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The mysticism of wide open eyes

By Mike On May 26, 2017 · Add Comment
Three months before his death from pancreatic cancer in 1994, the British playwright Dennis Potter was interviewed for the BBC by broadcaster Melvyn Bragg. In obvious pain and taking regular swigs from a bottle of liquid morphine, Potter explored a wide range of questions about his work, politics, family and feelings—given that he was already in the terminal stage of his illness. I was spellbound by the raw honesty and energy of his answers, but there was one section that catapulted me into a different state entirely. It came when Potter described the plum tree blossom outside his [...]
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Who wants to live in a frictionless world?

By Mike On May 26, 2017 · Add Comment
Does it matter that Micah Johnson was killed by a robot, albeit one controlled by human hands? Johnson shot five police officers during a demonstration in Dallas, Texas, on July 7 2016. Twenty-four hours later he was blown apart by explosives maneuvered into position by a robot-controlled device that was normally used for bomb-disposal, after a gun battle and the break-down of negotiations with police. According to the Washington Post, the action was “widely praised as an innovative way to eliminate a threat without risking more officers’ lives.” This form of “violence by proxy” is already [...]
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Should funding agencies also share in the sacrifice of social change?

By Mike On May 26, 2017 · Add Comment
Every day of every year, in places like Standing Rock and Ferguson and Aleppo and Hong Kong, tens of thousands of people put their lives and livelihoods on the line in the struggle for human rights. If they are paid at all the amounts are very low and the risks are often high, so shared sacrifice is demanded from everyone involved. Opportunities for personal gain are subordinated to solidarity with colleagues and the cause in order to knit together a strong social fabric. Consistency between words and actions is essential in building mutual loyalty and trust. Faced by these imperatives, [...]
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The privilege of being privileged

By Mike On May 26, 2017 · 1 Comment
It takes a special sort of chutzpah, as we say in New York, to deliver a homily on privilege from the summit of the Ford Foundation. So kudos to Ford’s President Darren Walker who has done just this in his latest annual letter. “Privilege allied with ignorance,” he writes, “has become an equally pernicious, and perhaps more pervasive, enemy to justice,” before going on to focus on disability as a missing piece in the Ford Foundation’s jigsaw of diversity. If people are concerned about privilege, of course, there’s an obvious solution—just give it up: spend out your wealth, roll [...]
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What’s to be done with Oxfam?

By Mike On May 26, 2017 · Add Comment
On a bookshelf in my office sits a large red book with a plastic cover to ward off mud and blood, sweat and tears. Like all new Oxfam staff I was given a copy of the Field Director’s Handbook to guide me when I arrived in Lusaka in 1984. It’s still the best job I ever had. Conspicuously missing from the Handbook was a section on the agency itself, these being times when self-questioning was largely absent from the world of NGOs. But on a visit from headquarters my boss David Bryer told me something that really [...]
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Why it’s time to say goodbye to ‘doing good and doing well’

By Mike On May 26, 2017 · Add Comment
I hate to admit it, but it’s been a good week for the philanthrocapitalists—the movement that claims that social and environmental problems are best solved by wealthy people working through business and the market. First up was Bill Gates’ announcement of the “Breakthrough Energy Coalition” at the Paris climate conference, a venture designed to channel investment into new, low-carbon technologies. In fact the greatest need right now is the mass deployment of existing technologies like solar power, but that’s a less attractive proposition to investors who are looking for big returns from R&D. Then came Read Full Article →

Will the left ever get religion?

By Mike On May 26, 2017 · Add Comment
Why does religion drive so many people nuts? That’s the question that opens and closes our debate on religion and social change. On the surface the answer is obvious, at least for progressives—it’s because of the damage that’s been done by religion to the causes they hold dear: independence and equality for women, gay marriage and LGBTQ rights, peace and protection from zealots and fanatics, and safety in the face of sexual abuse. How come the ineffable being is always a bloke with a beard who privileges others who look the same as him? [...]
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The political emotions of Martha Nussbaum

By Mike On May 25, 2017 · Add Comment
Martha C. Nussbaum is Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago. She has made landmark contributions across a wide range of issues including democracy, sexuality, justice, human development and religion, but it was her book Political Emotions that caught my attention when it was published in October 2013—probably because I was launching a new section of openDemocracy at the time that seemed to build on the same philosophy. Nussbaum’s book explores how “public emotions rooted in love—in intense attachments to things outside our control—can foster commitment to shared goals [...]
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Let’s get real about the transformation of society: can you email me directions?

By Mike On May 25, 2017 · Add Comment
I fell in love with the English Lake District as a boy, and I’ve wanted to live there all my life. But since my home and family are thousands of miles away in upstate New York I’ve had to make do with contacts and connections via social media, supplemented by the occasional dose of walking in the hills. For the longest time I saw my web surfing and Facebook chatting as a poor substitute for being there in person, but I’ve come to realize that both the ‘actual’ and the ‘virtual’ are part of the [...]
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To remain in prison for the rest of my life is the greatest honor you could give me: the story of Sister Megan Rice

By Mike On May 25, 2017 · Add Comment
The Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oakridge, Tennessee, is supposed to be impregnable. But on July 28th 2012, an 84 year-old nun called Sister Megan Rice broke through a series of high-security fences surrounding the plant and reached a uranium storage bunker at the center of the complex. She was accompanied by Greg Boertje-Obed (57) and Michael Walli (63). The trio daubed the walls of the bunker with biblical references like “the fruit of justice is peace,” and scattered small vials of human blood across the ground. Then they sat down for [...]
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