“We fat ourselves for maggots: your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table: that’s the end.” Hamlet, Act IV, Scene III

In the previous post I tried to set out a distinction between death (which can remain beautiful – a frozen moment just beyond life) and decay (which is always grotesque – all beauty drain and consumed by maggots) and then examine how, in ecological terms, decay is healthy, while unrotting death fails to complete the cycle of life. It is only once decay sets in that a body can become useful again.

All ecosystems require the evolution of appropriate agents of decay to remain healthy. I finished by expressing a hunch that ritual can be seen as an agent of decay in our culture, and that currently it is lacking. There is plenty of death – plenty of redundancy and refuse – but little decay. The end result of this is a lot of dead material to trip us up, but fewer and fewer resources released back into the ground to fund newness.

I’ve been re-reading Hamlet recently, and re-reading Will in the World – How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare alongside it too. The section that deals with Hamlet describes the death of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet (occasionally corrupted as Hamlet in various public records). Reading into the events of the time, the funeral of the boy must have had added strain: Shakespeare’s family had definite Catholic leanings, and yet the ceremony in 1596 would have had to have been a strictly Protestant affair. As such, families such as Shakespeare’s may well have grieved the loss of the more colourful and rich Catholic ritual that expressed a far more open relationship with the dead.

“It is possible that he found the service, with its deliberate refusal to address the dead child as ‘thou’, its reduction of ritual, its narrowing of ceremony, its denial of any possibility of communication, painfully inadequate.”

The theatre of funeral was removed; the agent of decay reduced. Bodies were lowered, cold, into the ground, like coal. Unfit for transition. At the same time, the theatres in London were regularly shut by the Protestant moralisers. Early 17th century London was a society unsure of how to decompose the dead material that surrounded, and use it to regenerate.

It feels as if we are at a similar place today. With the economic crisis and accompanying political crises, as well as the crumbling of trust in the press with phone-hacking scandals and the Leveson inquiry, it seems as though there is a lot of ‘dead’ material around. What we can now see is that the problem is whether we can evolve appropriate agents of decay to help process this dead material and reformulate it.

The Occupy protest movement is perhaps part of this process. Right-wing observers like to portray those involved as dirty maggots and bottom-feeders anyway, but this should perhaps be taken as a compliment. They are crawling over the dead matter, trying to work out what can yet be reused, and how these rich resources can fund new directions.

It strikes me that this is precisely where the church ought to be basing itself. As a faith based on death and resurrection, Christianity’s natural habitat is decaying matter. This is what others fled from in disgust – the lepers, the sick – but what Jesus went straight towards, mixing mud and spit.

Locating oneself in this place of decay is going to be profoundly uncomfortable. There is something heroic about those who can preach death of faith: it is cold and hard, steel sharp and cutting. But the reason why the communities that Pete Rollins is talking about in Insurrection offer such a shocking vision is that they are not based around the death of faith, but around the putrid decay of faith – the decomposition of it into something more base, more akin to shit, to soil, to raw earth… where, as compost, it can feed newness.

This is perhaps the best description of Ikon: a putrid community. One that embraces not just death, but decay and decomposition.

There is a theological problem here though. The orthodox idea of Jesus’ physical resurrection is very keen to affirm that Jesus’ body did not see any decay. To evangelical belief the idea of Jesus’ bruised and broken dead body carries with it a mystique of martyrdom and heroism… but the idea of it entering a state of decay is totally taboo. And yet, there is a sense in which it was only by the decaying of this body that its riches could be released.

In 2 Corinthians 4:16, Paul says that

“though outwardly we are decaying, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day…”

Perhaps we need to see this not as a negative-positive construction, but as a positive-positive one. The outward decay is to be welcomed…is the very thing that funds the inner renewal.

Either way, what we must certainly do is ensure that the theatre of ritual remains… that agents of decay are encouraged and given space, and that we do not hold on to our dead too tightly. The old, embalmed Lenins we all keep must be allowed to warm and rot.

