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How art and design can rebuild a community
MIT professor Azra Akšamija creates works of cultural resilience in the face of social conflict.
24 February, 2021
Credit: Memory Matrix
In the spring of 2016, a striking art installation was constructed outside MIT's building E15.
<p> The work consisted of 20,000 small green plexiglass squares, with intricate holes cut in each one, depicting vanished or endangered pieces of global cultural heritage, including buildings, monuments, and sculptures. Attached to fencing about 40 feet high, the squares collectively formed an image of the Arch of Triumph from Palmyra, Syria, an ancient treasure destroyed by fundamentalists in 2015.</p><p>Lit up at night or shimmering in daytime, this installation — the “Memory Matrix" — was a powerful reminder of the fragility of our cultural creations in the face of conflict and strife. But it also represented human resilience and the strength of collaboration: About 700 people helped construct it, including MIT community members from 11 different departments and programs, and participants from Egypt and Jordan.</p><p>“That project was amazing, because of the solidarity-building it created across campus and internationally," says MIT Associate Professor Azra Akšamija, who created the idea for the installation. </p>
<p>Akšamija is an uncommonly versatile artist, architect, and scholar whose work explores cultural identity and conflict. Her own career exemplifies resilience: Akšamija experienced displacement as a Bosnian Muslim whose family left in the early 1990s to escape the war at home. Having spent much of her life in Austria, the United States, and Germany, her work frequently explores encounters between Islam and the West.</p><p>Among other distinctions, Akšamija was given the 2013 Aga Khan Award for Architecture for her design of a prayer space's symbolic elements, at Austria's first-ever Muslim cemetery, in Altach (the cemetery itself was designed by Bernardo Bader). Some of her best-known designs are wearable art, including her "Frontier Vest" from 2006, a garment that works as a jacket for refugees and can be transformed into a Jewish prayer shawl or an Islamic prayer rug. Akšamija has detailed many of her ideas in a 2015 book, "Mosque Manifesto — Propositions for Spaces of Coexistence."</p><p>She has also been a program-builder at MIT, founding the Future Heritage Lab (FHL), which focuses on cultural preservation. At the Al Azraq Refugee Camp in Jordan, FHL members, along with their partners at German-Jordanian University, have helped Syrian refugees document their lives through photography, design, and poetry; the work was displayed at the 2017 Amman Design Week.</p>
<p>Over the past three years, camp residents, FHL members, and MIT students have developed a book about refugee inventions, which will be used in MIT's first design studio-based online course, "Design and Scarcity" (co-taught by Akšamija and FHL program director Melina Philippou). The book will also be translated for the camp and the wider region.</p><p>The Al Azraq camp refugees, Akšamija says, "design artifacts that are partly utilitarian, but are about preserving human dignity and memory, and keeping the feeling of who you are. It's powerful."</p>
<h3>"Making things since I could think"</h3><p>Akšamija grew up in Sarajevo, now part of Bosnia and Herzegovina. One of her grandfathers was an accomplished architect who had studied in Prague and, she says, "brought Czech modernism back to Bosnia." Design grabbed Akšamija's interest from a young age.</p><p>"I have been making things since I could think about myself," Akšamija says. "As a child I was completely obsessed with drawing and sculpture, which I would do for hours. Also, to get out of my piano lessons, I would make these plasticine sculptures and then display them on the piano, to distract the piano teacher."</p><p>At the time, Sarajevo was part of the larger republic of Yugoslavia. But in 1992, after war broke out in the Balkans, Akšamija and her family moved to Germany, then Austria, to escape the conflict. As an undergraduate, Akšamija studied architecture at the Graz University of Technology. Still, she says, the university "had these awesome art classes," and she wanted to incorporate art into her career.</p><p>Akšamija attended graduate school at Princeton University, receiving her MArch in 2004, while becoming active artistically; by 2004, her work had been displayed in high-profile institutions and exhibitions in Vienna, Valencia, Leipzig, and Liverpool. Joining MIT's PhD program in the history and theory of architecture, Akšamija continued to create art; in addition to "Frontier Vest," she produced noted works such as "Survival Mosque" (2005), a wearable and portable mosque equipped with a copy of the U.S. Constitution, earplugs (to block out the insults Muslims might hear), books, and more. Soon her work was exhibited in major art museums in London, New York, and Berlin.</p>
<p>Some of Akšamija's projects from this period went in novel directions. With nine other artists and architects, Akšamija co-curated the "Lost Highway Expedition" in 2006, a trek in which 300 people walked the Highway of Brotherhood and Unity that connects the capitals of the former Yugoslavia.</p><p>"After the war I had thought, 'I'm never going to Serbia again in my life,'" Akšamija says. However, for the trek, "we had events in cities and you had to find your own way, you had to make friends. And this is the way I went for the first time to the territories my country had the war with." Though the project was challenging, she says, "It was important to start discussing difficult topics. It doesn't mean they're fully resolved. Unfortunately, there are still many people denying that genocide happened in Bosnia."</p><p>For her dissertation, working with MIT professors Nasser Rabbat and Caroline Jones, as well as Harvard University's András Riedlmayer, Akšamija looked at the systematic targeting of cultural heritage in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the 1992-95 war, examining how Bosnian Muslims restored mosques that had been destroyed.</p><p>"These buildings were attacked because nationalists wanted to revise history and alienate people to an extent that they would never want to live together in the future," Akšamija says.</p><p>The questions driving her research apply anywhere, Akšamija says. "From the Balkans we can learn important lessons about how we live in spaces of fragmented commons. When that falls apart, how do you reconnect? What kinds of cultural institutions do we need to bridge divides and hold governments accountable? It is relevant globally. Who has the right to write their history, to be visible in public space, and who decides those things?"</p><p>After joining the MIT faculty, Akšamija earned tenure in 2019.</p>
