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The paradox of Margery Kempe

After a period of chastity, Margery Kempe’s husband described one of those hypothetical scenarios that couples sometimes use to test each other. “Margery, if a man came with a sword and wanted to chop off my head unless I had sexual intercourse with you as I used to before, […] [would you] allow my head to be chopped off, or else allow me to have sex with you as I previously did?” When pressed to answer, Margery finally told him she would “rather see [him] slain than that [they] should return to [their] uncleanliness.” Did that make her a bad wife, as her husband initially complained, or a devout Christian, as she believed?

The fifteenth-century English mystic Margery Kempe has divided opinions for centuries. For supporters, Kempe’s earnest spiritual struggles, vivid visions, and difficult journey to grace were laudable and inspiring. For opponents, her loud expressions of faith seemed fake and showy, her constant talk of—and with—God was annoying at best and potentially heretical at worst, and her independence and seemingly unwomanly behavior were problematic. Both sides agreed that she was uncommonly persistent in trying to live her life on her own terms. Since the rediscovery of the account of her life in the 1930s, modern scholars and readers have variously suggested that Kempe was a significant example of late medieval religiosity, a proto-feminist, a mentally ill hysteric, or a woman suffering from post-partum depression and menopausal symptoms. In any case, Kempe was, and still is, a difficult woman to ignore, and the autobiographical The Book of Margery Kempe, originally written in the 1430s, provides a fascinating view into both the spiritual and profane world that she inhabited.

Margery Burnham was born in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, sometime around 1375. She came from a prominent merchant family. She married John Kempe, a man from another family of means, and she quickly became a mother. The Book of Margery Kempe tells us that young Kempe was vain, loving to show off beautiful clothes, and that she was unsatisfied by her husband’s lack of business acumen. She tried her hand at business herself, unsuccessfully. She also enjoyed sex—too much so, she later thought, as she strove to live a chaste life. After the birth of her first child, Kempe suffered from a severe illness for several months, which caused her to lose her wits temporarily. She encountered devils and demons, who tried to convince her to kill herself. The turnaround came when she had her first vision of Christ, who told her that he had not forsaken her and that she should have faith. Thus began Kempe’s lengthy and complex spiritual journey.

After multiple periods of religious fervor and backsliding, and what must have been close to two decades of child bearing, Kempe managed to convince her reluctant husband to have a chaste marriage, since she wanted to be a virgin, married to Christ. This practice caused snickers among some of her detractors: how could a married mother possibly think of herself as a virgin? In her visions, Christ also told her that she should go on pilgrimages. Kempe travelled far and wide, to some of the most prominent cities of the time. At first, her husband accompanied her on English journeys to Norwich, Canterbury, York, and London. She then travelled without him to Jerusalem, Rome, Assisi, Bologna, Venice, Constance, Santiago, and Aachen. She suffered great hardships on her travels. While in Jerusalem, she experienced her first bout of loud, uncontrollable crying that would become one of her hallmarks. These ecstatic episodes caused her both exquisite pain and pleasure and made her writhe and wail so loudly that those around her sometimes feared she was dying. Her travelling companions at the time, already finding her bothersome, did not want to be associated with her at all after these episodes, whereas others who witnessed it believed she was genuinely moved by the Holy Spirit. Kempe experienced these crying bouts for the rest of her life. She died at some point after 1439, having outlived another famous mystic across the English Channel, Jeanne d’Arc.

The many paradoxes of Kempe’s life make her especially fascinating. At the same time as she strove to be a humble Christian, she also proudly highlighted instances when others found her wonderful, or when she bested learned priests and monks in theological discussions. She was relentlessly worried about her own sin, but also quick to point out the sins of others. She argued that she was glad to suffer hardships and humiliations for Christ, at the same time as she bitterly noted how others mistreated her. Both her strengths and her foibles come across as profoundly human, and it is certainly rare to have such insight into the mind of a fifteenth-century woman.

The fact that Kempe was a woman has always been the central focus of her detractors, both medieval and modern alike, although the reasons have shifted. Some of her contemporaries believed she was a bad wife: she should take care of her husband and their household, rather than focus excessively on devotion. Kempe responded that she always acted with her husband’s permission, and that serving Christ was in any case more important than any worldly concerns. To modern readers, who often admire her determination and independence from her husband and other men, it is her almost complete silence about her children that seems odd and disturbing. Was Kempe a bad mother? She gave birth to fourteen children, and yet, apart from their conception serving as reminders of her sinful concupiscence, she does not mention them at all in the autobiography. If Kempe were male, modern readers would in all likelihood not be as concerned about the lack of mention of children in an account of a spiritual life, since we are so used to seeing men’s spiritual, intellectual, and professional lives separated from their family life. In the twenty-first century, Kempe’s loud spirituality still confounds and inspires, serving as a mirror of our own ideals, desires, and struggles.