Micah Redding has an interesting post bouncing off some of the thoughts I’ve posted here, which reflects on baptism, and whether this represents a ‘ritual to signify the end of rituals.’

My immediate thought was of the lines from the Bhagavad-Gita, made famous by J Robert Oppenheimer in an interview in which he recorded his thoughts in the aftermath of the first atomic bomb test:

‘We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.’

Funny how these things go, but I then caught a few minutes of a BBC4 programme yesterday – ‘After Life – The Strange Science of Decay.’ (around on iPlayer for 6 days from today) and that threw up some interesting connections.

So, here we go… some quick thoughts on death, rituals and a theology of decay…

Firstly, I think it’s interesting to highlight the difference between death and decay. We might even say that it is not death itself that we are afraid of, but the process of decay that comes after. The just-dead body appears still to be of this world, or at least functionable for use in another world, whatever or wherever that might be. The embalmed or preserved body is frozen in time, still holding the tension between this life and the next.

But once decay sets in, things turn nasty. The decaying body is a thing of horror: beauty takes quick leave, and the ‘frozen’ nature of the corpse thaws into warm rot. Zombies are dead bodies in decay. The fear of the decaying body is this: it is no longer fit for transport or use elsewhere. The decaying body is returning to this earth; breaking down into its elemental substances, ready for re-use. The decaying body thus tells us something about our place in the material cycle of things: we are not elevated, we are atoms, chemical bond… we were dust, and will be dust again.

This fear of decay leads us to desire, if not eternal life, then at least some preserving medium which will keep our material bodies from disintegration. But in terms of ecology, this is a disaster: decay is a vital process, without which life on earth would cease to exist.

Without organic decomposers (bacteria and fungi) decaying dead organic matter, vital nutrients would be trapped and never be released back into the soil. Plants would therefore be unable to grow and every ecosystem would collapse, as plants are at the base of every food chain: the cycle of life would grind to a halt. Not only that: if nothing decayed, the dead bodies of all living creatures and plants would litter the globe. We would literally be climbing over undecayed bodies.

Actually, there have been periods in history where this has (partially) been the case. In the carboniferous period, large quantities of wood were buried and not broken down because the bacteria and insects that could effectively digest them had not yet evolved. These fallen trees were laid down as coal deposits, dark and cold and undying.

In other words, death will come to us. But decay – the transition from death into the new cycle of life – requires ‘agents of decay.’ Without these agents there is nothing can be broken down and reused.

So what the hell has this got to do with baptism? Well here’s my hunch: rituals are agents of decay. And at the moment they are seriously lacking.

I want to expand on this in the next post, as this is getting far too long for the average digital attention span [joking!], but, in brief, I want to propose that not only are we living in a culture – theologically and otherwise – where death is taboo, but, more seriously, we have  a paucity of communal ritual which moves in post mortem to bring about healthy decay. And the result of this: dark, undying deposits which are unavailable to be broken down and re-used.

Now here’s the thing: what I think Pete Rollins is doing with Insurrection is offering not only a path by which people can experience death (of poorly-thought-out beliefs) but also a way of participating in decay: the breaking down of these beliefs that can open them up for re-use.

But via Hamlet, Catholic persecution and the Occupy movement, I’ll get to that in the next post.

It’s been good getting to know Pete over the past few years. Our first books came out at pretty similar times, when we were both involved in similar projects in Ikon and Vaux, and since then I’ve come to count him as a good friend, and companion on a journey. The very nature of conversation means that threads are picked up and then left for a while, so it’s always good to get some of the thoughts and discussions I’ve had and overheard distilled into a crafted argument.

