Tag: Utopia
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The Empathetic Civilisation | Dirty Heaven [1]
Thanks to my friend Tom for putting me on to this RSA Animation: Bestselling author, political adviser and social and ethical prophet Jeremy Rifkin investigates the evolution of empathy and the profound ways that it has shaped our development and our society. Empathy is something I explore in some depth in Other, and it is,…
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A Letter to the Church in North America
Last weekend saw a really innovative gathering in Toronto called ‘Eighth Letter.’ It asked the simple question: if the writer of revelation had written ‘A Letter to the Church in North America’ what would they have said? A number of people were asked to present their letters – some in person, some virtually. Mine’s now…
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Christiania | The Violence of Heaven [ 4 ]
Violence of Heaven [ 1 ] | Violence of Heaven [ 2 ] | Violence of Heaven [ 3 ] According to Revelation – the apocalypic birth narrative of our future utopia – “when heaven is established, it will be a bloody business.” I have been trying to argue that any attempt to establish utopia…
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Christiania | The Violence of Heaven [ 3 ]
Violence of Heaven [ 1 ] | Violence of Heaven [ 2 ] In the previous post I ended with some thoughts about the options that utopian communities have when they have established a new purified space: they can either defend their space to stop dirt getting in, or move out from that space to…
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Christiania | The Violence of Heaven [ 2 ]
Violence of Heaven [ 1 ] I opened the first post with the story of Christiania – a ‘micro-nation’ in the centre of Copenhagen that has been going since the early 1970s. Seen as a ‘social experiment’ by the generally left-leaning governments of Denmark, it is now under increasing threat from more right-wing administrations, as…
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Christiania | The Violence of Heaven [ 1 ]
As promised yesterday, a post about a brilliant piece by Porter Fox in this month’s Believer about the micro-nation ‘Christiania.’ Christiania began when a group of Danes broke down fences to a long-abandoned military base in the centre of Copenhagen and started to use some of the space as a playground for their children. Covering…