The paramedic life

I love learning about medical care, and have recently read three books about Australian paramedics and have appreciated the different insights each gave.

Frog: The Secret Diary of a Paramedic, by Sally Gould charts the first five or so years of her career as a paramedic. From early ride-alongs on placement, learning from more experienced workers, to becoming a trainer herself and then applying for the Intensive Care Paramedic (ICP) program. Gould shares about encouraging and challenging co-workers, and weaves together funny, poignant, sad and awful stories about patients. She is also open about her struggle with depression, which escalated a few years into the job. 

The Gap by Benjamin Gilmour focuses on one summer (2007-2008) when Gilmour worked as a paramedic. Those who are unfamiliar with Sydney may not immediately understand the book’s title. The Gap is a prominent and beautiful 

location on Sydney’s coastline, but also where many people choose to end their life. He includes a large range of call-outs - to brothels, nightclubs, mansions, emergency births and numerous heart attacks. Woven into this plethora of emergency work are the regular calls to The Gap and the personal lives of his fellow paramedics. In hindsight, this book headed in a relentless direction. The high mental health cost for emergency workers is evident. 

You Called An Ambulance for What? by Tim Booth. This is much more cutting look at the people who call an ambulance unnecessarily - whether selfish, unknowing or entitled, and perhaps all three. Booth worked for years in south-west Sydney, and he does not hold back on his opinion of those who abuse the healthcare system. From the man with a blocked nose and the woman who wants her prescription refilled to the people who fake seizures in the middle of domestic disputes, Booth exposes the full gamut of people who call an ambulance who shouldn’t. Halfway through the book, Covid hits, radically changing the landscape, risk levels (and frustrations) for paramedics. It’s written in an acerbic tone laced with annoyance, frustration and condescension, so it won’t appeal to all. However, you may well also find yourself asking: “They called an ambulance for what?” 

Overall, these books have been a reminder of the amazing work our first responders do and the unique circumstances they operate in. Also, that 000 is for real emergencies only.

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Another book by Benjamin Gilmour, Paramedico, tells of his experiences serving with ambulance teams across the world in places like Iceland, Mexico, Pakistan and South Africa. It’s fascinating how different they are, often depending on funding and training. While every healthcare system has challenges, this is a good reminder of just how good we have it in Australia.

Home Work

Home Work: Essays on love and housekeeping, Helen Hayward (Puncher and Wattman, 2023) 

Home Work by Helen Hayward was a highlight of my recent reading. It is a gentle stroll through the unfolding years of her life, as she ponders what it means to care about her home, her household, and how it runs.

She outlines her early adult years, leaving Adelaide for London, and establishing a career. She struggled with the tension of enjoying a well-kept, inviting home with the reality and business of work and commitments: 

“And even while my thoughts were focused on my career, in my heart – a place I didn't often go – I never doubted that there was an art to running a home and that it was a worthwhile thing to do.”

Upon marriage and the subsequent arrival of children, the question of maintaining the home became front and centre: 

“From day one of motherhood, the emotional, imaginative and physical work of looking after my baby and home felt demanding. I felt I had no choice but to stay on top of household tasks…Cooking, organising, errands, shopping and cleaning became urgent. My life may not have depended on them but my sanity and well-being did.”

The family returned to Australia settling first in Melbourne and then in Tasmania. As Hayward’s mother got older and began questioning whether her life (spent at home with a focus on child-raising and volunteering) had value, Hayward was asking her own similar questions: 

“Was it possible to find meaning and satisfaction in housekeeping? And did this have something important to teach us about life itself? Eventually these questions snowballed into one giant question. Was our home work essential to living a good life or did it take away from it?”

What I really appreciated about this book was its tone. Hayward tells her story gently and honestly. She  doesn’t force her choices on you. She just shares her thinking, and perhaps others will find something in it for them.

She isn’t starry-eyed about the realities of managing a home: 

“Daydreaming about what family life might be like was easy in my early 30s. Housekeeping for the family that I went onto to have, as the years galloped by, was more challenging and time-consuming than I'd ever imagined.”

“What I do know, and do have words for, it's just how much love and effort it requires to keep up a warm and attractive home, especially with a family at the middle of it.”

Yet, there was a recognition of what was learnt in the process: 

“Being a mother of small children forced me into a self-reliance I had not known I was capable of.”

“What I didn't understand back then, what I couldn't fathom in my pigheaded adolescence, was the extent to which loving someone is to look after them. Aged sixteen I refuse to accept, it was incomprehensible to me, that loving someone is inseparable from caring for them practically, emotionally, and soulfully.”

She concludes that the reason that you maintain a home is mainly to love the people in it. 

“It's a daily expression of my willingness to do things that I don't really care about, for the sake of something bigger that I really do care about. For me, these big things are love and beauty. The kind of love that I've stumbled on goes beyond family, to everyone I care about. It extends to everyone I know who is in the throes of doing this difficult thing called life.”

Much of what Hayward shares echoes my own thinking in this area. I suspect she is only 5-10 years older than me and her story has many similarities. I have also chosen to be the primary person at home, managing the household for 25 years. This doesn’t mean there isn’t another focus elsewhere - Hayward was in paid employment for many years, and I have given much time to unpaid ministry. While I might be initially be tempted not to think of myself as very “homemakery”, when I think back over the years, I realise I have taught myself how to do basic home maintenance, clean gutters, change doorknobs, make bread, cook, paint a room, make jam, sew curtains, and so on. The things that keep a house going.

Like many, I have found there is both a tediousness to the never-ending cycle of cleaning, washing and cooking. Yet, there is also a sense of satisfaction in maintaining a welcoming home, where everyone is fed and clean, and where things work. And even more so - when others are served and loved by your actions.

This is what I appreciated about this book. It made me recall and reflect again on why I have chosen the path I have.

The Body Keeps the Score

The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk (Penguin, 2014) 

I have been slowly working my way through this seminal work on trauma over the semester. After it sat on my shelf unread for years, taking a trauma-informed therapy course at uni suggested it was now time to read it. 

It’s excellent and I can see why it’s so well regarded by other trauma experts, as well as by numerous health professionals, and the general public. van der Kolk presents the details of trauma, how it impacts the brain and body, and numerous treatment paths in a very digestible, easy to read format. This is impressive, for the book is over 400 pages, and requires reasonable concentration and attention. His storytelling skills are evident as he weaves stories, case studies and examples throughout while also explaining research, outcomes, programmes, and the impacts of public policy. 

Broken into five sections, he begins with the rediscovery of trauma, described through his work with Vietnam veterans. 

“Trauma results in a fundamental reorganisation of the way mind and brain manage perceptions. It changes not only how we think and what we think about, but also our very capacity to think…For real change to take place, the body needs to learn that the danger has passed and to live in the reality of the present.” (p.24) 

He explores the brain and how it is impacted by trauma, and then gives detailed attention to the developmental impact of trauma in children. He supports the view that child abuse is the gravest and most costly public health issue in the US. It’s a sobering observation that, 

“In today’s world your ZIP code [post code], even more than your genetic code, determines whether you will lead a safe and healthy life. People’s income, family structure, housing, employment, and educational opportunities affect not only their risk of developing traumatic stress but also their access to effective help to address it. Poverty, unemployment, inferior schools, social isolation, widespread availability of guns, and substandard housing all are breeding grounds for trauma. Trauma breeds other trauma; hurt people hurt other people,” (p. 418-9) 

If you are around my age (or older), you likely are aware of the prevalent view (of the 80s/90s) that people needed to relive or talk through trauma in all its details to process it. Reading this book (and my study) has clarified that talking therapies alone can be traumatic and triggering, and an integrated phased somatic trauma approach can be much more beneficial. An understanding of what your body & brain is doing, how it responds, and various treatment approaches are all important. It is these pathways to recovery that make up the final section (and almost half the book). He explores reestablishing ownership of your body and mind by finding ways to be present and calm, integrating traumatic memories, EDMR, body awareness through yoga, a parts awareness of our inner selves, psychomotor therapy, neurofeedback and community theatre. Some of these more technical terms may be familiar to those already in the field, but all are well explained and therefore understandable for any reader. 