I suppose it was nearly two years ago when I headed over to New York to see Pete that I found him reading The Coming Insurrection – a revolutionary tract put out by The Invisible Committee. The back cover goes like this:

It is useless to wait – for a breakthrough, for the revolution, the nuclear apocalypse or a social movement. To go on waiting is madness. The catastrophe is not coming, it is here. We are already situated within the collapse of a civilisation. It is within this reality that we must choose sides.

It’s an influential and persuasive read, and I thought that Insurrection might draw far more directly from it, be a far more obviously inflammatory work. But while the content of Pete’s new book contains a very revolutionary kernel, he has, wisely I believe, chosen to take a more careful approach to presenting it in that his book is actually quite pastoral.

In the introduction (just to prove I at least got that far ) Pete writes:

In Insurrection, I endeavor to outline what this radical expression of a faith beyond religion might look like and how it has the power to give birth to a radically new form of Church… The following will not be an easy read; many will find it disturbing, for some of the things we hold precious will be attacked from the very outset. But it is written with a firm conviction that we must not be afraid to burn our sacred temples in order to discover what, if anything, remains.

And that is precisely what he does. Using a mixture of parables and stories, and weaving in thoughts from theologians and philosophers from a wide variety of backgrounds, Insurrection (not to be confused with the fantasy trilogy of the same name!) takes us on a journey that is, like all of the best journeys, engaging, sometimes frightening, beautiful and enriching.

Ermmm... no, not this one.

But it is also a journey that refuses to return home. This is not a book that takes you to the boundaries of orthodoxy, stretches you and then returns you to your home comforts. This is a journey that – like the people behind The Coming Insurrection – opens the doors and takes you into a reality that demands some tough choices.

You could very easily read this book and be warmed by the cute, twisty stories and the interesting inversions… but that would be to be blind to the fierce message behind the text. For what Pete is asking you to do is nothing less than give up your Christianity. To give up the identities that you have built around it, the comforts you have brought into your pews and the affirmations you have wrought into your songs that mean that doubt is eliminated.

I know there will be those who say that the radical deconstruction that Pete is working in his writing leaves us with nothing positive – no way of serving the poor or reaching out to people. I think that’s a mis-reading. For me, Insurrection refuses to deliver simple messages that everything is ok because the poor and the needy matter too much. Christianity has gone so badly wrong structurally that it needs a radical overhaul if it is ever to serve people better in the long term, rather than serve its own needs in the short.

As Pete puts it in the conclusion (yep, I skipped to the last page)

[Denying the resurrection] means holding too tightly to what we have and identifying too closely with our idealized image. It means avoiding doubt, turning from our weakness, and refusing to face up to our finitude. In short, it means saying “no” to life.

But then there are times when we may affirm it: Times whenever we embrace life, face up to our pain, allow ourselves to mourn. Times when we meet our neighbour, look at ourselves without fear, take responsibility for our actions, listen to our fears, find joy in the simplest of things, and gain pleasure through embracing the broken world. In times like these, we say “yes” to life and, in doing so, we say “yes” to Christ. For it is only when we are the site where Resurrection takes place that we truly affirm it. To believe in the Crucifixion and Resurrection means nothing less than enacting them.

Insurrection, then, is both revolutionary and pastoral, because it is a call to integrity. To be – as Mother Theresa was – the change we need to see, even in the midst of enormous doubt. Here is the most clear link to The Coming Insurrection: for Pete, the central message of the a/theistic reading of Christianity is this: the resurrection is here, right now, so get on and live it.

I’d say this was essential reading… yet I’d also say that Pete is not finished, and it’s wise to read this book as part of an evolving theological move, the final act of which we are yet to see. Where he’s going with that will, I think, really force people to make some very tough choices. But with Insurrection we get the build up and background to exactly why those choices are going to need to be made.

I’ve been reflecting a bit on the conversation about the ‘Year of Opposition’, and the comments in particular that dealt with gender imbalance.