Join us in NYC’s Bryant Park at 12:30 tomorrow, July 25th, for a discussion on the Oxford World’s Classics edition of The Book of Margery Kempe led by Johanna Luthman, author of Love, Madness, Scandal.

The Bryant Park Reading Room was first established in 1935 by the New York Public Library as a refuge for the thousands of unemployed New Yorkers during the Great Depression. Today, thanks to the generous support of HSBC Bank USA, and the continued efforts of the Bryant Park Corporation, the Reading Room is thriving once again. As part of the Bryant Park program, Oxford University Press has created a special book club where we pair acclaimed contemporary authors with a classic title from the Oxford World’s Classics series.

Featured image credit: “Abbey, glass…” by 1899441. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.

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Let’s fly away: pioneers of aviation

The history of aviation spans over two thousand years – from the earliest kites in Ancient China to balloons in eighteenth century France, and from modern supersonic and hypersonic flight, to military drones and reconnaissance. Despite its long history, the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early-twentieth centuries witnessed an unprecedented interest into powered flight, with several pioneers leading the way. French physicist, chemist, and aeronaut Jacques Alexandre César Charles is credited with inventing the hydrogen balloon (at the same time as the Montgolfier brothers rediscovered the hot-air balloon and began manned flights), whilst little known figures such as Bessie Coleman led the way for black and female aeronauts.

Early aviation was a dangerous past-time, with many pilots meeting untimely ends as a result of their desire to reach further and higher than ever before. This didn’t deter many of the first pioneers however, who strove to advance the human yearning for flight. To celebrate their daring feats, we’ve taken a look at some of these early aviators and their attainments.

Jacques Alexandre César Charles

On 27 August 1783, Jacques Alexandre César Charles (who invented the hydrogen balloon) travelled nearly 48 kilometres in a balloon called the “Charlière.” It was destroyed by terrified townspeople in Gonesse (a commune in the north-eastern suburbs of Paris) upon his landing.

Madeleine-Sophie Blanchard

One of the most famous female balloonists was Madeleine-Sophie Blanchard, who learned to fly from her husband Jean-Pierre, the first man to fly in a balloon across the English Channel. When he died in 1809, she took up the profession with such success that the following year she was named “Aéronaute officiel de l’Empire” (Official aeronaut of the Empire). Unfortunately, on 7 July 1819, she became the first woman to die in a flying accident.

Charles Lindbergh arrived at Croydon Field, Surrey, England, June 1927 by Pacific and Atlantic photos inc. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Wilbur and Orville Wright

In 1903 Wilbur and Orville Wright (otherwise known as the Wright Brothers) were the first to sustain powered and controlled flight. They created a propeller to provide airborne thrust, and built (with assistance from a machinist in their bicycle shop) a lightweight engine to power a twin-propeller system. The culmination of their endeavours was 17 December 1903 at Kitty Hawk, when they made four controlled flights ranging from 12 to 59 seconds.

Bessie Coleman

Bessie Coleman was repeatedly turned down by US aviation schools, but was able to travel to France for training. She obtained her pilot’s license in 1921. Coleman was sadly killed in an air accident in 1926, but inspired countless pilots of all races and genders who followed her.

Charles Lindbergh

In 1927 Charles Lindbergh flew from New York to Paris, claiming the Orteig Prize offered for the first nonstop flight between the two cities. Lindbergh’s success convinced the public that aviation was more than just an experiment, with Atlantic air passenger numbers subsequently surging by over 300% in one year (from 12,594 in 1927 to 52,934 in 1928).

Frank Whittle

In 1930 the Englishman Frank Whittle patented his idea for an aircraft turbine engine. Not long after he received his patent, Hans Joachim Pabst von Ohain, a German aeronautical engineer, conceived and designed his own turbine engine, independent of Whittle’s efforts. Whittle was the first to operate a gas turbine aircraft engine, in 1937, but von Ohain’s design was the first to actually power an airplane.

Amelia Earhart

In May 1932, Amelia Earhart became the first woman and the second person after Charles Lindbergh to fly the Atlantic solo. As well as her aviation adventures, Earhart was also a passionate feminist (lobbying President Herbert Hoover for the Equal Rights Amendment in 1931), who enjoyed socializing with other female aviators. In 1929, she served as founder and president of the “Ninety-Nines”, a pioneering women pilots’ organization.

Featured image credit: aircraft building kit hobby by Ajale. Public domain via Pixabay.

