Iconoclasm and #Black Lives Matter

"They just don't think about it!" It was spoken dismissively. The group of churches met remotely twice a week by zoom.

A nice reflective service (in which the prayers mentioned justice and peace) was followed by "break out groups" where people were put in randomised groups of 5 or 6 other screens. In one group there was a general consensus among the participants that the recent demonstrations had been irresponsible, criminal and dangerous. "We'll see when the infection rate goes up." There was no mention of George Floyd whose funeral was going on nor of Black Lives Mattering. In fact they'd not been mentioned at all in any service. 

Edward Colston (Bristol News)

Slave ship (Wikipedia)

Meanwhile an inarticulate old man was thinking to himself: "Of course they'd thought about it. They've been thinking about it for years, decades and centuries. And of course they knew the risks they were running. Look at the masks, the distancing, the overwhelming self-restraint." He was thinking, "As a Bristolian from age 2 and a bit, who in my schooling up till university never heard a word about how Edward Colston made his money, I was glad when I heard that his statue had been toppled (like Saddam Husain), and dumped in the harbour. The rope round the neck reminiscent of the many slaves hung for wanting freedom; the dumping in the river echoing the thousands of African slaves dumped overboard in the Atlantic. It's high time the public honouring of slavery was removed. I am ashamed of my ignorance - for example I did not realise the significance of Whiteladies Road leading to Blackboy Hill *. I profoundly admire Bristol's elected mayor, Marvin Rees, who regarded the statue as a personal affront, but also said, 'My concern though is that racism is tackled not just by pulling down statues in symbolic moments – it’s stitched into the system. It’s the systematic exclusion of people from opportunity and power.' If it deserves to be replaced anywhere, it's in a museum exhibition about slavery." (I gather that's where it's going. Good decision.)

In the event all he said was, "I disagree. I think the cause of the demonstrations is hugely important. Black lives matter." There was momentary silence. 

Recently the vicar alluded to them in his weekly letter: 

"There have been many demonstrations about the inequality and mistreatment of people different from us. Psalm 58 helps express outrage at injustice. It might be a bit too brutal and vicious for you, but it does claim hope in God to achieve justice. If you have been or are a victim of unfair treatment, then Psalm 59 may express what you want to say."

Photo: London Evening Standard

Personally, I am happy that the statues of men who made their money from slavery should be removed. I would like it carried out after examination of the history and debate in democratic forums. I do understand the danger of hot-headed activists attacking monuments only to be confronted by white racists "defending" Britain and polarising public opinion - which would lead to the rise of extreme nationalism in our political life. It could easily germinate and flourish in the comfortable white shires of rural England. So I hope for a thorough and unflinching examination of our colonial past - and its being taught in our schools from the moment they're allowed to return. The context of 21st-century Britain is very different from the mid 20th when I was at school, and even more so from Victorian Britain when many statues were erected. The National Curriculum Stage 3 includes the example of "Britain’s transatlantic slave trade: its effects and its eventual abolition" as one option, which might explain why the younger generation was so represented in demonstrations. The generations who most need education about slavery and colonialism are mine (baby boomers) and those the succeeding one or two. 

I agree with the view that we are at a potential turning-point in the history of racial equality. The horrific killing of George Floyd with onlookers unwilling or unable to save him coincides with the world having the time to reflect and understand. My wife and I have been watching the TV adaptation of Andrea Levy's The Long Song, set in the cane fields of Jamaica. We need more of such uncomfortable programmes. I hope the debates continue.

Finally a single history test for you: What do you understand by the Middle Passage?

Barbara Holmes, an American theologian, may help:

"It was a community of sorts, yet each person lay in their own chrysalis of human waste and anxiety. More often than not, these Africans were strangers to each other by virtue of language, culture, and tribe. Although the names of their deities differed, they shared a common belief in the seen and unseen. The journey was a rite of passage of sorts that stripped captives of their personal control over the situation and forced them to turn to the spirit realm for relief and guidance. . . ."

*As is clear from the comments below, I hadn't realised the significance of the road names, which is less objectionable than I implied. (13th June) Apologies.

RIP Stephen Hawking

Today we had the AGM of our local MND Association and remembered Professor Stephen Hawking, the most famous man with Motor Neurone Disease and patron of the MNDA, who died this week. He’s widely considered one of our greatest scientists, the author of A Brief History of Time and the subject of the Oscar-winning The Theory of Everything. His MND was unique – or highly untypical – in that it lasted for 55 years rather than the average 14 months from diagnosis. He had a great dry sense of humour and an inextinguishable zest for life, despite the disease leaving him without a voice and without use of his limbs as it progressed. He claimed to have become a more convinced atheist over the years. Only once did I dare to disagree with him. In an interview in 2011 an interview with him was headlined, “Stephen Hawking: ‘There is no heaven; it’s a fairy story.’”  Which gives a beautiful picture which has circulated on social media by Australian artist, Mitchell Toy, particular poignancy.

The interview provoked me to suggest an alternative rational view, which was published in The Guardian, and as I recall attracted a quantity of hostile comment on line. I would like to think that my view and the vision of Mitchell Toy is nearer what Professor Hawking will experience than the bleakness of his own expectations.