What has really struck me about the above conversation is that all the voices are male. And I wonder whether the language of “thrashing things out” and the imagery of the boxing ring might have something to do with this? I had originally written that “the contributors can’t be held responsible for the lack of female participation” but on reflection, if the debate becomes couched in the language of aggression – which is often evident above – then they can. In my experience, a lot of women will simply walk away from that.

And:

As per the ‘year of opposition thread’ though, this is again pretty culturally blokeish. What I’m not sure about is whether that’s something it’s okay to indulge — perhaps only so if we critiqued the idea as we went. The way many blokes have come to be made has made them want to express their Christianity differently to women, who are a vast majority in churches. If those churches didn’t have a (continuing) history of sexism, we’d be allowed to be open about that. I can’t decide if it’s right to ignore it.

So here’s the question – which I mean very sincerely – if ‘blokes’ are ‘blokeish’ is it wrong to write posts that are ‘blokeish’? If I was a woman writing a blog, would she be expected to reduce her feminimity to make her site a place where men felt more comfortable to comment?

I think the point above (made by Simon Jones of Third Way) about the long history of sexism and patriarchy may be key: in order to bring balance we do need some affirmative action the other way. But… sometimes it just feels ‘wrong’ to be a man. Mark Driscoll I’m not, and I’m not about to go into the woods and bang a drum while wrestling a wart hog, but neither do I want to be ashamed of masculinity.

The question I’m not sure about is why women don’t post much on blogs, or submit so many applications to speak at events, or offer to write articles so much. Is this still part of a history of being oppressed, or is it something else? It seems to matter, because if it’s the latter, then perhaps men and organizations/publications need to feel less guilty about gender imbalance. On the other hand, balance is possible – and very refreshing when it happens. For a long time In Our Time have had extraordinarily balanced panels, and not gone about it at all. It’s subtle, but powerful.

As we come round to 10 years since 9/11 I wanted to do a quick plug of Other, for the simple reason that it meets head on the challenges of living in a world where difference so desperately needs to be understood.

Whether it’s personal issues of depression or the alienating effects of technology, or local issues of teenage gangs or noisy neighbours, or racism, sexism, questions about multiculturalism – right the way through to political wars, religious fundamentalism and international terrorism – the problem of dealing with the ‘other’ that is right at the heart.

How can Republicans understand Democrats, Evangelicals understand Liberals, Christians understand Muslims, local people understand asylum seekers and immigrants? Technology has brought the whole world closer to us, but that has often only increased the stress and anxiety of having to deal with those who are very different to us. When asked to summarise the entire body of the Jewish Law, Jesus didn’t come out with a list of ‘thou shalt nots,’ but instead told us very simply to love. Love God, love our neighbours, just as we love ourselves.

We seem to be struggling with all three, and the tragedy of 9/11 brings all of those struggles into focus: a tragic misunderstanding of what God wants, a terrible hatred for those from a different culture, and a deep insecurity that must have led those young men to seek affirmation in such horrific ways.

How can we possibly respond, and love the other better? Well, drawing on everything from poets to pirates, that’s what the book is all about. As one reviewer put it on Amazon: ‘I’ve rarely read any “Christian” book that draws on such a wide body of knowledge. It’s the book’s freedom from the usual self-referential fare that so many “Christian” authors recycle that makes it so interesting, fresh and provocative.’

I really do believe in it as a piece of work, and some people I respect a great deal have said some really nice things about it:

This is a brilliant work. Half-mystic and half hard-core intellectual, Brewin here offers us an intimate, personable, completely accessible and, at times, hauntingly beautiful engagement with the hard questions of emergence theology. Phyllis Tickle

With his new book Other, English author Kester Brewin joins Peter Rollins from Ireland and David Dark from the US as leading public theologians for a new generation of thoughtful Christians. He moves gracefully from Scripture to philosophy to pop culture to sociology and back to Scripture again, offering fresh, honest, and needed insights at each turn. Brian D. McLaren