<h3>Becoming yourself</h3><p>At MIT, Akšamija has found it gratifying to see students gravitate to her classes, to projects like "Memory Matrix," and to the Future Heritage Lab.</p><p>"MIT students care," Akšamija says. "They really want to do something to contribute to this world. This place is so inspiring."</p><p>At the same time, she notes, the Institute can be an intense academic setting, and instructors need to help sustain the sheer enjoyment of learning.</p><p>"You [can] lose sight of why you started doing things and what initially drew you to them, and it can be overwhelming," Akšamija says. "You see it with students. I like to create joy in things, especially in classes. That's why it's so amazing to teach here, because the students are so full of enthusiasm and joy. But also sometimes anxiety, and I think we all have responsibility here as teachers to take care of that. It's not about students performing for someone else, but becoming better versions of themselves."</p><p>Akšamija calls the current direction of her research "Performative Preservation." This is an approach to cultural preservation that uses "methods of contemporary arts and participatory art." She emphasizes that participation and co-creation are crucial to cultural restoration; physical structures can be rebuilt, but they will lack meaning without community involvement.</p><p>Her work is now on view at the Gallery for Contemporary Art, in Leipzig, Germany, and at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, with a new work slated for the 17th International Architecture Exhibition for the Venice Biennale, in May 2021. Curated by Hashim Sarkis, dean of MIT's School of Architecture and Planning, the Biennale's theme is "How Will We Live Together?" Akšamija's project, "Silk Road Works," a symbolic construction site for a pluralist society, will be part of a section at the Arsenale titled, "Among Diverse Beings."</p><p>As always, Akšamija hopes for a thoughtful response from her audience, without knowing exactly what that will be.</p><p>"When you work in public space, it's not about finding a consensus, where we all have the same opinion and are happily living together," Akšamija says. "It's about accepting and coming to terms with conflicting attitudes and ideas, and making space for them."</p><p>Reprinted with permission of <a target="_blank" href="http://news.mit.edu/" rel="noopener noreferrer">MIT News</a>. Read the <a target="_blank" href="https://news.mit.edu/2020/azra-aksamija-cultures-art-0812" rel="noopener noreferrer">original article</a>.</p>
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We have a new word for that feeling when travel makes everything new
A tourist generally has an eye for the things that have become almost invisible to the resident.
23 February, 2021
TIZIANA FABI/AFP via Getty Images
On a double-decker bus from Dublin airport to Drumcondra early one June morning, a young lad stretched out on the back seat and started to rap.
<p> What he lacked in talent he made up for in gusto. I was with a dozen of my students who were travelling from DePaul University in Chicago on a study abroad trip and this was their very first impression of Ireland. I cringed and tried to ignore the atonal reveller. Their response, it turned out, was at odds with mine. 'That's American rap!' one of them chortled. 'Why is he rapping Kendrick?' The oddity of the situation entertained them, and they discussed it with a fervour typically reserved for matters of greater significance.</p><p>One thing I've noticed over the years of bringing my students to Ireland – my homeland – is that they pay rapt attention to the little things. This heightened and delighted attention to the ordinary, which manifests in someone new to a place, does not seem to have a name. So I have given it one: <em>allokataplixis</em> (from the Greek <em>allo</em> meaning 'other', and <em>katapliktiko</em> meaning 'wonder'). In Modern Greek <em>katapliktiko</em> and the related word <em>katataplixie</em> can be used to register astonishment. Admittedly, in Ancient Greek the family of words surrounding <em>kataplêxis</em> sometimes signified 'terror' and 'panic'. It is, however, the note of pure 'amazement' and 'fascination' present in this word that I want to celebrate in my neologism.</p><p><em>Allokataplixis</em>, as I use the term, is the gift, usually unacknowledged, that the traveller offers to the places they visit.</p>
<p>For the past five years, I have travelled around Ireland each summer with a bunch of allokataplixic American kids. Almost everything draws them in. In the city, they never choose to stay downstairs on the bus – there's just too much to see from the upper deck. Marvellous to them also is the slight smell of salt in the air when you arrive in Dublin, the raucousness of seagulls crying overhead, the low-rise and higgledy-piggledy appearance of the city's architecture, the garrulousness of the people, the little fossils embedded in the bridge that spans the pond in St Stephen's Green, the 99 Flake ice-cream cones, the inclination of Irish people to traditional music, the almost unfathomable reverence in the west for uilleann pipers, the omnipresence of sheep on hilly tracts of land, the unhealthy deliciousness of Tayto crisps, the intense greenness of the vegetation, the yellowness of the butter, the perennial greyness of the sky, the presence of poets – actual poets – in the streets, Martello towers, walled gardens, the frankness about matters of mortality, the way the elderly habitually cross themselves as their bus lurches past the churches, the vat-loads of tea consumed, the vat-loads of stout consumed, the strangeness of Ireland's youthful drinkers hailing Budweiser as a premier beer, the national addiction to sweets, the quantity of dog shit left to gently steam in the thoroughfares, the medical acumen of pharmacists in 'Chemist' shops, the casual insults that friends sling at one another, the extravagant length of the midsummer's day, the gorgeousness of the sun setting on the Atlantic viewed from the beaches of the west, the melancholy slopes in County Kerry that were abandoned during the famine. And so on.</p><p>There is, of course, so much to learn when any of us visit a place for the first time and it would be easy to assume that information passes in one direction only, from the host nation to its guests. Yet over the years that I've been bringing students to Ireland I've observed that their thirst for fresh experience is contagious. It oftentimes brings out the best in people. A tourist generally has an eye for the things that, through repetitive familiarity, have become almost invisible to the resident. What is revealed need not always be congenial of course – visitors can make the resident aware of the shortcomings of their home: litter in the streets, poor service, even troubling cultural attitudes such as xenophobia. A tourist can stir within us a recognition of both the delicious strangeness of mundane things and our own unseemly peccadilloes.