As usual today also Hima was travelling back home after a long day at office. She stepped inside and soon found a comfortable seat.She was quite and just observing the people who were boarding the bus. During these hours there were hardly any smiles on the faces of the boarders. She could see tired, weary and given up looks on the faces around.

Hima is talkative but during the journey her face is blank as she is preparing herself secretly for an impossible mission.

The rotation of the wheels announced the start of journey. She closed her eyes and within a fraction of second reached her pre-planned destination. Nature started showering all its bounties generously on her. Here everything seems to be dancing in trance of youth and happiness and her romance attains its zenith. Tender grass allows her to throw her worn out physicality on its soft blades and she starts rejuvenating.

The big fruit acts as a lap and she rests her head on it. The sweet pulpy heart of the fruit calms every swirl of thoughts inside her nuttier brain. The exotic leafy hands caress her cheeks and she sinks her face in those careful hands. Meanwhile the soothing windy eye-lids give her plenty of butterfly kisses. Soft flower buds gently press against her lips and after few moments leave her dizzy and drunk.

Fully bloomed arms with scented fragrance of a beautiful creeper wraps her body and she surrenders completely to them to treat her with lovely tickles on her back. Later the watery feet of a slow-moving cascade when washes her feet and legs, she starts shrinking with the heavenly pleasure of them. She then embraces, squeezes, cuddles and nestles with her serene romance and goes in deep slumber.

Time intervenes. The wheels are decreasing their rotations and are ready for the halt. She realises the situation and gently opens the eyes of her brain, stands, adjusts her scarf and with very light steps, gets down the vehicle and walks towards her home. This is her routine practice. She visits heavenly bodies, hill- tops, sea- beds, skies and what not. There are no rules or logics in there.She can stroll on the moon without an oxygen supplying mask and can catch the comets, talk to them and even sway them to some other direction.

She can dance with the colourful fish under the crystal clear waters of oceans, and can fly without wings up in the sky without her skirt being fluttered by the naughty wind.

No rules!! No logics!!! Wow!!

Though nothing applies in the virtual world yet time plays its role in the same manner. So now its high time to start her journey towards her home, or say the real world. Her brain automatically starts winding up her visit to the virtual land with the logic of approaching her home station.

The moment she steps down from the vehicle, she unties herself from all the strings attached to the virtual world and comes back in one whole identity to face her very real and not so sweet but logical living world.

But why does she enter that beautiful virtual world?

What is she gaining from that?

The sweetness and softness of the lovable virtual world may have an adverse effect on her view point. She may get stuck in there. She may refuse to come back. She may get confused between the logical and illogical worlds.

But thankfully it never happened, rather the impact of the short lived virtual world was beyond imagination.

You can call this whole process as a me-timetherapy. A weird way of meditation which surprisingly results in showing up peace and contentment on her face. That everydays journey time is her only me-time and she is never ever sharing that time with anyone. Not even in her thoughts. None of her social relations pops up in her mind while having her me-time therapy. This meditation therapy fades away all her whys, whos, wheres, dos and donts. It turns the fierce waves of emotions into a clean,deep but silent lake.

This one wild thing prepares her to accomplish all her duties at home and also for the successful completion of job tasks before the deadline. Just an hour in virtual world and she is all set to manage rest 23 hours.

Give a thought

Move to a place where you are the only one to guide the universe to work according to your own sweet will and where you are not scared of being caught lying carelessly anywhere.You can spoil your clothes, change them and can restart.

Not a bad deal!!

Good luck !!!

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Meditation in virtual worldme time therapy - Tehelka

Turn off your worries and tune in to a guided meditation class, as these wellness centres and yoga studios across the UAE are offering soothing online and live-streamed sessions almost every night of the week amid the coronavirus crisis.

Every Tuesday at 9pm, Fitness First Middle East uploads a new meditation class to its YouTube, Instagram and Facebook pages. The 15 to 30-minute sessions incorporate a soothing narration of breathing techniques that are designed to alleviate stress, improve focus and encourage self-kindness. Check out the YouTube channel here.

This alternative therapy centre in Dubai is running a range of online meditation sessions at the moment, from morning gratitude to mindfulness and even past life regression. Theyre run by qualified instructors and last about an hour each. Prices start from Dh30. View the schedule here.

