Local homeless history

I didn't realise that the housing situation in Brisbane at the end of WW2 was as dire as this article at The Conversation indicates, with lots of people living in shanty towns.  (The only area that would probably qualify as such in my lifetime was Cribb Island - where I think not that many people owned the rather ramshackle houses they lived in. The area has long since been covered by the grounds of Brisbane Airport, but I did go to primary school with at least a couple of Cribb Island kids.)  

Here are some extracts:

The housing shortage in Brisbane alone was calculated at 13,500 houses in 1945 – a time when the city’s population was 380,000 people. New house construction was “not keeping pace with the needs of a growing population”. By 1949, an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 people were considered homeless.

During World War II, Brisbane was a major United States military base. After the war, pressure mounted to convert abandoned sites, such as the US Army camp at Barrambin (Victoria Park), into temporary housing for families.

At first, the state government refused, stating that facilities designed for men would need upgrades if they were to be used by women and children. Undeterred, families started squatting in these disused facilities across the city.

My research identified a total of 11 informal settlements across Brisbane in this postwar period, including eight housing camps in former military facilities, and three on public parkland.

Living conditions were poor. Residents relied on kerosene stoves and there was no running water.

In 1947, dozens of children were hospitalised with gastroenteritis – and 14 died.

Faced with rising public pressure, including a campaign led by the Courier Mail, authorities recognised the futility of threatening eviction and began taking a position of tolerance.

The Queensland Housing Commission requisitioned military camps. Brisbane City Council and the Queensland government supplied drinking water, toilets and tents to families camping in the bush on the city’s fringe.

Oh, and here is more about Cribb Island, from one of the linked articles above:  

Cribb Island was initially known as “the poor man's seaside resort” (So you know your Brisbane, 1929). Connected to the mainland side of Moreton Bay through land reclamation works which were often submerged during high tide, Cribb Island was located 15 km from Brisbane's city centre but remained an isolated community (Jolliffe, 1980). At its peak Cribb Island had a Methodist church (1918), state school (1919), a post office (1920), Catholic church (1936), Catholic school (1952), police station, medical clinic, cinema, general store (1930s) and a bus service. Most dwellings were considered substandard and referred to as “humpies”. Following a Brisbane City Council order to demolish 100 dwellings at Cribb Island in 1929, locals protested claiming Cribb Island was “a health resort on the seashore” where the ordinance did not apply, and that “Many parts of Brisbane were wretched slums, compared with their little township which they kept spotless” (Cribb Island - Council Evictions, 1929).  

Well, I would never have guessed it had a cinema once!   And I doubt the Catholic School was still going into the 1960's - otherwise the few classmates I had from there would presumably not have needed to come.

Anyway, all rather interesting... 

 

 

Highly dubious treatment endorsed by President we can only wish would rise to the level of "highly dubious"

Joe Rogan will probably start gushing over Trump again because he got him to sign a (possibly fairly meaningless?) directive to get his former drug taking, brain worm attacked, Health Secretary to look into getting ibogaine approved as an elixir for mental health:

President Trump signed an executive order on Saturday calling for the acceleration of research on certain psychedelic drugs as treatments for depression and other conditions. Podcaster Joe Rogan stood with him as he signed the order—and Trump indicated that Rogan was a major inspiration behind the push to fast-track legalizing ibogaine, which is used outside the United States to treat post-traumatic stress disorder.

Rogan has championed ibogaine for years. A year ago, on his podcast, he said “Ibogaine, in particular, has helped a lot of people. It gives you, like, a review of your life, apparently.” Two weeks ago, he interviewed the CEO of Americans for Ibogaine, who also stood by as Trump signed his order to ease access to the drug. 

I posted a few months about the bizarre way the American Right has rushed to endorse it, despite its obviously seriously dangerous side effect of stopping (some) hearts:

Because ibogaine lengthens the time between heartbeats, a user who gets the wrong dosage, is taking other drugs, or whose heart rate is not being monitored during treatment, can go into cardiac arrest. Even under the most scrupulous of circumstances, ibogaine therapy is a long and grueling inward journey that Ms. Sinema described as “the opposite of a pleasant experience.”  

