Monthly Archives: March 2020

by Clark Elliston, Assistant Professer of Religion and Philosophy, Schreiner University

Friends are all-too-frequently taken for granted, both in everyday human experience and in theology. It seems that for many people friends simply emerge; a shared laugh or thought becomes many and through some unseen alchemy a friend is created. Theologically the situation is a little more delicate. The concept of friendship poses a problem for theology insofar as friendship, in both antiquity and early theology, remains largely a preferential love. We choose our friends based on any number qualities, but we nevertheless choose them. This is a good gift, but as Soren Kierkegaard makes all too plain, this can be problematic for followers of a Savior who commands a neighbor-love of all persons. A preferential love which by necessity excludes others (as no one can love the whole world equally) thus violates the universality of Christs command to love all. Yet even here there are perplexing tensions. After all, the New Testament repeatedly mentions the beloved disciple and Jesus suggests an appropriate category of friendship when he notes that the greatest love is laying ones life down for friends. Nonetheless such difficulties, as well as the embedded character of human friendship, have made it strikingly absent from much theological discourse.

Yet like so many areas of human life in a technological world, sociality too has been affected. Study after study indicates that the social life of Westerners is suffering. We are more lonely, depressed, and anxious than ever before. We also know that self-reported social encounters are perhaps the greatest source of meaning and happiness available to us. Yet this is not to say that we simply need more social encounters after all, we are in the midst of one of the greatest social revolutions in history courtesy of the Internet. Though we may seclude ourselves physically from the surrounding world, most people will have hundreds of online interactions a day. As we work harder, as traditional ties lessen, and as the allure of instant communication grows, we should not be surprised as social media opportunities increase. Yet this transition into an online context poses myriad problems. Not least is the devolution of friendship as a fundamental form of human relationship. Instead, social media technologies promise ever-greater connectivity to others while paradoxically eroding constituent elements of friendship classically considered.

Two immediate issues arise when considering the digitalization of friendship through social media. First, social media friendship lacks consideration of character and the time it takes to cultivate character. Second, social media friendship remains crucially limited in terms of its presence with the other as friend. These issues, to be sure, do not undermine the project of social media entirely meaningful encounters with others can happen on several platforms. However, social media disciplines and forms our online relationships in crucial ways. When this disciplined thinking and formation creeps into other realms of life it becomes toxic.

When Aristotle wrote one of the most influential treatises on friendship, books seven and eight of the Nicomachean Ethics, he delineated between three types of friendship. Two are immediately familiar to us: friendships based on pleasure and on utility. In these we are friends with those whom we enjoy or who provide clear benefit to our personal projects. These are inferior modes of friendship, however, relative to friendships based on virtue. The friendship of virtue, in contrast, centers upon the character of the friend. We befriend those whose character we admire and who admire us for our character. While this emphasis on virtue possesses problems of its own, it nevertheless offers insight into a crucial facet of authentic friendship, namely that friendship should involve something other than deferred self-love. Friendships of virtue rightly privilege an other for their performance of virtue, rather than our own gratified desires or pursuits.

Second, social media cannot mediate the distance between persons. If time poses an immediate issue for the cultivation of relationship, then we should not be surprised that place does as well. More specifically, friendship is centrally related to presence with and for the other. This is poignantly and pastorally put best by Nicholas Wolterstorff when he writes about the death of his son:

If you think your task as comforter is to tell me that really, all things considered, its not so bad, you do not sit with me in my grief, but place yourself off in the distance away from me. Over there, you are of no help. What I need to hear from you is that you recognize how painful it is. I need to hear from you that you are with me in my desperation. To comfort me, you have to come close. Come sit beside me on my mourning bench (Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son, 34).

The images of proximity in this passage resonate. It is not the demonstration of either wit or wisdom which mitigates the distance between self and other, but the sheer presence of oneself alongside another in suffering. Whereas social media, as a quintessentially intellectual exercise, exists primarily in the mind, genuine friendship becomes incarnate in the concrete situations in which we find ourselves. The sympathy that undoubtedly exists in social media communities is thus closer to pity than compassion. Pity remains, while deeply sympathetic, apart from the one being pitied. I can pity someones circumstance from a distance. In contrast, and as indicated above, the practice of compassion requires that I be both present and willing to get my hands dirty. This is profoundly difficult and undermines the easy deployment of what we commonly call compassion.