One could read this book overwhelmed by the challenges that trauma presents to both individuals and our society at large. Yet, there is hope scattered throughout as well. It’s an area with growing understanding and increasingly research proven methods of treatment. People can process and integrate their trauma in ways that enable them to go on to live stable, safe and meaningful lives. 

“Trauma consistently confronts us with our fragility and with man’s inhumanity to man but also with our extraordinary resilience.” (p.427) 

For the Christian there are other areas worth exploring that overlay the current secular thinking. These include our view of God in the midst of suffering and pain, what forgiveness could look like, how our redemption in Christ changes us, and how ongoing sanctification could impact the person with trauma. To consider what it means to be a child of God, trust in him as the God of comfort who truly loves and cares for us, even in our brokenness. All areas still to explore. 

This book is an excellent introduction to the current thinking and research on trauma. It is highly recommended for health professionals who want to understand this field better. I would say it also has great benefit for those with trauma, although caution is needed as it is likely to contain triggers, and does require a fair amount of concentration to read.

Resilient Grieving

Resilient Grieving, Dr Lucy Hone (Allen & Unwin, 2017)

This is an excellent book about grief, how it impacts and changes us, and how we learn to live with loss.

Dr Lucy Hone works in the field of resilience psychology. Living in Christchurch, she worked with people through major loss and disruption over the time of their earthquakes. Her life was then turned upside down when her daughter Abi (12) was killed in a car accident, along with two dear family friends.

As Lucy, her husband and two sons faced their devastating grief, she began to consider how her her work could interact with her grief experience. In the end, she decided she wanted to be proactive about her grieving, to take control of it.

Her reading, research and experience has produced Resilient Grieving (first published as What Abi Taught Us). She says “this book is less about what you might experience during bereavement and more about what you might do to enable the process of healthy grieving“.

The book is split into two parts.

Part 1: Recovery

This section is intended for the early days, weeks and months after a major bereavement. The first chapter suggests six strategies for coping in the immediate aftermath:

• There are no rules, do what you need. 
• Choose where to focus your attention 
• Take your time 
• Feel the pain 
• Beware of the grief ambush 
• Reestablish routines 

Further chapters consider ideas such as:

• Accepting the loss 
• Noting humans are hard wired to cope - death is normal and most people manage tragedy and trauma quite well, with time. 
• Noting the secondary losses that come with any major loss - perhaps loss of role, income, dreams, etc. 
• Choosing to find positive emotions 
• The usefulness of distraction 
• Habits of resilient thinking: realistic optimism, redefining hope, and mindfulness 
• Managing exhaustion and depression through rest and exercise 
• What family and friends can do to help. This chapter is very helpful for support people, and also includes comments about grief in children 

This was all very useful material. My only thought is that whether someone is likely to have this book and be in a state to read it in those very early days of grief, or able to process the content within. As such, this may be more of a tool for a support person, who can also put it in the grieving person’s hands when they are ready.

Part 2: Reappraisal and renewal

This considers the reality of your life after the loss, so chapters address:

• Reappraising your brave new world 
• Facing the future 
• Continuing bonds 
• Post-traumatic growth 
• Rituals and mourning the dead 

The main reason I found this book so helpful was not related to a personal grief story. Rather, I have done a Theories of Grief course at uni this semester. And so forgive me, because this next sentence will mean nothing to many - but for those that have spent time in the field it should make sense. What Hone has managed to do is turn numerous grief theories (e.g., Worden’s tasks of mourning, Attig’s relearning the world, Stroebe & Schut’s Dual Process Model, and Neimeyer’s meaning making concepts); and combine them into an easily understandable explanation that grabs the key elements of each and applies them to her own situation. What I appreciate about the various grief theories is how readily they can interact with & build on each other. Hone has developed her own pictoral grief model - a jigsaw puzzle of interlocking pieces, not linear or circular, but something that keeps needing to be fit together in a way that works for her.

So, Hone has managed to tell her own story of loss and grief, and combine it skilfully with research, producing a book that is both deeply personal as well as being a learning and guiding tool for others - readily accessible for anyone in grief. Each chapter finishes with personal questions to consider for your own situation.

This could be a very helpful guide to those charting their own way through major bereavement. In addition, it would be a valuable addition to anyone who cares for or counsels those in grief.

Burnout

Burnout: A Guide to Identifying Burnout and Pathways to Recovery, Gordon Parker, Gabriela Tavella and Kerrie Eyers (2021)

At times, burnout seems to be the buzzword. It’s used often, yet hard to define or quantify. Are you burnt out or burning out? Is it possibly depression? Or exhaustion? Or is there an underlying medical condition? This is a timely book for anyone impacted by burnout, whether personally, or for family and friends, employers or health professionals; with the aim to explain, advance awareness and enable ‘nuanced management recommendations’. It is peppered with personal stories that give meaning and expression to the research and concepts within.

Part 1: What is Burnout? 

They begin by considering the place of burnout in ancient literature (including possibly Moses and Elijah) and its more modern history. They interact with the generally accepted definition of burnout and it’s three factors: energy depletion or exhaustion, negative feeling or cynicism about one’s job, and reduced professional efficacy (this may be the definition you have heard, it’s the one I knew about).

Based on the authors’ research (referred to as the Sydney Studies), they expand the factors at play and propose that the main features include:

• exhaustion 
• loss of empathy or perhaps loss of joy 
• compromised work performance 
• impaired cognition 
• that it is different to depression, although there is overlap 
• that perfectionism heightens the risk (it’s identified as probably the key predisposing risk factor) 
• that it is a ‘diathesis stress’ condition meaning that some people are predisposed. 

This higher risk due to personality suggests that “escape from work or caregiving pressures may relieve some of the burnout symptoms, but failure to identify and modulate any personality contribution will not allow burnout to be so readily managed, while also increasing the risk of relapse”.

They consider other causes of burnout symptoms (what burnout is not: e.g. chronic fatigue syndrome, anxiety) with much time comparing the symptoms of depression. There is an extensive table comparing melancholic depression (that which arises from inside a person with no seeming trigger), non-melancholic (more responsive to a situation) and burnout. This could be very helpful for health professionals, as well as individuals seeking some clarification.

Part 2: Causes of Burnout

It seems universally acknowledged that a clear cause of burnout is work. But what work causes burnout? Certain professions are linked with high rates of burnout including doctors, nurses, police, lawyers, teachers, managers, and clergy. However, the high rate of burnout in caregivers is now also being more widely recognised.

Interestingly, there is a paradox relating burnout with how one views one’s job: “burnout rates appear lowest in those who work in simply a job, higher in those who view their work as a career and highest in those who whose work is at the level of a ‘calling’”. Let ministry workers have ears to hear.

Then attention is given to the predisposing factors that can increase the risk of burnout, the most prevailing being perfectionism. Others include: neuroticism, having an external (rather than internal) locus of control, a Type A personality, a low sense of self-efficacy and low EQ. They conclude that “the sad thing about burnout is that is more likely to afflict good people”.

Part 3: Overcoming Burnout and Rekindling the Flame

To resolve burnout, three approaches are helpful, with most benefit if all three are addressed:

• resolve work factors 
• learn and implement de-stressing techniques 
• identify and address personality contribution 

Following chapters focus on managers and improving workplace conditions and culture, workers and caregivers (e.g. when to speak up at work, and when to choose to leave), de-stressing techniques (e.g. mindfulness, meditation), and managing perfectionism (with a recommendation for the use of CBT).

They draw all the threads together at the end, with numerous suggestions about how to manage burnout, pointing out that “burnout resolves better with a self-management model” and therefore people can take control and manage it themselves perhaps with some assistance along the way.

Appendices

The appendices include:

• The Sydney Burnout measure - their proposed diagnostic tool to assess burnout which can be self applied. 
• A checklist of workplace triggers 
• A perfectionism scale 
• An extensive list of various resources (mainly apps and websites) 

All in all, this is a very helpful & relevant book, taking a concept that is widely talked about, but less widely comprehended or qualified, and provides a scaffolding for our understanding, assessment, and treatment of burnout.