It has other possible dangers too:

Ibogaine’s most significant barrier to clinical adoption is its safety profile. The drug is known to prolong the QT interval on electrocardiograms, increasing the risk of fatal arrhythmias such as torsades de pointes [18], [19]. Sudden cardiac deaths have been reported in individuals undergoing ibogaine therapy, particularly those with underlying cardiovascular disease, electrolyte imbalances, or concurrent substance use [20], [21]. Ibogaine also exhibits neurotoxicity at high doses in preclinical models, particularly in cerebellar Purkinje cells, and has been associated with adverse neurological events in humans, including ataxia, tremors, and psychosis [22], [23].

 

The drug’s complex pharmacokinetics—marked by a long half-life and active metabolites—further complicate dosing. Inadequate medical supervision, polypharmacy, and pre-existing health conditions can increase toxicity risk. A review of ibogaine-related fatalities emphasized the need for pre-treatment cardiac screening, inpatient monitoring, and electrolyte management to reduce adverse outcomes [16].

And are the results really worth the risk?

Two double-blind, placebo-controlled trials—one in opioid-dependent individuals and another in cocaine users—reported modest reductions in dependence symptoms, although both were underpowered and inconclusive due to small sample sizes and methodological limitations [12]. 

I wonder how you do a double blinded placebo test for a drug that, if you have the real one, makes you feel deathly sick and tripping?   I mean, I guess you could mimic the nausea by a vomit inducing drug in the placebo, but surely you can't replicate the hallucinogenic aspect unless you use another hallucinogen.

A retrospective survey of 88 individuals treated with ibogaine in Mexico found that 54 % remained abstinent from opioids for six months or more, and 30 % reported complete long-term abstinence [14]. A qualitative study involving 73 individuals documented long-lasting psychological benefits such as enhanced emotional regulation, increased meaning in life, and greater authenticity, suggesting ibogaine’s potential role in improving psychological well-being beyond substance use cessation [15]. 

 Increased authenticity?   

Now the problem is that there are no doubt some people with serious problems who legitimately gain an insight this way that they can't imagine gaining in any other, so it feels wrong to dismiss its potential totally -  but when you're talking about a drug with serious potential side effects, this seems right up there with the "worst" of them.    (The articles all suggest that the way forward may be to work on analogues to the drug that don't have the heart stopping side effect - but it sure sounds as if that will be a slow process.)

But it's clear that, as with all of the revival in interest in psychedelics, there are vested interests promising way too much way too early.  And making money has a lot to do with it. Back to the Mother Earth article:

 Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel has spent the better part of the past decade investing heavily in psychedelic pharmaceutical companies. He’s a major backer of Compass Pathways, a British company seeking to commercialize psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient in magic mushrooms, in particular for therapeutic use. He’s also invested in AtaiBeckley, a German company working on hallucinogens. On Thursday, the stocks of both companies spiked on news that Trump would likely be giving his stamp of approval to ibogaine this weekend.   

I guess I can't say that it's always a safe bet to bet again whatever Trump endorses healthwise, given that he was a proponent of COVID vaccines until he decided that anti-vaxxers are more his type of people (that is, dumb and prone to conspiracy beliefs.)  But really, Trump hardly gives off a sense of, um, common sense when he makes jokes like this:

At the White House Saturday, Trump didn’t talk much about the money behind all this. Instead, he asked if he could get some ibogaine.

“Can I have some, please?” he said. “I’ll do whatever it takes…I don’t have time to be depressed. If you stay busy enough, maybe that’s what works too, that’s what I do.”  

  

Rice and meat - a recipe note

I haven't tried a new recipe for a while, and I liked the look of a Middle Eastern dish called chicken or beef kabsa.  As one site says:

Beef Kabsa is a traditional Saudi dish that consists of beef cooked with tomato sauce & different aromatic spices, and then combining it with long-grain rice cooked in a flavorful broth. It is considered a national dish of Saudi Arabia, that is served during family gatherings and important occasions. 

I'm not sure how different it is from biryani.  Certainly, they are very similar dishes.

Most, but not all, Youtube videos showed one ingredient as being dried whole lemons or limes, which are not always that easy to find.  But Google pointed in the right direction - to a shop dealing mainly with Iranian food at Acacia Ridge. (I felt sorry for them for the likelihood of having relatives still there living under great uncertainty.)   It also had an Afghan restaurant, and a butcher that sold lamb and beef cut in lots of different ways, and at good price too.  It pays to shop "ethnic".

