The Risky Life: Beyond Safetyism

In the future, audio editions like this will mostly be available to the paid subscribers. This is a bit of an experiment with the podcasting feature of Substack, so let me know your thoughts!—MPMW

In this continuation of engagements with Ivan Illich, a conversation about baseball led me down this rabbit hole. The set-up of it is this: Illich, I think, has something to say about the way in which the technocratic mindset (though in the audio, I just call it the managerial) deals with risk. The world is fraught with all kinds of risk, and part of the technocratic impulse is to try to bring those risks to the surface: safety isn’t a good for its own sake here, but because threats slow things down, and make us less productive.

It’s not bad to try to exercise caution, but the technocratic mindset works further than this: to reduce risk for the sake of productivity, and maximally so. But when you’re dealing with humans, the problem is that when you’re frequently dealing with risks and threats which aren’t visible. So, what happens next, and what does a Christian response to a culture primed to eliminate all risk look like? Listen on.

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Reading: more Illich. Some have asked if I’m doing anything with this longterm, and the short answer is not really: there are certain figures that I like to be completists with, if only because their thinking is so fecund and provocative, and Illich is one of those. Michael Sandel’s Justice as background reading for this semester’s bioethics course, which of course, gives me a long list of other things to read. The second volume of the Green Ember series, while reading the first one out loud to the kids. I love reading out loud, if only because it gives you an excuse to do all of the voices.

Writing: I have a piece coming out with Christian Century soon-ish on violence, and another sometime soon-ish with Comment, on the “long loneliness”, or how loneliness is an enduring feature of the Christian life. And, sloooooowly plugging away at the “real” summer project on what it means for the church to claim to be apostolic. But I’ve also been writing a weekly series for Chris Green’s Speakeasy Theology, on the 23rd Psalm and the moral life. It began its life here, but seems like a better fit over there: come check it out.

Paying Attention: A few stories that are worth noting:

1. The first grain shipments have left Ukraine since the war started. This is a big deal because Ukraine is one of the major global producers of grain, and the Russian blockade has produced more than its share of hunger and suffering. On the same day, the architect of Ukraine’s grain industry was killed in a shelling.

2. Australia remains a key offender with its immigration policy, detaining people for up to two years on average. The “character risk” criteria named here as one of the big reasons for visa rejection is a tricky one, and more than we can get into here: character indicates a long-term pattern of behavior, and when run through a screening algorithim makes our character into patterns of inevitability. Cue Illich’s concerns for what it means to be a free being.

3. For-profit prisons are an abomination. Shipping inmates 300 miles away eliminates any ability to provide them with fair hearings, or access to loved ones, particularly for low-income families.