</p><p>This annual migration to Ireland that I take with Hugh Bartling, a climate policy wonk, and our students, is focused primarily on the ecology of our national parks. Unlike the United States, where such parks are often regarded as wilderness areas, in Ireland there is an acknowledgement that even remote landscapes are as much a product of cultural forces as they are of nature. To instil an understanding of the history and resilience of these traditional, cultural landscapes, we prepare our students before they leave by reading a great quantity of Tim Robinson's work. Over a period of four decades – from the 1970s until his recent departure from Ireland – Robinson walked, mapped and wrote about the west of Ireland with verve and enormous grace. Those who have read his brace of books on the Aran Islands – <em>Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage</em> (1986) and <em>Stones of Aran: Labyrinth</em> (1995 ) – or his trilogy on Connemara – <em>Connemara: Listening to the Wind</em> (2006), <em>Connemara: The Last Pool of Darkness</em> (2008) and <em>Connemara: A Little Gaelic Kingdom</em> (2011 ) – will know the story of his coming to Ireland fairly well. Jaded from the European art scene, Robinson and his partner visited Inis Mór in the 1970s and elected to stay. A local postmistress mentioned that a map of the island would be useful. What began as an index of place names mushroomed over the years into one of the great European literary projects of the last several decades: the work includes maps, books, a Gazetteer, essays and lectures. A central metaphor in Robinson's body of work is the notion of the fractal – a geometrical pattern that shows the property of self-similarity at various observational scales. Snowflakes and coastlines are examples in nature. Robinson writes that the fractal promises to be a rich 'source of metaphor and imagery' in literature and life. He continues: 'Like all discoveries it surprises us yet again with the unfathomable depth and richness of the natural world; specifically it shows that there is more space, there are more places within a forest … or on a Connemara seashore, than the geometry of common sense allows.'</p>
<p>Robinson, the one-time tourist, became one of the great natural and social historians of that part of the world. Though the work is rightly celebrated, what is not always noted is how Robinson, as an attentive outsider, awakens even his Irish readers to a recognition of the fantastical in the mundane landscapes of the west. Robinson is, in other words, a great writer of allokataplixis.</p><p>One does not need, however, to be an outsider or a tourist to be allokataplixic. Is it not the task of most writers to awaken us from the dull, the flat and the average sentiments that can dominate our lives? Many of the Irish writers that my students read before travelling have a knack for noticing the marvellous in the everyday, and of making the quotidian seem wholly other and amazing. Robert Lloyd Praeger, the great naturalist of the last century, is one such writer – as he travelled the rural counties, some of his greatest botanical discoveries were made right outside the guesthouse door. J M Synge, especially in his often-neglected writing on travels in Wicklow, Connemara and Kerry, is another such writer. And James Joyce, that profound naturalist of life's epiphanic moments, specialised in observing how the ecstatic intrudes – sometimes painfully – into the everyday. My students read the story 'The Dead' as an ecological text, for it provides an abiding account of a rupture between Ireland's supposedly refined east coast and its feral west. At the conclusion, Gabriel Conroy, cuckolded by the ghost of Michael Furey, his wife's dead boyfriend, takes a melancholic psychological journey across a snowy Ireland to that boy's grave. Joyce wrote in one of his most celebrated passages that the snow 'was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried.'</p><p>I'll mention just one more recent writer, if only to illustrate that a new generation of allokataplixic writers is emerging: Karl Whitney, author of <em>Hidden City: Adventures and Explorations in Dublin</em> (2014). In <em>Hidden City</em>, Whitney becomes a visitor to the city of his birth, a tourist of the commonplace. In one brilliant chapter, he inches along beneath the streets of Dublin, following the courses of rivers that have long been paved over. In another, he follows the excrement of the denizens of the city out to the sewage treatment plants and, once treated and refined, follows the liquid discharge out into Dublin Bay. Not since Leopold Bloom defecates so leisurely in an early chapter of <em>Ulysses</em> has urban excrement been so vividly described.</p>
<p>Last year as we crossed the Midlands, we walked out on the boardwalk at Clara Bog in County Offaly, where by chance we met with a local out on his morning constitutional. Tommy was a former worker for Bord na Móna, the Irish semi-state body that oversees the economic development of peat for use as fuel. He is now an enthusiastic conservationist. That my students took such a delight in the bog seemed to ignite something in him. Noticing that one of the students carried a tin whistle, he volunteered to play a couple of reels and so we listened to the blast of a few tunes out on the bog on an ordinary Saturday morning. He said he'd never done anything like it. Allokataplixis is contagious.</p><p>I don't suppose one needs to live a life of perpetual astonishment. After all it's adaptive to forget. Our daily grind is perhaps easier to endure in a state of mild amnesia. Muscle memory sets in, routine takes over, and one day seems the same as any other. But days go by, the years hum along, and one can careen towards senility without being unduly startled by anything at all. Surely, there are times when we must be released from our moorings and free ourselves up to notice the peculiarities of everyday life. Our greatest writers have, as often as not, lived in a state of astonishment – this is not an easy burden. But in a quieter register and perhaps in an equally instructive way, even the everyday tourist can alert us to the remarkable in our home terrain. When we are ourselves tourists, we notice things. But even in noticing how tourists are alive to their surroundings, might we not learn something from them? Observe the tourists on Dublin's Grafton Street listening to the buskers, or watch them marvel at the lights on Broadway in New York. Witness them sip their ouzo at the Acropolis or behold them picking their way across the newly minted basalt lava-flow in the Volcanoes National Park in Hawaii. They've brought their allokataplixis with them.</p><p><em>Thanks to my wife Vassia Pavlogianis for discussions on the Modern Greek words for wonder, and to Dr Sean Kirkland of DePaul University in Chicago for a tutorial on the Ancient Greek etymology.</em><img src="https://metrics.aeon.co/count/170d73af-c3dd-4d6e-be95-20c44cbb3652.gif" alt="Aeon counter – do not remove"></p><p>Liam Heneghan</p><p>This article was originally published at <a href="https://aeon.co/?utm_campaign=republished-article" target="_blank">Aeon</a> in 2017and has been republished under Creative Commons. Read the <a href="https://aeon.co/ideas/we-have-a-new-word-for-that-feeling-when-travel-makes-everything-new" target="_blank">original article</a>.</p>
