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Living With Psychos

I read American Psycho  so you don't have to.  It's a harrowing read and I don't recommend it unless you have a strong stomach. Bret Easton Ellis's 1991 novel is narrated by Pat Bateman, a young man who does something or other on Wall Street.  He seems to have an unlimited amount of money which he spends on designer clothes, gym and health club memberships, high end sound gear and eye-wateringly expensive dinners at exclusive restaurants.  Much of the novel consists of Bateman's descriptions of his dinners and socialising with various companions (you couldn't really call them friends) in which he describes in great detail what they are wearing, the appearance and sexual desirability of the women, the food they order and their absurd, inconsequential conversations.  This is not the harrowing bit. Amidst all the tedium of his day-to-day life Bateman also describes, in the same matter-of-fact tone, a series of gruesome murders which he commits.  The violence i...
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Daring to Love

Last weekend we went to a wedding.  The children of two sets of long-term friends were getting married, and the church was full of people we know and love.   As so many do, the couple had chosen 1 Corinthians 13, Paul's 'love chapter', as the Bible reading for the event. Many of my readers will be able to recite it, or at least parts of it. If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not deli...
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Mutual Aid Between Trees (and other species)

Back in 1904, Peter Kropotkin published the anarchist classic Mutual Aid.   He wrote it as a response to the prevailing pseudo-Darwinian notion that life, both animal and human, was defined by a perpetual struggle for survival - a view that drove the ravages of colonialism, the exploitation of labour by capital, and the wars which engulfed Europe in the years after its publication.   For Kropotkin, this view is a mistake.  He starts in the animal kingdom, going through ants and bees forming huge cooperative colonies, birds forming flocks for food gathering, protection and navigation across migrations, mammals forming packs for cooperative hunting and herds for mutual protection.  Throughout the animal kingdom, he says cooperation is the norm.  For mammals and birds, certainly, it is solitary competition which is the exception.   He then moves on to spend most of the book talking about cooperation and mutual aid as a driver of human history, from p...
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The Death of Centrism

Our media is in a spin about the One Nation victory in the Farrer by-election recently, following hot on the heels of the big gains made by Reform (and also the Greens) in recent UK local government elections.  It seems to me that political journalists are flailing about, trying to explain what is going on.  The predominant narrative is that this is about punishment, and that voters are blaming the major parties for the fact that they are struggling to pay the bills.  The far-right parties, with their outspoken leaders and taboo-smashing statements, seem to offer an alternative.   David Farley is the first One Nation member of the lower house. Will these parties make our lives better?  You only need to look at the US to see they won't.  The far-right Trump administration is actively making the lives of poor people worse while Trump and his billionaire cronies cash in.  Reform and One Nation would do the same if they got the chance - why else do yo...
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Legion

This Lent I've been thinking about one of the stories of Jesus' life, found in Mark 5:1-20, and Luke 8:26-39, with a different, abridged version in Matthew 8:28-34. The story concerns a man whose name we never learn.  He lives in 'the region of the Gerasenes' (with variations on the place name in the other gospels), part of the Decapolis on the east side of the Sea of Galilee.  This region was a set of multi-ethnic towns, with many residents being veterans of the Roman Army as well as local ethnic peoples including some Jews.  We don't know if this man was a Jew although it seems likely - none of the gospels tell us one way or the other. What we do know is that he had an 'impure spirit' - that is, he was inhabited by a demon.   "This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain. For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue...
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