Anyway, I just followed a combination of Youtube channel videos as to how to make it.  (I avoided the one which had subtitles saying "add 1.5 kg of baby meat".)

Here's how it goes, more or less:

1.     Fry a diced onion in plenty of oil, along with a cinnamon stick, two or three dried lemons/limes, half a dozen cloves and half a dozen cardamom pods.  (There seems to be no precision to how much of these initial spices are added.)

2.    At some point, add diced garlic - again seems up to you how much - and the chopped meat to get it seared a bit.

3.    I would probably add salt at this point too (or even have salted the meat for a while before frying), although some recipes just had it added to the broth.

4.    Add a couple of table spoons of tomato paste to fry it a bit, and the other powdered spices.  It seems cumin, coriander, and pepper are essential.  Most recipes add something else - either paprika or kashmiri chilli powder (which is not very hot) - and also some tumeric.   As to how much to add - I really guessed, from watching videos, but it seems to me reading their notes now I may have overdone it a bit.  I did a level tablespoon of cumin, coriander and paprika, about a couple of teaspoons of pepper, and a bit less than a teaspoon of tumeric.  However, it seems that for a kg of meat (the amount I cooked), many recipes in the notes said only a  teaspoon of the main spices (the cumin, coriander and paprika).  I think that's too little.  

5.    Fry it for a while, then add two or three chopped tomatoes, and let them boil down.

6.    Add a chopped capsicum, cover the meat with hot water from the kettle, and let it cook for about an hour.

7.    Meanwhile, soak two cups of washed basmati rice for 30 minutes or so.  

8.    Here's where more variations occur:  some recipes just have the drained, soaked rice thrown in the pot, perhaps even with a little bit more hot water, and initially cook it at high heat to reduce the liquid a bit, then on low heat (covered) for about 20 to 30 minutes to steam the rice.  Other recipes have the meat removed from the pot, the broth strained of solids and returned to the pot with the meat, and then the rice added.   I did something in between - strained it to see how much liquid I had, but then returned some of the solids, including the cinnamon stick and cardamom.    I might just leave it all in next time.

9.   A lot of recipes also add a few hot chillis on top at this stage (after adding the rice).  I had some not so hot green ones, and yes, they look good and added more flavour.  (For chilli heat, I had diced a couple of dried red chillis when I added the tomatoes. I forgot that.)

Anyway - despite my concerns about liquid to rice ratio, it seems basmati is more forgiving than paella rice (which I always find hard to cook to a suitable "not wet" texture.) 

So yeah, it came out pretty well....   

  

So many things I don't know much about

Two examples:

I learned this morning from watching a Youtube video (by someone I don't recall watching before) a succinct history of the development of lighthouses.  It included the point that the very heavy rotating light mechanism worked by floating it in a pool of mercury.  And that the resulting mercury fumes have been speculated as contributing to at least some cases of lighthouse keeper madness.   (A pity that I didn't learn this from The Lighthouse!)

Here is the video.  (The torch he has looks very cool - if slightly dangerous - too.)   

  

 

The second example - from a review of yet another book about Rasputin: 

Beevor’s narrative goes on to show that in fact, the downfall of Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra was overdetermined. Their reign was a parade of disasters, from the fatal stampede after Nicholas’s coronation that killed more than a thousand people to Nicholas’s decision to continue playing dominoes as the revolution began in February 1917. Beevor quotes one cleareyed contemporary who observed that “the problem was not Rasputin, but the regime that made Rasputin’s influence possible.” 

I've never read much about Russian history, and feel that a lot of people know about the fall of the Romanovs because of the inherent drama and ambiguity of the role of Rasputin.  But I feel I should have heard about the fatal coronation stampede before... 

More cannabis takes from American MSM

This article at the Washington Post is of interest: The surprising ways cannabis may affect the ageing brain.

I thought it read as relatively balanced, and showed that there are still some very significant gaps in understanding.  It also reconfirmed the thing that seems universally agreed - use at a young age (like, teenagers) is very problematic.  

