Do we still know where we are?

Yesterday (Sunday 19th May) the swifts came back. Some of them nest in the eaves of our houses, and this year, what with our awful spring, they are two or even three weeks late. The day before, we had our first community get together in each others gardens and it seemed profoundly wrong in a deeply spiritual sense that it was cold and overcast and many flowers had not yet bloomed – and the swifts were not circling above.

In meeting for worship yesterday we were reminded that it was pentecost – a celebration of new life in the spirit. Weeks earlier it was Easter – the coldest on record, but supposedly a celebration of the resurrection of life. And then on the 1st May those with pagan inclinations were supposed to celebrate new life. A friend with Finnish connections told me that there they celebrate Walpurgis Night, after Saint Walpurga, on 30th April, again to mark new life, yet northern Finland  is still in the depths of winter.

What seems to have happened is that all these externally imposed festivals have disconnected us from the physical reality of the changing seasons. When we should be relating spiritually with the world as it is, instead we are encouraged to relate mystically with some imagined world where spring always arrives on Easter Sunday, or 1st May. And so it is that we become detached from the physical world as it is, and we are but a short way from exploiting it and the creatures in it, including our fellow human beings, for our own selfish ends, all justified by appeal to some disconnected ideal, whether religious or political.

When I first started to become really aware of the world-as-it-is, which coincided with first attending a Quaker meeting, I had become profoundly disillusioned with established Christianity, and came to call it the 'two thousand year ago, two thousand mile away religion'. But we do not need to have the external authority of imposed festivals to cut us off from the world, our consumer culture is more than effective by itself. It amazes me that supermarket fresh food sections, and even some greengrocers, look almost identical whatever time of year it is. And so it is that our disconnection is complete and we become lost and wander aimlessly over the world damaging it by accident as much as deliberately, so blind are we to the reality that is outside of us.

This last weekend we had asparagus for the first time in ten months, and we sat in the garden and toasted the swifts with bubbly.

The "G" Word

"The name of God can be used to freeze our wonder, to make a comforting and useful idol, or it can be the opposite: a name that opens into continuing mystery."

- Thomas Moore (The Soul's Religion)

Discuss?

Get out of your head and into the world

There is a need to engage with the sheer physicality of the world, to get out of our heads and feel the resistance of the world as we do things in it. By being taken up with ideals formed inside our heads, we become focused on wanting solutions before we have even looked properly at the problem, let alone understood the problem. The physical world does not let you do this. It will bite back at you and hurt you if you do not engage fully, with all the senses, but especially touch, paying attention to felt experiences. This is the true meaning of 'mindfulness': it is not about the mind at all, but about getting away from the mind and experiencing the world and being aware of the world and everything and everyone in it. 

Our western culture teaches us to be thinkers observing the world - we absorb this standpoint like mothers milk, not even aware of how it is distorting our perspective of reality. Instead we need to be actors relating to the world. This viewpoint is profoundly heterocentric – in the physical world, if you constantly pay attention to yourself, you will trip up, so you are forced to pay attention to the world of which you are a part.

Technology disengages us from the world - we think we are supermen, when all we are doing is flicking a switch to turn on the power. We think that we can shape the world to our own desires, hammer and chain saw our way through any obstacle, not realizing that once something has been broken without understanding how it works, it cannot be mended.

Engaging with the physicality of the world teaches us to engage properly socially. Staying with the physical problem, realizing our physical limitations, feeling it through, accepting uncertainty and risk, looking for the novel approach, being physically hurt by mistakes; all this teaches us to listen to others, teaches us the value of dialogue and interchange, and the uselessness of competition.

Realizing how puny we are in the physical world, how fragile our bodies are, how easily we succumb to disease and infirmity, teaches us the need to find ways of working that use minimal force, that don't wear us out. As our engagement with the physical world teaches us to be easy with ourselves, so we learn to be easy with others, to listen, to engage, to forgive.

As we actively engage with the physical world, so we learn that to not get bitten back we must relate fully to the other, to know the other and to discover ourselves back through the other. And so in turn we learn to empathise with others, to know ourselves through the other person we are engaged in a relationship with. We realise that sympathy is merely looking at the other person through our own eyes.

And so it is that we come to walk cheerfully over the earth, feeling that earth rising up to meet our feet, and realising that 'answering that of God' is not a notion in our heads about some sort of essence in the other person, but seeing ourselves through them.

All in it together?

 “Vile Product of Welfare UK”

screamed the Daily Mail on 3rd April, after the conviction of Mick Philpott.