This newly launched Facebook group offers daily live sessions on all sorts of topics, from nutrition and childrens fitness to meditation. For example, Kate Sheikh, the co-founder of Soul Space, is running a 20-minute meditation session on Thursday. Join the group, which already has almost 500 members, and get access to all the latest content.

The popular Dubai wellness and yoga hub, formerly known as Life n One, is gearing up its virtual platform to host a whole range of yoga and meditation sessions. In particular, various instructors are offering a range of sound healing meditations using Tibetan singing bowls, crystal bowls and gongs. Keep an eye on the website for more details.

Illuminations well-being centre, which has branches in both Dubai and Abu Dhabi, has all sorts of free and paid-for classes on offer. For example, there are complimentary meditation sessions designed to boost your immunity, delve into past lives and generally find the calm within. These take place throughout the week, alongside practitioner workshops and training courses. Check out the online schedule here.

Every week, this Dubai yoga studio uploads a new schedule and it tends to include at least a couple of meditation sessions led by instructor Neesha. These take place in the afternoon or evenings via Zoom and last for an hour. Theyre open to all levels, from beginners to advanced, and the studio is offering its online classes for Dh45 per session. Packages of five (Dh210) and 10 (Dh400) are also available. Check out the schedule here.

Jivamukti yoga instructor Dina Ghandour, who is based in Dubai, offers a weekly 30-minute meditation session on Tuesday for $6 (Dh22). These are done live via Zoom and can be booked on her scheduling website.

There are a couple of different types of meditation sessions on offer at this Dubai yoga studios online portal. Firstly, Neesha Radia leads a relaxing breathing and meditation session that promises to introduce us to a calmer mind. This one lasts an hour. Alternatively, Zeid Bataineh hosts a 90-minute moving meditation session that incorporates traditional tantra yoga. These are done via Zoom and cost Dh40 for a single session. There are five and 10-class packages available, too, for Dh35 and Dh30 per class respectively. Check out the online schedule here.

Abu Dhabis The Studio is also offering online sessions live via Zoom, with prices starting from Dh35. You could opt for a meditation class with a gentle Yin Yoga sequence incorporated into it, or try a session that also promises to facilitate detox. The class schedule is posted here every week.

The Dubai studio is currently offering only about one meditation session a week online, but there are different options to tune in to. This week, Fatima Garcia is hosting a one-hour sound meditation on Wednesday from 5pm to 6pm, whereas next Wednesday theres a Yoga Nidra session by Benedicte Alice Kapur. The latter is also referred to as yogic sleep and aims to aid emotional and physical healing as you fall into a state somewhere between sleep and consciousness. Check out the online schedule here.

_________________

Read more:

Now is a good time to start your own meditation practice here's expert advice on how to begin

#Namastayathome: 11 online yoga classes led by UAE instructors

11 simple mood boosters: techniques to improve your mental health when staying indoors

_________________

Updated: April 14, 2020 09:18 PM

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Say 'om': 10 UAE wellness centres offering online meditation classes - The National

Back in the day when life was carefree and movement unrestricted, Glenn McCrory and myself used to host a Ten Club once a month.

It was a get-together of like-minded folk all resplendent in black tie who broke bread, quaffed a little wine, and indulged in yarns of great derring-do.

We would invite a mixture of sporting celebs and top business people. Among those of fame were the likes of Jack Charlton, former Newcastle skipper Mick Martin, Olympic athlete Mike McLeod, Steve Black who coached the Falcons, Wales, and the British Lions, world champion boxer Johnny Nelson and Lennox Lewis's manager Frank Maloney who later became Kelley.

We once even went over to the south of France during the Cannes Film Festival to put on our monthly extravaganza. All challenges were accepted!

Well, being under current house arrest made me wonder and yearn for those good old days. So I thought about a couple of dinners involving just Newcastle United as our dose of soccer excitement is non-existent - one with those of yesteryear and one of personalities still very much with us.

I thought I would restrict my guests to six instead of 10 as a gesture towards social distancing and, having wiled away many a fanciful moment drawing up my guest lists, here they are with Gibbo explanation attached.

Hughie Gallacher, Bobby Robson, Stan Seymour, Colin Veitch, Jackie Milburn, and Len Shackleton.

Why this particular Super Six I hear you say?

Well let us start with wee Hughie. I've always been attracted to, well, colourful characters because I find them more interesting than one dimensional Mr Straight Laced. There are so many layers to peel away.