Remember

Remember, Lisa Genova

Lisa Genova, neuroscientist and author of Still Alice has written this excellent little book Remember: on the science of memory and the art of forgetting.

It’s very readable and understandable, combining the science for those who are interested, in an engaging format, with easily comprehensible and relatable examples to explain and expand what she is saying.

She starts by explaining the breadth of what our memory does:

"Of all the complex and wondrous miracles that your brain executes, memory is king. You need memory to learn anything. Without it, information and experiences can’t be retained. New people would remain strangers. You wouldn’t be able to remember the previous sentence by the end of this one.… You use your memory from the moment you wake up until the moment you go to sleep, and even then, your memory processes are busy at work.

The significant facts and moments of your life strung together create your life’s narrative and identity. Memory allows you to have a sense of who you are and who you’ve been." (p2)

Yet as she will go on to expand, it’s also incredibly faulty. 

The first section considers How we remember.

With some explanation about how making a memory works (encoding, consolidation, storage, retrieval), Genova notes that the main reason we forget things is that we just don’t pay enough attention to them. So, if we paid attention to where we parked our car, we would remember where it was. She gives tips throughout for assisting with making memories stick.

Then she explores the three types of memory:

• muscle memory - how to do things, eg ride a bike 
• semantic memory - information eg. George Washington was the first US president 
• episodic memory - the history of you remembered by you. Here emotion and surprise are important, “the more emotional the event, the more vividly and elaborately detailed the memory”. In fact, something highly unexpected and exceptionally emotional creates a flashbulb memory (eg. September 11 for many people). 

The second part details Why we forget. 

Here Genova tips things on their head, pointing out how our memory of things are often wrong (which any conversation with someone else who experienced the same event quickly shows us). Every time we recall a memory, we change it a little, and resave it as Version 2.0 in our mind.

She explores the “tip of the tongue” phenomenon, when you know a fact but can’t recall it; and why it is so hard to remember things you are supposed to do the future. Her tip here is the basic thing most people do - don’t expect to remember, rather use your calendar, to do lists, and pill boxes for regular medication.

She notes time in the biggest factor in forgetting, and much of this is good. We have to forget things, we need to leave the emotion or pain of some memories behind, and we need to create space for new information.

Genova compares the normal impact of aging on memory with the devastating impact of Alzheimer’s. In fact much of this book seems to be designed to help people see the difference, and therefore have more confidence in when you need to be concerned and when you don’t. So, for example: if you can’t remember where you put the car keys, that is fine, however if you forget you have a car, or what the keys are used for, that is a problem.

Part 3 considers what to do: whether you improve or impair.

She notes that unrelenting chronic stress is disastrous for memory. However, she emphasises that the two main things that are essential for memory and preventing Alzheimer’ are adequate sleep (7-9 hours per night) and exercise.


This is a very easy to read book, full of interesting facts and reliable examples and anecdotes. In the end, she wants us to know that "your memory is miraculously powerful, highly fallible, and doing its job." Definitely worth reading.

Apocalypse Never

Apocalypse Never, Michael Shellenberger

This book got a fair bit of attention when it was released in 2020, for it seemed that an environmental activist was suddenly saying that perhaps things weren’t as dire as environmental alarmists have been claiming for years.

As such, I was intrigued to read it, having studied environmental science and worked in the field many years ago. I continue to wonder what it means to be responsible stewards of God’s creation, through measured rather than extreme responses to environmental impacts. Things are so much more complicated than simplistic headlines suggest. This is where Shellenberger provides insight, considering issues from multiple perspectives including energy usage and fuel density, land-use, wildlife preservation, industrialisation, poverty and economics. He notes how the developed world has tried to impose their newly established environmental morality on developing nations, preventing their progress in ways they never had to deal with themselves.

Shellenberger has been an environmental activist for 30 years, researching and writing on environmental issues.

“Much of what people are being told about the environment, including the climate, is wrong, and we desperately need to get it right. I decided to write Apocalypse Never after getting fed up with the exaggeration, alarmism, and extremism that are the enemy of a positive, humanistic, and rational environmentalism….Apocalypse Never offers a defence of what one might call mainstream ethics. It makes the moral case for humanism, of both secular and religious variants, against the anti-humanism of apocalyptic environmentalism.”

Over 12 chapters Shellenberger highlights an alarmist environmental issue and then seeks to interact with it from numerous perspectives, showing that it’s not as simple as suggested and often the proposed solution is actually harmful to the environment, people and the economy.

Many will be those that we are familiar with, including: 

• that rainforest burning is destroying the earth’s lungs 
• that plastic straws are overrunning the world’s oceans 
• that sweatshops are destroying the planet 
• that vegetarianism is the answer to climate change 
• that sea level rises are killing the polar bears 
• that fishing practices are a problem for oceans 
• that renewable energy is the solution to all energy problems.

I am not all over each of these topics (as I guess few people would be), and at times I found it hard to figure out which direction each chapter was going; it started somewhere and ended up somewhere else. However I suspect this is the reality of the complex nature of issues when dealing on the world scale. Everything is multifaceted: the fuels people use and the way products are produced affects the world. Energy use has different impacts on different people, as do land-use and waste products.

Those in grinding poverty need reliable energy supply which would reduce charcoal production and land-clearing. In poorer countries, waste management needs to be addressed, but probably after sewer and stormwater systems are prioritised. He raises the question of whether the survival of animals that we deem attractive should be prioritised over the people struggling to live on the same land.

He looks at the higher land use required by renewable energy, bioplastics and other biofuel products. He talks about the advantages and benefits to wildlife of plastic replacements (eg. no more tortoiseshell or ivory since plastics took over). He is unwaveringly and overwhelmingly favourable about nuclear power as the solution to energy supply and production problems. He takes a close look at how oil and gas interests have been funding environmental groups to prevent nuclear power plant production.

“The fact that the energy density of fuels, and the power density of their extraction, determine their environmental impact should be taught in every environmental studies class. Unfortunately, it is not. There is a psychological and ideological reason: romantic appeal-to-nature fallacy, where people imagine renewables are more natural than fossil fuels and uranium, and that's what's natural is better for the environment.”

He notes that industrialisation is a good thing, and we should stop trying to prevent developing nations from doing so, for it takes people out of poverty. “Contrary to what I and others have long believed, the positive impacts of manufacturing outweighs the negative ones”. He wonders why we are trying to keep other nations from developing along the same path we have already done, noting our moral arrogance along the way.

I found the final chapters particularly interesting as he tried to bring together the reasons why environmentalism, particularly the extreme versions, have taken such a hold on the Western world. In the end, he concludes, it’s the secular religion of our time:

“Today is the dominant secular religion of the educated, upper-middle-class in most developed and many developing nations. It provides a new story about our collective and individual purpose. It designates good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains. And it does so in the language of science, which provides it with legitimacy.”

On one hand, he suggests environmentalism and vegetarianism is a strong break from the Judeo-Christian religious tradition, particularly because they reject the view that humans have dominion over the earth. But on the other hand, he proposed that it’s a new kind of religion, one that replaces God with nature:

“I believe that secular people are attracted to apocalyptic environmentalism because it meets some of the same psychological and spiritual needs as Judeo-Christianity and other religions.” 

Yet he notes, while religion provides people with meaning, purpose and a guide to positive, pro-social and ethical behaviour, on the other hand:

“The trouble with the new environmental religion is that it has become increasingly apocalyptic, destructive, and self-defeating. It leads its adherents to demonize their opponents, often hypocritically. It drives them to seek to restrict power and prosperity at home and abroad. And it spreads anxiety and depression without meeting the deeper psychological, existential, and spiritual needs it's extensively secular devotees seek…

negativity has triumphed over positivity. In place of love, forgiveness, kindness, and the kingdom and heaven, today’s apocalyptic environmentalism offers fear, anger and the narrow prospects of avoiding extinction.”