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Brexit: what happens to international litigation?

At the present time, a large range of civil proceedings, especially in the commercial area, are governed by an EU measure, the Brussels I Regulation (Recast) of 2012. This applies whenever the defendant is domiciled in another EU country, whenever there is a choice-of-court agreement designating a court in the EU, and whenever an EU Member State has exclusive jurisdiction over a particular matter, for example title to land or registered intellectual-property rights. The Regulation also applies to the recognition and enforcement of judgments between different EU States.

This has many benefits for the United Kingdom. It means that persons and companies domiciled in the United Kingdom are protected from the often exorbitant and unfair jurisdictional rules applied by some Member States; it precludes other Member States from hearing cases over which the United Kingdom has a legitimate claim to exclusive jurisdiction; and it requires other Member States to respect exclusive UK choice-of-court agreements. It also provides a simple and effective means of enforcing UK judgments in other EU States.

When the United Kingdom leaves the European Union, all this will come to an end unless an agreement is reached to keep the Regulation in operation. Should the United Kingdom try to obtain such an agreement? Would the EU be willing? These are the questions which have been exercising the minds of big law firms and barristers practising in the commercial area ever since the referendum result was announced. The Ministry of Justice has conducted a survey of opinion and the Lord Chief Justice has set up a committee. The almost unanimous view of those concerned is that the United Kingdom should try to obtain such an agreement. Formal discussions with the European Union are yet to begin, but initial indications are not discouraging.

The almost unanimous view of those concerned is that the United Kingdom should try to obtain such an agreement. Formal discussions with the European Union are yet to begin, but initial indications are not discouraging.

If such an agreement were concluded, what would it look like? Basically, it would provide that the United Kingdom would continue to be treated as if it were a Member State for the purposes of the Brussels Regulation. EU Member States would not be entitled to hear claims against individuals and companies domiciled in the United Kingdom unless they had jurisdiction under the provisions of the Regulation. If the parties had concluded a choice-of-court agreement giving exclusive jurisdiction to the courts of the United Kingdom, the courts of EU States would not be entitled to hear the case. The same would apply if UK courts had exclusive jurisdiction under the rules of the Regulation. UK judgments would be recognized and enforced in EU States. In return, the United Kingdom would recognize similar rights for persons domiciled in EU Member States and respect exclusive choice-of-court agreements designating courts in the European Union. Judgments given by courts in the EU would be recognized and enforced in the United Kingdom.

The plan is to maintain the Regulation in force almost exactly as it stands at present. Some adjustments may be necessary, but they would be minor. What about the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU)? The British Government would not be happy about giving it a continuing role. Under the Lugano Convention, which applies a similar system between the EU and three non-EU States (Norway, Iceland and Switzerland), the CJEU has no direct role but national courts are obliged to give due consideration to any precedents laid down by it. In practice, they are almost always followed. Perhaps this approach could apply under the new agreement. If not, there would probably have to be a special tribunal set up to ensure that the agreement was properly applied on both sides. The members of the tribunal would have to be acceptable to both the United Kingdom and the European Union.

If might be thought that all this is unnecessary. Could not similar results be obtained by other means? The Lugano Convention might provide the answer. At present, it applies to the United Kingdom because the UK is an EU Member State. Could the United Kingdom not join in its own right after Brexit? The problem with this is that the Lugano Convention is based on an earlier version of the Brussels Regulation and is unsatisfactory in various ways. For example, the dreaded ‘Italian torpedo’ may still work under it. In any event, unless the UK joined EFTA, it could not become a Party to Lugano without the unanimous consent of the other Parties. So the European Union would have a veto: if it did not want to conclude a special agreement with the United Kingdom, it would probably not allow the UK to join Lugano. Joining Lugano would be a good idea, but it is not a substitute for Brussels. The United Kingdom will just have to sit down with the EU and hammer out an agreement.

Featured Image Credit: ‘The pro-EU march from Hyde Park to Westminster in London on March 25, 2017, to mark 60 years since the EU’s founding agreement, the Treaty of Rome’ by Ilovetheeu. CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons. 

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The first humans

The discovery in Jebel Irhoud, Morocco of human fossils with modern facial features, similar to ours, has been a wonderful surprise, even outside the world of anthropology. The discoveries have been published in the journal Nature by Jean-Jacques Hublin and collaborators. The fossils are associated with tools from the Middle Stone Age, the technique immediately preceding the Upper Pleistocene. The surprise is due to the age of the tools and of the fossils, somewhat older than 300,000 years. The oldest Homo sapiens previously known, from Florisbad, South Africa, are more recent. The fossil tooth found in this deposit had been dated, using the electron spin resonance (ESR) technique, at 295,000 ± 35,000 years.

