Pistis reclaims vital statistics! (weekending January 18th 2020)

‽istis reclaims vital statistics! (weekending January 18th 2020)

‽istis considered the state we are in through the lens of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals reports and webpages (including this week’s Guardian interactive quiz[i]) following links to the world of the ‘2019 Sustainable Development Goals Report’[ii] with its sobering infographics and condemning detail:

‽ that ,perhaps, the world is not on track to end poverty by 2030; there are 3.5million more malaria cases in 2017 compared to 2016; 750million adults still remain illiterate; 18% of ever-partnered women and girls aged 15-49 years have experienced physical and/or sexual violence in the previous 12 months; 785million people reman without even basic drinking water, ‘9 out of 10 urban residents breathe polluted air, etc. 

but ‽istis rejoiced at the good news of apparent progress:

‽ that, possibly, deaths of children under 5yrs has dropped from 9.8million to 5.4million between 2000 and 2017; incidence of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa 15-49yr olds has declined by 37%; the income of the bottom 40% of the population has grown by more than the national average in more than half of the 92 countries with data; water quality has improved in 104 of the 220 coastal regions monitored… though ‽istis wondered at the baseline quality of the water measured and whether this meant that the glass was now half full or half empty!

And ‽istis came to rest at the ‘Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 6 July 2017’[iii] regarding the ‘Work of the Statistical Commission pertaining to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’ and thought:
      

‽ maybe the ‘perhapses’ and ‘possiblies’ (above) are necessary when ‘many national statistical systems across the globe face serious challenges’ such that ‘accurate and timely information about critical aspects of people’s lives is unknown’ – and this lack of information may relate disproportionately to the poorest, the hungriest, those with the worst health and wellbeing, the least equal, those with least access to quality education or clean water or sanitation, or literacy and numeracy…

  

And ‽istis vowed to revisit the webpages and scrutinise future reports – and to ask whether the story they tell (perhaps, possibly, maybe) should lead to congratulations over some improvements for the ‘us’ we can count – even while we may never be able to quantify fully how different the world is not, for those who most need it to be so.     

© Pistis   

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[i] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/ng-interactive/2020/jan/15/environment-inequality-hunger-which-global-problems-would-you-fix-first

[ii] https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/progress-report/

[iii] https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/indicators/indicators-list/

Pistis reclaims wonder, literally (weekending January 11th 2020)

‽istis reclaims wonder, literally (weekending January 11th 2020)

As the epiphanous stargazers are removed from their nativity scenes, ‽istis looked out in awe and wonder at the night sky and considered attempts to make the ineffable accessible, bring the sublime down to earth and explain the deeply complex with literal, does-what-it-says-on-the-tin names and initials 

‽ perhaps whilst we may not understand all the content, calling the journal ‘Nature’ may tell us all that we need to know, versus the unlikely-sounding but presumably not randomly chosen (all puns intended) ‘Stochastic: An International Journal of Probability and Stochastical Processes’;

‽ possibly naming the source of apparent new and nearer FRBs (Fast Radio Bursts) as 180916.J0158+65 in a galaxy only half a billion light-years away (see article in said journal[i]) seems less unnerving than the thought of communicating aliens - of the variety that Helen Sharman (the Brit who was first to get nearer to them, after all) vouches for[ii];

‽ maybe the fact that the lead author of said FRB study in said journal is apparently from the Joint Institute for VLBI - Very Long Baseline Interferometry (which incidentally sounds as though it could be an understated ‘safe’ euphemism for measuring allegations of rape and sexual assault currently under scrutiny in a certain high-profile legal case in the States) provides a sense of accessibility; if we can understand two of the words in the institute’s four word title, we might understand half of what they do).

‽istis blamed the earliest astronomers who looked out and up and beyond into the void and called it simply ‘space’…  

And perhaps, possibly, maybe - looking through the ‘Total Perspective Vortex’ (thank you Trin Tragula and Douglas Adams) – if we remembered more often that: ‘In an infinite universe, the one thing sentient life cannot afford to have is a sense of perspective’, then how different the world down here might be. 

  

© Pistis   

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[i]  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1866-z

[ii] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/jan/05/astronaut-helen-sharman-this-much-i-know 

Pistis reclaims resolution (weekending January 4th 2020)

‽istis reclaims resolution (weekending January 4th 2020)

‽istis stopped trying to work out the number of fireworks attached to prominent landmarks, the manner of their attachment and the potential infrastructural impact on, say, Europe’s apparently tallest cantilevered observation wheel… and pondered a process whereby hope and wish might just possibly, perhaps, maybe become will - and where will might find a way 
    

‽ perhaps there could be a formula for calculating the point at which ‘just because you can’ becomes ‘doesn’t mean that you should’

‽ possibly someone might work out a way to understand the means by which theory becomes on-the-ground, tangible, make-a-difference-to-lives practice in areas such as ensuring equality, exercising compassion or promoting rights

‽ maybe in 2020, clarity of vision - looking beyond the short-term and the vested interests of ‘people like us’ (or those who have lent a vote) to a wider ‘we’ in a systemic world – might align with political imperative (legitimated through thoroughly considered and scrutinized legislation; adequately and equitably resourced; reparative and restorative; informed by evidence and experts and evaluated for its impact and outcome, not just by input)

    

And ‽istis, newly resolved, decided to try to act – to be the change and to see whether practice, if not making perfect, might yet help to make a difference… 


© Pistis   

Pistis reclaims the space between (weekending December 28th 2019)

‽istis reclaims the space between (weekending 28^th December 2019)

‽istis, paused and pondered the space between…

‽ perhaps there is a name for those days between Bank Holidays - the shutdown for many between Boxing Day and New Year’s Day? 

‽ possibly for others there may be no space, with the  continuation of work (helping to let others shutdown); with not even the briefest cessation of hostilities (no ‘Silent Night’ miracle moment); when even the time between is filled with fear as the hyper-vigilance of anticipation simply adds toxic stress in the brain to the physical pain?

‽ maybe for others still there is never, and will never be, respite from the undifferentiated continuation of life as grindingly usual…

But just perhaps, possibly, maybe there will come a time when all home care staff are paid for travel between those visits and that ‘having time for a chat’ (especially this time of year) might be assessed as vital as bathing, administering medication, providing breakfast, helping to get to bed safely…   


And maybe, at a time when ancient and modern salvation stories bubble up to public consciousness and public expression, just a few more of those ideas, past and present, might be recognised as constructs not absolutes – for if ‘limbo’ can be re-examined and redefined[i], then just imagine how different the world might be.  


© Pistis   

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[i] http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20070419_un-baptised-infants_en.html

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).