I know how great a goalscorer Gallacher was from the record books which would be worth delving into itself but it would also be intriguing to get close to a tortured soul apparently bent on self-destruction yet always capable of doing so many outrageous things on the field as well as elsewhere.

I met Hughie on a few occasions late in his life when I was but a teenager. He was a courteous little fella who called everyone 'sir' . . . until he had a drink. Then he became a demon.

I also got to know his son Hughie Jnr when McCrory and I made a TV documentary on United's original No 9 legend and I found him both loyal and proud of what his father had achieved.

Others? Well Colin Veitch was obviously a rare individual. An original.

During United's Edwardian heyday of glorious success Veitch was hugely prominent as they won three Football League Championships (1905, 1907, and 1909), their first FA Cup in 1910, and were FA Cup finalists an incredible five further times between 1905 and 1912.

A unique figure in the history of the game, Veitch was a versatile tactical innovator whose life off the pitch was every bit as fascinating as his successful football career.

He was a great lover of the arts and co-founded the People's Theatre in 1911. An accomplished playwright, composer, conductor and producer, he counted George Bernard Shaw among his circle of friends, was a prominent member of the Professional Footballers Association, and served in France during the First World War as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Garrison Artillery.

Oh and upon returning to Tyneside after his football days were long gone Veitch became a journalist with the Evening Chronicle. In 1929 he was banned from the St James' Park Press box for his outspoken views.

Who wouldn't want to meet a guy with such varied depth? Imagine his conversation round a dinner table. He wouldn't be short of a few words.

The four others I not only met but knew well. It's just that I miss Stan Seymour, Bobby Robson, Jackie Milburn and Len Shack and would love one more evening chewing the fat with them about the grand old days.

All four were outstanding players while SS and Sir were top managers too.

The foursome have a very special place in United's history but Wor Jackie in some ways more than all others. Never meet your heroes, they say, but I did and he didn't let me down one little bit. In fact he increased his sky-high standing if that was possible.

We wrote a couple of Newcastle United books together. A kinder man, a gentler soul, a more modest superstar I have never met.

Shack, who uniquely scored six goals on his United debut, was my room-mate on all our Fairs Cup trips and was terrific company. He wrote a chapter in his autobiography entitled What The Average Director Knows About Football and left the page blank!

I was to become a director with Gateshead but as Shack told me directors used to come up to him, nudge him in the ribs, and tell him he was right.

"They all thought I was talking about the other guys," laughed Len.

Mike Ashley, Alan Shearer, Joelinton, Ian La Frenais, Chris Hughton, and Mike Mahoney.

Oh I can see a few eyebrows raised at these dinner guests!

Why Ashley? I'll tell you why - because he won't answer a solitary single question from the media and here he would be locked in a room for several hours and would be bombarded with difficult, searching questions not little lobbed balls for him to smash to the boundary. Why? Why? Why? he would be asked.

As for Joelinton I would like to ask him one question. Why when you have the No 9 on your back are you terrified to penetrate deep into the penalty box searching for chances even if hurt is almost inevitable?

Shearer would simply provide an air of greatness . . . and the ability to tell Joelinton exactly what is required of someone doing his job at a club where centre-forwards are revered.

Chris Hughton, an absolute gentleman, would I suspect resist pointing out anything unpleasant to Ashley about his shocking treatment at SJP where he did an unbelievable job amid chaos. Never mind, he would have the chance.

I had strongly considered SuperMac of course, a very special mate, but I sit next to him at every United home match and therefore we hardly need an opportunity to talk whereas it would be a fascinating catch up with an old Whickham neighbour Mike Mahoney who has spent the bulk of his years since playing here either in America or Bristol.

Mind you, I would be taking a risk with the Big 'Un - he got me back on the fags after a year's abstinence when he kipped on my hotel floor in LA before the 1994 World Cup final and, having not indulged the wicked weed since shortly after returning from the Sydney Olympics, I have no wish to relapse again.

As for Ian La Frenais, he would be my Geordie superfan. Someone from the terraces who cares with a passion like so many of us and could tell the likes of Ashley what it is really like to be stripped of ambition and hope. Perhaps Ashley would listen more to him than me.

La Frenais is the writer of such epics as The Likely Lads, Auf Wiedersehen Pet, Porridge and Lovejoy who travelled all over England the Europe with me when I was exclusively on the Newcastle beat. He took the players' wives out to see Billy (based on the novel Billy Liar), starring Michael Crawford at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane the night before the 1974 FA Cup final and also put on the after match party.