Commentaries concerning the new discoveries of Jebel Irhoud highlight two significant facts. First, human fossils from the same Moroccan deposit had been known since the 1960s but the age attributed to them was much more recent. The second and most significant point concerns the age of our own species. Molecular biology data (mitochondrial as well as nuclear) show that Neanderthals and modern humans diverged about half a million years ago. Why is it that all available evidence about fossils similar to us is much more recent?

Jean-Jacques Hublin at Jebel Irhoud (Morocco), pointing to the crushed human skull (Irhoud 10) whose orbits are visible just beyond his finger tip. Photo by Shannon McPherron, MPI EVA Leipzig. GFDL via Wikimedia Commons.

The answer emerges from how we come to identify the divergence between two lineages. Most likely the Neanderthals evolved from ancestors, which were also our own, who left Africa about half a million years ago. But thereafter, the lineages of the Neanderthals and of modern humans evolved independently, the first in Europe and ours in Africa. Although at later times, after the Cro-Magnons migrated out of Africa, the two lineages would occasionally intermix in the Near East and in Europe.

After about 500,000 years ago, the lineage that would eventually give rise to Homo sapiens evolved in Africa. Gradually, of course, but following a pattern known as “phyletic” evolution, namely without branchings. The quandary that arises in a process of gradual change within a single lineage, is that it becomes impossible to determine a precise time when a new species arises, such as our own. A similar quandary arises if we want to determine when an adolescent becomes an adult: the change is gradual; there is not a precise moment at which the transition occurs. We are the outcome of a gradual process of change, expanded over half a million years, which eventually yielded our current features.

Determining when this actually happened will depend on new fossils yet to be discovered and what they tell us about their evolutionary characteristics. Thanks to the fossils from Jebel Irhoud we now know that 350,000 years ago there were already humans with facial features similar to ours, although with somewhat different configuration of the skull. Taking into account the considerable phenotypic variation of our species, both Jebel Irhoud and Florisbad indicate that the steady process towards modern humans had reached an evolutionary stage similar to ours at least 300,000 years ago.

Featured image credit: Human skull photo by Sandro Katalina. CC0 Public Domain via Unsplash.

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How well do you know Hegel [quiz]

This July, the OUP Philosophy team honors Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) as their Philosopher of the Month. Although Hegel was a hugely successful philosopher in his own right–described as “the most famous modern philosopher” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe–his legacy remains the influence he had on later philosophers. A huge proportion of critical theory philosophers acknowledge his influence, with most major positions from the last 150 years having been developed in response to Hegelian thought, including Marxism, existentialism, pragmatism, and many more.

How much do you know about Hegel? Put your knowledge to the test with our quiz below.

Quiz image: Hegel portrait by Schlesinger 1831. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. 

Featured image: Schloss Bellevue, Berlin, Germany. Photo by  Stephan Czuratis. CC-BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons. 

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The traveler’s challenge: overcoming vacation blues

After months of working 40+ hour weeks, running the kids from one activity to the next, and managing a household, the time has arrived: vacation. You’ve carefully planned a week-long getaway at a seaside resort, and can think of nothing better than basking in the sun, reading a novel, and sipping a cocktail.

You arrive with eager anticipation. The beach is perfect, the resort restful and luxurious. And yet, after just a couple of days, you find your joy diminishing. Your thoughts drift off to work projects left unfinished. You feel antsy in your beach chair. The vast ocean ceases to amaze you, and free-flowing cocktails have lost their allure.

While you may have scouted out the perfect location for your must-needed vacation, you didn’t do any kind of mental or emotional planning. You didn’t take into account some fundamental truths about human psychology. This is one of the biggest misconceptions about travel: that merely putting yourself in a wonderful location will make you feel wonderful.

There are a lot of possible reasons why this trip is disappointing. For one, there’s hedonic adaptation, the pernicious process through which pretty much everything, good and bad, loses its emotional power over time. Because we can forget this fact, you may have simply overestimated your ability to savor and appreciate a beautiful but unchanging scene. When it comes to appreciation of the static, unchanging present, your internal psychological makeup is working against you. It’s in your nature to adapt to your surroundings. It’s actually good for you. Imagine how distracted you would be if you were constantly marveling at all the nice but unimportant things in your everyday environment, like the pretty photo on the wall, the perfect temperature of the room, or the hardwood floors polished to a glossy shine. It’s just not feasible, practical, or wise. Yet we fail to realize the extent to which it happens, especially when we’re in a new and exotic place.