The comments is full of aggressive complaints about the article, however.   As I have noted many times before, health-cautionary articles on it use frequently get attacked this way in the US. 

Markets and premature optimism

This is quite odd:

The S&P 500 hit a fresh record high on Wednesday, reflecting investors’ optimism that a peace deal would be reached before the war in Iran could inflict significant damage on corporate America.

The benchmark stock index, which is widely watched across the world as a barometer of the health of the U.S. market, rose about 0.8 percent to close above 7,000 and higher than its previous peak, reached in January. The index had already erased its losses during the war in Iran and now sits 2 percent higher than it was before the fighting began in late February. 

Further down in the article, in the New York Times:

...some market watchers have been perplexed by the recent rally, which has taken place as the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway on Iran’s southern coast that serves as a crucial shipping lane for the world’s oil supply, has remained throttled. Even if a formal peace deal is achieved between the United States and Iran, it could take a long time to get ships moving again and repair damage to ports and other oil facilities. High oil and gas prices have been feeding into rising U.S. inflation and tumbling consumer confidence.

The International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday that disruptions to oil markets could slow growth, fuel inflation and raise the possibility of a global recession. Even if the war is short-lived, the damage to the global economy has been done, the I.M.F. warned as it cut its forecasts for economic growth.

“What is a little strange is that there is a tendency by some to assume that it’s business as usual,” Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, said on Tuesday when asked about the seeming exuberance of markets at an event held by Bloomberg in Washington.

Looking further down, it's hard not to get the impression that something seems "off":

JPMorgan Chase, the banking bellwether, on Tuesday reported a $17 billion profit for the first three months of the year, considerably more than analysts expected. The bank slightly lowered its forecast for profits in the remainder of the year, but still expects to earn more than $100 billion. Its executives expressed worry about energy costs weighing on consumers but stressed that the labor market remained healthy. Goldman Sachs, Citi and Bank of America also reported strong profits this week.

Bolstering the signal sent by the S&P 500, the Russell 2000 index of smaller companies — typically seen as more susceptible to economic shocks — has also rallied sharply. The index has risen over 12 percent since March 30 and began trading on Wednesday just 0.5 percent away from its January record. 

 Why are the banks being so profitable when recent American consumer confidence looks like this?:

 

MOND is back...again?

That was an interesting video from Sabina Hossenfelder today, in which she notes that a new calculation of how much "normal" matter is in certain galaxy clusters indicates that MOND (the explanation for how gravity works without the need for the dark matter no one can directly detect) works OK for clusters as well as for individual galaxies.

Yet, she still gives the paper a 7/10 on her "bullshit meter" - which seems a tad tough.  I thought she was more sympathetic to MOND than to say that.

I notice that some people in comments also dismiss MOND because it doesn't work with General Relativity - which does seem a good point, but I don't know what MOND theorists say about that. 

Anyway, the video is one of her more easily understood ones, so I like it.     

Trump as Jesus

I was annoyed last night when I found that the Washington Post, New York Times and even the Guardian all had reports on Trump's Truth Social attack on the Pope, but failed to mention that shortly after it Trump had posted this image, which will probably infamously feature in some future history books, I expect:

 Why are they ignoring this, I wondered.   It was all over X and Bluesky, with many questioning not just the obvious reference to either Jesus or God the Father, but why the image in the sky (which had been a soldier in the original nutty version) had been converted to something looking demonic.

Apparently, there were heaps of MAGA defenders trying to excuse it as "not posted by Trump personally, but by a staffer".   

It obviously got noticed by enough Christian insiders who presumably contacted him and told it was a step too far, so Trump deleted it and then (hilariously) admitted to personally posting it and claimed it didn't show him as Jesus, but as a Red Cross doctor!!   (He is being widely mocked for that weak explanation.)

He also tried to say it was only the Mainstream Media that would claim it depicted him as Jesus - yet, as I say, last night I saw that the post had been up for 7 or 8 hours and the MSM had completely ignored it, even though they had dealt in detail with the Pope attack post which had gone up only shortly before it.

So, I am glad that it blew up, finally (it does now have large coverage on all MSM) but I think the delay in dealing with it is an example of how the media now is far, far too cautious on dealing with Trump.