It’s a fact-dense book, with many quotes, figures and references. It’s hard to argue with such data, although we also know data can be used to say many things. He notes if he installed a battery and solar system in his home, it would take 17 years to pay off, hardly a great renewable investment financially. He has access to much cheaper power than we do, for a similar system in our home would be paid off in 6 years. At the same time, woven throughout are stories and anecdotes to illustrate his points. There is specific naming and shaming of various people and players, and he doesn’t hesitate to identify those who benefit financially from their stance, being quite harsh about some. Generally, I think it could have been edited better. A quick look at reviews online suggests he has ardent followers and harsh critics in equal measure, which is no great surprise.

I found it an interesting and thought-provoking read. It broadened my understanding of many environmental issues and provided angles to each that I had not considered in detail before. It is more optimistic and more favourable towards humanity than other writings in this field, which appealed to me. Lots of food for thought.

A. J. Mackinnon

I discovered A.J. Mackinnon’s travel writing this holidays and loved both of his books. Mackinnon is an Australian high school teacher, mainly in English I think - I imagine if you had him as a teacher, you’d love whatever he taught. He had some of his childhood in Adelaide and is currently a teacher in the Victorian highlands. His writing is beautifully lyrical and descriptive as well as enjoyable and great fun.

The Well at the World’s End (2014) 

This enjoyable true diary is of Mackinnon’s travels from Australia to the Well at the World’s End on a remote Scottish Island around 1990. He decides to travel with virtually no plans and avoiding all air travel. So by yacht, train, bus, car, ship and ferry, he goes to New Zealand, back to Australia, up through Indonesia into Asia and onwards to Europe. He has a similar humorous and self deprecating style to Bill Bryson, but with more a lyrical, fantasy feel, and fewer reflections on culture. It’s a funny and enjoyable read, especially if you happen to have been to any of the numerous destinations he visits.

The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow (2002)

This one charts Mackinnon’s decision to sail a small dinghy from the English / Welsh border down to Bristol in 1998. Of course, the excitement and joy of the whole exercise, plus the encouragement of others, leads him to go back up the Bath River across the canals of England to London. Not satisfied with traversing that country, he crosses the English Channel, and heads across France, Germany and finally ends up in the Black Sea. It’s fantastic. This one I read with Google Maps open in satellite view next to me so I could see exactly where he had gone, not knowing enough specific geography of the area to manage without. 

Both are treasures to read — enjoyable, clever, insightful and just plain fun.

If you just want a taste, it’s worth listening to his two part interview on the podcast “Life in Flux” from Nov 2018. There are a few different details there, as well as some additional pondering on humanity and the impact of great literature. He is a big fan of Narnia, Lord of the Rings, Swallows and Amazons and Dr Doolittle, and all of these have impacted his views of life and his travels.

Being Mortal

Being Mortal, Atul Gawande

Gawande has written this sobering, honest, critical and yet hopeful book “about the modern experience of mortality - about what it’s like to be creatures who age and die, how medicine has changed the experience and how it hasn’t, where our ideas about how to deal with our finitude have got the reality wrong.” 

As he says:

“Our reluctance to honestly examine the experience of aging and dying has increased the harm we inflict on people and denied them the basic comforts they most need."

He considers the medicalisation and institutionalisation of dying, and how it comes at cross purposes to what many want in their final days and years: choice over whether to remain in your own home, freedom over what you eat & drink, how we socialise (or not) with others, and the ability to make your own decisions about care, treatment and death.

He moves through topics considering how independent we are through most of life, but things start to fall apart as bodies decay and age naturally. We become creatures who need more help, and who become more dependent on others.

He consider what he terms the failure of the nursing home experiment, noting they were never designed for the purposes to which they have been put, with the three things that plague them: boredom, loneliness, helplessness:

“Our elderly are left with a controlled and supervised existence, a medically designed answer to unfixable problems, a life designed to be safe but empty of anything they care about.”

Gawande uses personal stories to illustrate many of his points, including very sad situations of people over-treated with increasingly painful and pointless procedures, and given false hope, who, along with their family, were never properly prepared for their inevitable death. He contrasts this with well done hospice care. He also weaves the story of his own father’s decline and death, and the choices they had to make along the way.

“Our responsibility, in medicine, is to deal with human beings as they are. People die only once. They have no experience to draw on. They need doctors and nurses who are willing to have the hard discussions and say what they have seen, who will help people prepare for what is to come - and escape a warehoused oblivion that few really want.”

He notes how hard it is for patients, family and doctors to have these hard conversations, but having them helps everyone to process the reality, and to be clear about when they want, can expect and what is possible. He suggests some of the things we should be talking about at this stage are:

• What do you want? (eg to be at home, to manage the pain, enjoy remaining days) 
• What are your biggest fears and concerns? (eg to not be able to go home, to be ventilated) 
• What goals are most important to you? (eg. being able to walk, care for yourself, eat, have autonomy over day) 
• What trade-offs are you willing to make, and which ones are you not? (this can help with risky surgery decisions, etc) 

Personally, I would have loved some consideration about how faith affects people’s view about these last days, but that was not where this book was headed.

He touches on assisted suicide, and in the end is not greatly supportive of it: “Our ultimate goal, after all, is not a good death but a good life to the very end.” As he notes, “assisted living is far harder that assisted death, but its possibilities are far greater, as well.”

I appreciated some of his final comments:

“Technological society has forgotten what scholars call the “dying role” and is important to people as life approaches its end. People want to share memories, pass on wisdoms and keepsakes, settle relationships, establish their legacies, make peace with God, and ensure that those who are left behind will be okay. They want to end their stories on their own terms …the way we deny people this role, out of obtuseness and neglect, is cause for everlasting shame. Over and over, we in medicine inflict deep gouges at the end of people’s lives and then stand oblivious to the harm done.”

“If to be human is to be limited, then the role of caring professionals and institutions - from surgeons to nursing homes - ought to be aiding people in their struggle with those limits”.

This is an excellent, thoughtful analysis that could help many start these important conversations with those they love.

The Madness of Crowds

The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity, Douglas Murray 

You may recall I read some books on racism earlier in the year, White Tears / Brown Scars and Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race. Both prompted me to think through current issues and language, such as white privilege, white guilt, structural racism, intersectionality, etc.

I then turned to Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility, and at this point started to feel uneasy. I chose not to review her book here, but after some research realised it’s not just me who felt uncomfortable with it. She is a white woman who runs diversity seminars. Her premise is that all white people are racist, we live in a white supremacy world, with our white fragility and an unwillingness to face our racism. Her book keeps us all of us our place: we cannot learn or change, you have to live with your guilt, fragility and privilege.

I felt it was time to explore some other writing, so after enjoying Ben Elton’s fictional exploration into identity politics, I turned to Douglas Murray’s analysis in The Madness of Crowds.

I could give a very detailed review, as I wrote copious notes and highlighted many sections. Instead, I’ll give some overarching summary comments, including quotes, so you can decide whether or not you want to read it for yourself. I realise this is still quite long as is.

Personally, I highly recommend reading it.

He asserts there are four main tripwires now laid across culture, which he titles:

• gay 
• women 
• race 
• trans 

He addresses each in depth, starting from why they have come to the fore, but at the same time pointing out the illogical nature and antagonistic attitude behind much of today’s discourse.

“Among the things these issues all have in common is that they have started as legitimate human rights campaigns. That is why they have come so far. But at some point all went through the crash barrier. Not content with being equal they have started to settle on unsustainable positions such as ‘better’.”

He then notes, “each of these issues is infinitely more complex and unstable than our societies are currently willing to admit. Which is why, put together as the foundation blocks of a new morality and metaphysics, they form the basis for a general madness. Indeed a more unstable basis for social harmony could hardly be imagined.”

It’s a brave man who chooses to dip his toe in these muddy waters. But his analysis is timely, logical, helpful and does not hesitate to draw out the inconsistencies of positions that we are presented with.

“We are going through a great crowd derangement. In public and in private, both online and off, people are behaving in ways that are increasingly irrational, feverish, herd-like and simply unpleasant. The daily news cycle is filled with the consequences. Yet while we see the symptoms everywhere, we do not see the causes.”

He believes the cause is because all our grand narratives have collapsed. Religion and politics no longer tell the story, and postmodernity suggested there wasn’t one.