Here is my article:

Like Stephen Hawking, I have been living with Motor Neurone Disease.  Like him, I’m one of the lucky few not to have died within months of diagnosis.  I’m nine years younger than him and have had the symptoms of the disease for only ten years, compared to his 49.  However for those ten years I’ve “lived with the prospect of an early death” also.  Unlike Professor Hawking I am not a superstar scientist.  I’m simply a small-time writer, who used to be a teacher and a vicar. 

It seems to me that, while some things Stephen Hawking says in the interview as it’s reported are unarguably true, some are also admitted hypothesis, and some are merely tendentious.  One of the features of MND both for him as for me is that it affects your ability to speak and hence pares down what you say to the bare bones. (That’s not of course the case when you have time to type a script.)  Hence sometimes you are frustrated by your inability to nuance your ideas.  And so it may be that his very categorical answers are the nub of his opinion, but not the full expression.

For example, there’s something of ‘nothing-buttery’ about his comments about death: “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”  It’s unarguably true that there’s no heaven for broken down computers, as I have found to my cost when I poured fruit juice over my laptop.  The brain may be nothing but a most remarkable computer, yet there’s something generically different from a computer in a brain which, when it starts to malfunction as happens in MND, can begin to love Wagner’s music and “enjoy life more”.  That, I would say, is irrational, but not uncommon.  Human beings, it would appear, are something more than machines.  Maybe science will one day describe what the difference is.

Hawking tells us that “The universe is governed by science.”  I think I understand what he means.  It is certainly discoverable by science.  Scientific theories which don’t fit with the evidence of the universe fail.  In simple terms science is governed by the universe, not the other way round.  What’s interesting is that this is in effect what Hawking says talking about the beauty of science.  It’s “beautiful when it makes simple explanations of phenomena or connections between different observations”, citing the double helix and fundamental equations in physics as examples. 

I find myself admiring and agreeing with much of what Professor Hawking says, but I find his ethical deduction and his quasi-religious observation sadly lacking.  “So here we are.  What should we do?” he’s asked.  The question sounds similar to ones posed to great religious teachers of the past.  His answer is disappointing: “We should seek the greatest value of our action.”  It’s certainly thought-provoking (What exactly does that mean for this or that action?) and it is a principle which is reinforced by the experience of life-threatening illness.  One could say, “Don’t waste your life.”  Yet as a rule for life, it lacks both the impact and the practicality of the great Judaeo-Christian answer to that question, “Love God above yourself, and love your neighbour as yourself.”  Even those who are unwilling to subscribe to the first part can understand the second part and usually admit its validity.  It might conceivably be argued for on the Darwinian grounds, that those societies which have lived by altruistic principles have survived, but that very admission raises the question of the origin of that surprising pre-scientific insight.

Finally Stephen Hawking’s headlined observation about death, that an after-life “is a fairy-story for people afraid of the dark” is both sad and misinformed. His proposition that there is no heaven reminds one of Gagarin’s alleged dismissal of God because he did not see him in space.  Openness to the theoretical possibility of there being eleven dimensions and fundamental particles “as yet undiscovered” shows an intellectual humility strangely at odds with writing off the possibility of other dimensions of existence. 

For someone “facing the prospect of an early death”, with probably an unpleasant prelude, the idea of extinction holds no more fear than sleep.  It really is insulting to accuse me of believing there might be life after death because I’m afraid of the dark.  On the contrary, sad though I shall be to leave behind those I love, I suspect the end of life, whatever happens, will be a relief.  And, like Pascal making his wager, if it is dark, I really won’t mind, because, of course, there won’t be a me to mind.

Strangely enough, my theory that there is a form of life after we die is not some sort of wishful thinking.  It’s based on evidence.  If the brain is a computer, then, when I was studying where Stephen Hawking now teaches, I came on a mass of data of which the most convincing, the neatest, explanation was that death is not the end of life.  It wasn’t the most comfortable nor most obvious of conclusions, but the forensic case was forceful and beautiful, providing “simple explanations of phenomena or connections between different observations”.  The best exposition I found was by the then Director of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies in London, Professor Sir Norman Anderson, in The Evidence for the Resurrection (afterwards republished as part of Jesus Christ the witness of history (IVP 1985)).  My disturbing conclusion was that, if it happened once, as seemed beyond reasonable doubt, then I needed to revise my whole world view.  What you see is not all you get.

One may wish to dismiss Jesus Christ, or Julius Caesar, as fairy stories, even as bunk, but, until one has examined the evidence in Anderson’s forensic manner, that’s a premature judgement.  I suspect many do that.  As for the idea that belief in an afterlife is a consolation, it is not just about heaven.  Most faiths in fact have a notion of judgement, which is hardly comfortable for anyone, although it does focus the motivation not to waste one’s life.  Moreover in our situation Professor Hawking surely knows better than that some notion in your head, whatever that notion might be, makes the frustrations and pains of a terminal illness somehow more bearable.  That’s the nonsense of those who’ve not been there.  I can’t prove it of course, but on good grounds I’d stake my life on it, that beyond death will be another great adventure; but first I have to get finish this one.

RIP Stephen Hawking.