Digest #5
upcoming and onramping:
Jordan Peterson Does It Again
by
Jordan Peterson’s series on Genesis broke into the zeitgeist like a revelation.
I was immediately drawn to it because I could see that like CS Lewis, he was making a way forward through the thorns and thistles of decaying modernity … What followed would transform my life and vocation.
I had hundreds of conversations on the Internet with people whose lives had been improved by watching JBP's online content. Many of these because of Jordan's work began exploring Christianity as a way to address what John Vervaeke coined "The Meaning Crisis".
This harvest was so large I knew I couldn't personally pastor it and most churches were either ill-equipped or uninterested to enfold these seekers so with the help of former CRC Minister John Van Donk I began to develop Estuary. https://www.estuaryhub.com
… My friend Jonathan Pageau had told me about his trip to Florida to discuss Exodus. Would this work? Could it work? Part of what was so special about the first Biblical Series was that it was Jordan's own ideas disconnected from the complex schools of Biblical scholarship.
Having now seen the first two episodes…
It has the sort of wild and diverse qualities that the best Bible studies have to offer. Here with an interesting cast of diverse perspectives contributing connecting regular people to hear the Bible speak to them in their contexts.
I can imagine this Exodus series inspiring thousands around the world to try their hands at this, helping to once again refresh our culture by having this sacred text once more ignite our spiritual imaginations…
It turns out that a book is more durable than… an empire.
~ Jordan Peterson
eye-catching:
Protopia and The Future of Heterodoxy: Why difficult conversations need to stay difficult
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… how to redevelop trust within our polarised societies, create ways to cooperate effectively across humanity and upgrade our civilisation to help prevent its collapse.” This is underpinned by the idea of Protopia itself, which means changing the world through gradual improvement, rather than the inevitable damage we do when we summon the dreaded scourge of the 20th Century: Utopia.
As the facilitator, I wanted to make sure I was creating a container that would deliver on this. One large and flexible enough to hold all of our perspectives, without collapsing us into false agreement, chaos, or meaningless grey areas. It’s one of the toughest facilitation challenges I’ve had, and I was feeling excited and grateful. We tried to hold conversations like this at Rebel Wisdom many times with varying degrees of success; often we just agreed with one another too much because we had so many shared reference points.
This felt different, and I think a reason why can be explained by the mediator Diane Musho Hamilton. I’ve learned a lot from her about difficult conversations, and one of her key ideas is that they always include a balance between sameness and difference. Sameness creates safety and opens us up to one another. Difference creates dynamism, creativity and a bit of danger…
[emphasis mine on bolded phrases quoted, which stood out as being a very tall order!]
When we’re discussing polarised issues, we are often doing it from and to one another’s masks and get inevitably get stuck. What brings us into generative, creative, compassionate conversations is when we can find ways to speak to who's beneath.
When we do, we come into contact with a complex, dynamic, contradictory human being instead of a set of ideas and ideological positions.
‘We’re all one’ can quickly become ‘we all have to agree’, and we were eager not to send that message…
… some of the most vibrant conversations during the Protopia Lab were around religion, and the role of the ‘god shaped hole’ in the West in our cultural fragmentation. Reflecting on this, I think it may be because religion gives us ways to go beyond our own masks. To move past the game to something real, permanent and certain. To a reality that isn’t changed by the pronouns we use or the colour of our skin, but is universal and solid and real.
Religions help us to go beyond our social games. To attune ourselves to a reality beyond what we can see, and what we say to one another. One of the most powerful aspects of Christianity, according to Rene Girard, is that it interrupts the social dynamics of blame and retribution that drive culture wars. It can help us move beyond the cycle by which we scapegoat the other, projecting the unresolved sins of the collective onto one group or person.
The more I’ve reflected on the conversations that came up during the Protopia Lab, the more I’ve found it useful to see cultural polarisation through a lens of cycles of blame and retribution. Unresolved rage, unresolved needs, unresolved hopes. Over all, what I feel in these kinds of conversations is a collective urge for the unspoken to be spoken…