By turns startling, heart-warming and thousght-provoking. Maggi Dawn

A book for mystics and poets and troubadours of a new world. Brewin invites you to look into the eyes of others and squint a little — to see the image of God.  He dares you to see the world with new eyes — to look into the mirror and see one who is beloved, to look into the eyes of the orphan and see Christ, to look into the eyes of those whom we find hard to like and catch a glimpse of the One we love. Shane Claiborne

In our socially networked and technologically advanced world we remain surrounded by mystery: the mystery of others, the divine mystery and mystery that we are unto ourselves. ‘Other’ masterfully explores how we might embrace this often complex reality and draws out how love of that which is other is central to the Christian experience. This is a work of rare beauty. Peter Rollins

Frank Schaeffer also just gave it a 5-star review on Amazon, and I know it’s being used in various seminaries as a key text on theology and contemporary culture. So yeah, do go buy it!

Linkage: US version |  UK version |  Kindle version |  or find it in the iBookstore on your iPad too.

I’ve been reflecting a little on Greenbelt – not so much on the talks that were going on, but on the conversations I fell into and around in the pub and other places. It’s here, in the ‘interstitial festival’ that the truth is often heard more clearly. (Tricky really: you can’t programme these spaces – you need an ‘official’ programme in order for them to grow in the gaps.)

One of the things I’ve been wondering is if the theological direction that a few of us have been taking is entering into a period of more acute opposition. I had a long conversation with two people – one a good friend and the other someone I’ve known for some time – and I found both were, a couple of beers down, becoming quite aggressive in their opposition to, in particular, Pete Rollins’ work and the parallel stuff I’ve been writing too.

The general thrust was this: a) it’s been done before in the ‘negative theology’ movements b) it gets people nowhere in mission or social justice c) it’s too complex for the ‘common man’ – and thus cannot be ‘true.’

Thinking over it reminded me of the thumbnail sketch of Jesus’ ministry: a year of obscurity, a year of popularity and a year of opposition. No ‘messiah complex’ intended (!) – obscurity is certainly my specialist area, though Pete has certainly achieved ‘popularity’ – with close ties with Rob Bell and others who have feted his work. But I wonder if the tide is turning now, and people are beginning to see what might be at the centre of the project – and not like it quite so much as they thought they might.

Perhaps this is actually quite encouraging in an odd way. There’s been a lot of candy-floss around emerging theology, and perhaps it’s time now for a bit of seriousness about which way people are going to fall. Certainly for me, I think there are some radical cuts to be made, and while people may have found the path so far ‘interesting’ or in some way ‘cool’ it’s now going to shake down into some tough choices on what people really believe, and where those beliefs take them.

As I’ve written here before, I think for many this path is going to be a retreat – for want of a better word – back into what is essentially a more conservative faith practice. The emerging / alt.worship thing was fun for a while, but now people are a bit older the old order seems more comfortable… New Monasticism is part of this, I think.

For me, that’s not an option I think I can go with. It’s something I’ll be explore in more detail if I get this book finished, but having listened to Pete’s new work on his Christology, I do feel very drawn to pushing in that more radical and difficult direction – and do genuinely feel that there are very good things there. Positive things that are not about deconstruction, but a very different construction to what has been before.

I wonder if this is something that we should aim to get to grips with at next year’s Greenbelt? Perhaps we should aim to set up some serious debates between some of the key figures involved, and have a bit of a deeper reflection on where the movement – if there is one – has got to, and where things might be going.

As the US battles with itself over the debt crisis, and Europe struggles to get to grips with economically weaker nations threatening the Euro, I’ve been mulling over a conversation I had with Tom Sine and another significant leader who’ll I’ll call B at Wild Goose a month or so ago (I won’t name him, as I feel it might be unfair to put his name to a conversation he didn’t know I might share). Tom Sine has long worked in ‘futures’ – helping community groups to think about the sort of future that they want, and how they might achieve it, and is essentially an optimist. B, who’d I’d not met before, but with whom I enjoyed a number of very interesting conversations, lives and works in a very poor city in the US, and is pretty pessimistic about where things are going.