But when Dennis Stevenson (a lord), James Crosby (a knight of the realm) and Andy Hornby were found to have “recklessly” ruined HBOS (Halifax Bank Of Scotland) and cost the rest of us £20Bn, where was the headline:

“Vile Products of Bonus-Culture UK”?

George Osborne says there is a

 "question for government and society" about the influence of benefits on behaviour.

But is there not also a

"question for government and society" about the influence of bonuses on behaviour?

While people languish on welfare as a result of the crisis caused by the likes of Stevenson, Crosby and Hornby and are being scapegoated, Fred (“the shred”) Goodwin, who ruined RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland) and cost us £45Bn, is probably paying the most expensive lawyers in the world to analyse every dot and tittle of the law to wriggle out of multiple lawsuits against him, no doubt easily paid for from his massive salaries, bonuses and pension, most likely held off-shore so as to pay as little tax as he can get away with.

Unless and until we see the likes of Goodwin stripped of every penny they ever had and joining the queue for the food bank with the people he impoverished, there is absolutely no justice or equality in this land.

It is not Mick Philpott who is “vile”, nor Fred Goodwin, but the system that entrenches the injustice and inequality that brought about the society we find ourselves in. Individuals can and should be forgiven and are capable of repentance – systems have to be overthrown, and it is to the system and it's perpetrators who are in government that we must direct all the anger and bile and contempt and passion we can possibly muster.

What's in a name?

At Britain Yearly Meeting this year, we are being asked to consider 'trusting in Quaker Trusteeship'. We are told that because we are a charity we have certain legal obligations and we must have trustees who must do things in certain ways.

Before the Enlightenment, people believed, as they still do in many parts of the world, that to find the right name for something was to be able to control it. Names had visceral power, and naming and cursing were dangerous activities. In our sophisticated civilisation we think that we are rational and know that names are mere labels. But we are mistaken. Research reported by CommonCause shows that the way we name things subconsciously 'frames' the way we think about them and value them (or otherwise). A report here illustrates this with the use of economic language – the differences that happen, tested in controlled experiments where only the names are chnged. For instance when we call people 'consumers' rather than 'citizens', positive emotions tend to be associated with materialistic values, such as wealth, image and success.

Calling people 'trustees' has unwittingly trapped us in certain modes of thinking. We have 'framed' our thoughts and don't realise that there is a whole world outside the frame. I believe that this has also happened in our meeting here in Sheffield. Rather than the more normal 'Premises and Finance' committee, we have a 'Management' committee, and rather than employ a 'warden' we employ a 'manager'. This has trapped us in hierarchical and controlling ways of working despite our testimony to equality. I wish that our meeting house business was a workers cooperative and we got rid of special roles for 'management', This is especially so when my wife, Chriss, who works at our meeting house, arrives home frustrated and sometimes angry.

Many people I talk to say we should not be a charity because charity law imposes structures on us that are against our testimony. In fact, in financial matters and care of resources our Quaker integrity makes demands on us beyond any law: we should not be conforming to the law, we should be surpassing it, and, where needed, demanding changes to the law, as we have done for gay marriage. Instead we seem to cow before the law, and fear the Charity Commissioners and feel that we have to conform to secular ways to satisfy them. The truth is that the work that 'trustees' do in the most part still needs to be done somewhere by someone. Where has our testimony to integrity gone and why aren’t we trusting the spirit?

What being a charity and calling a group of us 'trustees' has done, in my view, is to expose the ever creeping instrumentalism in Quaker work and organisation. The adoption of 'management speak', of ever more 'framing' in economic terms, of the veneration of 'experts'. We think that because we are Quakers we will not be infected by the ways of the world, but we have a 'Framework for Action', which many people, myself included, have found highly problematic. So we think that we can now tell where the spirit comes from?

We do need to explore how to be effective and use our resources wisely. We have to keep the name 'trustees' if we are going to remain a charity. But working out what 'Quaker Trusteeship' might be is fraught with problems, not just because 'Quaker' can mean just about anything, but because 'Quaker' refers to our values and relationships rather than to our organisation. I suggest that we explore 'Cooperative Trusteeship', to reinforce modes of association that are non-hierarchical and lead to equality rather than control. This is a debate that also needs to happen in the cooperative movement, since many co-operatives are or want to be charities, and vice-versa, so we can find common cause with like minded people, which will strengthen our analysis.

As for where we place our trust: we trust the spirit, that spirit that informs our testimonies to integrity and equality – we need to believe in people, not structures and names.

I hope that the debate about 'Trusteeship' will be a wake up call for our society. We are constantly at the mercy of the Zeitgeist. In the 19^th century we fell for evangelicalism, in the 20^th century for idealism, and now in the 21^st century for managerialism.

“The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” John 3:8, KJV

The New Priesthood.