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Has political correctness gone too far?
The debate over whether or not there is a place for political correctness in modern society is not always black and white.
21 February, 2021
- Political correctness is often seen as a debate between two extremes, but there are nuances in the middle of the spectrum. Is there such a thing as being too PC, and if so, where is that line?
- While philosopher Slavoj Žižek, comedian Lewis Black, and actor Jeff Garlin acknowledge that some topics can be hurtful or even oppressive and should thus be approached with "good taste and self-restraint," they also argue that PC culture has tipped the scales far beyond being balanced. "If we continue to move in that direction," says Black, "then we're going to be living between uptight and stupid and there'll be no in between."
- Simultaneously, others—including Paul F. Tompkins, Jim Gaffigan, and Martin Amis—argue that political correctness aims to change things for the better, especially for groups who have been marginalized and discriminated against, and that not being sexist and racist, for example, is not actually a heavy lift. "The fact of the matter is these people are the people of today and you might be a person of yesterday if you can't adjust and you can't be in tune with what people think is funny anymore," says Tompkins.
Rousseau explained: What his philosophy means for us
The philosopher who praised a simple life and inspired the worst of the French Revolution.
18 February, 2021
A portrait of Rousseau by Maurice Quentin de La Tour.
Public Domain
Culture & Religion
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Swiss Enlightenment philosopher with some radical ideas.
- He argued passionately for democracy, equality, liberty, and supporting the common good by any means necessary.
- While his ideas may be utopian (or dystopian), they are thought-provoking and can inform modern discourse.
<p> Modern political debates often ask how much democracy we should have and what should, and should not, be subject to a vote. Whenever we discuss these issues, we stumble on the famously tricky philosophy of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Jean-Jacques Rousseau</a>, who argued nearly three hundred years ago for democracy, equality, and the greater good.</p><p>Born in Geneva in 1712, Rousseau wrote his first major essay while living in Paris in 1750. He went on to write several major works on politics, education, music, and even botany. However, his controversial ideas made him many enemies, and he was forced to flee France, Switzerland, and Prussia in turn. He died in France in 1778 after many years of wandering and being fairly convinced of a vast conspiracy against <a href="https://iep.utm.edu/rousseau/#SH1a" target="_blank">him</a>. </p><p>His ideas on education, toleration, state sovereignty, democracy, liberty, and equality have proven extremely influential. Here, we'll dive into some of his big ideas and take a look at attempts to put them into practice.</p>
The State of Nature
<p> Like other philosophers at the time, Rousseau was very concerned with what the world was like before the creation of societies. This was very important for political philosophers because it could be used to explain the motivation for creating and supporting a state.</p><p> If you, like the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, thought that a life in the "<a href="https://www.the-philosophy.com/hobbes-vs-locke" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">state of nature</a>" was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short," you're probably in favor of anything that keeps the state of nature at bay, no matter how tyrannical or brutal. This is why Hobbes supported a ruler with absolute power, typically a monarch.</p><p><a href="https://www.the-philosophy.com/rousseau-philosophy-summary" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Rousseau</a>, however, went the other way. He suggested that the state of nature wasn't all that bad, proposing that the people in it were self-sufficient, fairly solitary by choice, sympathetic to others, and peaceful. With nothing to fight over, they don't fight much. Since morality hasn't been invented yet, they are innocent and incapable of being malicious. </p><p>Importantly, people in the state of nature are free in that they can follow their own will all the time, and equal — the various sources of inequality haven't been invented yet.</p><p>He argues that it is only when we move into society that human nature becomes corrupted, and many of the vices and evils we know all too well can flourish. He thought that many of the problems society claims to solve, like protection from theft, can only be problems after society, and thus the notion of private property, already exists.</p><p>Beyond this, he asks us if the things society provides us are really beneficial in the first place. </p><p>In his first significant work, "<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/46333/46333-h/46333-h.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Discourse on the Arts and Sciences</a>," Rousseau argues that art and science haven't improved most people's moral fiber — a shocking position to hold in Enlightenment-era France. Instead, he suggests that they arose from vices such as vanity and only serve to continue the degradation of morals. Given how many civilizations seem to have reached decadent heights before being brought down by their barbarous neighbors, he questions how desirable they are for other purposes as well.</p><p>Private property, another concept made possible by society, earned Rousseau's ire as an institution that encouraged greed and egotism. He expresses how terrible he supposes the invention of private property was in this striking paragraph from the "<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11136/pg11136.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Discourse </a><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11136/pg11136.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">On The Origin And The Foundation Of The Inequality Among Mankind</a>":</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;"> "The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody!"</p>The Social Contract
