a discussion between the Sociologist Richard Sennett and the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams (14.05.2010, London)*
The rituals and narratives of everyday life are changing in an era of condensed time. Time is increasingly measured in fragments and is shaping absence.
How do you restore punctuated time, where rest and reflection (on self and society) are valued?
How do you foster social behaviours that create sustainability (individually, collectively, as policy)?
Is there possibility in cultural reformation, as opposed to revolution or renaissance?
Could the practice of faith, craft and music restore broken bonds, alleviate suffering and balance our relationship with time?
* which sounds like the start of a terrible joke: so a sociologist and an archbishop walk into the room . . .
2 comments:
it does sound like the start of a bad joke, for sure-- "...and one of them is carrying a 12-inch piano and the other is carrying a 12-inch pianist..."
however, these are some pretty profound and important questions, no?
how do we restore punctuated time, where rest and reflection are valued? good question.
i read a book by historian John Keegan a while back where he pointed out that, 800 years ago, there *might* be one clock in your whole village (key word "might"), whereas now every north american has half a dozen individual time pieces. we've broken the world down in to 15-minute segments, whereas it was, until quite recently, measured in moon and solar cycles.
he also pointed out that there's more information available to you on the front page of the New York Times than a medieval labourer would have been exposed to in his entire life.
this all has clearly unbalanced something-- whether it's the world itself, or just us, is another question.
anyway, i like these questions.
Faith and creativity are good answers I'd say.
Post a Comment