As a final note:  some online have been joking that the sick or dying man in the image looks like Epstein.  To my mind, it looks more like Jon Stewart - and I hope the comedian agrees as his reaction could be very funny.  

Update:   I also note that the media which perceives its job as defending Trump relentlessly - such as Fox News, the Hot Air blog, Newsmax - either have not covered the story at all on their websites, or buried far down amidst all of the pro-Trump stuff.  Interestingly, though, since I rarely look at it, Newsmax's headline is currently this:

Energy Sec's Warning: Oil Surge Will Persist Until Strait Normalizes

Oil Prices are expected to continue rising until significant ship traffic resumes through the Hormuz Strait, he the Semafor World Economy Forum. This, despite previous speculation that oil would come down soon. "We're going to see energy prices high — and maybe even rising — until we get meaningful ship traffic.

That's not exactly a headline Trump would welcome... 

Update 2:  Yes, Jon Stewart did see the resemblance.  The segment was funny, but I think could have been funnier.

Also, Youtube is giving me the impression that the conservative Catholic backlash to the Trump/Jesus image is very strong.      

A surprising problem in South Korea

According to the New York Times, South Korea has a pretty stupid system for hospital emergencies:

Despite being one of the wealthiest countries in Asia, South Korea has a buckling emergency-care system. A chronic shortage of E.R. doctors, fewer legal protections for physicians than in other rich nations and a quirk in the emergency response system — paramedics must wait for hospital permission before transporting a patient to an E.R. — have led to delays that can be fatal.

These hospital rejections — called “E.R. runaround,” “ambulance pingpong” or E.R. “merry-go-round” by the local news media — have become more acute in recent years, government data shows. President Lee Jae Myung has described the failures as systemic.

“Patients are dying on the streets, unable to find an E.R. for hours on end,” he said at a cabinet meeting in December and ordered his Health Ministry to fix the system.

It will not be easy.

The average time it takes for major trauma patients to be accepted by an E.R. has doubled since 2019 — the year Dong Hee had his tonsils removed — to 16 minutes and 30 seconds, according to data released by Representative Yang Bu-nam, who is part of a committee that oversees the National Fire Agency. 

Last year, the data show, there were more than 1,000 instances when ambulances had to call over 20 hospitals before finding beds for their patients.

In October, a woman in her 60s was hit on a crosswalk by a cargo truck in the city of Changwon. An ambulance arrived on the scene quickly but the medics — who called 30 hospitals — could not find an E.R. willing to accept her and she died a couple of hours after the accident, according Representative Yang.

Unfortunately, the countries social (and other) media obsession with looks and grooming kind of plays a role too:

South Korea has universal health care and its medical system is considered above average among wealthy nations. But it has fewer doctors per capita than most developed nations and many doctors prefer to specialize in fields that pay more than emergency care, such as dermatology and plastic surgery. 

The fundamental problem

I'm not sure whether this theory has been specifically addressed in the reporting on how Trump got talked into attacking Iran: but it's pretty obvious, isn't it?

 The fundamental problem with Trump agreeing to get into the war was his not understanding that he can't control the cost of American oil because it's not a nationalised industry.  Hence, he can bluster all he likes about how America doesn't need Middle East oil, and that other countries should buy American oil:  but restrict the global supply and the market price for it (including for Americans) is going to rise while ever the restriction continues.  

Everything he says indicates that he doesn't understand that.   And the mystery is:  how many times has he been told in private that this is what would inevitably happen; and how much of his continued statements ignoring it as a fundamental problem for his American voter base is genuine lack of comprehension, and how much is narcissistic inability to admit this as consequence of what he has done?   

I mean, the precedent for this is the continual misrepresentation of who pays tariff costs - but in that case, you only had nutty economics advisers who might think there is no point in correcting him, because it's the policy they wanted, more or less.   And without continued correction, it seems to me that that a plausible case can be made he has repeated the lie so many times he probably believes it.

But in the case of Iran, you can imagine a more diverse pool of advisers, including the military, and now oil industry executives, and surely some of those have said "just be aware that if this ends up with a significant ongoing restriction on the world's oil supply, your voters are going to feel the pain in higher prices too because we don't control the price of oil here."

This is the problem of supporting a dumb narcissist because you think he can be successfully manipulated to get what you want:   he is open to competing manipulators and the decisions he makes are not going to be based on sound reasoning and comprehension.