<iframe width="730" height="430" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/R2YM5_o6PRo" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe><p> Now, you might be wondering why, if the state of nature is so pleasant and people in it so moral and decent, anybody would ever create a society or join up with one. Rousseau suggests this is a natural evolution caused by the need for individuals to cooperate. Eventually, people will figure out things like agriculture and industry, which require working with your neighbors or creating rules for living near them. </p><p>In fear of worst-case scenarios, Rousseau thought that people agreed to societies dedicated to protecting them from threats, real or imagined, that then took away their freedom and protected the inequalities that further led everybody, including the rulers, into vice. He saw this as a cure nearly so bad as the disease, leading him to lament that "Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains."</p><p>His alternative is to create a <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/social-contract-in-politics-105424" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">social contract</a> that will allow all members of the society to be as free as they were in the state of nature, that is, to enable them to follow their own will all the time while still living in a society. It will remove the unnatural inequalities that degrade both the rich and the poor. It will ensure that everyone is equal before the law that they create.</p><p> To achieve this, he formulates one of the more radically democratic systems of government ever to achieve widespread consideration.</p>The General Will
<iframe width="730" height="430" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nGAO100hYcQ" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe><p> The key to Rousseau's social contract theory, and his biggest idea, is a take on the "<a href="https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/General_will" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">general will</a>." While he wasn't the first philosopher to talk about it, his conception of it is the most famous and consequential. He posits that any legitimate state must be based on the general will, which is the fundamental source of sovereignty. All laws and actions the state undertakes must be in line with it. </p><p>It is akin to the notion of popular sovereignty, with a few differences. </p><p>The general will is the will of the entire body politic, which exists independently of the will of any one member or any group of people that comprise it. It is also not just the sum of individual wills. Because an individual contributes to the general will as a citizen, the general will is, at least partly, their will. It is a universal, generally applied concept and, when done correctly, will be used to create laws that apply to everyone in the community equally. </p><p>In principle, a person can follow it and still be following their will, since they helped to forge it. In the ideal case, a person fully understands that the greater good is also in their interest and there is no friction between their interests and that of the community. This is how Rousseau supposes people can be as free in society as they are in nature. However, if the shift between being able to follow the individual will and the general will is one that is quite so easy to make is a point many philosophers have raised.</p><p>How we find what the general will even is creates another problem. There are generally two approaches to figuring it out, with a third splitting the <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rousseau/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">difference</a>. All of these interpretations are supported by Rousseau's writing — his style is famously contradictory even when it is working towards a clear point. </p><p>The first is a highly democratic model, featuring the citizenry discussing legislation at town hall meetings every time an issue comes up. While magistrates would exist to run the government day by day, they would be elected and duty-bound to follow the will of the people as determined by the debate and votes at these meetings. Minorities will exist, but their participation in the debate assures that they helped forge the general will and that the resulting laws will be good for them, too. </p><p> Going the other way, the general will could be a somewhat transcendental thing that just exists for every political group that only some well-educated people can grasp without the help of well-made social institutions.</p><p>Rousseau suggests that a "legislator," a person who knows what good laws and morals are, can help people understand what the general will is by either guiding discussion and putting the vague ideas of the people into politically actionable terms, or by assisting individuals to identify with the common cause that is the general will if they are incapable of doing it themselves. In that case, the magistrates would still follow the general will, but it wouldn't be quite as democratically determined. </p><p>The hybrid of the two is a procedural model, where citizen-legislators discuss issues and realize why the common good is also their own good when making law.</p><p>As an example, imagine a neighborhood association's members discussing what trees to plant. Some of them will realize that their preferred choice of tree is a poor choice when they learn that most of their neighbors are allergic to it. After further discussion, not only do they agree to the new option, they will also end up agreeing that the new choice is in their best interest. They'll be happier when their neighbors aren't grouchy from allergies. The voters want what the community wants because what they want has shifted.</p><p>The general will is also very expansive, and a government based on it can do many things that others couldn't justify. While this means a Rousseauan government can do many good things others can't, it also means that it can be uniquely oppressive. The general will could call for abolishing or redistributing private property, press censorship, or mandatory attendance at morality plays among a variety of other harsh mandates. In principle, it could even call for ending democracy if that is in the best interests of the whole. </p><p> Whatever it calls for, it does so on everybody equally and because they called for it. </p>What would living in a Rousseauan society look like?
