September 2024 – Glenn Myers

On Waterloo Bridge

Somerset House (part of which is now part of King’s College; and my old friend Waterloo Bridge). Photo by Sam Quek on Unsplash

I’ve been slightly ambushed by the past in the past few months.

We recently had a 40th (actually 41st for complicated reasons) anniversary reunion of my time in college. So all of us who were once fresh young graduates, world at our feet, are now the seasoned and greyed end-of-career types talking about retirement and needing reading glasses–with all our working and adult life placed between these two milestones.

I met a lot of people for the first time, former fellow students. One was a High Court Judge. One had shared a flat with Tim Berners-Lee and thought at the time that his web invention wasn’t all that good. One sold off zombie companies for a living and made hundreds redundant with a single phone call.

It was a lovely day. Wandering around beforehand (King’s College is on the river Thames in London, by Waterloo Bridge, still the most breathtaking location), I thought London was less grimy, all the shops had changed, it was a beautiful city, a wonderful place to be a student. I don’t remember it being quite so difficult to walk along the Strand without getting breathless.

We’ve also lost a close relative through death in recent months and one side effect of that has been sorting through his old things. Someone had bought him an archive of the day’s newspaper (the Daily Telegraph as it happened) that was published on his birthday every day of his life. It showed the newly minted leader of the opposition, Margaret Thatcher, receiving 51 roses for her 51st birthday from the Young Conservatives in the 1970s. Flip through the pages and you find the 80-something Margaret Thatcher, with her son and his wife. She barely seemed to know what was going on.

Reading the books on his bookshelf I found a history of the Lyons teashop family, its entrepreneurial rise, its dramatic post-war fall. The Strand in London has some relics of it still (the Strand Palace Hotel for example), and back when I was a student, a Wimpy Bar, another Lyons innovation, soon to be eaten in turn by the fast-growing McDonald’s.

Time like an ever-flowing stream bears all its sons away. Waterloo Bridge and the Strand remain for a time. Lyons Teashops and Corner Houses and hotels pass away. We all age and curl and fall. How important to live for things bigger and longer-lasting than our lives.

Slow dating makes a return

Just finished Louise Perry’s book The Case against the Sexual Revolution, which was so informative and eye-opening, even if it isn’t stuff that finds its way into my normal diet. Perry is a journalist and writer, raised in all the tropes of Western sexual culture, but turning away from them. I think broadly her argument is that:

Technology and culture change (easy divorce, the pill, abortion) have freed up women’s sexual choices
That freedom, in the cultural context that evolved with it, hasn’t served them at all well
The forces of evolution are much stronger in our make-up than new social constructs; men and women view and treat sex differently
It’s better to rely on structures that have worked OK in the past (monogamy) than speculate on or explore options that are theoretically possible but have not, across the whole of society, actually worked.

A former volunteer in a rape crisis centre, she’s very dismissive of the figleaf of ‘consent’, which is deployed whenever freedom to love is raised. Her problem? It doesn’t work:

[Out of ‘Me Too’ came stories of] a lot of women who described sexual encounters that were technically consensual but nevertheless left them feeling terrible because they were being asked to treat as meaningless something that they felt to be meaningful.

I’m anxious not to quote her too much, lest in my clumsy hands I make her say things she doesn’t say or (more likely) say things without her elegeance and erudition. As a writer she prefers the rapier to the halberd.

Nor does she start from an a priori conservative position (I think) ; more from observation and evidence of how much damage (to both women and men) the prevailing sexual culture is creating. The ones who suffer least are the high-status men; the ones who suffer most, young women. I wish I could quote her better and I wish even more than people would read her book.

It is, finally, a manifesto for slow too. Here’s a taster of her stuff, from near the end of the book:

Consent workshops are mostly useless…

The category of people most likely to become victims of [sexually aggressive] men are young women aged about thirteen to twenty-five. All girls and women, but particularly those in this age category, should avoid being alone with men they don’t know or men who give them the creeps. Gut instinct is not to be ignored: it’s usually triggered by a red flag that’s well worth noticing.
Get drunk or high in private and with female friends rather than in public or in mixed company.

