Of Intersections and Way Faring

The good folks at Substack suggest that you start your newsletter/blog by beginning with “why this, why now”.  Excellent advice.  “This” is the very crowded intersection, in my life, where Anthropology, Religious Studies, Cultural Studies and Politics collide, and, at which, cross pollinated ideas run amok. More, much more, on this below and in each future instalment.

“Now” is also an intersection. Bluntly, I need to find a way to generate income, to put all those years of studying to work so that I can haul myself up over the poverty line and into a decent life for the last years of my life.  I am now in “retirement” but, as so many of my age have found, our pensions no longer cover rent, food and “living expenses” – especially in a tek world where things have to be replaced, peripheralled or connected.  It is hard enough learning to navigate this brave new world, but you gotta pay as you go, right?  In my case, unfortunately one not all that unique, I single parented a multiply Disabled child into her adulthood (and through university, I might add) but single parenting is a notoriously under “funded” career, especially where pensions are concerned.  Ergo, rather than sling hash at the local, I’d prefer to sling words on subjects in fields I have been able to tuck around the corners of that parenting job. University is such a great hide-out and allows such flexibility that it is possible to do both (intensive parenting that a Disabled child requires, and acquiring degrees by virtue of perseverance alone). I don’t think we are supposed to be as crass as I have just been – to say that my “why” involves generating income, especially not as a priority item.  But years ago, I read an article in the Toronto Star, entitled “I’ll show you mine, if you’ll show me yours” and it was a plea for a breath of fresh and honest air about how our personal economies “articulate” with the broader economy – in my case, not all that well.   And given my ear to the ground, I hear, despite the shout outs of success, that that is the state of the people’s union.

But money isn’t all of it.  The luxury of having a “platform” to write about “things” is a deep and sustaining pleasure all its own.  You can’t go through that much university, can’t be an observer of the world (its past, present and future) without having a few things that feel like they need to be said – or questions asked. For example, I recently wrote (but have not heard back from) Erica Chenoweth, pleading for a debate between the “fall of civilizations” scholars and the “mass non-violence protest (will save the day)” scholars because, although I know each camps’ arguments by heart,  I need to hear them speaking to each other, and answering the qualifications each puts on the other’s arguments: are we finally in “the end times” (because civilizations can, and have, fallen when they reached certain tipping points), or, can mass mobilization pull us back from climate chaos and peak depletion (and the fall that must inevitably follow)?  I’d like to know.  Wouldn’t you? Yes, yes, I have read “The Dawn of Everything” and while there was new information, and while certain findings did “up-end” received anthropological “truths”, I did not feel that its optimistic message rang true for the overriding reason that the issue of “scale” (social scale, folks) was given a jolly short shrift. Glossed but by no means deep dived – and we need that deep dive into scale, the fraught intersection of resource, population, economic structure, through-put and political intention.             

Speaking of “End times”, it has that unavoidable biblical ring.  Which happens to be one of my research rabbit holes.  I went into Religious Studies hoping to learn something about European Paganism by following the leading edge of Christianity as it spread northwestward and reading off its encounters with local cult. But like so many who venture into “Western Religions” I fell into the “Jesus studies” trap – because, like Everest “it’s there” and because it really is fascinating.  And, I fell in love with Greek. As my teacher, Anne Marie Lewis, used to tell us “The Greek verb is a thing of beauty”.  I plastered newsprint sheets on every wall so I could easily see (and therefore comprehend, was the hope) all those declensions and conjugations.  Well, it worked. That was for a Bachelor’s Honours Specialist (second set of degrees after Anthro), and I graduated Summa Cum Laude by the sneaky virtue of dropping any class I thought I couldn’t ace.  I have just gone back to studying Greek again, adding in Koine too.  Because an added – and unexpected – benefit was that it rescued my brain from deterioration.

But.  The problem is, all that unrealized eschatology, found in Earliest Christianity Studies, would seem to put a dint in Extinction Rebellion.  (Fodder for a future post but in the meantime, how many “End times” can there be????)

And so, that is where past, present and future meet – and crash.  How could one not have questions?  

As well as this newsletter/blog, I will soon be launching a resurrection of a project from many years ago.  That project was called “Mythic Movies” but since we have come so far in videography, I think -drawing on that Religious Studies language – I might call it Video Evangelion.  It seems to me that our culture produces extraordinary series that are probes into morality, ethics, cult, spirituality – the whole nexus of “meaning” in sentient relations, from the most intimate to the broadest social configuration.  So, keep a lookout, it will be coming down the pike any week now.

So that is the “why this” and the “why now”.  Next up: Throwing my hat into the “Jesus book ring”, mine is provisionally titled “Confusion” - as I invite you along into the rabbit warren of current Jesus studies for a quick look at the mess.  Should be fun.