What is it to be prophetic in England today? It is to the ability to imagine a future that is radically better than the present.
The radio journalist said, “This is the UK’s third great crisis of trust.”
First it was the banks.
Then it was the politicians.
Now it is the media.
But the fact is that the banks are back at their game and the politicians are back at theirs. And the truth is that when this ‘news of the world’ has passed by, it will be business as usual for the media as well. The surface landscape may have been altered, but structurally all is as it was.
Why is that?
Because we cannot imagine a way of life that is better than the one we have now lived with for some thirty years gone. We are numb and anaethetised in the right brain and hopeless and despairing in the left brain.
Our liberal democracy has become a political monotheism: “the idea that there must be a unique king and a unique kingdom to comply with a unique god…the closure of the borders which tolerate nothing outside them.”
Until we can imagine a future in which our unique god – “the voided truth of Western nihilism, of its secularized Christianity” – is given freedom from our oppressive political ideology, we will not be able to imagine prophetic futures that fill us with more than just saccharine hopes that things might be able to change. Only once we have been freed from “a [Western] political theology subject to perpetual secularization” in which we are immersed can there be a movement towards radically reimagining a society that is not merely a restructuring of what came before.
Note: I’m thankful to wood s lot for posting a link to Roberto Esposito’s “Ontology at Present Tense. Community and Immunity in the Global Times” from which I have poetically taken the quotations above. The radio journalist referred to was on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme.
mjn777
July 8, 2011
The main problem is moral/spiritual/mental decay of the individual – you cannot correct society – you have to correct individuals – once done society will take care of itself.
mjn777
July 8, 2011
Oh yeah life goes on – long after the thrill of livin’ is gone. John Cougar Mellencamp
Richard Wasserfall
July 8, 2011
Not sure you can correct individuals either. But until a society starts collectively imagining what a different world could be — lets say a world no longer based on fossil fuels — only then the possibility of that world come into being.
mjn777
July 9, 2011
I think I was born one generation or maybe a decade too early to get the green/eco concept to be honest – never bought into that really
To me it is more important the moral health of a person driving a car than what fuel is powering the car forward.
I totally agree with you without imagination nothing will be possible to achieve individually or collectively.
My imagination of a better society is one where you love your neighbour etc etc but really the imagination of good people will not move bad people to change.
Sometimes to be a peacemaker you gotta kick some ass – (superman 2 quote).
Humanity will change only when it has to and kicking and dragging its heels too – for example when the fossil fuels are almost exhausted.
mjn777
July 9, 2011
I hope i don’t sound like I disagree with your original post – as I think what you say is true and it is great too.
Just giving my spin on things.
We both – like many others think a change is urgently needed – but how to achieve it is the real question.
Neil Haas
July 9, 2011
I like your state of the nation summary (looking at my KJV I notice ‘these nations’ becomes ‘this generation’ in NIV). Make’s it all just a little clearer to me. You address and and also illuminate. By diagnosing the condition you point to the cure.
mjn777
July 9, 2011
We have had this knowledge and cure etc etc Neil refers too for centuries the problem is most people are just bad – as you can also find in the same scriptures.
Most are on a wide path to destruction ‘going with the flow’ like dead fish – if you are a live fish swimming against to current towards life – just rejoice in that fact most of all – but don’t expect many of the dead fish passing you by to be resurrected and join you in your struggle. If you do expect this to happen then i suggest reading the scriptures again in more detail.
mjn777
July 9, 2011
So what are we actually going to do anyway – does anyone have a plan besides mutual acknowledgement and sharing similar philosophy in cyberspace.
We cannot preach to the converted if we really want to get things done.
The Dream Vision is difficult to understand even for your fellow believers so how can it help the unenlightened and ignorant. They wont get past the first paragraph – sorry harsh i know but true.
It is a genius piece of work in it own right – of that i have no doubt but if you really want to help the average person – you need to talk in terms they can understand.
mjn777
July 10, 2011
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” – Albert Einstein