To summarise his position: there are a number of ‘triggers’ – economic, environmental, political – which could pull the US and other parts of the world into a scenario where the normal societal structures collapse. Food distribution, welfare payments, fuel networks, healthcare and policing – all of these could effectively cease functioning (and with some US cities close to bankruptcy, how far off is that?).

The problem that B sees is that the US has developed a new type of poor person: one who is not simply economically poor, but seemingly incapable of existing independently of state welfare. Unlike the poor of, say, Malawi, the unemployed urban poor of the US have no knowledge of agriculture nor any ability to innovate with basic tools and technology. They simply await their welfare payment, and that’s it, and the huge amount of charitable money that has been put into this demographic group has done little to really change the core problem of zero positive engagement with education or labour. What this means is that if these state systems do collapse, these people will be totally incapable of supporting themselves, other than by looting.

Some people in the community B is part of run a community garden, from which they harvest vegetables etc. B’s point was this: what happens when the hungry urban poor march on the garden, demanding food from it? The garden cannot sustain everyone in the area, and if the garden is ravaged by a mob it will cease to sustain anyone in the area. So he’s foresees a scenario where he would have to train Christian people to take aim and fire on the poor – in order to survive themselves.

Both Tom and I were pretty shocked by his analysis. But on reflection, I’m not sure quite how far off he is. For those of you who have read or seen The Road, any major collapse is going to throw up terrible ethical questions. And what I like about what B is doing is that he’s not afraid to get people thinking about them now.

There’s a call to arms here: whether you are going to start making swords or ploughshares, it’s going to pay to be ready.

This time next week I’ll be North Carolina enjoying the inaugural Wild Goose Festival. I’m going to be speaking in the Geodesic Dome venue on Friday evening at 8pm:

Loving Others in a World of Fractures

From noisy neighbours to racism, fundamentalism, issues about immigration and terrorism, the problem of dealing with ‘the other’ has been at the centre of our conflicts, both internal and international. Roping in pirates, poetry and quantum physics, as well as unhealthy does of TAZ, dirt, Facebook and theatre, this session will seek to uncover what Jesus’ instruction to love others might mean in our paradoxically fractured-yet-networked world.

I think there’ll be some beer to be had afterwards too – look forward to catching up with people there! One of the key reasons for my visit (other than to fulfil a life-long dream and share a tent with Pete Rollins and Jay Bakker) is to give the US release of Other a good push in the right direction. (Conveniently, the new compact format of the UK edition is now available for pre-order and is looking great too…)

BUT - I’m just a poor boy from London, so if this is going to fly in the big ol’ US of A then I’m going to need your help dear readers! So, if you’ve read the book – UK or US edition – and liked it, or you just wished you’d liked it, or if you read the other one and liked that instead, then please, consider writing an online review, speaking to people in your networks about it and generally being a superstar.

I can’t claim perfect foreknowledge, but God did say quite clearly that each extra copy you get people to buy will move you 2 rows further forward in the great cinema in the sky. Now we’re talking, eh?!

Seriously though, it would be great if people could spread the news a bit. Some good people have already said some wonderfully generous things:

This is a brilliant work. Half-mystic and half hard-core intellectual, Brewin here offers us an intimate, personable, completely accessible and, at times, hauntingly beautiful engagement with the hard questions of emergence theology.
Phyllis Tickle

With his new book Other, Kester Brewin joins Peter Rollins from Ireland and David Dark from the US as leading public theologians for a new generation of thoughtful Christians. He moves gracefully from Scripture to philosophy to pop culture to sociology and back to Scripture again, offering fresh, honest, and needed insights at each turn.
Brian McLaren

A book for mystics and poets and troubadours of a new world, Brewin dares you to see the world with new eyes.
Shane Claiborne

Masterful – this is a work of rare beauty.
Pete Rollins

Startling, heart-warming and thought-provoking.
Maggi Dawn

Very kind, all of you! The truth is, I really believe in this book. I think it’s timely and interesting… and has a section about pirates. Come on, what more do you want! Seriously though, it would be great to create a buzz about it and, more than that, to start putting some of this into action, from the local through to the national and international. Now more than ever do we need to love our neighbours, and love our own selves properly too, just as we need to love our God.

