agency

If things became like they are depicted in 1984 or Brave New World, we wouldn't realize it because we would be inside it. Those novels only mean what they do to us because things aren't like that in our world. 

But in any case, say if the world was like that, each individual would have their own interactions and life - their own story. One of the things that helps me in dealing with mental health issues is the realization that we each have the power to shape our own lives. 

modern history

Here are some lines from Jonathan Healey's The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England (2023):

One evening in December 1620, two men approached the door of John Harris's Alehouse in Bridgewater. 

It was a winter's night: the smell of woodsmoke scented the crisp air of the Somerset coast, accompanied by the clattering percussion of the masts from the town's dock. In the windows of the townhouses, candlelight flickered against the warm smoulder of the log fires. 

This is history in the 21st century...so different from and better than traditional history books that didn't evoke images like this but stuck to the facts and figures. 

nailed it

In The Anxiety of Influence, Harold Bloom wrote that 'all [literary] criticism is prose poetry'. I like that. When I read Bloom or Bakhtin - for example - there isn't a singular meaning that I need to try and get. It's more like the meaning emerges from my engagement with the text, so it's really my own....I made this meaning. 

postex

I forget who said it, but someone influential and successful said that they learn more about the truth from novels than from non-fiction books. I like that idea but I don't think it fully defines the novel or literature. 

There's been a growing realization as well, that what we call non-fiction has a considerable degree of fictiveness about it. It's understood that information and ideas can be represented in different ways and the most effective way to do so is to embody them in stories. 

choice

I don't believe any decision is difficult. You never stand at a crossroads and face two equal paths. It seems to me there is always one path that, when you think about it, is the better path - it's the right path for you. 

foreign climes

When I visit other countries, I always marvel at the way there are some things that are the same as here and are probably the same all over the world....like trees, for example. Wherever you go, there are trees and they're basically the same, or at least, they're the same in basic ways. And soil, clay and rocks.

you know you're right

I really thought that I would be part of the Sydney Church of Christ for the rest of my life. There didn't seem any other option. 

One of the things that really opened up the possibility of leaving as a serious option, was Henry Kreite's open letter, because here was someone who had been in the top leadership of the church, decisively stating that the church could be wrong. That's what really impacted me, because I had been taught and had accepted the belief that the church is always right. If there's a problem, it's with me. So, I had defined all the issues - and there were many - in that way. There was something wrong with me and the ones that were going to help me were the church. 

What I took from Henry Kreite's letter was different from the meaning he intended and a lot of people took from his letter - that the church had started out perfectly and, over time, had gone astray. I read his letter as an identification of a flaw in the church that was central to its nature. It wasn't some mistake that had creeped in over time. 

A big part of it, as I already mentioned, was the claim to infallibility. The letter opened up the possibility that, actually, I could be right. My issues could be real and valid and the reason why the church had never been able to help me with those issues could be because of their blindness to those issues rather than my own spiritual blindness. 

That's the problem with making absolute claims like, I am always right. You only have to be wrong once in one small way, for the whole edifice to come crashing down.