A story of the secular that assumes a progressive and inevitable move from more religious to less religious is a reduction of experience to the point of actual and symbolic violence. It is an ethnocentric projection which prolongs a sense that We have superseded history to take an objective position. It seeks to de-anthropologise one set of human values in relation to another. … More The secular is not just about religion.
It seems to me now that Ireland’s complacent, property-obsessed middle classes (yes, that’s me) are in a similar position. We think that making the banks work ‘properly’ again is the objective of these ‘adjustments’. It is not for this objective that the hospital wards are closing this year. This is little short of the Irish economy being turned inside out for shareholder value. … More 3. work if you can 4. dream. 5. act
This is a slight return to a post from last week but looking again at Fergus O’Donoghue’s decent Studies blog a little more in the last few days, there’s something that stands out: conviction is more respected than populism. On his own blog, Fergus takes Pat Rabbitte to task about his supposed anti-Catholic stance. In … More Slight return: left politics and being Catholic
Chiara Bottici, in a recent edition of the journal Philosophy and Social Criticism (abstract), gets to the heart of the problem with current political discourse in Europe and elsewhere: a lack of imagination. By imagination, she is not talking about that required to bring us to some world where Ricky Gervais becomes god or even … More imaginal · imaginary · imagination
Today is a sad day because as the Irish Times reports: Up to the end of September this year, 1,059,382 US military personnel, on 8,698 flights, had used the midwest airport since the start of “Operation Iraqi Freedom” 4 and a half years ago. Figures released by the Shannon Airport Authority have confirmed that since … More Sad day for Ireland
53 degrees 