or even nothing (-10 points)

·       repetition (-3 points)

·       repetition, again (-3 ² points)

·       deployment of the word ‘look’ to suggest that finally something genuine might about to be said (-2 points)

·       the phrase: ‘if you’ll just let me finish!’ or variation (-5 points; x 2 if preceded by a prepared speech on another topic related only tenuously to the question; x 4 if preceded by a prepared speech on another topic altogether)

·       repetition, yet again (-3 ³ points)

·       hyperbole: about the cost of others’ proposals or the benefit of one’s own (-6 points)

·       repetition, deployed cynically simply to take up a significant proportion of a finite interview slot and thereby limit other questions or discussion of other topics (-3 ⁴ points)

·       just continuing to talk, head down ‘I will make this point’, going on and on and on and on whether anyone else is talking or not; whether anyone is listening or not (-8 points)

   

‽istis even contemplated the rare award of bonus points for an absence of hubris, tone of patronising assertion, or effort to sound in touch through references from popular culture. Mind you, ‽istis thought, complete absence: -50 points!


The news channel jingle heralded the dawn of a new day and ‽istis realised that indeed it had been a dream interview!


© Pistis   

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[i] NB: this may also be played as a drinking game: either negatively (with a commonly available and multi-form psychoactive substance with dependence-producing properties that has been widely used in many cultures for centuries; the harmful use of which causes a large disease, social and economic burden in societies and can result in harm to other people, such as family members, friends, co-workers and strangers (https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/alcohol); or positively (with the milk of human kindness, or equivalent dairy-free alternative).   

Pistis reclaims Black from Red (weekending 30th November 2019)

‽istis reclaims Black from Red (weekending 30^th November 2019)

‽istis sat, finger-poised in the moment: bargain to right of me, bargain to left of me, prices slashed from the sabre-stroke of enticement - when can their glory fade? 

‽ perhaps the difference between a need and a want is no longer visible at half a league?

‽ possibly a perfectly judged bid would win all that was left of them?

‽ maybe those who had fought so well had indeed come through to the front of the queue? 

Bargain in front of me, boldly I clicked and well. 


Forward into Monday and the valley of products silicon, ready to charge. Plunged in the battery smoke, all the world warmed, shatter’d and sunder’d…   But, stopping to reason why and wishing not to do and die, ‽istis wondered: perhaps, possibly, maybe someone had blunder’d.


© Pistis (with apologies to Alfred Lord Tennyson)

Pistis reclaims a distrust of 'Great Men' (weekending 23rd November 2019)

‽istis reclaims a distrust of ‘Great Men’ (weekending 23rd November 2019)

Hot from yoga and a TV streaming channel documentary; lukewarm from a political debate perhaps short of a full set of credible candidates; cold from a televised/possibly ill-advised interview, and neutral at the appointment of a ‘special one’, ‽istis pondered the lives of so-called ‘Great Men’.

‽ perhaps the publication of the 12^th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica did not end the view (after Thomas Carlyle) that the history of the world is the biography of great men[i];

‽ possibly Herbert Spencer underestimated the way that power and patronage, self-publicity, money, title, or tweetings could influence, persuade, coerce or control the narrative, the news (fake or otherwise) and lives – when suggesting that attributing historical events to the decisions of individuals was ‘a hopelessly primitive, childish and unscientific position’[ii];  

‽ what if Tolstoy’s football-punditry-style comment maybe brings some balance: ‘All these great talents, the Goethes, the Shakespeares, the Beethovens, the Michelangelos, created, side by side with their masterpieces, works not merely mediocre, but quite simply frightful.’[iii]

And, bemused at an apparent lack of gender representation across a spectrum (of proponents and critics alike) and wishing desperately for the hushing of hubris and a drawing back of the curtains surrounding the self-proclaimed great and unmatched wisdom of ‘wizards’ (past, present or yet to come; in Oz, or in and amongst us)...

‽istis reclaimed Kierkegaard’s sentiment for great people everywhere who may consider themselves slaves of history and cannot imagine their greatness. 
Those who, despite their circumstances (and perhaps, possibly, maybe despite the hegemonic dominance of so-called ‘Great Men’ and the consequences of their words and deeds) are: ‘able to fall down in such a way that the same second looks as if one were standing and walking’; who can ‘transform the leap of life into a walk’ and who just sometimes are able both ‘absolutely to express the sublime in the pedestrian.’[iv]

Great people of the world (though perhaps, sadly, you don’t know who you are), we salute you! 
    