So, people find meaning by engaging in “new battles, even fiercer campaigns and ever more niche demands. To find meaning by waging a constant war against anybody who seems to be on the wrong side of a question which may itself have just been reframed and the answer to which has only just been altered.”

He examines how the world is now interpreted through three lenses: social justice, identity group politics and intersectionalism, which he notes is “probably the most audacious and comprehensive effort since the end of the Cold War at creating a new ideology.”

Woven throughout the book are overarching comments and arguments, including:

1. The way we treat each other and impute motive:

“The manner in which people and movements behave at the point of victory can be the most revealing thing about them. Do you allow arguments that worked for you to work for others? Are reciprocity and tolerance principles or fig-leaves? Do those who have been censored go on to censor others when the ability in is their own hands?”

“Which leads to a question that everybody in genuinely diverse and pluralistic societies must at some point ask: ‘Do we take other people at face value, or do we try to read behind their words and action, claim to see into their hearts and the divine the true motives which their speech and actions have not yet revealed?”

2. Hardware vs software 

He returns to this distinction in each category, and how thinking has changed around it. For example, gender was always thought to be a hardware issue, you are born male or female. However, with the trans movement, someone can declare themselves to be a woman even while being biologically male, thus turning the perception of gender in a a software issue.

3. The politicisation of each position

Each section refers to the political nature of each issue, to the extent that if you aren’t on the ‘right’ side of the debate, you can be outed from that position. eg, a gay man who was told he could not be truly gay, because he supported Trump.

“…may be among the biggest issues of all. It is whether being gay means that you are attracted to members of your own sex, or whether it means that you are part of a grand political project.”

4. Claims of each have moved beyond equality, to that proponents of each are somehow now ‘better’ than others 

“just one of the contradictory settlements that we have landed on … the one that simultaneously insists that women are in every meaningful way exactly the same as men, possessing the same traits and competencies and able to challenge them on the same turf at any time. Yet simultaneously, magically, they are better than men. Or better in specific ways.”

5. Intersectionality 

“To say that intersectionality has not been thought through is an understatement. Together with its other faults it has not been put to the test in any meaningful way for any meaningful length of time. It has the most tenuous basis in philosophy and has no major work of though dedicated to it. … it would ordinarily be deemed presumptuous, not to say unwise, to try to roll out that concept across an entire society, including every educational institution and every profitable place of business.”

6. The impact of technology

“What all these waves have inadvertently demonstrated is the deranging effects that social media can have not just on a debate but on a movement.

He notes the power that Silicon Valley have to make the world think like they do:

“on each of the maddening issues of our time - sex, sexuality, race and trans - the Valley know what is right and is only encouraging everyone else to catch up”

7. Forgiveness

One final area which I thought was particularly insightful were his interlude comments on forgiveness. This echoes Tim Challies’ comments almost 10 years ago, noting the eternality of information online, “can a world that never forgets be a world that truly forgives”.

His comments on the loss of faith here are instructive:

“As one of the consequences of the death of God, Frederick Nietzsche foresaw that people could find themselves stuck in cycles of Christian theology with no way out. Specifically that people would inherit the concepts of guilt, sin and shame but would be without the means of redemption which the Christian religion also offered. Today we do seem to live in a world where actions can have consequences we could never have imagined, where guilt and shame are more at hand than ever, and where we have no means whatsoever of redemption. We do not know who could offer it, who could accept it, and whether it is a desirable quality compared to an endless cycle of fiery certainty and denunciation.”

***

These are some of the overarching thoughts across the four tripwires he discussed. For more detail on how he addresses each issue, I suggest you read the book. He uses a lot of anecdotes and stories to make his case, and of course the ones chosen illustrate his points perfectly. Stories from the other side would have helped balance some of his argument, for it is true that there are times when women, gay, trans and people of colour have been treated appallingly. However, he is not arguing they have not, but rather the pendulum has swung so far the other way.

His final chapter turns to some solutions, which is only the start of a way forward. His suggestions include inclining towards generosity, recognising where this all may be going and depoliticising our lives. Like many of these types of books, Murray has done an excellent job of identifying the issues, but struggles to propose a helpful, practical way forward for the average person. Perhaps that it because we are still in the middle of it all.

Or perhaps, that is because we do need a meta-narrative to hold our society together. One that values all people. One that considers we are all wonderfully made. One that knows that we all err and fail, yet mercy and true forgiveness can be found. One that calls us to love our God and love our neighbour as ourself. One that extends grace and generosity to one another with a desire to understand and be unified by our common humanity. That’s a meta-narrative worth exploring.

Victoria: The Queen

Victoria: The Queen Julia Baird

After dipping my toe into the historical fiction Victoria by Daisy Goodwin, I was keen to read more about her. So I turned to Julia Baird’s detailed biography.

It was a great read. Baird writes clearly and engagingly, covering large amounts of content, but making it eminently readable. 

I was pleased to have read the Goodwin one first, as I was covering familiar ground for the first few chapters. This enabled comparison between the accounts, but also meant I was familiar with the people present in the young Queen’s life.

This is a solid read and a large book that covers her whole life in detail (although for those that are alarmed by the size of the book, almost half is notes and references). Apparently it’s a challenge to research Victoria for although she wrote thousands of pages of journals and letters over the course of her life, her children and others severely edited them, sanitising much of the content.

"Beatrice, Victoria’s daughter… had been charged with the unfortunate task of editing the queen’s voluminous diaries. She did this over ten years, writing them out in her own hand into blue copybooks and burning the originals, in one of the greatest acts of historical censorship of the century."

So, it’s hard to be sure of the facts. Baird has spend hours in document research, and tries to draw conclusions about facets of Victoria’s life that have been ignored by others, most notably her later very close friendship with John Brown.

Victoria is a fascinating character study. In a time where women where viewed as the property of husbands, could not vote and were rarely considered having opinions worth hearing, Victoria became Queen at 18 and ruled an empire for 64 years. As Baird notes:

"When Victoria was born, food was cooked in open fireplaces, horses carried messages, half of the population was illiterate and a narrow band of property owners were the only ones with political power. By the end of her life in 1901, people travelled by subway, telegraphs shot messages across oceans, education was compulsory, and women had some basic rights."

Her great love was Albert, although she was only married to him for just only 21 years (he died in his mid 40s). Over that time they had nine children. Baird does bring her own interpretive note here at a number of points. One I found unnecessary was that “In the most conventional of senses, Victoria has procured herself a wife. [The Prime Minister Lord] Melbourne was her intellectual companion and Albert was her object of desire.” For many years, it seems that Albert essentially functioned as king, which makes some sense considering the years she would have spent pregnant and recovering from childbirth. Yet, Baird also observes that she ceded much to Albert, losing much of her own strength over those years, which really only rallied when she was again on her own:

“She had forgotten her own colossal strength. It lay dormant for years as she worshipped and relied on her ailing, driven husband.”

This is not only an account of Victoria and those closest to her, woven throughout are the events of the time, how they impacted England and the world, and other notable people living during the same period. She worked with ten prime ministers, some very well and some very cantankerously. Her children went on to marry into many of the royal houses of Europe. There were moments of great progress and triumph, as well as wars where many lives were lost. This is really a telling of the history of England in the 19th century, through the lens of the monarch.

Well worth reading, especially, if like me, you know very little about Victoria and her time.

Digital Minimalism

Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport

(This is a longish review - feel free to skip to the bold parts to see the main outline) 

In this interesting and thought-provoking book, Newport makes a case for digital minimalism:

"A philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimised activities that strongly support things you value, and then happily miss out on everything else."

Part 1 outlines the philosophical underpinnings of digital minimalism, argues why it’s the right solution, and what a digital declutter would look like.

He starts by considering the uneven playing field we are now on with technology, as tech companies use two forces to encourage behavioural addiction: intermittent positive reinforcement and the drive for social approval.

"We’ve been engaging in a lopsided arms race in which the technologies encroaching on our autonomy were preying with increasing precision on deep-seated vulnerabilities in our brains, while we still naïvely believed that we were just fiddling with fun gifts handed down from the nerd gods."

