I’m almost finished reading your book, can hardly leave it down. It feels a relief to find your way of articulating the current world situation. I didn’t know I was waiting for this book, but it seems I was. I know I will need to reread it.
And the comments and your responses are so rich too. Another fan of John Berger here. Other names and works mentioned below that I want to follow up on.
...." other ways to bring Heaven and Earth into relation". I was very struck by what Meziane, at the Black Elephant lecture, had to say about what he called the "secularocene". Does it not seem to chime with what David Cayley tells us about Illich's narrative of the Great Inversion "Corruptio optimi quae est pessima". Also, as suggested this evening at Mill Hill Chapel, perhaps midwifery among the ruins is another form the work may take, in addition to hospicing. Stephen Faller's 2015 book The Art of Spiritual Midwifery: Dialogues and Dialectic in the Classical Tradition comes to mind. (Btw, It was Raimon Pannikar, who was the brilliant Spanish Hindu priest, and collaborator with Illich at the "Real" Earth Summit in Orford, Quebec,1992.)
Ah, yes, Raimon Pannikar! Thank you for the reminder, Rob. And please tell me more about the "Real" Earth Summit, that's a story that I'm not familiar with!
I agree that there's a good deal of resonance between what Meziane is saying and Illich's account of "the corruption of the best that is the worst". Several conversations on this trip have made me think it's time I reread The Rivers North of the Future.
Thanks for the Faller reference, too. I've always been struck by Vanessa and the GTDF collective emphasising the double work of hospicing and midwifery. Without that, talk of hospicing easily gets tangled up with mistaking "the end of the world as we know it" for "the end of the world, full stop".
And I agree, those 'other things' are crucial, not least because they destabilise the tendency of Marxism to claim to offer a totalising account of the world. A Marxist friend once spoke someone having 'an incomplete analysis', a phrase which was clearly intended as a euphemism for being badly wrong about something, and I thought, what kind of person or group thinks of their analysis as ever being complete?
In that line about 'other things' I hear an echo of Hamlet, which brings us back to the theme of this post from another angle: 'There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio / Than are dreamt of in our philosophy.' (If I remember rightly, the texts of Hamlet vary over whether it is 'our philosophy' or 'your philosophy', but my tutor, Tony Nuttall, author of 'Shakespeare the Thinker', insisted that 'our' was the better reading.)
I just came across this article which takes Berger's reference to 'more things' as its starting point:
Many thanks for the introduction to Berger, someone I'd heard of but was barely on my periphery beyond that. There seems to be so much there to absorb, I must be patient; my "must read" pile is getting ominously large again!
I hope your travels are rewarding, I'm just sorry I couldn't get to one of them.
Great reflection. I too am a big fan of John Berger and keep returning to his essays. Such breadth and depth. I am waiting to pick up a book in Dartington on Friday so here's hoping there are some left. Enjoy the rest of your journey. Thanks for the poems too.
I'd be grateful for one of your signed hard copies, Dougald.
I enjoyed your reading on the Audibubble put there's nothing better than getting the vinyl these days. Let me know how I/we can order direct. Thanks and thanks (for your work)
I’m almost finished reading your book, can hardly leave it down. It feels a relief to find your way of articulating the current world situation. I didn’t know I was waiting for this book, but it seems I was. I know I will need to reread it.
Thank you, Margaret! It's so heartening to hear about the experiences people are having as they read the book.
Dougald, I hope you don’t mind but I’ve given your book a little promo at the end of my own latest post today.
And the comments and your responses are so rich too. Another fan of John Berger here. Other names and works mentioned below that I want to follow up on.
...." other ways to bring Heaven and Earth into relation". I was very struck by what Meziane, at the Black Elephant lecture, had to say about what he called the "secularocene". Does it not seem to chime with what David Cayley tells us about Illich's narrative of the Great Inversion "Corruptio optimi quae est pessima". Also, as suggested this evening at Mill Hill Chapel, perhaps midwifery among the ruins is another form the work may take, in addition to hospicing. Stephen Faller's 2015 book The Art of Spiritual Midwifery: Dialogues and Dialectic in the Classical Tradition comes to mind. (Btw, It was Raimon Pannikar, who was the brilliant Spanish Hindu priest, and collaborator with Illich at the "Real" Earth Summit in Orford, Quebec,1992.)
Ah, yes, Raimon Pannikar! Thank you for the reminder, Rob. And please tell me more about the "Real" Earth Summit, that's a story that I'm not familiar with!
I agree that there's a good deal of resonance between what Meziane is saying and Illich's account of "the corruption of the best that is the worst". Several conversations on this trip have made me think it's time I reread The Rivers North of the Future.
Thanks for the Faller reference, too. I've always been struck by Vanessa and the GTDF collective emphasising the double work of hospicing and midwifery. Without that, talk of hospicing easily gets tangled up with mistaking "the end of the world as we know it" for "the end of the world, full stop".
Somewhere Berger wrote I am among other things a Marxist. I guess the other things are so crucial to who he was.
Yes, it's in the closing line of this essay, 'Ten Dispatches About Place' from 'Hold Everything Dear':
https://orionmagazine.org/article/ten-dispatches-about-place/
And I agree, those 'other things' are crucial, not least because they destabilise the tendency of Marxism to claim to offer a totalising account of the world. A Marxist friend once spoke someone having 'an incomplete analysis', a phrase which was clearly intended as a euphemism for being badly wrong about something, and I thought, what kind of person or group thinks of their analysis as ever being complete?
In that line about 'other things' I hear an echo of Hamlet, which brings us back to the theme of this post from another angle: 'There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio / Than are dreamt of in our philosophy.' (If I remember rightly, the texts of Hamlet vary over whether it is 'our philosophy' or 'your philosophy', but my tutor, Tony Nuttall, author of 'Shakespeare the Thinker', insisted that 'our' was the better reading.)
I just came across this article which takes Berger's reference to 'more things' as its starting point:
http://quarterly.politicsslashletters.org/%EF%BB%BF-john-berger-theorist-politics/
And I wrote about some of this in the first issue of Dark Mountain:
https://dougald.nu/death-the-mountain-john-bergers-enduring-sense-of-hope/
Many thanks for the introduction to Berger, someone I'd heard of but was barely on my periphery beyond that. There seems to be so much there to absorb, I must be patient; my "must read" pile is getting ominously large again!
I hope your travels are rewarding, I'm just sorry I couldn't get to one of them.
Thanks for the references.
Great reflection. I too am a big fan of John Berger and keep returning to his essays. Such breadth and depth. I am waiting to pick up a book in Dartington on Friday so here's hoping there are some left. Enjoy the rest of your journey. Thanks for the poems too.
I'd be grateful for one of your signed hard copies, Dougald.
I enjoyed your reading on the Audibubble put there's nothing better than getting the vinyl these days. Let me know how I/we can order direct. Thanks and thanks (for your work)
Thanks, Jez - drop me a mail at dougaldhine@gmail.com and we can sort this out.