Social media can be engaged wisely, and it indeed allows for convenient communication. Yet, its value lies primarily in its capacity to support already-existing friendships it is not generative of friendship. Friendship requires the patient cultivation of virtue alongside the courageous willingness to walk alongside another in their suffering. Such friendships school us for loving both God and world. Thus, Nobody would choose to live without friends even if he had all the other good things. (Nicomachean Ethics, VIII.i).

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Friending the World Sociality and the Transhuman Vision - Patheos

by Victoria Lorrimar

In engaging with transhumanist visions of the future, and the more general notion of human technological enhancement, from a theological perspective, a helpful starting point is the place of technology within a doctrine of creation.

Within a Christian understanding, an examination of the biblical language for creation (i.e. a word study of the Hebrew brand ytsar the first of which is reserved only for the action of God while the second is an activity that both God and humans carry out) suggests that it is appropriate to speak of humans as being genuinely creative from a theological perspective. Drawing on a metaphor of God as divine artist, we might situate human making within a theology of creation, rather than relegating it to the more distant doctrines of preservation, providence or redemption. Trevor Hart sums up this approach, arguing that viewing creation as a project divinely begun and established, yet one that is handed over to us with more to be made of it yet and inviting our responsible participation in the making, affords a fruitful perspective on the matter (Making Good, 2014: 8).

For a long time, the semantic scope of creation rejected the possibility of such parallels and served to underscore the radical otherness of God. We can chart the historical shift which saw the notion of creation extended from its previous preserve of God alone to human artistry. Creation proper may still apply solely to the work of God in certain instances, but the idea of creation more generally has expanded in scope.

In fact, we can track the understanding of human creativity as it diverges from its humble scriptural origins. The language of creativity is first ascribed to humans during the Renaissance, as the idea of art being a faithful imitation of divine creativity gave way to the idea of the artist or poet as a creator in their own right. This extends through the Romantic era and the Enlightenment period, with the result that the modern understanding of the arts is, on the one hand, more limited than its classical and mediaeval counterparts, in that earlier understandings of art encompassed human productivity more generally, but also more audacious in the claims it makes on behalf of human capacities and originality.

From the time of Francis Bacon, the father of modern science, we see this understanding of human capacities bound up in the promise of empirical science, the immense confidence in the expansion of human knowledge, the drive to master nature and the flourishing of utopian thought. This emphasis on dominion came to be enmeshed within theological understandings of creation, as creation found its way into the vocabulary used for human activities.

This does not mean, however, that it is inappropriate to speak of humans as genuinely creative. Hart, after an extensive historical analysis of the language of creation, reaches the conclusion that: at various key points in the story of Gods creative fashioning of a world fit for his own indwelling with us, divine artistry actively solicits a corresponding creaturely creativity, apart from which the project cannot and will not come to fruition (Making Good, 2014: 37).

We find similar ideas in the work of Jacques Maritain and Dorothy Sayers, who reinforce the theological significance of human making and its proper place within a doctrine of creation. Maritain describes the creativity of the artist as a development of divine creation, a work proceeding from the whole soul which bears the image of God. Though he distinguishes the creation of God (who is able to truly generate another substance through divine utterance) and human works of creating (which can only ever be signs), Maritain nevertheless grounds the dignity of art in his assertion that it realizes in act one of the fundamental aspects of the ontological likeness of our soul with God. Sayers, too, locates human creativity in our being made in the image of a triune Creator, introduced in her play The Zeal of Thy House(1937) and unpacked further in The Mind of the Maker (1941).

The challenges posed by transhumanist visions of the human future require us to develop a sufficiently robust account of theological anthropology in return. Of course, theological anthropology is a very broad category, and Ive focused on the understanding of human creativity within that. If we reflect on enhancement technologies, this prompts the question as to whether these kinds of technology are a legitimate exercise of our creativity, set within the framework of a broader doctrine of creation.

Most of the detailed theological treatments of human creativity we might turn to focus almost exclusively on the arts. If they do treat technology, they tend to have developed within the science and religion field and often are accompanied by an over-privileging of rationality and an epistemological confidence in human capability that neglects an account of fallenness and the need for discernment (here Im thinking mainly of Philip Hefners created co-creator proposal outlined most comprehensively in his 1993 work The Human Factor). In these latter discourses, even if they are moving beyond a foundationalist epistemology, the role of the imagination for understanding and discernment is often neglected.