The Quaker way is to discover the truth from within; that any external authority, be it priest, church, scripture, is not sufficient without inner convincement. This is our distinct witness, that is shown in the way we live our lives and organise our society. This is my convincement, discovered by revelation in December 1988, nine months before entering a Quaker Meeting House for the first time.

At Britain Yearly Meeting this year, we are to consider 'Trust In The Spirit' and 'Trust in Quaker Trusteeship'. Now 'Trust In The Spirit' I can understand: this is what we mean by inner convincement coming before any external authority: we trust 'the spirit' to show us the truth or otherwise of any authority or power put before us. Our discernment processes: Meeting for Worship for Business, Threshing, Clearness, Worship Sharing, have all been developed over the centuries to aid us in hearing the voice of the spirit.

But what does it mean to 'Trust in Quaker Trusteeship'? What is the difference between 'Quaker Trusteeship' and the normal secular sort found in charities that many of us are or have been trustees of?

The demands of the Quaker Way are profound – it is not a way for the faint hearted. Through the centuries, we have, as a society, failed in the challenge to discern and follow the 'leadings of the spirit', daunted by the sheer complexity and hard work of it all. In the eighteenth century all that persecution in the century before was just too much and we just became 'quiet'. In the nineteenth century, along with many other churches, we became evangelical and started to trust the scriptures – the infallible Word Of God or so they said. In the twentieth century we followed the trend of liberal idealism, to follow an ideal rather than work out what concrete action is required of us in our day-to-day lives.

And now, in the twenty-first century we seem to be overwhelmed by the sheer complexity of modern life and look to experts and managers to show us the way. In a technocratic society, the managers and experts become our priests – we trust their pronouncements rather than the wisdom of our own hearts gleaned from practical experience in the world. We are even told in The Friend by Tom Jackson (8th Jan. 2010) “I have come to the conclusion that the Quaker Business Method applied to the subject of finance is not appropriate”. So we are left with no alternative but to "Trust in Quaker Trusteeship" to sort out our finances and other complex problems of our relationship with society at large.

It was in just such a context, back in December 1988, when I realised from within myself that the authority of so-called experts was a sham. In the face of protests about an airport right next to our community, we were told that we needed to trust them to work out the complex economic problems of a large city like Sheffield, and that they would look after us, and that we would all benefit from increased employment and wealth. They have been proved wrong.

“There is a curious idea abroad that only specialists and experts are capable of answering the fundamental questions at issue in modern society. This is the reverse of the truth. The expert and the specialist, the highly trained and highly cultivated individual may be useful and essential for solving technical problems about the means by which the general solution can be carried into practical effect, but they are positively disqualified for deciding what the general purposes should be. There is nothing paradoxical in this." (John Macmurray, “The Creative Society” 1935; SCM Press, pp 167-8)

George Fox discovered  from within himself that “to be bred at Oxford or Cambridge was not sufficient to fit a [person] to be a minister of Christ" (Journal, 1647, qfp 19.02). So it is – or should be – with trustees: they are not fit to tell us what we should or should not do. John Macmurray, the Quaker philosopher, knew this too. They may advise us, but there is only one place for trust – and that is in the spirit, the inward light, as discerned in the gathered meeting, not by any individual, call themselves "minister" or "pope" or "manager" or "trustee", or in any group of such people.

Is Fair Trade Fair?

Since we are in the middle of this year's Fairtrade fortnight, it might be worth asking the question: Is Fairtrade fair? There is a lot of criticism out there, almost invariably from economists, which are dutifully picked up by newspapers and magazines during events like Fairtrade Fortnight. One prominent essay on the subject is by Peter Griffiths, which gets straight to the point by arguing that not only is Fairtrade not fair, it is unethical (Ethical Objections to Fairtrade, 2011). This essay has just been signposted here in Sheffield through Now Then magazine, in an article by Cassie Kill to mark the fortnight.

Now Peter Griffiths, like most good economists, posits a Utilitarian ethic, and basically concludes, after highlighting several problems with Fairtrade, some of which are picked up in the Now Then article, that the best way to support Third World producers is to pay the minimum price possible and give the money you save to charity. If you are a Utilitarian this is the end of the argument and you may as well stop reading this now.

There are many critiques of the Griffiths essay, and others like it, but at the end of the day is is probably fair to say that nothing is perfect in this complex world, and Faitrade has problems like anything else. A better way to look at this is to get beyond the problems or otherwise of Fairtrade marketing and look at fairness itself. And rather than struggling to understand the economics of remote countries, to look at fairness right here where we live and work and do our shopping. The minimum wage is regularly posited by economists as creating a 'market distortion' that leads to unforeseen unfairness, often around increased unemployment. We should instead, economists argue, allow wages to find their own level and so keep prices low so we can all afford goods and services and all (supposedly) find work.