“Recent research has found that idleness – the kind that comes from, say, sitting on a beach – creates the opportunity for a certain type of fruitless and harmful self-reflection.”

Another reason is that you could be putting too much pressure on yourself to relax and have fun. The constant monitoring of emotional states (“Am I happy right now? Is this as fun as I expected?”) combined with the pressure to enjoy a once-in-a-lifetime event detracts from the simple pleasure of the moment. If you consider all the time and money that goes into a trip, plus the knowledge that your time in the place is limited and the general belief that vacation time must be fun time, you have a recipe for incredibly high expectations and a whole lot of pressure. Recent research has found that idleness – the kind that comes from, say, sitting on a beach – creates the opportunity for a certain type of fruitless and harmful self-reflection.

What can you do to prevent your vacation from losing its allure? In the planning phases, ask yourself: what will I get adapted to? Can you really marvel at a beach for hours on end? Draw on past experience to help you find your answer.

Also, ask yourself: do you put pressure on yourself to have fun and be happy, especially in pricey and privileged situations? (If vacations are rare for you, also think about special occasions like holidays, fancy meals out, and weddings.) Realize how counterproductive this is. And realize, too, that immersive, absorbing activities might be a powerful antidote to this mindset.

Also, consider the fact that the resort and beach can be made better when supplemented and contrasted with other types of activities. We prefer variety more than we realize, it seems, especially when looking back on our experiences. Plan to have some engaging activity: a cooking class, a language class, hiking, birding, kite-surfing, fly-fishing. Look on online for ideas and things to do in your destination. Look for an intriguing activity that may be challenging enough to absorb your attention, but not so challenging that you feel unsafe or anxious. Book it ahead of time. Then go find your flow, lose track of time, and let your attention be absorbed in activity. And then that beach chair will be all the more welcoming.

Featured image credit: “man-standing-on-brown-rocking-mountain-under-blue-sky-and-yellow-sunlight” by Stocksnap. CC0 public domain via Pexels.

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Attention, or how to organize the mind

Sometimes our mind is a mess. Thoughts and experiences pile up, and our mind flips from one thing to another: I need to buy milk, I have an important meeting tomorrow, and, no, the bills have still not been paid;  it’s my friends birthday, the face of that person reminds me of someone I met in college, and the advertisement blaring from the loudspeakers  tells me that a new shampoo will change my life. When our mind is such a mess, our life easily becomes a mess too. We forget to write the memo for the meeting, and return home with a shampoo we didn’t need. In such moments, it is easy to agree with Hume that a mind is just a heap of perceptions, feelings, and ideas.

Luckily, most of our minds are not always like this. But why not? What aspect of the mind organizes it?  Attention, I argue, is an important part of the answer.

Attention shapes perception, what and how we think, the way we feel, and how we act. But the deep integration with other aspects of our lives also gives rise to a host of challenges for an account of attention. First, how could a single process be involved in such disparate and diverse parts of our lives? Is there really anything in common between visual attention, attention in thought, and when we prepare a friend’s birthday with all our attention?  Second, how is attention related to other aspects of the mind? In order to focus her attention on something, a subject must also, it seems, have the object of her attention in her mind in some other way: she must, for example, see it, hear it, thinks about it, or feel emotions directed at that object. But how, then, is attention different from those other aspects of the mind, on which it seems to depend? Third, what can be explained by reference to a general capacity for attention that cannot be explained by the various specific processes that shape perception, thought, emotion, and desire? Finally, attention seems to be associated with a kind of prominence in consciousness. How can an explanatory account of attention that meets the other challenges be integrated with an account that explains its role in shaping conscious experience?

Many philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists who work on attention have come to think that there can be no single overarching theory of attention that meets these and other challenges. In a sense, there is no such thing as attention. I believe that we can meet the challenges head-on. In order to get attention into clear view, we must step back from the specific mental processes and elements of the mind. We must start with mental structure. We get a satisfactory theory of attention, once we recognize a fundamental structure of the mind that so far has been largely neglected.  It is the mind’s priority structure. Our mind is not an unorganized heap of mental states but has a structure more like a stack: on top of an agent’s present priority stack are some mental elements and processes, while other elements are pushed down on the stack.

Attention can now be seen as the activity of regulating these priority structures. It is a general purpose organizing activity through which an agent unifies her mental life. Attention integrates the elements of the mind and coordinates between them. It depends on other aspects of the mind, because it has them as its parts. But the parts, the specific elements of a subject’s mind, are contained in a structure that cannot be reduced to what is in the structure.

[image error]Image credit: Stones tower, photo by Milada Vigerova, Public Domain via Pixabay.

