Matthew Henry John Bartlett

Eric Schlosser (of Fast Food Nation fame) on the prison-industrial complex [via NRT]
Burning Man and the gift economy
Eye of the Fish is spawned from WellUrban

Eisenhower said:

[There is] a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties.

Wendell Berry said:

I think that human dignity … depends on not knowing everything. I think that you and I have a measure of dignity and are granted a measure of dignity because just anybody cannot presume to understand us entirely, and that dignity, that mystery, seems to me to be infinitely worth protecting.

Thanks for coming to the engagement party. We had a ten out of ten time.

Yesterday evening Casey Aaron Jonathan Richie Mr Heeringa and I went to Chris & Elaine‘s and talked with and listened to Brian J Walsh for a couple of hours. He talked about his upcoming book Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire. He identified what he describes as contemporary expressions of the ‘principalities and powers’, i.e. global consumerism/capitalism (greed a virtue) + pax americana. He told us that dualism is the enemy of a useful Church. And he liked Fast Food Nation!

Tonight in the bath i finished Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser (review), which my friend Rachel lent me a couple of weeks ago. Appears that the fast food industry (At least in the States) and pratically everything connected to it is thoroughly fuct.

A few months ago i read Down With Big Brother by Michael Dobbs (review) which describes some of the insane stupidities of the fall of the Soviet Empire. Reading that, and Naomi Klein’s No Logo (review) makes me think that capitalism (or whatever it is that we wade to work in) is not inherently better than communism. I don’t expect that this a very interesting issue for most of you, but for years i’ve prided myself on being Mr Super-Right-Wing Libertarian Man. Now i think they’re both riddled with rottenness, and that neither the Left nor the Right provides a good model for Kingdom critique of the powers.

Also, i keep finding that for the most part, the prophets aren’t coming from inside Christianity.

Said Wendell Berry at the ‘Fast Food World’ conference in 2003:

After long practice I can say all I know in eight minutes. Evenutally it’ll be a haiku. My starting point is the failure of the environmental movement to envision and promote a conserving, land-based economy. The movement has failed to forsee or envision a mean between the pristine and the utterly spoiled. There’s talk now, among biologists, of dividing the world 50-50 between nature preserves and industrial farming & forestry. But this abandons any hope of harmony between human life and the life of the world. Without which, neither can be preserved. (more…)