There you are. You know my two lots of Newcastle Super Sixes. I wonder who you would invite to your imaginary house party!

Continued here:
Just imagine Ashley, Shearer and Hughton around the dinner table - my NUFC dinner guests - Chronicle Live

APRIL 2020 Issue 970 x 90 Books

Shokoofeh Azar Translator anonymous The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree (Europa Editions, 2020)

The first pages pull off an impressive act, juggling the stuff of dreams with the all too real. In a few horrifying lines, Shokoofeh Azar describes a young man hanged without trial, one of the thousands executed in the fall of 88, around Tehran. Their only crime had beenreading banned pamphlets, or distributing flyers, and their murderers enjoyed a career boost, becoming Revolutionary Guards, even mayors. Yet alongside such documentary materialIrans Islamic Republic at its worstThe Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree explicates its surreal title image. On the day of the boys state-sanctioned murder, his mother leaves her rural home to climb to the top of the tallest greengage tree (the fruit of which is better known as a green plum). There she sits mesmerized, for three days and three nights, perched on stardust, gazing down at an Earth no bigger than a tiny speckcarrying in its womb the past and future.

The woman flies off to Tralfamadore, in other words, and with much the same prompting as Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse-Five. Indeed, a firebombing haunts the mother. Years before her son was killed, during the Islamic Revolution of 79, the familys Tehran home was ransacked. In thefight against the vice of pleasure, the mob set fire to the fathers luthier shopwhere the older daughter Bahar was trying to hide. Instantly, she was immolated.

But then, Bahar too inhabits a magical space. She serves as the novels ghostly narrator, making free with mortal chronology. Only over time does the story emerge as a decades-long tragedy, in which the opening execution is just another chapter. Under the Ayatollahs, Bahars family suffers till it shatters. Yet as its devastation comes to light, our undead narrator provides otherworldly relief. Herself a fantasy, she summons up many others of her kind:

Such passages risk being congenial to flat repetition and hand-me-down phrasing (in the blink of an eye), and a few times I fretted about the translation. Yet by and large the fabulist business proves delightful. I especially enjoyed the metamorphosis of Bahars sister, who ends up a mermaid. Better still, such materials always reveal their roots in the loam built up over millennia of Persian storytelling with all its grandeur and creativity. The way this heritage has collapsed mirrors the familys going to bits, and those dual pistons drive Greengage Tree. Thus while the opening recalls Vonnegut, the structure overall owes more to One Hundred Years of Solitude. The Colombian text is cited a couple timesmost poignantly, when the Revolutionary Guards toss it into a bonfireand the Iranian likewise yokes a doomed family to a destructive culture, while decorating the gloom with a phantasmagoria. Azar might not have moves as breathtaking as Garca Mrquez, but she belongs on the same stage.

Sorting out the novels chronology also entails escaping to an older Iran, a largely illiterate village in the hills. Here Bahars remaining relations seek peace amid ancient forests central to Persian traditiona natural setting for the sort of tales you might hear from Scheherazade. Once or twice those tales stretch the narrative almost to breaking, meandering a long way from the core drama. Still, the familys five-hectare grove cant protect them from the book-burners. Soon enough, what remains of the family library is destroyed, in a scene that raises the hackles despite rhetoric as overripe as some of the fairytale scenes. Before long, the son Sohrab languishes in prison, soon to be hanged. Small wonder Mom climbs up into the stars and Sis swims off into the Caspian Sea. Or, to put it another way, the assorted mystical developments might actually represent more mundane disorders. A psychiatrist might call them PTSD, if in a form you wont find in the Merck Manual. Just such a diagnosis turns up, in fact, on the closing pages of Greengage Tree.

At that point, years after the sons execution, the grieving father has fallen into the hands of the State. Hes made his lonesome way back to Tehran, and there he cant resist picking up a few bootleg CDs of protest music. To hear such songs, to know at least some artists were still alive and reacting, left him overjoyed. But when the Basji patrols discover the contraband, they label the man a Corrupter on Earth. Jailed, beaten, he must write a confession. Dad however takes that last step out of bounds. He wrote for days, and the result sounds a lot like the novel weve been reading, with children either murdered or turning to mythical beasts. But then, under still more pressure, the old man delivers something a doctor would recognize, with grief-induced psychosis and withdrawal.