The problem with this sort of utilitarian argument is that it assumes that the market works for all of us, and we are all on a 'level playing field' and all 'in it together'. In fact, what happens is that most companies are only interested in supplying goods and services and providing employment in order to make a profit for their shareholders, who are often not the same people who are buying these goods and services. This is called 'maximising shareholder value' and companies will do everything they can within the law (and sometimes a little bit outside it) to achieve this, including lobbying to get laws changed in their favour, avoiding paying taxes, and not checking supply lines. For them, the minimum wage and fairtrade agreements undermine opportunities to maximise shareholder value.

One of the key ways to maximise shareholder value is to 'externalise costs' , that is, to avoid paying the real price for anything if you can get away with it. Two key areas for externalising costs is firstly to pay the lowest wages possible and hope someone else will feed, clothe and house people who get paid so little that they cannot afford such basics, and secondly to trash the environment and hope that someone else will clean it up.

So if you seek the cheapest price for goods and services, in half decent countries like the UK you will find yourself paying increased taxes to support benefit payments and cleaning up the environment. When you see destitute people from the Third World on the telly you can always give some of the money you have saved to Oxfam.

But whether people are in East Sheffield or East Africa, they don't want charity, they want fairness and justice. The minimum wage is not enough, we should pay a living wage. People don't want aid, they want to sell their produce at a price they can live on and be able to send their children to school and afford health care.

If you pay the lowest price that you can find, someone somewhere, along with their environment, will almost certainly be being trashed whilst already wealthy shareholders pocket even more. These shareholders and their agents, the bonus seeking chief executives on obscenely high salaries, backed by their lawyers, will stop at nothing: they tried to convince us that it was safer not to wear seatbelts, that asbestos and tobacco do not kill you, and finally that climate change is not caused by their rampant overexploitation of the planet.

In Now Then Cassie Kill rather weakly say that she does not have all the answers and suggest that we should do a little bit of research, though she does say that she buys faitrtrade when she can afford it, how ever often that turns out to be.

So here are some pointers:

Firstly, get it straight in your head that the vast majority of big companies are in it for profit for shareholder value and nothing else despite all the nice things they say in their adverts and promotional literature. And secondly, see through the shortcomings of Utilitarianism. You can use utilitarian ethics to justify slavery – do you really want to go there?

So you want to buy something and you don't want to make people dependent on benefits or aid, and you don't want their environment to be trashed.

The most important criteria is provenance.

Do you know where it came form? Who grew it or made it? What their lives are like? What labour laws and other rights they have? If you don't, then either don't buy it or find out. If you cannot find out, either the supplier does not care, seeking only the lowest price, or knows something they don't want you to find out. If you had done this with your frozen beefburgers, you would not now be feeling sick at the thought of what you were eating last month.

The next step is to buy from a co-operative or small trader wherever you can. Shop at the Co-op and join and, if you want, influence policy. Buy from John Lewis and Waitrose. Buy from the very person who owns the business and get to know them and ask about their suppliers. Don't buy Cadbury's Fairtrade dairy milk, buy the Co-op's. Half the world's population benefits from cooperatives, including over a billion members, 100 million workers and over a trillion dollars of trade. You can help freeze out the already stupidly rich shareholders and build up the cooperative movement. Find out about Sheffield Co-ops here: http://sheffield.coop/list. Find out about co-operatives worldwide here: http://ica.coop.

You can help pay the £6.9 million salary of Tesco's CEO or you can help people like yourself. You choose.

The next step is to buy from countries that have established labour rights and decent welfare systems. Despite the efforts of our own country to the contrary, the EU has established and maintained comprehensive labour and welfare legislation. If you shop for food in season there is virtually no reason to buy food from outside the EU. And stuff like coffee, tea, chocolate and bananas can easily be bought fairtrade through cooperative suppliers or directly from known cooperatives.

And finally, yes it often costs more. After all you are making sure that growers and workers are getting a decent living, but the pursuit of shareholder value is so endemic that even cutting out the middle people and dealing with cooperatives still makes it more expensive. So what are you going to do, give in and go to Tesco's? Remember, one day they will come for you, and there will be no one left to help you.

Instead, why not spend twice as much on half as much? You are no worse off, you can learn to make do and mend and even end up recycling less. OK, you still need to eat, but do you really need to eat that expensive protein every single day? Fill up on fruit and vegetables and really enjoy that treat knowing that you are taking one small step to making the world a better place - and you will be healthier as well.