Yet, transhumanism as a philosophy is veryimaginative. There are all kinds of synergies with science fiction that other scholars have drawn out, but (whatever we say about some of the ideologies involved) we have to admit that transhumanist visions of transcendence are captivating for many (even if not always taken seriously). If we are to engage these movements from a theological perspective then we need to meet them with equally compelling theological accounts of the future, and the good news is that Christian theology has a deep well of resources to draw on in this area.

James McClendon argued for the need to enter the tournament of narratives competing for attention within a postmodern milieu. Presented in ways that recruit the imagination (as James K. A. Smith describes the imperative for good stories in the moral arena), the visions of transcendence and glorification proclaimed so confidently in transhumanist literature are ripe for reclamation by Christian theologians, philosophers, writers and artists. We might respond with a fuller vision of the human future, a greater hope to set alongside the imaginings of transhumanists and techno-utopians. Of course, this is already a move to eschatology, but then we dont want to separate out creation and redemption as entirely independent doctrinal loci.

Whereas technology itself tends to occupy many of the classic roles of a deity in the present technological paradigm, theologians are able to expose the pretensions to self-love inherent in certain technological mindsets (as theologian Brian Brock puts it). A Christian account of hope declares that in conceiving, assessing and implementing technologies, we bear neither the burden of correctly envisioning or accomplishing redemption for ourselves nor the risk and dread of complete failure. Technology occupies its proper place within the work of a gracious God who allows creation to participate in bringing the creation toward glorious fulfilment.

By reflecting on our technological activity in the context of theological accounts of co-creation (recognising and challenging the ways in which understanding has diverged from a biblical account of creativity), and by setting imaginative portrayals of Christian hope alongside transhumanist projections, we might think of theology as entering the tournament of narratives competing for victory over the human (and non-human, an aspect often neglected by transhumanists!) future.

Excerpt from:
Technology and Human Creativity in Theological Perspective - Patheos

Nathan Thornburgh and photographer Shane Carpenter were in New Hampshire last month for their longterm reporting project on the states odd presidential primary. In hindsight, it looks more surreal than ever.

It is unnerving to look at the pictures at this moment, in this week. Photographer Shane Carpenter and I have been working on a longterm project about the New Hampshire presidential primary for four election cycles spanning 16 years, but the things Ive come to love about the campaign up therethe intimacy of retail politicking, the electricity of the big ralliesnow just trip alarms in my mind. All the handshakes. All the pressed flesh, the leaning in, the campaign buses filled with coughing staffers, the moist microphones, the communal pens at the polls. The collective spittle of a talkative, aging electorate grabbing the shoulders of talkative, aging candidates. The entire thing feels so antediluvian.

But still, this is how it was just a few weeks ago. Were at the end of New Hampshire series of The Trip Podcastthe final episode is with Zoltan Istvan, who is both a lesser-known candidate for president and an avowed transhumanist obsessed with using technology to defeat deathso it seems a good time to publish a few of Shanes photographs from our time there.

We spent some time, as we always do, getting to know the brave and occasionally delusional lesser-known candidates who pay to be on the official ballot in the hopes of stealing some votes for themselves or their cause. And there were mainstream moments, like the Mcintyre-Shaheen candidate cattle-call in the big downtown arena. That one was cathartic for Shane and me in particular; the last time we were at that arena was for Trumps final 2016 rally before the primary in New Hampshire. He used the word pussy while ad-libbing with the crowd; he booed and badgered the press as they stood in their pen. It was the kind of monster truck rally political event that has become all too familiar over the last four years. The next day, Trump won.

This year, the New Hampshire primary was held on February 11, twelve days after the first U.S. coronavirus patient had been diagnosed in Washington State. No candidate mentioned it once while we were there; no voter asked any questions about it. On Primary Day, Shane and I drove down from Dixville Notch, where we had witnessed the campy traditions of the midnight vote. The next day we left the state; I drove back to Boston and took the Acela to New York City.

Less than two weeks after that, the Biogen conference kicked off at the Marriott Long Wharf in Boston. So far, 97 confirmed cases have been reported among conference attendees, spreading throughout the U.S. and even to China.