Which version counts as the truth? That dangerous term? Plainly, Azar would answer both, arguing that the Old Gods still hold value, still alive and reacting, even as she recognizes how mysticism didnt offer any simple solutions to murder, plunder, poverty, or human injustice. An ambitious claim, this tempts her at times into overreach. Nevertheless, The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree overwhelms any reservations. My quibbles about syntax or vocabulary, for instance, matter little when one considers that the translator had to remain anonymous. The current regime would never brook such critique, and likewise Azars acknowledgments end with thanks to the free country of Australia, to which she fled ten years ago. Ultimately, her work stands as another of the terrific fictions, a number of them by women, out of this tormented region and moment. It affirms again the adaptability, the veracity, the sheer power of the novel form.

John Dominis fourth novel, The Color Inside a Melon, appeared last summer.

Link:
Shokoofeh Azar's The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree - Brooklyn Rail

Author Christopher Miller writes 'The Small Scroll' to share the eternal truths of Christianity

VICTORIA, British Columbia, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ --In the Bible, the life of Jesus Christ is depicted through the eyes of various prophets. Author Christopher Miller wrote the reflective, jewel of a book, "The Small Scroll: The Enlightenment of Jesus," that follows the life of Jesus Christ from His perspective and unveils the simple, but eternal, truths of faith.

Written as a descriptive narrative, Miller weaves scripture and Jesus' stream of consciousness as he navigates the world as a human and fulfills his destiny. "The Small Scroll" portrays Jesus' human experience by demonstrating how He consistently faced hardship, and through meditation and internal knowledge that He was the Son of God, was able to rise above as the Savior.

"In a world that is riddled with disagreement, there are eternal truths presented in the Bible," Miller said. "With 'The Small Scroll,' I want to spread the word of these truths and allow readers to discover what a spiritual life is."

"The Small Scroll" features timeless lessons from Jesus that transcend past Biblical times and into modern day. Readers, who may be questioning their own destiny, will be able to relate to Jesus' journey of accepting that he is the Savior. Because this book illustrates the life of Jesus from a first-person perspective, readers can feel a one-on-one connection with this character and, in turn, with Jesus Christ.

"The Small Scroll" has received both the Editor's Choice and Rising Star awards from iUniverse. Also, it was recommended by US Review:

"The descriptions of the resurrection from the dead and ascending to heaven may provoke thoughts of what it might be like at one's own demise," said The US Review of Books. "Miller has produced a masterful tale as well as an argument for Christianity."

"The Small Scroll: The Enlightenment of Jesus" By Christopher Miller ISBN: 978-1-5320-6119-6 (softcover); 978-1-5320-9167-4 (hardcover); 978-1-5320-6120-2 (electronic) Available at the iUniverse Online Bookstore, Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

About the author Christian author Christopher Miller found his faith with he was 35 years old. In the Christian faith, he found the logical, intellectually based religion he was looking for. He previously worked as a bank manager and operated a mortgage company before retiring in 1996. Currently, he resides in Victoria, British Columbia with his wife. To learn more about Miller and his book, please visit http://thesmallscroll.com/.

For Interview Requests & Review Copies, Please Contact: LAVIDGE Phoenix Krista Tillman 480-648-7560 ktillman@lavidge.com

###

SOURCE LAVIDGE

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New Book Shares the Life of Jesus Christ From a First-Person Perspective - Yahoo Finance

BEFORE THERE WAS a self, there was the tribe.

True, tribe is a troublesome word, bearing the weight of decades of anthropological study that privileged Western civilization over all other traditions. But let us rescue it here, pare it down to its simplest meaning, as a name for the first human communities that formed beyond the primal bonds of kinship the beginnings of the great experiment we call society, which taught us to be human.

Before there was a self, there was the tribe.

Our earliest ancestors did not stand alone; they banded together to survive. For vast stretches of history, our consciousness was shaped by our connections to the people in closest proximity to us. Identity was like a complicated address, at the intersection of birthplace and blood, the things we chose to worship and the ways we kept ourselves alive, in a finite landscape we knew as both home and world. We were defined not by our hidden interior life but by our outward gestures, the rituals and markings we shared, the tributes we paid to common ideals of goodness and beauty not by what made us different but by what made us the same.