<iframe width="730" height="430" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/obts3Y-XRjg" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe><p> On the bright side, since the general will has to be applied universally and generally, the society that forms along these lines will be very equal, with the law applying to all citizens in the same way. Major inequalities would be swept away, and there would likely be a significant democratic element to the government, depending on how the people decided to organize the state. It would probably be a small society, as Rousseau feared that a large country would not find the common cause he thought was so important.</p><p>The people themselves would share a common cause, be highly educated in how to carry out their various civic duties properly. They would enjoy being able to act freely within a sphere decided by the general will.</p><p>However, since the general will can be applied to nearly any facet of life, the people, or the legislator in some cases, may decide to create a very oppressive society devoid of things they don't like or think will lead to vice. </p><p>Individual rights only exist as far as the sovereign, the general will, thinks they should. While it is probable that the application of all laws equally means that everyone would have to choose to make it oppressive for themselves; that remains a risk that could come to pass. Democracy might also go out the window, and a monarch who follows the general will could be appointed. </p><p> Furthermore, Rousseau suggests that people can be "forced to be free," so even if your interests are quite different from those of the general will, you can be dragged along with it. Some later philosophers, such as Jacob Talmon and Isaiah Berlin, have thus suggested that a Rousseauan state would be a "totalitarian democracy" with the individual always being subject to the whims of the majority or whoever claims to speak for the general will. </p><p>Despite the extensive reach that the Rousseauan state would have, he does argue that some limits on what a sovereign can do exist.</p><p>Most notably, he expressly states that people have the right to their religion alongside a civic faith that promotes solidarity, that pluralism is inevitable, and that a variety of religions can improve morals. He suggests that toleration should be held sacred. He does not extend this toleration to atheists, however, who he suggests be exiled. </p>This all sounds a bit unrealistic in any case. Did anybody try to run anything like this?
<iframe width="730" height="430" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mm8asJxdcds" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe><p> According to Professor <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5soKkx-RZow" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Charles Anderson</a>, the decision-making process of the Quakers during their meetings is very similar to, but not quite the same as, the hybrid model of the general will. The Quakers seek God's will through discussion and end up in agreement on what that is and the wisdom of following it. In <a href="https://quaker.org/decision-making/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">practice</a>, it may be as close to that model as anyone has ever gotten, even if it is a religious notion unrelated to Rousseau's philosophy.</p><p> On a larger scale, The French Revolution can be viewed as an attempt to apply Rousseau's ideas in a situation where they were never going to work. Famed revolutionary Maximilien Robespierre studied many philosophers, but Rousseau's ideas were the ones that most inspired him. It is <a href="https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/robespierre-terror.asp" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">said</a> that he slept with his copy of "The Social Contract."</p><p>The revolutionaries' Cult of the Supreme Being, a state religion based around a single deistic goddess, is based on Rousseau's idea of civil religion. Both centered on the existence of a deity, an afterlife, and the need for virtue, patriotism, and social solidarity. Robespierre, like his favorite philosopher, thought such a belief system was vital in a republic. </p><p>Additionally, Robespierre strongly agreed with the idea that the general will was the basis for state legitimacy and that people could be "forced to be free" by any means necessary if they weren't going along with it. Those who were actively fighting it, namely royalists, could be done away with as a result. This is part of the reason why Rousseau's <a href="https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/robespierre-terror.asp" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">ideas</a> often get blamed for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> Terror</a>. <br></p><p>On a more practical and mundane note, Rousseau was asked to submit ideas for the new constitution being written in Poland-Lithuania. His <a href="http://self.gutenberg.org/articles/eng/Considerations_on_the_Government_of_Poland" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">suggestions</a> were conservative compared to his previous work, suggesting he grasped that his ideas could not be instituted in such a large state or that his previously hard-line stances had softened. Among his ideas that made it in were a federalized system of governance and a representative legislature. He encouraged the Poles to adopt a gradualist system of reform. <br></p><p>This may shed light on what he might have thought of his disciples leading the French Revolution, which occurred after his death. <br></p><p>As with most political philosophy, the real question may be how his big ideas are discussed in our society rather than on if anybody tried to follow his books to the letter. Other philosophers with great influence, like Kant, Marx, and Rawls, all sighted Rousseau as an influence.</p><p>Outside of academia, every time we discuss certain topics, like what it takes for a government to be legitimate, if modern society is good for us, or what we think should and should not be subject to a vote; we stumble across topics Rousseau considered and can benefit from his insights.<br></p><p>While a purely Rousseauan society probably isn't practical for many reasons, his writings continue to inform debate in our society, despite their often contradictory and confusing nature.</p>
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Turns out those aren't the apostle St James’s bones after all
Research shows that bone fragments of Jesus's (possible) brother belong to someone else.
17 February, 2021
Saint James the Less, Basilica of St. Vitus in Ellwangen, Germany
Credit: zatletic / Adobe Stock
Culture & Religion
- New research in Rome has found that bones purported to be from St. James the Less are impossible.
- The femoral bone fragments date to somewhere between 214 and 340 CE—a few centuries off the mark.
- The analysis was conducted on bone fragments, oil, and mummy remains in the Basilica dei Santa Apostoli.