Now the virus is everywhere, and these pictures are unnerving to look at, but somewhere in here youll see the next president of the United States (and no, Im not talking about our lesser-known candidates like self-described jailhouse lawyer Mary Maxwell, Arkansan actual lawyer Mosie Boyd, or Zoltan Istvan). And though its hard to know what the half-life of social distancing will be after this pandemic ends, I do know that many of the building blocks of the new America we get after this one has molted are in these photos. The fervor, the turnout, the radical belief in participatory democracy. Well need them all.

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Electioneering on the Eve of the Virus Nathan Thornburgh and photographer Shane Carpenter were in New - Roads and Kingdoms

So instead of a list of local events, the newsroom staff at Johnson City Press helped pull together a list of shows to watch on streaming services this coming week.

Shrill on Hulu: Shrill is a new Hulu comedy series starring Aidy Bryant from Saturday Night Live as Annie, a fat young woman who wants to change her life but not her body. Annie tries to advance her journalism career while dealing with bad boyfriends, a sick parent and an often dismissive boss. This show explores sexism, body image issues and much more.

Rebellion on Netflix:Rebellion is a five-part series that is told from the perspectives of a group of fictional characters who live through the political events of the 1916 Easter Rising. The show focuses on the revolutionaries fighting for a free Ireland, as well as those involved in the British occupation. A great show for history buffs.

Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia on Hulu: Fans of this cult comedy classic were displeased to see the show leave Netflix in 2017, but you can still catch the gang in action on Hulu, which recently added season 14 to its streaming service. The show, starring Glenn Howerton as Dennis Reynolds, Charlie Day as Charlie Kelly, Rob McElhenney as Mac, Kaitlin Olson as Dee Reynolds and Danny DeVito as Frank Reynolds, follows the exploits of a group of arrogant narcissists who seem to get worse as the show continues.

Adult Swim App: For fans of alternative comedy, the free Adult Swim app can be found on your Roku device or other smart TVs. The app includes everything the channel has ever featured over the years, includingRick and Morty,The Eric Andre Show,Loiter Squad, all the hijinks ofTim and Eric, and much more. With hours of free TV shows, this app alone could kill a lot of time.

Counterpart on Amazon Prime: Counterpart, a sci-fi thriller drama starring JK Simmons, Olivia Williams and Harry Lloyd, tells the tale of a United Nations employee, played by Simmons, who discovers that the agency he works for is hiding a parallel dimension thats at war with our own. Within that parallel dimension is a top spy whos his other self.

The Expanse, an Amazon Prime original: The Expanse, starring Steven Strait, Cas Anvar and Dominique Tipper, follows a police detective in the asteroid belt, the first officer of an interplanetary ice freighter and an earth-bound United Nations executive as they discover a vast conspiracy that threatens Earth's rebellious colony on the asteroid belt.

Ozark on Amazon Prime:Ozark, starring Jason Bateman, Laura Linney and Julia Garner, follows afinancial adviser who takes his family from Chicago to the Missouri Ozarks to work for a drug boss who he must appease through money laundering and more. Season three will come out on March 27.

Altered Carbon on Netflix: Altered Carbon, starring Anthony Mackie, Lela Loren and Simone Missick, is set in a futuristic transhumanist world in which peoples consciousnesses can be transferred into other bodies, orsleeves. This show follows a prisoner who returns to life in a new body with a chance to win his freedom by solving a murder. The show is based on Richard K. Morgan's cyberpunk noir novel of the same name.

The Witcher on Netflix: Though the show has received mixed reviews from some, most have seemed to enjoyThe Witcher, an action fantasy series starringHenry Cavill, Anya Chalotra and Freya Allan. The show, which is set for another season, follows a mutated monster-hunter for hire in a turbulent world where people often prove more wicked than beasts.

Frozen 2 on Disney Plus: The musical fantasy film Frozen 2 was released early on Disney Plus on Sunday for viewers getting throughthis challenging time. This critically acclaimed animated film follows characters Anna, Elsa, Kristoff, Olaf and Sven as they leave Arendelle to travel to an ancient enchanted land to find the origin of Elsa's powers and save their kingdom in peril.

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Staying away from public events during COVID-19 caution? Stream these shows at home - Johnson City Press (subscription)