I see this article at Politico says that oil executives have been begging him to "deal with" the Strait of Hormuz:

While high prices provide a financial cushion for oil and gas majors, the war has introduced all manner of uncertainty into their investment decisions, which dominated conversations at the CERAWeek industry conference in Houston last week, as my colleagues James Bikales and Ben Lefebvre reported. The war has suddenly reintroduced concepts like naval tanker escorts, first used during the 1987-88 Iran-Iraq war, back into public discourse. Energy executives have hustled to kill proposals — like reimposing the crude oil export ban that former President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans lifted in 2015 — and been surprisingly explicit about the military outcomes they want to see, some sounding like Republicans from a different era.

“If you talk to [American Petroleum Institute] member CEOs, they also want to make sure that we’re finishing the job in Iran. We can’t leave Iran in a position where they can control the strait with any given drone that they shoot into the strait on any given day,” API president Mike Sommers, who once served as chief of staff to former Speaker of the House John Boehner, told POLITICO at CERAWeek.

So, it seems they won't be happy with the "complete blockade" idea and will be working the phones to get this changed ASAP.... 

Update:  I can't get behind the paywall, but if the tweet is correct, it seems to indicate that the economic pain to the US has been pushed by Bessent and others - but how early did they do this?

 

 

Update 2:Maybe this answers my question as to the timing of warnings to Trump about dangers to the US's own energy costs.  In a column at the Washington Post:

...the administration has been caught unawares when other nations have weaponized their economic advantages. Last April, when China retaliated for Trump’s tariffs by banning exports of rare earth materials — critical ingredients in civilian and military products — the president called the move “a real surprise” on social media. 

Likewise, the U.S. seemed to have no answer when Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. With shipping carriers unwilling to brave Iranian threats, oil markets quaked, sending U.S. gas prices above $4 per gallon and hammering import-dependent economies across Asia.

If the U.S. seemed flat-footed, it may be because the Treasury Department performed no prewar analysis of the conflict’s potential energy market consequences, according to Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the senior Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee and a frequent administration critic.

Sriprakash Kothari, nominated to become assistant treasury secretary for economic policy, told committee staffers “that not only did he not perform any work related to energy markets leading up to the war, but that he wasn’t aware of anyone at Treasury who did,” Wyden said in an April 9 letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

The Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment. 

Thank heavens you're here

That's Artemis II I'm referring to, which returned to Earth at a very convenient time (around 10 am on a Saturday morning) for viewers like me in Australia:

I'm relieved for the obvious reason of not caring to watch another re-entry disaster like the space shuttle had, but also because during this mission the increased number of women who work at NASA in the Houston Control Room was very obvious (compared to past space missions), and it occurred to me that if this one involved a disaster, the idiotic American Right wing on social media would immediately claim a connection with that new-ish aspect of NASA.

You know I'm right, even if this is a hypothetical concern.    

What a bunch of headlines

They are from the Washington Post.

As some online are arguing, Trump is employing the "madman" theory of international diplomacy, and his cult followers and apologists are all "trust us, bro, it's just negotiation":  as if we are all supposed to be comfortable with a world leader threatening to kill and harm civilians because their leadership won't do in trade what the world leader wants.    

It's an incredibly shallow and ridiculous argument, and one rejected not just by all Democrats (and probably most independents), but also the Pope, and weirdos like Tucker Carlton and (my God!) Alex Jones.  

Oh, and I saw on a podcast this morning an extract of Megyn Kelly (critical of the Iran war) saying that nonetheless, she will always vote Republican because while their president might want to destroy another country, Democrats wanted to destroy American (claiming "open borders" and transgender kids!)   

This is so pathetic - but perfectly illustrates the Republican party as morally bankrupt and living in a fantasy land of their own creation as to Democrats true intention to destroy the country.    

The unserious Right wing media

Reaction to Trump's rant on Iran over the weekend included this:

Yes.  The Right wing "journalist"/influencer job is one for completely unserious people.

Update:

Happy post-Easter

The book I was thinking of at the end of my last post was Christology in the the Making by James DG Dunn.  It is still on my shelf, but I didn't skim through it again over the weekend, although I should have given the holiday.