He notes the issue is control:

"current unease with new technologies is not really about whether or not they’re useful. It’s instead about autonomy. We signed up for the services and bought these devices for minor reasons… And then found ourselves, years later, increasingly dominated by their influence, allowing them to control more and more of how we spend our time, how we feel and how we behave."

Digital minimalism is based on three core principles:

1. Clutter is costly 
2. Optimisation is important 
3. Intentionality is satisfying 

His proposal is a digital declutter: a 30-day break from the optional technologies in your life, clarifying that it’s optional unless its temporary removal would harm or significantly disrupt the daily operation of your professional or personal life. During that time, explore other pursuits and interests that you enjoy and find meaningful. At the end, you consider which technology to reintroduce, asking three questions as you do so:

1. Does this technology directly support something that I deeply value? 
2. Then, is this technology the best way to support this value? 
3. Then, how am I going to use this technology going forward to maximise its value and minimise its harm? 

(I am still in the middle of my 30 day break from Facebook and Instagram, and have thoroughly enjoyed it)

Part 2 provides a framework for adopting a sustainable digital minimalism lifestyle if you decide it’s right for you, with many practical suggestions. He has four particular practices you might consider:

1. Spending time alone. He notes that many operate in a state of solitude deprivation: where you spend close to zero time alone with your own thoughts and free from input from other minds.

In avoiding solitude, he observes “you miss out on the positive things it brings you: the ability to clarify hard problems, to regulate your emotions, to build moral courage, and to strengthen relationships. If you suffer from chronic solitude deprivation, therefore, the quality of your life degrades.”

Some practices he suggests here are leaving your phone at home (or at least tucked away and hard to get out), go for long walks (on your own, no music or headphones), and to write things down (journaling thoughts, etc).

2. Avoid all low quality communication, and instead prioritise actual conversation.

Suggestions here are: don’t click ‘like’ or make online comments ever, manage texting within set times, and set conversation hours. Here is where you start to think about the principles rather than the suggested practice. I couldn’t make a set time for conversation work - it doesn’t account for other people’s availability, but I already schedule phone calls with friends in advance via text. Or, I meet a friend for a walk, enabling purposeful time together. I don’t have text threads with no purpose, although with teenagers I can see how they might benefit from limiting texting to more purposeful conversation.

3. Reclaim leisure, being purposeful with how you spend your extra time. He has three ideas here:

1. prioritise demanding activity over passive consumption 
2. use skills to produce valuable things in the physical world 
3. seek activities that require real world, structured, social interactions. (While he explored clubs and gyms, my mind naturally and immediately went to Christian communities) 

Suggestions include: fix or build something every week, schedule your low quality leisure, join something, make leisure plans for the week and the seasons.

4. Join the attention resistance. This is where he got more practical in taming tech use. Practical ideas included: deleting social media from your phone, reducing apps and websites (turning them off as standard), managing social media access with precision, embracing slow media (eg read the newspaper rather than nonstop headlines), and dumbing down your smartphone (or actually changing to a dumb phone).

With lots of these, I felt these options were simplified, so while a helpful starting point, there were numerous other ways you could make it work for you.

I have several reflections. 

There are helpful insights into what we have lost in the hours wasted with low value online experiences, whether its flicking through social media, scrolling news sites, binge watching Netflix, or texting in never ending but empty streams of conversations. Ironically, as he points out, no one who spends hours a day on Facebook would ever have the time to develop something like Facebook.

He’s identified a middle-class first-world problem: having enough free time to waste online. But even more than that, it seemed even more elite. How much of this is a problem for those who can afford iPhones, have time to spare and waste, have time and money when not online to devote to leisure pursuits, and who aren’t encumbered by the burden of long working hours and family life. We may bemoan the hours wasted online, but do we stop and give thanks to God that we have the time, money and privilege to have the option to do so (even if we need to reconsider how we use it)?

The author is a tenured college professor and it felt like it. That’s not to dismiss his wisdom, but to see it’s place. He uses the thinking of Thoreau, the practices of Benjamin Franklin and the choice of solitude by Abraham Lincoln as entry points to consider our practices today. Some suggestions reflected a lifestyle with great flexibility, and a fair amount of free time. He can go for long walks daily to encourage solitude, he can decide when he is available for conversations and limit himself to those hours, and can invest in leisure projects.

I assumed he must be single, because there was no consideration of what digital minimalism might look like in a family setting. No thoughts about how to consider these things with a partner or with children who are also navigating the online space, or making such decisions in a household with differing ideas and values in this area. Many recommendations struck me as suiting someone with few ties and much flexibility. (Yet the acknowledgements thank his wife and three children).

I found myself wondering, what does the digital minimalism look like for the Christian? I guess it depends on its purpose. If you step back from online pursuits to fill your life with woodwork and long walks, you are still not really fulfilling God’s call to love him and your neighbour (although you may be happier and less stressed). There could be great value in digital minimalism if you turn to further glorify God, to serve others, and to consider the state of your own heart. One risk of the clutter of a busy online life is we cannot focus on God and how he calls us to live. Newport does suggest that humans are made for more than this empty online life. I agree, we were made for so much more: a deep and abiding relationship with our creator and the people he has made. Any change to our digital lives that fosters that is well worth considering.

Why I'm no longer talking to white people about race

Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race, Reni Eddo-Lodge

After reading Ruby Hamad’s White Tears/ Brown Scars, and discussing it at length, I was pointed to this book by Reni Eddo-Lodge, a London based journalist who has written a detailed analysis of racism in Britain, both historically and currently. I have hardly spent any time in Britain, and so do not have any personal experience and knowledge of these issues there, but she has written in a clear and compelling way, that even if I do not fully grasp the political structures or geographical references, her points still hit home to a reader outside the UK.

Eddo-Lodge is a black woman who as a 4-year old asked her mother when she would become white, because all the good people on TV were white, but all the villains were brown or black. Through her university years she took a course on black history where she realised how much of the UK’s history ignored the issues of racism and the range of cultures present in the country. Increasingly right wing political agendas were calling for a reduction in immigration, to protect “British people” and their “way of life”. As she dug deeper, she began to realise the depth of structural racism through all facets of British life.

But as she tried to speak about it, she met walls of resistance from white people, refusing to see the issues, or claiming we are post-racism and that we no longer see colour. After years of trying, and meeting walls, blank faces, arguments and white tears (like Hamad), in 2014 she wrote a blog post (also like Hamad), called “Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race”. It was a way to declare that for self-protection, it was no longer worth talking to people that refused to see the problem. Not unsurprisingly, it sparked critique, but also, much more positively, more conversation, both from people of colour agreeing with her comments, but also from many white people keen to understand more and wanting to know what they could do. It is worth spotting her own note that when she talks about white people she doesn’t mean every individual white person but rather whiteness as a political ideology. (p115)

That led to this book. Firstly she covers some of the history of Britain, including the various ways that people of colour came to the country and how racism has been prevalent across the years. She then turns to consider “the system” using detailed examples of police racism, which led to coverups, persecution and miscarriages of justice for many people of colour. This then leads to an analysis of what she terms ‘structural racism’, how racism is intrinsically part of life, and its reaches affect education, job opportunities, housing, income, the way people are treated in the workforce, access to medical care and so on. Yet, it’s often just assumed or ignored, because it’s so part of life: “The covert nature of structural racism is difficult to hold to account.“ (p64)

“Research from a number of different sources shows how racism is weaved into the fabric of our world. This demands a collective redefinition of what it means to be racist, how racism manifests, and what we must do to end it. It seems like black people face a disadvantage at every significant step in their lives.” (p65-66)

She then turns to consider white privilege: “the fact that if you’re white, your race will almost certainly positively impact your life trajectory in someway. And you probably won’t even notice it.... White privilege is dull, grinding complacency. It is par for the course in a world in which drastic race inequality is responded to with a shoulder shrug, considered just the norm.“ (p87)

This chapter also raises some interesting questions about mixed race children and where they find their identity, whether parents actually consider both ethnicities as they raise a child, and the impacts of privilege and racism on that child.