Don’t use dating apps. Mutual friends can vet histories and punish bad behaviour. Dating apps can’t.
Holding off on having sex with a new boyfriend for at least a few months is a good way of discovering whether or not he’s serious about you or just looking for a hook-up.

Only have sex with a man if you think he would make a good father to your children – not because you necessarily intend to have children with him, but because this is a good rule of thumb

She has a podcast too.

The ever-widening horizon

The Chicago horizon … one of our summer views

I’ve been enjoying over the summer exploring the brain of former Archbishop. and continuing New Testament scholar, Rowan Williams, not least because I can now read his books for free, ish, on my phone, thanks to the wonderful perlego.com subscription service.

Something he said got me going, though. He described how becoming a Christian made his perspective wider, broadened his view. I really like that idea But how so?

I thought of some examples:

Science is the pursuit of God’s utter ingeniousness. Science is great at ‘how’ and rubbish at ‘why’. But if the ‘why’ is settled, and especially if it’s settled in the idea of a loving God not able to keep his goodness to himself, and creating a universe, then science becomes a rather joyous romp in a playground. Wider, deeper and higher we can go, into the crannies of God’s genius.
Art is for all humanity. Christ is Lord of culture. That is really something. This does not doom us to endlessly paint Biblical scenes, nor only to write theology. So much of the Christian faith is attitudes: set yourself to love God and neighbour, pick up your paintbrush, and see what happens. Wider, deeper, funner, lovelier. And because everyone is in the image of God, everyone is capable of artistry.
The common good. We don’t need to resort to utilitarian arguments to care for the earth or humanity. We have, through the unrolling story of God-with-people, a context of individual, communal, global, and universal thriving. When we set ourselves with that perspective, we can have confidence that we are working with grain of the Universe, whatever our hands find to do. Wider, more imaginative, more creative.
Christ is the Lord of Time. The proper Time-lord. What does this mean? We don’t have to rush. Let’s do stuff well. Let’s not do other stuff. And let’s be OK with failing.
All will be summed up in Christ. So he’s taking the whole ‘completeness’ thing on his own shoulders. That frees us to be partial, incomplete, which frees us to attempt big things, because the final outcome rests just with us following our sense of his leading.

I am free to be my playful self, because I’m standing on somewhere solid and safe. And beause I’m loved. How lovely.

The pushback against the autocrats (continued)

I’m enjoying the substack of Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who is a scholar of autocracy and is writing with a wide knowledge and perspective on a subject that can seem very gloomy.

But here’s an upbeat assessment from her:

A growing number of countries are not just turning back autocracy but are also making their reborn democracies more robust. V-Dem Institute’s 2023 Democracy Report, “Defiance in the Face of Autocratization,” analyzes eight cases of countries (Bolivia and Slovenia among them) that have made a “U-turn” from autocracy and now qualify as democracies. Since that report appeared we also had the big victory of democratic forces over the far right in Poland (October 2023), and the successful unity play of the French left against a National Rally victory (June 2024).

Nonviolent mass protest remains among the most important ways to show our support for democracy in situations of creeping authoritarianism; to protest injustices and advocate for policy reforms; and, in autocracies, to show the world the government does not speak for us.

She goes on:

What they all share is a validation of nonviolent protest –people coming together in public spaces to express dissent—as a way of doing politics or simply acting on an inner conviction that what is going on in their societies is wrong and they can no longer stay silent.

Depending on the country, non-violent mass protest can be dangerous. But she quotes Hong Kong dissident Nathan Law:

History in the making. We have no idea whether are in the beginning, middle or end of it. But we are sure that history will mark what you have done as something magnificent. History will treat you well. No matter what will happen, your effort is not going in vain.”

It’s not all bad.