Hope you can help out, and look forward to catching up at Wild Goose. Get a ticket, it’s going to be sublime.

Thanks to @designbygecko for putting me on to this extraordinary talk by Jim Gilliam at a web conference recently. Jim was brought up a fervent evanglical – and remains so, except that his faith is now truly in the Internet.

He has his reasons for his conversion: he’s suffered multiple cancers and had to have bone marrow and dual-lung transplants, and each step of the way it was other people on the web who pushed for him to be given access to procedures, campaigned for him and gave him encouragement.

Gilliam is serious: the internet is his religion. He believes fervently in its power to build a new world, by connecting people together and giving them a voice and an opportunity to create.

God is what happens when humanity is connected. Humanity connected is God. Each one of us is a creator, but together we are THE creator.

A couple of things I’d want to say about this. Firstly, it connects quite well with Zizek’s view of Christianity. He proposes that in the crucifixion we see the actual death of God, and it is then in the community of the Spirit (who like Google will, as John 14:26 puts is, teach you all things and remind you of everything I’ve said ) who become the risen Christ – embodying God on earth in Marxist collectives.

Marx’s contention was that we are alienated from our labour, and this fits well with Gilliam’s vision, because he sees the internet as the way for us to rid ourselves of this alienation and become fulfilled people. As Zizek put it in First as Tragedy, Then as Farce:

Enclosure of the commons is a process of proletarianization of those who are excluded from their own substance… The present conjecture compels us to radicalise it to an existential level well beyond Marx’s imagination.

In this sense, the internet is one way of radicalising the commons to a level that would have been beyond Marx’s imagination. What I am convinced about is that the route out of our capitalist malaise is via a reinvigoration of ‘the commons’ in its broadest sense: we need to rediscover what it means to share a common life, to act communally and regularly beat down enclosures where we see them encroaching on the common ground which is the theatre within which community life is lived.

But I have my doubts about Gilliam’s internet fervency. Perhaps he is more right than he believes: the internet is rather like a religion, and is thus open to serious power abuse and practices of disinformation. What appears to be ‘free’ and ‘abundant life’ can actually a whole lot of wasted time getting anxious on Facebook, or trying to pump some deadened hashtag into life.

Whereas Gilliam believes the internet will redeem people, unshackle them and allow them to reach their potential, I believe that only other people can do that. The web can inspire people to great acts of altruism, but it can also drag people into grand selfishness and vanity. It is, in other words, only a technology, and, as such, it deserves our worship only as much as a golden calf.

The things the web achieves boil down to connecting people because community structures have failed. The web couldn’t save Gilliam’s life, only an actual donor could do that. So what we should celebrate is community and generosity, rather than modes of connection.

If you watch to the end of the video, I think you may detect a level of discomfort with Gilliam’s ending, and the applause is slightly tinted with sympathy, rather than easy acceptance. I think that this suggests a deep-rooted reflexive skepticism of the internet as saviour. Gilliam’s story is emotionally charged, but we should be careful not to give ourselves to a new religion on the basis of a few ‘signs and wonders.’

Good health to him, and all the best for his start-ups, which look to increase activism and political engagement. But while the internet can help us engage, as I’ve said here before, I’m convinced that it works best only as a tool for arranging physical engagement between actual people.

The net may be a sacrament, but it is not God. God’s ‘absence’ – however we interpret that – has left a troubling hole in our sense of self and community. The net has grown to fill some of that, but we need to be careful.