Instead, I got distracted by listening to a Tricycle podcast about tantric (or esoteric) Buddhism, which was a little dull actually, but led me to check about Shingon Buddhism in Japan, and the famous monk Kukai (or Kuukai, or Kobo Daishi) who established it there.   

Long story short:   esoteric Buddhism from Tibet and China has some dubious elements of "transgressive" rituals, but it would seem not to be the case for the version that ended up as Shingon Buddhism.  Shingon seems to be about the third largest sect in Japan, and I didn't know much about it (or had forgotten what was said about it in the book on Pure Land Buddhism I read a couple of years ago.)

The home of Shingon in Japan - the temple complex at Mount Koya (or Koyasan) is in a pretty looking mountainous area not that far from Osaka, and it's now on my list of places to visit in Japan.   This video gives a good short introduction to the place, and the sect.

But, back to Kukai:  he's had brief mention at this blog before because of the (almost certainly not true) belief that he was responsible for introducing monk and young acolyte sexual activity as a legitimate or normalised monastic activity on his return from China.   (Now that I understand more about how his type of Buddhism was of the esoteric branch, I guess might help explain why he got the blame for this.)   

But what I didn't realise was how culturally significant he was to Japan in ways other than those involving just religion. The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy introduces him this way:

 Kūkai (774–835CE) is one of the intellectual giants of Japan, who ought not to be ignored in any account of the history of Japanese thought. Among the traditional Buddhist thinkers of Japan, and perhaps even of the whole of East Asia, he is one of the most systematic and philosophical. He is most famous for being the founder of Shingon esoteric Buddhism in Japan. But he is also remembered not only for his contributions as a teacher and scholar of religion, but for his accomplishments and innovations in social welfare, public education, lexicography, language, literature and poetry, literary theory, calligraphy, art, painting, wood-carving, sculpture, music, civil engineering, architecture, etc. during a period when Japan was undergoing rapid change.

The Wikipedia entry about him goes into more detail on his very busy life, including his participation in the state sponsored visit to China to further investigate parts of Buddhism there.   (I find it intriguing to think that Japanese governments once paid for such expeditions in pursuit of knowledge - not just in search of land or stuff for material profit of the kind European monarchs later became famous.)

This paper, though, argues that some of Kukai's achievements outside of religion might be more legendary than real.   But still, he left behind lots and lots of writings (including poems):  there is no doubt he was a smart and important man in history.

So much so that there is cult-ish belief about him in Shingon:

Kūkai's mausoleum (the "Gobyo") at Mount Kōya is at Okunoin (奥の院) temple and it is the main site for devotion to Kūkai. Offerings and prayers to Kūkai are made around the year at this site. He is believed by the faithful to still be alive, having entered a deep samadhi (meditative absorption) until the arrival of the next Buddha Maitreya.  

On videos, they show monks carrying the twice a day meals towards his mausoleum, but videos and photos are not allowed past a bridge leading up to the building (which you can't see clearly from the bridge.)  This gives all the more incentive to visit the place in person!

  

Revisiting atonement - an Easter religious post -

I'm not entirely sure if I should be slightly worried about how often this has started to happen,  but one feature of having written this blog for so long is that when I search for old posts on a topic, I'm quite often finding ones which I have forgotten about, but are still really interesting.   (I'm leaning towards it being a good thing - I've been keeping these notes for more than 20 years, for goodness sake, and quite a lot has happened over those years to crowd out some memories.  And, well, I quite like re-discovering the quality of some posts! 😏)

Anyway, that's a preamble to talking about the topic of atonement in religion, and Christianity in particular.   

I have forgotten about this post, and this one, both specifically talking about the origins of atonement.  And then I was recently re-reading this very old post about the divide between "realist" and "non-realist" views of Christianity in particular (a post of which I had some memory), but had forgotten that my old friend Geoff had turned up in comments and questioned what I thought of atonement.      

The reason I'm talking about this at all is due to a podcast video I watched recently by biblical scholar Bart Erhman called "The surprising reason Luke removed atonement from his gospel".   (Ehrman is quite a likeable person to listen to, and has followed the not uncommon path of being a believer when he started his formal studies, but later moving to what might be called non aggressive agnosticism/atheism - in contract to the Hitchens/Dawkins brand of atheism.)