© Pistis
  

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[i] https://www.azquotes.com/author/2488-Thomas_Carlyle/tag/history

[ii] https://infogalactic.com/info/Great_Man_theory

[iii] http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Notes_on_the_Auteur_Theory  /  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/46272/46272-h/46272-h.htm

[iv]  https://quotes.yourdictionary.com/author/quotes/574581

Pistis reclaims Intolerance - possibly, perhaps, maybe... (weekending 16th November 2019)

‽istis reclaims Intolerance – possibly, perhaps, maybe… (weekending 16th November 2019)

‽istis wasn’t sure whether to speak boldly, to whisper or to remain silent to mark UN resolution 51/95[i] and the International Day for Tolerance.[ii]  

‽ what if, maybe, both sides of a story were convincing in a universe of quantum morality?

‽ what if, possibly, I am the person that they come for first?[iii]

‽ what if, perhaps, intolerance is the only thing that shouldn’t be tolerated?

‽ what if society is not civil and there is no peace?

And just possibly, perhaps, maybe what if a recognition of the complexity of knowing when, where, why and how to draw a line was acknowledged and we sought to see things from each other’s perspective? Would we find more or less in common and might we have a clearer, shared idea about what exactly is intolerable to us, when it might no longer be tolerated, and what to do about it?
   
© Pistis

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[i]  https://undocs.org/A/RES/51/95

[ii] https://www.un.org/en/events/toleranceday/

[iii] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Martin_Niemöller

Pistis reclaims White Poppies and makes a first foray into the world of Charity Expenditure (weekending 9th November 2019)

‽istis reclaims White Poppies and makes a first foray into the world of Charity Expenditure (weekending 9th November 2019)

‽istis stood in silence, the lone white poppy wearer, at the local memorial. ‽istis remembered… and thought about… 

‽ the fallen, from here – family names that live on and those where the family line stopped at the front line; the fallen from there, from everywhere…

‽ ‘those who are serving or who have served in the armed forces’[i] including those living with stress linked to experiencing trauma, those living with mental illness, those who are homeless, those who are in prison – those reliant on charity

‽ those affected by all wars and conflict of every nationality, on every ‘side’; the much larger number of civilians who are killed[ii], the millions made sick or homeless, families torn apart, those killed or imprisoned for refusing to fight or resisting war[iii]

‽ Eleanor Barton and the women of the Co-operative Women’s Guild who had lost husbands, fathers, sons, brothers and friends, were apparently worried at the growing militarisation of remembrance events by 1933 and who sought to renew a commitment “to that ‘Never Again’ spirit that was strong in 1918 but seems to grow weaker as years go by”, who wore the white poppy[iv]

And after the bugle had fallen silent and the lamppost poppies had been taken down (and people had wondered if they and the cable ties could actually be recycled or whether there was room to store them for another year), ‽istis found the Charity Commission website and started to search, noting the very varied proportionate expenditure (across the c.160,000 charities in England and Wales) by ‘income generation and governance’ and by ‘charitable spending’[v]; and ‽istis knew that quite possibly, perhaps, maybe this needed further exploration…    


© Pistis   

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[i] From the Royal British Legion webpage: https://www.britishlegion.org.uk/about-us/who-we-are  and the Charity Commission description

[ii] For example see a comparison of apparent civilian and military deaths across the Allied and Axis countries in WWII: https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/world-war-two/civilian-casualties-of-world-war-two/ and the Peace Pledge Union claim that ‘today over 90% of people killed in warfare are civilians’ https://ppu.org.uk/remembrance-white-poppies

[iii] https://www.ppu.org.uk/remembrance-white-poppies

[iv] https://ppu.org.uk/remembrance/white-poppies-frequently-asked-questions

[v] E.g:

·         The Royal British Legion: Income generation and governance: 25%; Charitable spending: 75%

·         SSAFA: Income generation and governance: 6%; Charitable spending: 92%

·         Combat Stress: Income generation and governance: 14%; Charitable spending: 84%

·         Help for Heroes: Income generation and governance: 30%; Charitable spending: 70%

·         Invictus Games Foundation: Income generation and governance: 8%; Charitable spending: 72%