The priority structure view of attention enables a unified account of attention. In perception, attention structures the field of perceptually presented qualities. We can, for example, selectively listen to the rhythmic qualities of the music and background what it tries to sell to us. Through changing the priority structure of perceptual experience, we perceptually attune our mind to specific aspects of the environment. But priority structures don’t just organize perception: while the agent follows a train of thought, her attention organizes a field of associated images, and her experience of her environment may now be relegated to a rather low priority position. Nor do priority structures need to be short-lived. An agent whose attention is occupied by a long-term project will prioritize incoming information and feelings that are relevant to the pursuit of that project and de-prioritize those that are irrelevant (if she gets distracted, her priority structures will become less stable). In different cases, attentional priority will be realized by different forms of neuronal and computational processing. What is common is role of attention as mental management.

The priority structure view of attention lets us integrate an explanatory account of attention with one that respects it role in shaping conscious experience. The distinctive explanatory role of attention consists in organizing an agent’s mental life “online” without making changes to what she wants or believes. Through temporary suppression of the semantic content of the advertisements message, the agent gains what David Foster Wallace calls “an important kind of freedom,” a freedom to react flexibly to what impinges on the sense or shows up in our mind in some other way. This freedom makes a distinctive contribution to the field of experience: priority structure manifests in consciousness as the differentiation of center and periphery. This structure is not another quality of consciousness. It is also not a structure that the agent appears to find in the world, like the spatial organization of our environment. The freedom that Foster Wallace speaks of is the freedom of actively taking a specific stance – in conscious experience – on the world we appear to encounter.

Featured image:  Purchasing shopping cart, photo by Heinz Anton Meier. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.

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How to overcome the forces that glass-ceiling health

These are divided times. In Washington, a new administration has deepened the polarization of an already gridlocked political process. In the media, our disagreements are expressed, and often amplified, by a host of competing voices. The questions they address include: how should the Constitution be interpreted? Should we embrace free trade or focus on rebuilding our industrial base? What is the role of immigrants in our society? With so much to debate, issues that inspire true consensus are hard to come by. Yet there is one item on which everyone can agree: we all want to be as healthy as possible.

The proof is in our investment. In the United States, we spend 18 percent of our annual gross domestic product (GDP) on health. In 2015, this amounted to $3.2 trillion, a figure equal to the entire GDP of Germany. The country next in line in health spending, Sweden, invests 12 percent of its annual GDP—about two thirds of what we spend. For additional comparison, most other peer countries spend about nine percent of their GDP on health. Clearly, the United States values wellbeing and is willing to pay for it.

We spend 18 percent of our annual gross domestic product (GDP) on health

But are we healthier as a result of this investment? We are not—far from it. American heath is, by most metrics, worse than that of all other rich countries. US child mortality, for example, is about seven per 1,000 children. Compare this to Finland, where child mortality is two per 1,000 children. Then there is life expectancy. A Japanese child born today can expect to reach the age of 84, while an American child can expect to reach age 79. This gap exists despite the fact that we spend about seven percent more on health than Japan. We still manage to beat, barely, a country like Qatar, where life expectancy is age 78. This achievement becomes less impressive, however, when we consider that the US spends about eight times more per capita on health than Qatar. It is also worth factoring in the unique health challenges we face, such as the obesity epidemic, which costs us between $147 and $210 billion per year and adds to the burden of chronic illnesses like diabetes and heart disease. Would a truly healthy nation have such morbidity in its midst?

It was not always like this. Our current poor health is principally the result of a decline which began around 1980. While we have been able to improve our life expectancy and reduce our mortality from a number of diseases in the last 35 years, we have done so at a far slower rate than our peer countries. This has led to us, in some cases, being outpaced. For example, in 1980, life expectancy in Chile was 68; by 2014 it was 81. In the United States, life expectancy was 74 in 1980; by 2014 it was behind Chile at 79. And we do not just suffer in comparison to other high income countries. In 1980, Cuba had a life expectancy of 74, and of 79 in 2005. By contrast, the United States had a life expectancy of 77 in 2005. Is this decline acceptable? How would we react if we saw a similar trend in another area where the United States invests heavily—defense spending? Would we spend more and more on a military that grows weaker and weaker by the year? Doubtful. We would make a change.

How is it that we can care so much about health, and spend so much money on it, yet still fail to achieve a standard of wellbeing that equals or exceeds that of our peer countries? The answer is best expressed by the following metaphor.

Imagine you have a goldfish.

You love this goldfish and want it to be healthy. So you tell it to swim ten times counterclockwise in its bowl everyday so it can stay fit. You tell it not to eat too much of the food you provide so it can avoid obesity. You invest in the best veterinary care money can buy, so you can cure the fish when it is sick.