<p>The most psychologically riveting undiscovered archaeology in the Western world remains "proof" of Jesus and his disciples. Dan Brown's alternative religious history, "The Da Vinci Code," was denounced by the Church (even though it was admittedly fictional). Yet his book revealed something about human psychology, with this revival of the Holy Grail legend and Mary Magdalene selling 80 million copies sold worldwide.</p><p>Speaking of Mary, that was the name of James the Less's mother, making him the potential brother of Jesus. While he hasn't received the same veneration as James the Great (the patron saint of Spain), James the Less (aka the Younger) earned fame as one of Jesus's dozen disciples. His bones have been stored in Rome's Basilica dei Santi Apostoli for over 1,500 years—well, so people thought. According to a <a href="https://heritagesciencejournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40494-021-00481-9" target="_blank">new research article</a>, published in the journal Heritage Science, the femur is a few centuries younger than advertised. </p><p>Researchers used a variety of dating techniques, including mass spectrometric detection, X-Ray diffraction, and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry to analyze bone fragments and mummy remains in the Basilica dei Santa Apostoli. Investigating the supposed remains of St James and St Philip, they discovered that James's femoral bone dates to somewhere between 214 and 340 CE. This skeleton certainly did not walk with Jesus. </p><p>The team also discovered rapeseed oil and a ceramic shard dating to roughly the same era, give or take a century. All samples, in fact, dated to at least two centuries after the time of Christianity's savior. </p><p>The 6th-century church dedicated to James and Philip has gone through numerous renovations, including a 16th-century facelift that shielded it from recurring floods. In 1700, the church was basically rebuilt. In the late 19th century, relics were discovered in the catacombs and shuffled around. Keeping track of so many changes on paper has proved challenging; it shouldn't be surprising that the fragments were caught in the mix. Superstition trumps reality—but not technology. </p>
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTY1ODk0Ni9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY3MDU5ODgwNn0.ojJojmjsjAua5f5pJ779pq6VKnmXddnTt-s8Yxx3x0M/img.png?width=980" id="c4992" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="77a58287985ca37ec94b561425259cc4" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="2498" data-height="1328" />
a) Tibia of St Philip KLR-11036/C90 (femur of St James KLR-11030/C81); b & c) foot of St Philip KLR-12288/C18 and KLR-11029/C80
Credit: Rasmussen et. al
<p>The contention that St James the Less is Jesus's brother is also contested. As the researchers note, the Lord's brother, <em>Iakob</em>, is not mentioned in any list of the 12 disciples. Pivotal to the Church of Jerusalem, with 11 mentions in the New Testament, James was part of the council that decided whether gentiles should be circumcised. His influence remains part of us—well, deciding what remains part of us.</p><p>The team notes that the potential conflation of Jesus's brother with St James is a red flag. Calling a divine sibling "Lesser" doesn't make sense considering his outsized influence on the Church of Jerusalem. Jesus's brother is textually referred to as "Lord's brother" or "the Just." Some even consider St James the Less to be a cousin of Jesus, not a brother. </p><p>As mentioned, we love a good mystery. </p><p>Regardless, the bones in the Basilica are not of any James we know of. Lead author Kaare Lund Rasmussen, an archaeometry professor at the University of Southern Denmark, <a href="https://www.livescience.com/st-james-relic-someone-else.html" target="_blank">says</a>,</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"Our dates, although disproving it was St. James, fall in a dark period, between the time when the apostles died and Christianity became the dominant religion in the Roman Empire."</p><p>In a <a href="https://www.sdu.dk/en/nyheder/forskningsnyheder/jesu-apostle-videnskabeligt-undersogt" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">statement</a> released after the publication of the study, Rasmussen continues, </p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"We consider it very likely, that whoever moved this femur to the Santi Apostoli church, believed it belonged to St. James. They must have taken it from a Christian grave, so it belonged to one of the early Christians, apostle or not."</p><p>The mystery continues. While we might never discover actual bones or grails, there's always a novel waiting around for Netflix to option. </p><p><span style="background-color: initial;">--</span></p><p><em>Stay in touch with Derek on <a href="http://www.twitter.com/derekberes" target="_blank">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/DerekBeresdotcom" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Facebook</a>. His most recent book is</em> "<em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08KRVMP2M?pf_rd_r=MDJW43337675SZ0X00FH&pf_rd_p=edaba0ee-c2fe-4124-9f5d-b31d6b1bfbee" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Hero's Dose: The Case For Psychedelics in Ritual and Therapy</a>."</em></p>
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Stonehenge stones came from an even older Welsh stone circle
Waun Maun was an ancient Welsh stone circle that had an awful lot in common with Stonehenge.
