Provocations
Short-take commentaries and conversation starters
The Spaces We Inhabit
Sat 09 Jan 2010 by Keely Latcham
In thinking about the importance of the spaces we inhabit, I recently read The Architecture of Happiness by Swiss philosopher and author Alain de Botton. An interesting read accompanied by many beautiful photographs, the book encouraged me to think further about the connection between space and identity—and virtue. We are not just spirits; we are more than our online presences. We have bodies and we live in spaces that help shape our experience of life.
One of de Botton’s central ideas is that of an alignment between the visual and ethical realms. That is to say, we find architecture beautiful because it corresponds to our ideas about “the good life.” Beautiful buildings, de Botton suggests, correspond to virtuous and happy people. Of course this is not always the case, nor is it a causal relationship; while architecture may suggest such ideals, it doesn’t necessarily bring them about. De Botton notes, “Not only do beautiful houses falter as guarantors of happiness, they can also [fail] to improve the characters of those who live in them.” While architecture undeniably possesses moral messages, he says, it “simply has no power to enforce them.”
However, de Botton insists that beautiful buildings convey a moral attitude, which recalls the claim of the great nineteenth-century critic John Ruskin that buildings speak to us “both of what we find important and what we need to be reminded of.” De Botton writes that architecture invites us to emulate its spirit, offering values it encourages us to adopt as our own. “It is architecture’s task,” de Botton says, “to render vivid to us who we might ideally be.”
Gollum as Everyman
Fri 15 May 2009 • Responses: 1 • by David Naugle
This article is adapted from material in Reordered Love, Reordered Lives: Learning the Deep Meaning of Happiness (Eerdmans 2008).
“There is not any thing in this world, perhaps, that is more talked of, and less understood, than the business of a happy life.” Seneca said this centuries ago, and it is still true today.
Down the ages, the best human thinking has connected our happiness with what we love. What do you love? How do you love the things that you love? What do you expect from the things you love? There aren’t too many questions more important than these. The reason is that what we love makes us who we are. If we love something that cannot sustain the weight of our expectations, or if we love something in the wrong way, such disordered loves will destroy the very happiness we seek and will eventually disfigure us.
Are Thoughts Material?
Mon 23 Feb 2009 • Responses: 2 • by John Polkinghorne and Nicholas Beale
A selection from Questions of Truth (Westminster John Knox, 2009).
I viewed a recent discussion on the topic of whether our thoughts are material. The Christian holds that the process of thought is material but thought itself is not. Atheists generally hold that all processes and outcomes of thought are solely material. They claim that all neuroscientists would agree. What are the implications for the Christian if our thoughts are wholly material?
Beale: This is a complex topic that we address in some detail in an appendix to the book. Let’s try and give an outline of our position here.
The World Standing Beside Me
Tue 18 Nov 2008 • Responses: 1 • by Jo Kadlecek
She didn’t mean to make me sad. My colleague’s words were short and brave, but there was no mistaking the heavy worry she felt as a mother.
“He’ll be here for a ten-day break,” she smiled. “Then back to Iraq for another tour. But really, it’s been okay. He’s okay.”
When I asked how she was doing, she emphasized the ways in which her son’s courage had grown during his twelve months away from home, how his sense of humor was still intact and his weekly phone calls encouraging.
The Institutionalization of Greed
Wed 22 Oct 2008 • Responses: 4 • by Prabhu Guptara
Excerpts from a Trinity Forum Conversation
“As a culture shifts from being focused on tradition or society or God to being focused on money, then the kinds of problems we have had over the past few years are only to be expected.”
Lives of Adventure, Fulfillment, and Service
Thu 28 Aug 2008 by Christopher Gergen and Gregg Vanourek
Some people don’t just live a life, they lead a life. They don’t sit around waiting for a lucky break. They create opportunities for themselves. They go after their dreams and bring them to life. Rather than bending to the status quo, they change it. As with any great effort, their work is never done but ever-evolving, and it is often inspiring to those around them.
Welcome to the territory of life entrepreneurs.
Putin’s Brezhnev Doctrine
Wed 20 Aug 2008 • Responses: 1 • by David Aikman
Forty years ago this August, all of Europe and the U.S. watched with horror as the Soviet army, in conjunction with units from four of its Warsaw Pact allies, rolled into Czechoslovakia to crush the “Prague Spring.” The “Spring” had been a dramatic movement for reform and liberalization of Czechoslovakia’s Communist system that had been introduced by Czech Communist leader Alexander Dubcek and some others.
The 200,000 invading troops met only token resistance, because Dubcek had ordered Czech citizens not to oppose the invasion. But in a singular act of brutal humiliation, Dubcek and his associates were transported to Moscow in chains in the belly of a Soviet cargo plane, then made to face the bullying shouts of the assembled Soviet Politburo. Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev’s rationale for the invasion became known as the “Brezhnev doctrine,” a principle that Communist Party control of the countries of Eastern Europe should never have to submit to reforms that might bring capitalism and democracy to them.
Islamist Ideology in the UK: Doing Fine
Sun 10 Aug 2008 by David Aikman
Three years after “7/7,” the British version of 9/11, when four suicide bombers immolated themselves and fifty-two other innocents—British people, foreign residents, or visitors to the UK, including Muslims and an Israeli woman who feared to return to Israel because of the danger of suicide bombings—any belief that the Islamist rage fueling the murderous rampage grew out of economic resentment has surely been laid to rest.
At least two new two pieces of information back up this view. First, poll after poll has revealed that British-born Muslims at British universities share a view of Islam dangerously sympathetic to Islamism, the preferred technical term for radical Islamic ideology. Second, two former British Islamists, Ed Husain and Maarjid Nawaz, have founded a counter-extremist Islamic think-tank in the UK that exposes the domestic roots of British Islamic extremism and is attempting to counter extremist ideas freely current in the British Muslim community.
Remembering the Soviet Union
Fri 25 Jul 2008 by David Aikman
A museum in Tallin, Estonia, offers an eye-opening glimpse into a terrifying past.
Tallin, Estonia.
The first odd thing you notice in the museum is the collection of ancient suitcases neatly lined up near the main entrance. What are they doing there? Then it hits you. This is not a museum of the history of the travel business, but a history of occupation; Soviet occupation. The suitcases were brought to the museum by hundreds of Estonians who were fortunate enough to have survived deportation to Siberia in the 1940s and who wanted to testify to what happened in their lives when Estonia belonged to the Soviet Union. Tourists on cruise-ships that stop at Baltic ports all the way to St. Petersburg can visit the museum on excursions often called, “Life in Soviet Estonia.” Participation in such a tour is an eerie and eye-opening glimpse into a terrifying past.
Israel-Lebanon: A Clash of Cultures
Fri 18 Jul 2008 by David Aikman
The biggest loser in the “transaction” between Israel and Hezbollah is Lebanon.
In the Middle East last week, no two scenes could have highlighted more vividly the clash of cultures in the Arab-Israeli dispute than the contrasting events in Lebanon and in Israel. In Beirut, there were shouts of acclamation, brass bands, and kisses on the cheek for the returning heroes—along with crowing signs in Arabic that read “humiliation” across a photograph of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. In Israel, the return of the bodies of two Israeli soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, was followed by the mournful sounds of funerals conducted with quiet dignity in Nahariya and Haifa for the two men. The exchange of two dead soldiers for five living prisoners and 199 dead Lebanese and Palestinian fighters was the fruit of some eighteen months of painful negotiation between Israel and Hezbollah that followed the 33-day “July War” in 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah.