Ernest C. Witherss I Am a Man, Sanitation Strike (1968). Dr. Ernest C. Withers Sr., courtesy of the Withers Family Trust

But how do we square this with the ethos of individualism that has dominated Western life for the past four centuries? The very idea of the individual (from the Latin for indivisible: that which cannot be separated from itself) is a late construct, specific to time and place. While some historians trace its origins as far back as 12th-century Europe, it was not fully embraced until the 17th century, at the start of the Age of Enlightenment, coinciding with the rise of the nation-state, which superseded and subsumed tribal allegiances into a single destiny. Becoming a citizen, part of an amorphous, disparate, geographically wide-ranging group many of whose members you would likely never meet was inextricably linked to becoming an individual, no longer beholden to the tribe that once claimed you, and free (at least theoretically) to decide for yourself who you are or want to be.

The primacy of the individual is still resisted by many cultures, particularly in much of Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. For if you enshrine the self above all, theres the danger of dead-ending in solipsism, disavowing the responsibilities of public life in pursuit of a perfected solitude, as if being in the world and being true to oneself are at odds. The early 20th-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger thought otherwise: that to be human is to be in the world. We come alive in the presence of others. The self is not a fixed goal but a flux, ever in progress, generated and modified by each encounter, in the space and sometimes the tension between what is expected of us by family, society, cosmology and what we might actually want. Even before we thought of ourselves as individuals, we had private desires, arising in response to the dictates of our context; as the American-Canadian historian Natalie Zemon Davis has written of the premodern era, being embedded in a circumscribed social sphere did not preclude self-discovery, but rather prompted it.

ITS WHEN THAT context grows too large, beyond the human capacity to grasp, that we may become unmoored: Our confidence in who we are starts to fray. In this age of globalization and corporate homogenization, when it appears that the generic is triumphing over the particular, there is a hunger to stand out, to resist the broader narrative. At the same time, the erosion of local institutions and neighborhood life has left a void: Some of us fear we no longer have a place to call home, in the deepest sense of the word, a place that is ours and can never be taken from us. In Idols of the Tribe: Group Identity and Political Change (1975), the American political scientist Harold R. Isaacs likened this alienation to the literal and spiritual displacement of immigrants transported across great physical and cultural distances; group identity is the ark they carry with them, the temple of whatever rules ones forebears lived by whatever form of creed or belief in a given set of answers to the unanswerables. To be part of a tribe is at once a refuge and a declaration of faith. It is to be anchored, to be certain that we have a role in the world.

Renee Coxs The Signing (2018). Pigment inkjet print

But is tribe the best way to describe the loose alliances of today, groups that transcend the old ties of kinship and language, united instead by ideology or aesthetic (itself often a manifestation of ideology)? The English language fails us. A clan is related by blood, a generation by age, a faction by politics, a sect by religion, a cabal by conspiracy. A clique doesnt scale beyond the intimacy of friends (and enemies), and a gang has come to be deployed almost exclusively in matters of youth and crime. To call a group a subculture presumptively shunts it to the margins. There is no English correlative to the Chinese suffix zu, which applies to both clan, zongzu, and ethnic group, minzu, and has been recently adapted as latter-day ethnographic slang, delineating the likes of yi zu, the ant tribe, college graduates from the provinces who move to the cities and wind up toiling at poverty level, and ken lao zu, the bite-the-old-folks cohort, young people who do no work and leech off their parents. Still, these are nicknames imposed by observers, not voluntarily chosen identities or loyalties.

Etymologically, tribe is fairly neutral, from the Latin tribus, an administrative category designating a voting unit: that is, a body of people endowed with a degree of political power. It does not presuppose an opposition, like the Japanese dichotomy of uchi-soto, which marks inside and outside, the familiar and the unknown, us and them each group explicitly defined by what it is not.

But after Europeans began to explore other regions in the 15th century, the word tribe took on the shadow of colonialism, as a label reserved for non-Western peoples who were seen to represent an earlier and implicitly inferior state of social evolution. The American anthropologist Marshall Sahlins has criticized the distinction long drawn between tribes and civilization as opposing cultures of war and peace, arguing that tribes are not innately fierce or predisposed to violence, and since the last half of the 20th century, the term has largely vanished from anthropological texts only to shift back into popular parlance. Today, American pundits speak in worried tones about the fragmentation of the country and an increase in tribalism, as if acknowledging a group identity were a retreat to a more savage time.