The next chapter then turns to consider “Fear of a black planet”, and the irrational fear that white people have that perhaps one day the tables will be turned on them. As such, she makes some very interesting comments comparing the importance of talking about racism with its often counter-argument: talking about offending people. What happens at that point she says,

"Tackling racism moves from conversations about justice to conversations about sensitivity. Those who are repeatedly struck by racism’s tendency to hinder their life chances are told to toughen up and grow a thicker skin."

As she notes, the conversations need to be had, and we need to encourage free speech. But, as she notes:

“Free speech is a fundamental foundation of a free and fair democracy. But let’s be honest and have the guts to unpick who gets to speak, where, and why. The real test of this country’s perimeters of freedom of speech will be found if or when a person can freely discuss racism without being subject to intellectually dishonest attempts to undermine their arguments. If free speech, as so many insist, includes being prepared to hear opinions that you don’t like, then let’s open up the parameters of what we consider acceptable debate.”

She then considers feminism and introduces the term intersectionality to address the joint issues black women face when delaying with both racism and sexism. Hamad dealt with the intersection between racism and feminism in more depth, but I also appreciated Eddo-Lodge’s analysis here. She finally turns to consider class structure, and how racism in intertwined here as well. There was some detail on London’s housing situation here, which while the details escaped me, was clearly showing the disadvantage people of colour experience when councils ‘gentrify’. She also challenges the idea that more education, or moving up in class will really make any difference:

"Being constantly looked at like an alien in the country you were born in requires true tolerance. I don’t think that any amount of class privilege, money or education can shield you from racism." (p208-209)

The final chapter moves to considerations of how to respond. First she says, the conversation needs to keep being had. When asked, when do you think we’ll get to the end point on this, she says “you can’t skip to the resolution without having a difficult, messy conversation first. We are still in the hard bit.“ (p213). She notes,

“Change is incremental, and racism will exist long after I die. But if you’re committed to anti-racism, you’re in it for the long haul. It will be difficult. Getting to the end point will require you to be uncomfortable." (p214)

I was pleased to see her considerations of what white people can do in the space:

“White people, you need to talk to other white people about race. Yes, you maybe written off as a radical, but you have much less to lose…If you feel burdened by your unearned privilege, try to use it for something, and use it where it counts. But don’t be antiracist for the sake of an audience. Being white and anti-racist in your private or professional life, where there is very little prize to be found, is much more difficult, but ultimately more meaningful.” (p216).

There was also a measured warning about the of championing causes on social media. “We really need to be honest with ourselves, and recognise our own inherent biases, before we think about performing anti-racism for an audience.”

In the end, her conclusions rang true to me:

“racism is a white problem. It reveals the anxieties, hypocrisies and double standards of whiteness. It is a problem in the psyche of whiteness that white people must take responsibility to solve.” (p219)

So, she suggests, white people first need to be talking about it, then to consider how whiteness has silently aided our lives, but in the end she does not encourage guilt, “I don’t want white guilt. Neither do I want to see white people wasting precious time profusely apologising rather than actively doing things. No useful movements for change of ever sprung out of fervent guilt.” Her suggestion is get angry because anger can be useful and you can support those in the struggle rather than pitying yourself.

She concludes, “it can be as small scale in chipping away at the warped power relations in your workplace. It can be passing on knowledge and skills to those who wouldn’t access them otherwise. It can be creative. You can be informal. You can be your job. It doesn’t matter what it is as long as you’re doing something.”

This book, along with Hamad’s, have caused me to think through these issues in more depth than ever before. I have appreciated the challenges they have raised, and the uncomfortableness they have made me feel. Clearly there is no short term fix for the systemic racism apparent in our communities, but I feel better informed to at least be part of the conversation and consideration for change.

White Tears / Brown Scars

White Tears / Brown Scars, Ruby Hamad

This book is still rolling around in my head and has prompted further reading as well. I read it thanks to a partial interview I heard on ABC radio, and was intrigued.

Ruby Hamad is an Australian journalist and author, who was born in Lebanon. She has written a searing critique of white culture, most notably white women, and how for centuries they have used their position of power over women of colour. Much of her focus is on Australia and the United States.

She starts identifying her own and other women of colour’s experience that when they raise issues of racism with white women, usually the situation is turned back on them, with white women claiming they have been victimised or that the woman of colour challenging them has been arrogant and hostile. This led to her to write an article titled ”How white women use strategic tears to silence women of colour”, which was picked up by numerous media outlets and led to Hamad realising her experience was definitely not unique.

When she began this book, her central question was "What happens when racism and sexism collide?" What she analyses is:

 “the way in which women of colour who attempt to address an issue that is detrimental to them in some way almost invariably come up against a wall of white fragility so immovable, so lacking in empathy, so utterly unrepentant, that the first few times it happens, you naturally assume you are imagining it, that you are the problem, that you should have gone about it differently … until at some point you, as a woman of colour, realise in shock that regardless of the facts of the situation, the real problem isn’t even about you. It is how white society regards you. It is how white society treats you. Because you, as a woman of colour, do not measure up to their image of what a women in and should be in order to be believed, supported and defended.”

From here, Hamad explores roots of white colonialism. Because the prevailing idea at the time was that all brown, Asian or black (any non-white) culture was subhuman, you could treat those people any way you liked, which included sexualising the women. Of course, this also enabled white men to treat indigenous women as they chose, with no consequences or repercussions. She goes on to explore the power that sex and desire played in these interactions, as indigenous women were cast in the worst possible, simplistic light, either as unable to control their desires or wanting white men to save them from their own men. And so arose stereotypes which exist still in various forms today: the spicy sexpot of Latin America, the submissive China Doll, the deceptive Dragon Lady, the Angry Black Woman or the Bad Arab. Whereas, she asserts, white women were always seen to be pure, innocent, damsels in distress, who needed protection and saving from white men, often against the perceived threats of indigenous men.

When considering white privilege and how white people do not know how to interact with it, she quotes another woman, Kristina: “I think white people have discomfort from their white privilege, and then when you have conversations with them about these issues, that discomfort suddenly ruptures, and they see that as discrimination against them because they’ve never had to operate in a system where you have to own your discomfort.”

While analysing white tears and how white women use their fragility when challenged, she also draws attention to the maternal complex of white women trying to rescue indigenous people from their believed lower states. This has extended to removing children from their homes in order to give them a more ‘civilised’ upbringing. She looks further into feminism, and how most change has been won for white women, not women of colour, noting “there is no recourse for women of colour who have been burned by white feminism”.

There are times when she starts to think change will happen, but then writes off the change: “White women keep apologising, telling us they will listen, they will improve, but they never do”.

In the final chapter, she has two conclusions:

1. "Women of colour must become consciously aware of the limitations forced on them, that these limitations are designed to keep us on the lowest rung of the hierarchy, and that we need to collectivise to bring them down", and
2. "white women have to acknowledge the unfair advantage their race has given them not just in the sense they have white privilege, but in the sense they have participated in a system where their womanhood is itself a privilege and a weapon."

She finishes with a rallying cry for women of colour to unite and white women to get behind them. Beyond that though, there is little suggestion of what a real way forward could look like.

What are my thoughts? They are many, varied, and I’m still considering them.

1. She has presented a strong critique against almost all aspects of white culture, particularly the impacts of colonialism, which read as accurate portrayals of much history.
2. Her stereotypes of women of colour struck a chord, especially when you consider how they are still represented in popular culture.
3. Yet, I also wondered if her representation of white women is also a bit stereotyped. There was no recognition that some white women do not behave this way, and yet there must be some that do not fit her mould.
4. Related to this (and I acknowledge that her topic was white women), there are numerous cultures who believe they are superior to others. We do live in a western world, where white is often seen to be dominant, yet there are other cultures who have the same sense of entitlement and priority. An exploration of this would have been interesting.
5. It can be insightful to read an author who holds strong, different opinions on many things to our own. I don’t mean so much her comments or analysis of racism, but as I looked through her Facebook page, it’s clear we think differently on numerous issues and also choose to express ourselves differently. Yet, it’s helpful to be challenged and consider various perspectives.
6. It was outside the realm of her research, but personally, I want to consider her conclusions through a Christian lens. Of course Christians have not always done this well in the past, and I agree that dreadful wrongs have been done in the name of the church. Yet, I hope that for those who truly believe that all mankind is made in the image of God, there is a desire to see the equality and value of all. How do we seek to really love our neighbour, if our neighbour is all people, of all colour?
7. In the end, I found myself asking, “what do you want me to do?” I am not a journalist, a CEO, a politician, a leader of any type in a public setting. So, what is Hamad asking of me? I would have loved another chapter or two with some productive suggestions for moving forward. I am a white woman, I make mistakes (as we all do), so what should I do - in the day-to-day and in the bigger picture? I felt this book would have been more powerful, as well as more conciliatory and productive if this was included.