One day you wake up, only to find that your goldfish is dead. What happened? You were so busy telling it what to eat and how to exercise, and seeking out expensive treatments for its every sick care need, that you neglected a key aspect of its care: you forgot to change its water. And no amount of good behavior on the part of the goldfish—no matter how much exercise it got or how unimpeachable its diet—could make up for the fact that it lived in a fundamentally unhealthy context. Even the best doctors and treatments, sustained by sky-high medical costs, can only do so much when the conditions of poor health are allowed to become ubiquitous.

Subway by Engin Akyurt. CC0 public domain via Pixabay.

The goldfish in this metaphor is us. The water is the social, economic, and environmental conditions in which we live. These conditions shape the health of populations at a level that is deeper than our lifestyle choices or the capacity of curative care to treat us when we are sick. Indeed, these conditions determine whether or not we get sick in the first place. If we wish to avoid disease, and reap richer returns on our investment in health, we must work to create a healthier context. This means building safer neighborhoods, broadening the accessibility of quality education, investing in accessible non-polluting public transportation, and pushing for agricultural policies that put better ingredients in our foods, to name just a few areas of potential focus. It means making sure that the forces that govern our social relationships, our technology, our arts, and our industries all align towards a culture that promotes health—toward cleaner water.

I realize that I am asking for a big shift in how we think, investing not only in drugs to restore us to health but in the conditions that keep us healthy to begin with. But, importantly, unless we do this, unless we clean our ‘water,’ we are going to continue to get sicker than people in our peer nations and be less healthy, and die younger. This will take time, commitment, money, and a willingness to rethink where that money should go. Luckily, we are well-positioned to take these steps, despite the setbacks of recent decades. We have, after all, shown an encouraging willingness to invest in health. We must now invest smarter, so we can live healthier.

A version of this post was originally published on Fortune.  

Featured image credit: Petter Rudwall. CC0 Public domain via Unsplash.

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Oral history and the importance of sharing at Pride in Washington D.C.

Back in March we heard from our friends at the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program (SPOHP) at the University of Florida, who had traveled to the Women’s March on Washington as part of an experiential learning project. Building on the work they did at the Women’s March, they returned to Washington, D.C. in June to document the city’s Pride Weekend, including the Equality March for Unity and Pride, the QT Night of Healing and Resistance, and more. They have graciously shared some of the fruits of their labor with us below, providing a taste of the experiences they had and the stories they recorded. Their reflections highlight the importance of sharing stories – how listening to each other can help to humanize “the other” through shared experiences and why thinking about our intersecting identities is critical for both good organizing and good oral history.

https://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/7-21-EMUP-OHR-Podcast.mp3

Robert Baez:

Why have certain voices been silenced in the LGBTQ+ community? Why have trans folks and people of color not received full credit for the revolutionary ideas they have advanced? How do these messages numb cultural understandings of the LGBTQ+ experience? These are challenging but critical questions to be engaging with at a time when Pride events have become multi-million dollar events spanning multiple days.

Our first night in Washington, D.C. was spent at an event hosted by the Trans Women of Color Collective, organized to create a space of healing and resistance. There we met two best friends who we shadowed for the duration of the weekend: Aurora, a Black trans woman, and Strawberry, a Black gay man who is HIV+. They serve as systems of support not only for each other but the community around them.

After speaking with Aurora and Strawberry for some time, we came to understand the complex world of queer politics in the city. Pride has been divided over multiple weeks, each devoted to a particular identity. According to Aurora, there are Pride weekends devoted to Black communities, Latina/o communities, and so forth, all leading up to Capital Pride, the largest and arguably Whitest Pride event in the city. Aurora shared the problems she saw with this framework, but recognized how designated spaces are also important when pursuing solutions to social problems faced by that community.

These conversations, and this reflection, have posed more questions than answers, but I want to use this space as an opportunity to consider the utility of identity politics. I believe it is possible to acknowledge our varying experiences while also working to demand justice together, but to say we’ve reached that point would be a mistake. Understanding how experiences can be unique, and viewing oppression as inextricably linked, is the first step in working toward a more unified LGBTQ+ community.

Queer in the Capital 2017: Pride, Resistance, and Community from Drea Cornejo on Vimeo.

Holland Hall:

“We met across a crowded dance floor.” While in D.C. for the 2017 Pride weekend, I briefly met the uncles of one of our program volunteers. The couple had met in 1994 at Gainesville’s sole LGBTQ+ nightclub, University Club, while they were both students at the University of Florida. Their meeting over twenty years ago brought special memories of my own life to mind while in the midst of this historic weekend.

