Hi friends - Thanks for visiting my site. For the time being I will not be updating the blog here. The best way to keep in touch is to subscribe to The Porch, at www.theporchmagazine.com - you’ll get much of my new writing there, along with some wonderful fellow travelers. My new book, How Not to be Afraid is published in April 2021 - and you can find more details (and download a free chapter) at www.hownottobeafraid.com. Thanks friends.
Hi folks - welcome to this week’s brief highlights of our slow conversation about beautiful, and difficult things.
1: What Does Media Violence Do?
I’ve been thinking again about the relationship between the violence in the stories we tell and violence in the real world. Media violence (in movies, television, literature, music and games as well as “the news”) is such a part of our lives that it may seem either not worth bothering with, or such a huge problem that we could never change it. But whether or not the violence we rehearse in the stories we tell leads to violence in the “real world” is a serious question. We can’t afford to ignore or misinterpret it. It occurred to me this week that the progressive “solution” to violence is actually quite conservative, and vice versa. At The Porch recently I posed five questions about media violence - I’ll try to offer some responses next time.
2: On a related note I finally finished Deadwood - the HBO series about the evolution of a lawless camp into a formalized US American city, with mythic resonance for our understanding of the nation. The writing, directing and performances are outstanding - delicate and raging, subtle and loud at once. It takes care to show violence as dehumanizing to everyone involved, and doesn’t sugarcoat the competition between empire-building and the pursuit of peaceable community. The most striking characteristic of the show is the way each episode frequently pivots between cruelty and compassion; it’s clear that the show wants to be on the side of the angels. But it has one enormous blind spot: the near complete absence of Native Americans, from whom the land was stolen in the first place. It adds to the irony of what the show itself is trying to say: that the founding vision of US American culture was a glorious dream, full of holes, including in the self-understanding of those who believed in it the most. There’s a lovely profile of Deadwood’s creator David Milch, here.
3: Porch Courses begin next week (September 14th, 2020) - with Black Movies, American Lives and Queer Christianities. These courses provide a space - led by distinguished teachers, artists, and activists - for us to seek wisdom, find community, and contribute to a better world. Many of us are tired of online engagement, so we’re planning an experience that respects your time and energy, and allows for participation at your own pace. Porch Courses are a dream come true for many of us - just five sessions per course, but with real substance and meaning. We promise more than “information”, but transformation: of our sense of self, our beliefs and attitudes toward others, and what we consider possible in a world that is under so much pressure, and full of so much possibility. It would be so good to have you with us. Check out Porch Courses here.
PS: I’m happy to say that we’re extending our partnership with the filmmakers behind COUP 53, the acclaimed telling of the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected government in 1953. If you didn’t get to see it at its premiere transatlantic screening this past week, COUP 53 will still be available for a few more weeks. Viewers in the US can buy tickets via this link. The film is excellent, and all ticket purchases support The Porch. If you’re in Ireland, the UK, Chile, or Canada, click this link instead. The film isn’t yet available outside those countries, but hopefully will be in the future.
Some of us were talking recently about money and the deep desire for interdependent community. Like many, we hope that the pandemic will lead to profound changes in the mainstream economy. We’re particularly supportive of Universal Basic Income (UBI), where we the people provide everyone a stipend that helps meet basic needs. (There’s a great article here outlining UBI in more detail - including helpful responses to typical criticisms.)
Universal Basic Income will have many positive impacts: mutual suspicion will decrease; the myth of scarcity will have a harder time finding purchase when people’s basic material needs are substantially met; and just think of the creativity that could be unleashed when people aren’t so worried about rent or food and can, instead, pursue vocations whose value derives from more than just the money it “produces”.
But we don’t have to wait for UBI before we can free ourselves from the tyranny of scarcity. With or without UBI, the truest shelter comes in the form of the stories we tell, and the people with whom we share our needs and gifts.
The mainstream economy has always existed alongside at least two other economies - domestic work (aka "housework" - the vast majority of which is unpaid and still usually done by women), and the sharing of gifts and needs in networks ranging from extended families to faith communities to friendship cohorts and, yes, the folks who live next door.
Alongside Universal Basic Income we need Universal Basic Community, because where relationships are whole, and interdependent networks of sharing and gifting exist, there is no poverty: neither of material things, nor imagination, nor healing.
I’ve been thinking lately about the portrayal of violence in the stories we tell ("the news", movies, television, literature, music, games, and any other form of storytelling). The typical response is two-sided: one says that violence in media can cause violence in the real world, and that we should censor it; the other that there is no relationship between media violence and real world violence, that it would encroach freedom of speech to try to limit it.
Ironically the former group tends to be the one most committed to talking about “freedom” and personal responsibility, tending to downplay any analysis of the world that sees humans as participants in systems and structures that can limit or encourage certain behaviors. This group, committed to freedom and personal responsibility might like to censor storytelling because people can’t be trusted not to be influenced by it.
And the latter group tends to promote a systemic analysis of how the availability of resources is shaped by social structures, but doesn’t see the stories we tell as one of those resources, or the systems of meaning we have evolved to be a possible part of the problem when it comes to the way we tell stories that involve violence.
In other words - the “conservative” response to violence in media might actually be a progressive one, and the “progressive” response might actually be a conservative one.
They’re both partly right, but only skim the surface. I think the question of media violence is at least fivefold:
1: Does it de-sensitize us to violence in the real world, meaning that we care less about real violence than we should?
2: Does it over-sensitize us to violence in the real world, meaning that we over-predict it, and become paranoid or overly anxious, and more likely to support authoritarian policies or even further violence to repress the violence that we have overstated in the first place?
3: Does it tell the truth about how violence actually happens - where it comes from, who does it and why, what it causes in the lives of its targets, and what it costs the people who enact it?
4: Might it, on the other hand, provide a helpful catharsis, releasing pent-up energy in the lives of those who might otherwise commit acts of aggression, but for whom watching - and imaginatively participating in - story violence might be enough to "get it out of their system"?
5: Does it promote, challenge, or transcend the myth of redemptive violence - i.e. what does it say about the idea that violence can redeem or cleanse things?
Still pondering - and I welcome the conversation.
John Hume said that Ireland and northern Ireland was "not a divided land", but "a divided people"; and honestly there is no one in public life there who did more for the process of conflict transformation and peacebuilding than he.
Mr Hume died today, at 83, after a long and courageous life. Read about him here, and let's consider how his visionary leadership can inspire our own journeys amidst struggle and gift today.