All in all, a challenging read and well worth diving into, it will make you consider your own reflections and experiences of racism, whether you are white or of colour, male or female - and that is something we all need to do.

The Art of Rest

The Art of Rest, Claudia Hammond

I really enjoyed this book. In fact, just the process of reading it was immensely restful.

Claudia Hammond worked as part of a multidisciplinary team for two years studying rest. They covered research in numerous areas, as well conducting a survey called the Rest Test, of which over 18,000 people took part across 135 countries. This book summaries some of the findings, by investigating in detail the top ten activities that people surveyed found restful.

There is an acknowledgement that many people today do not feel they get enough rest:

“Modern work practices, modern lifestyles and modern technology have combined and conspired to make life in the early 21st-century ceaselessly demanding.”

Hammond does not include sleep as rest, but rather she means “any restful activity that we do while we’re awake”. For some, this may be active like exercise or gardening, for others rest might be more sedentary, perhaps listening to music, lying in the bath or reading. Some prefer it to have some mental effort like cryptic crosswords, others prefer to watch TV, or just sit quietly in nature.

She then counts down the top ten, starting with mindfulness, helping explaining what it actually is, and then turns to almost the opposite - watching TV:

“We could practice mindfulness, but there’s nothing wrong with a bit of mindlessness. Nothing wrong with zoning out rather than zoning in. Watching TV is escapist and easy…No practice needed. Just switch on the set and switch off the brain.”

She then covers daydreaming, a bath, a walk:

“So much of life these days is speeded up. Walking slows us down.” I found this chapter interesting as she looked at the relationship between rest and exercise, because for some people, including myself, exercise is restful, and it seems to have a double benefit:

“As well as finding the exercise itself restful, people who exercise tend to reward themselves with sedentary rest afterwards. A double whammy.”

Later chapters look at doing nothing in particular, not really something I find restful, but it was a helpful look into the chronic busyness of lives generally. Then came listening to music, where she notes “that listening to music is one of the most common self-care strategies used by people under twenty-five”.

The final three were choosing to be alone, spending time in nature and reading. That reading came in number one was absolutely no surprise to me - it is always my go-to activity for some downtime.

The team were also interested to observe the things that didn’t make the top ten, including catching up with friends and family, or time online. The majority of the activities could be, and often are, done alone, “it seems when we want to rest, we very often wasn’t to escape from other people”. Yet there is a fineline here, and she also explored ideas of too much rest, enforced rest, loneliness and boredom.

I appreciated how Hammond identifies numerous types of rest and how they might work, but acknowledges this is a personal thing,

“The fact is we are all on our own on this one. It is a case of self-diagnosis and self prescription. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from others. Everybody rests in their own way, but there are many common elements to the different ways we choose to rest.”

At the end, she considers what might the perfect prescription for rest. Some of these are obvious like make sure you rest enough, and do what works for you. But others about reframing your idea of rest were quite helpful - so give yourself permission to rest, keep an eye out for resting when you don’t realise it, and reframe your wasted time as rest (that time in line, on the train, etc). Then she moves into some life management tips for considering your own busyness - don’t fetish busyness, say no, and put breaks in your diary as well as appointments. Again, reasonably obvious, but it doesn’t mean we actually do it.

I found one comment particularly insightful here - that we often think we will have more time in the future, but we rarely do. So if you are asked to go to a two-day conference in 6 months, consider how you would feel in you had to fit it in in the next two weeks. If that thought fills you will dread at trying to fit in in, there is little chance you’ll be less busy in 6 months, so perhaps you should turn it down. Now, I know it’s not quite that simple, I often commit to things a long way out and then adjust my upcoming commitments because of that future choice, but I see what she is getting at.

All in all a very helpful book to consider rest as a whole, the things we might personally find restful, and it gives permission to see rest as important and necessary in our lives.

Any Ordinary Day

Any Ordinary Day, Leigh Sales

How do people live when tragedy strikes? How do you go on when in the midst of one normal day, things change forever? This is the story Leigh Sales wanted to address in this book, and she has done an excellent, insightful job. She opens with her own story of one day drastically changed, when she had a uterine rupture with her second pregnancy putting both her and her baby’s life in danger. This springboards into a reflection and investigation into how people cope and change when they have faced a major event.

Sales is a long-standing experienced journalist and perhaps this is why she has been able to interview so many people. Included in her list are:

• Louisa Hope, survivor of the Lindt Cafe hostage crisis who also has multiple sclerosis.
• Michael Spence, Sydney University Vice-Chancellor whose wife died four weeks after a cancer diagnosis, leaving him with five young children.
• Walter Mikac, who wife and two daughters were killed at Port Arthur.
• James Scott, who survived 43 days lost in the Himalayas and then become the centre of a publicity storm.
• Stuart Diver, the only survivor of the Thredbo landslide, who has since also lost his second wife to cancer.
• There are others too whose names we might not recall as readily or know at all, but have suffered their own private griefs and shocks.

What is highly valuable is some of her analysis along the way. She interviews past Prime Minister John Howard, who over his 11 years in office was the voice that consoled a nation through Port Arthur, the Thredbo landslide, 9/11 and the Bali bombings. She talks to coroners, police officers and priests and gives helpful comments on the legal profession, police force and those who help others, how they can be helpful or harmful to those grieving and suffering trauma.

She also considers how journalists help or hinder these tragedies, all in the name of reporting what the public want to know about it. She acknowledges there’s always a tension between landing the scoop and treating people with dignity. She is strikingly honest about her own failings and shame in this area, noting that many were due to a lack of empathy:

“There is an unfortunate collision between two forces. Maximum public curiosity and therefore maximum media harassment coincide with the peak vulnerability of the people involved.”

What I found interesting was that three of the people she interviewed have a strong personal Christian faith. I appreciated Sales’ honesty about her struggle with this, almost a sigh when people told her, yet an openness to try to understand how personal faith affected people: “Michael Spence is an extremely intelligent, accomplished, insightful person. If he finds value in Christianity then surely there are lessons for me to draw from that.” Later she comments,

“Religion is an extraordinary helpful tool at times of grief and loss because it offers both an explanation for the inexplicable and a supportive community…For me it has been equally heartening to meet many people who’ve had the courage the face the worst that life can throw at them without faith.”

She makes astute observations along the way about how people are drawn to hear about other’s people tragic circumstances but do everything they can do avoid their own. How people think they could never survive what others have had to go through. How many people can’t stand being that close to people who have suffered as they have no idea what to do or say, and so avoid it altogether.

Most people’s reflections acknowledge that there has been growth through whatever they faced, whether personal change, or a greater sense of purpose or meaning, or seeing communities change for the better as a result. While she does refer to some people who have really struggled with tragedy, it is clear they are not the main focus of her research. In the end, many people reach similar conclusions:

“That in pain, there’s also joy. You can’t be in the presence of just one though, that life is good, or life is bad, or life is sad. There’s all these things. And there are so many good people in the world, actually, so much kindness,. It’s everywhere.” 

“‘Somehow we need to be aware that we’re mortal, that this time is finite,’ she says. “It’s knowing this is all going to end, so let’s make it matter.’” 

“The random distribution of misfortune is perhaps the only thing in life that is fair. No amount of money, fame, power or beauty can save you from tragedy, illness or death if they’re coming for your family. I have a heaping plate of things in life that aren’t fair – nice parents, a peaceful country, a good brain, sound health and caring friends. I didn’t do anything to deserve any of that.”

It’s an engrossing read. Sales has done an excellent job with confronting but also uplifting subject matter, providing analysis and research while keeping a very personal and caring touch over it all.