16 February, 2021
Credit: Ty Welch/Unsplash
Culture & Religion
<ul class="ee-ul"></ul><p><br></p>
<p>Ancient Stonehenge stands silently on the U.K.'s Salisbury Plain amidst the continual thrum of cars zipping by on the A303 motorway. It is about as anachronistic as a thing can be, a mysterious object out of time whose mysteries continue to fascinate us.</p><p>Bit by bit, Stonehenge's puzzle pieces are falling into place—when its stones were put up, its bluestones' origins in distant Welsh quarries—and a very big one may have just fallen into place. New research suggests that Stonehenge was actually built some 200 km (124 miles) away in Wales where it stood for hundreds of years before being taken apart, transported to its current location, and reassembled with the addition of some local stones.</p><p>Lead author of the research, published in <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/original-stonehenge-a-dismantled-stone-circle-in-the-preseli-hills-of-west-wales/B7DAA4A7792B4DAB57DDE0E3136FBC33" target="_blank">Antiquity</a><em>,</em> is archaeologist <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/people/mike-parker-pearson-professor-british-later-prehistory" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Michael Parker Pearson</a> of University College London, who <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2021/feb/stonehenge-may-be-dismantled-welsh-stone-circle" target="_blank">says</a>, "I have been leading projects at Stonehenge since 2003 and this is the culmination of twenty years of research. It's one of the most important discoveries I've ever made."</p>
A mystery of dates solved
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTY1MzI4Mi9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1NTE4Nzk2OX0.7m_x0Sf1EGBnHt-pDD7C8SOnYZpKzOZlqlb8fEeJL6E/img.png?width=980" id="5a9f5" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="8f5585b5f6689d90fc94d20398aa1ac8" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1440" data-height="960" />Credit: Ankit Sood/Unsplash
<p>The theory has to do with Stonehenge's bluestones. These are the 43 smaller upright stones positioned at the inside of the structure. They're called "bluestones" not because they're normally blue, but because they take on a bit of that hue when they're wet. (The outer, taller, stones at Stonehenge are sarsens, and the stones laying across the tops of other stones are its lintel stones.)</p><p>It has been known for some time that the bluestones were dug from a quarry in the Preseli Hills of Wales 200 km away some 5,000 years ago. (The larger <a href="https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/stonehenge-sarsens" target="_blank">sarsen stones </a>are believed to have come from about 15 miles away from Stonehenge.)</p><p>There's been a problem with dates, though. The rocks were extracted about 5,000 years ago, between 3400 BC and 3000 BC. That's 300 or 400 years before Stonehenge was built. Where were they all that time? "They're clearly not spending 200 years slowly moving them across the landscape," co-author of the research <a href="https://www.southampton.ac.uk/archaeology/about/staff/cjp1r10.page" target="_blank">Joshua Pollard</a> tells <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/02/england-s-stonehenge-was-erected-wales-first" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Science Magazine</a>.</p><p>The earliest writing about the origins of Stonehenge was Geoffrey of Monmouth's c. AD 1136 "History of the Kings of Britain." In it, the author suggests that Stonehenge was constructed from the stones of a dismantled Giants' Dance stone circle atop the mythical Mount Killaraus, having been moved to Salisbury under the command of Merlin. Fantasy, to be sure, but the distant origin of the bluestones may underpin the central idea that these stones were actually repurposed from another place and time.</p>Waun Mawn
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTY1MzMwNS9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxNjM4NjE5N30.esfI2abeHi5BZbt_MEXRc3yYcNR-wgV9ZuvB6wdGPK0/img.png?width=980" id="78345" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="3e84e01b24068eadc6a19b140726320e" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="898" data-height="1000" />Credit: Denys Holovatiuk/Adobe Stock/Big Think
<p>The "<a href="https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/stonehenge/things-to-do/stone-circle/stones-of-stonehenge/" target="_blank">Stones of Stonehenge</a>" project identified a possible Welsh stone circle in 2010, Waun Mawn, but had not excavated it. In 2017 and 2018, a research team led by Parker Pearson began serious exploration. They identified an ancient megalith quarry nearby and the toppled bluestone remains of the stone circle, estimated to be the third largest yet found after Avebury in Wiltshire and Stanton Drew in Somerset.</p><p>At Waun Mawn were socket-shaped pits that likely held other, long-gone bluestones. The researchers used optically simulated luminescence to determine how long ago the sediments buried inside the pits had been exposed to light, and radiocarbon-dated charcoal found inside. The shrine dates back pretty perfectly to 3400 BC, in line with the time the bluestones had been quarried.</p><p>The researchers mapped out the likely arrangement of the stone circle by extrapolating between the remaining stones and empty stone sockets. They arrived at a shape that measured about 100 meters across, the same as Stonehenge's original layout, the ditch currently surrounding it. (Stonehenge has been rearranged many times since it was first built.) Waun Mawn, like Stonehenge, was aligned on the midsummer solstice.</p><p>The researchers estimate that the missing bluestones were removed between 300 and 400 years after the stone circle was built, around the time Stonehenge was built. "We're quite confident the reason they come down is they've gone to Stonehenge," Parker Pearson tells <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/02/england-s-stonehenge-was-erected-wales-first" target="_blank">Science Magazine</a>.</p><p>Other clues? One of the Stonehenge bluestones has an unusual shape that matches one of the Waun Mawn pits perfectly. In addition, sone chips found in that pit precisely match that stone at Stonehenge.</p>There goes the neighborhood
<p>Sometime after 3000 BC, the people living near Waun Maun left — there's little evidence of habitation in the area after about 3400 BC, according to Parker Pearson. "It's as if they just vanished," he says. "Maybe most of the people migrated, taking their stones — their ancestral identities — with them, to start again in this other special place. This extraordinary event may also have served to unite the peoples of east and west Britain."</p><p>Analyses of plant and animal remains at Stonehenge indicate that the people who built it spent their early years on the Welsh coast, providing evidence, says Pollard, that "We've got regular contact between the two regions."</p><p>Parker Pearson suggests that maybe the people who built Stonehenge incorporated the bluestones from Waun Mawn for one of two reasons: to have something of their former home in their new one, or to use the bluestones as symbols of their authority, thus entitling it to respect and power among their new neighbors.</p><p>In any event, Pearson suspects there's more to the story. Waun Mawn's stones may not be the only transplants at Stonehenge:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"With an estimated 80 bluestones put up on Salisbury Plain at Stonehenge and nearby Bluestonehenge, my guess is that Waun Mawn was not the only stone circle that contributed to Stonehenge. Maybe there are more in Preseli waiting to be found. Who knows? Someone might be lucky enough to find them."</p>
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