My best friend, Mireillee, and her partner gave me a rose quartz necklace as a Christmas present this past year. Believed to attract romantic love, their gift worked its magic in less than two weeks. Mireillee and I regularly encourage each other in our work lives, schoolwork, romantic pursuits, as well as sharing nights of barhopping and dancing—oftentimes leading us to the dance floor of that same University Club. In January, less than a week before I embarked with another research team to document the Women’s March on Washington, I met my first love and current partner across the crowded dance floor at the University Club.

On Thanksgiving 2015, I shared the holiday with Mireillee’s family in her hometown of Orlando because my family was away, and she didn’t want me to spend that time alone. That evening we went gallivanting around Orlando, ending up at Southern Nights, an LGBTQ+ nightclub. Across a crowded dance floor, a woman and I goofily started smiling at each other. We found ourselves within a couple of feet of each other, and spent the rest of the night dancing together. We exchanged numbers, and we spent the next few weeks getting to know each other through broken English and Spanish. We reconnected a few weeks later and spent a weekend together, but eventually fell out of contact, and our lives continued separately. Six months after the horrific massacre in Orlando, I was at Pride with Mireillee in her healing hometown, and reconnected with my old dancing partner, reigniting our friendship.

As I reflect on the LGBTQ+ history we record, I return to these chance encounters, to the spaces where we have found each other, and to the knots turning in my stomach as I looked at the list of victims from Pulse, hoping desperately not to see a familiar name. I am grateful to have coordinated this research trip with Robert Baez, who helped ensure that we approached our fieldwork with an intersectional lens. In an editorial in the Gainesville Sun, Robert asked, “What good are these rich oral histories if they just sit in an archive, stowed away from our consciousness? These stories need to be heard and understood, and people need to become familiar with experiences unlike their own. Only by humanizing the plethora of experiences we face in the United States can ‘the other’ become ‘the neighbor.’”

For more from the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program (SPOHP), find them on Facebook, Twitter, or their homepage. Chime into the discussion in the comments below or on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or Google+.

Featured image credit: “Marchers gather in front of the state capitol in Washington D.C. following the Equality March for Unity and Pride on June 11, 2017.” Photo Credit: Andrew Cornejo and the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program.

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10 facts about spirituality

What does spirituality really mean? Is spirituality distinct from religion? Why is spirituality becoming increasingly popular and how has the term evolved and used today from its Christian roots? Philip Sheldrake, author of Spirituality: A Very Short Introduction, talks about what he thinks are the top 10 facts everyone should know about spirituality.

‘Spirituality’ stands for lifestyles and practices that embody a vision of human existence and how the human spirit is to achieve its full potential.
During the last quarter of the twentieth century, the concept of spirituality moved well beyond its origins in Christianity and even beyond religion itself. It is now a broadly based quest for spiritual experience and spiritual practices expressed in a variety of ways.  The term spirituality is being increasingly used in the professional world such as healthcare and business.
Spirituality that appears in non-religious contexts is often called ‘secular spirituality’.
The term’ secular saint’ refers to someone who, irrespective of religion, is respected either for their selfless contribution or their inspiring life, e.g. Mohandas Gandhi or Dag Hammarskjöld.
One can identify four broad ‘types’ of spirituality: ascetical, mystical, active-practical, and prophetic-practical. These types can overlap to some degree.
The different types foster self-transcendence and transformation via a movement away from what they see as ‘inauthentic’ towards the authentic. They seek to answer questions such as where transformation is thought to take place (context), how it takes place (practices, ways of life), and what the ultimate purpose of transformation is (human destiny).
Spiritual practices are regular, disciplined activities related to spiritual development. They enable people to progress along a path towards whatever they see as the ultimate goal of human life. They clearly involves a degree of self-sacrifice in that it means setting aside time and energy which might have been given to more immediately pleasurable activities.
Spiritual practices include various styles of meditation and contemplation, artistic practices, going away on solitary retreats, or undertaking a pilgrimage to a religious shrine or place of religious power.
The term ‘spiritual capital’ refers to the potential value of spirituality to our everyday lives. This concept is to be used in favour of a humanely productive or successful life and involves quantifying the value to society at large of spiritual, moral, or psychological beliefs and practices.
‘Spiritual intelligence’ seeks to provide a spiritual equivalent to the importance in human flourishing of the intellect and of the emotions. The cultivation of spiritual intelligence enables us to better access out deepest meaning and highest motivations.

Featured image credit: Stained glass spiral circle by msandersmusic. Public domain via Pixabay.

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