Ehrman's argument about Luke is not one I was previously aware of:  that Luke did not use clear "atonement" passages that appear in Mark, and the one passage in Luke that is taken as incorporating the atonement doctrine is probably a later addition to "fix" this problem.  

I see that Ehrman has proposed this for some years, as it is discussed in a 2017 entry on his blog, which I have just visited for the first time.)  This is him explaining the view that Luke had a completely different understanding of the point of Jesus' death:

....it is a striking feature of Luke’s portrayal of Jesus death — this may sound strange at first — that he never, anywhere else, indicates that the death itself is what brings salvation from sin.  Nowhere in Luke’s entire two volume work (Luke and Acts), is Jesus’ death said to be “for you.”  And in fact, on the two occasions in which Luke’s source Mark indicates that it was by Jesus’ death that salvation came (Mark 10:45; 15:39), Luke changed the wording of the text (or eliminated it).  Luke, in other words, has a different understanding of the way Jesus death leads to salvation from Mark (and from Paul, and other early Christian writers).

It is easy to see Luke’s own distinctive view by considering what he has to say in the book of Acts, where the apostles give a number of speeches in order to convert others to the faith.  What is striking is that in none of these instances (look, e.g., in chapters 3, 4, 13), do the apostles indicate that Jesus’ death brings atonement for sins.  It is not that Jesus’ death is unimportant.  It’s extremely important for Luke.  But not as an atonement.  Instead, Jesus death is what makes people realize their guilt before God (since he died even though he was innocent).  Once people recognize their guilt, they turn to God in repentance, and then he forgives their sins.

Jesus’ death for Luke, in other words, drives people to repentance, and it is this repentance that brings salvation.  But not according to these disputed verses which are missing from some of our early witnesses: here Jesus’ death is portrayed as an atonement “for you.”

Originally the verses appear not to have been part of Luke’s Gospel.  Why then were they added?  In a later dispute with Marcion, Tertullian emphasized:

Jesus declared plainly enough what he meant by the bread, when he called the bread his own body.  He likewise, when mentioning the cup and making the new testament to be sealed in his blood, affirms the reality of his body.  For no blood can belong to a body which is not a body of flesh.  Thus from the evidence of the flesh we get a proof of the body, and a proof of the flesh from the evidence of the blood.  (Against Marcion 4, 40).

It appears that the verses were added in order to stress Jesus’ real body and flesh, which he really sacrificed for the sake of others.  This may not have been Luke’s own emphasis, but it certainly was the emphasis of the proto-orthodox scribes who altered their text of Luke in order to counter docetic Christologies such as that of Marcion. 

Some of the comments following are interesting too:

caesar September 24, 2017 at 5:36 pmLog in to Reply

Since Paul and ‘Luke’ seem to have contradictory ideas about the atonement–and Luke seems to contradict some of Paul’s claims about his own life–does this suggest that the writer of Luke probably wasn’t an associate of Paul’s? Does this make the traditional authorship claim less likely?

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  BDEhrman September 25, 2017 at 2:54 pmLog in to Reply

  Yes, for me that’s an important argument that he was not Paul’s close companion.

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    kadmiral September 25, 2017 at 3:38 pmLog in to Reply

    Also relevant seems to be Luke’s and Paul’s different understanding of the Holy Spirit–Paul includes a kind of
    “indwelling salvation” doctrine (Romans), so to speak, where Luke only ever refers to the Holy Spirit’s empowering presence (there’s not a hint of any “indwelling salvation” doctrine in Acts).

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    SidDhartha1953 September 26, 2017 at 9:10 amLog in to Reply

    Do the biographical contradictions lead you to believe Luke had not read some of Paul’s letters?

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      BDEhrman September 27, 2017 at 7:08 amLog in to Reply

      Yup!

There are quite a few other interesting comments in the thread.

I am not at all sure how more widely this has been discussed, beyond Erhman.   It's perhaps something I should look into.

It's also a reminder that I still have a book about New Testament views of Jesus that was quite influential on me when I read it in my 20's, but it's been so long since then that I am struggling to remember fully the argument it made.  Sounds like something to revisit on Good Friday, and perhaps to write a note here to remind myself in future...