Dutch and Flemish authors photographed with personnel of the Dutch publishing house De Bezige Bij in the library of the Rijksmuseum, in Amsterdam, on the publishers 25th anniversary, in 1969 (left); its 60th anniversary, in 2004 (center); and its 75th anniversary, in 2019 (right). 1969 Paul Huf/De Bezige Bij; 2004 Thom Hoffman/De Bezige Bij; 2019 Stephan Vanfleteren/De Bezige Bij

YET NO OTHER word in English carries the same promise of a family beyond family. Its a newly urgent notion in the West today, and to focus only on the clashes between partisans in the political sphere is to ignore both the multiplicity of tribes and how they bring vigor to public life. The strength of a culture lies not in its promotion of a single way of being but in its ability to sustain a diversity of viewpoints. How else are ideas generated but through exchange and debate, polyphony rather than a single voice? Among the groups celebrated in the pages that follow, borders are fluid; these are not hermetic bubbles but ever-expanding spheres. For some, membership is testament to a crucible of experience. The cooks who have passed through the kitchens of the seminal Mexican chef Enrique Olvera bear their scars and burns along with the banner of Mexican cuisine, staking its rightful place among the great culinary traditions of the world; the bond between the activists of ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, founded in 1987 to denounce the fatal passivity of the medical-industrial complex in failing to confront the H.I.V. crisis, is sustained in part by the memory of their comrades who died too early. Others find their associates in the realms of art or fashion, like the black filmmakers championing the work of the formative American photographer and director Gordon Parks as they build legacies of their own, and the coterie of Guccis iconoclastic designer Alessandro Michele, including acolytes, muses and those who are both at once, in a give-and-take of inspiration. Sometimes connections are accidental rather than sought out, occurring by pull of gravity, as with the polymathic luminaries who over the past three decades have come to haunt humble Omen, a small country-style Japanese restaurant on a less-trafficked block of SoHo in Manhattan, whose indifference to chic paradoxically draws those most in thrall to it.

What these groups share is an experience of collective effervescence, in the phrase of the 19th-century French sociologist mile Durkheim. The catharsis and exaltation historically invoked in religious worship find a modern analogue in the electricity that snaps through a crowd gathered in common cause. There exists a source of religious life as old as humanity and which can never run dry: It is the one which results from the fusion of consciences, Durkheim declared in a 1914 speech. Transcendence can be achieved by the mere fact of coming together, thinking together, feeling together, acting together.

Tseng Kwong Chis Art After Midnight (1985). C Print Muna Tseng Dance Projects, Inc.

The 20th-century Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan attributed the decay of tribal culture to the overriding of oral tradition by a codified, written language, a process accelerated by the 15th-century invention of the printing press. He saw this as a corruption of our original unmediated sensual relationship to the world of things and to each other. Once we no longer needed to communicate face-to-face, to connect the message to the messenger, we grew estranged. McLuhan also predicted in a 1969 interview, before the dawn of the internet that electronic media would revive tribalism by creating a simultaneity of experience, bringing back the prelapsarian immediacy of a long-lost village. In this ceaseless flow of data, theres a risk of a tribe becoming no more than a brand, its members identities reduced to the products they buy swirly-hued bath bombs, say, or catchphrases memorialized in neon scribble signs choices that can easily be monetized and exploited as part of a capitalist system. Marketers speak of consumer tribes and corporate leaders are exhorted to instill in their employees a tribal culture, leveraging loyalty and a sense of mission for greater production and profits.

But true tribes shuck off labels, resist easy slotting within an index. Theyre instinctual, constantly shape-shifting, drafters of their own fates. Whether rabble-rousers or quiet meditators, crusaders on a mission or proclaimers of unexpected beauty, they are family: individuals who choose to become one, and make of that communion the beginnings of a new world.

Ligaya Mishan is a writer at large for T Magazine.

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What Is a Tribe? - The New York Times

Americas oracle of realpolitik, Henry Kissinger, seeks to put the coronavirus pandemic in the context of his ongoing narrative of the changing world order.

In his two recent books, On China and World Order, Kissinger describes the geopolitical dynamics of the past half-century. He sees the changes as having laid the groundwork for a massive shift in world influence from the United States and the West to the Peoples Republic of China.

It is a revolutionary transition that he played a major, if not dominant, part in arranging as an adviser to eight U.S. presidents and, simultaneously, to five supreme leaders of Communist China.

Yet, in the 828 words of his Wall Street Journal article, The Coronavirus Pandemic Will Forever Alter the World Order, Kissinger never mentions China. It is unclear whether he had it in mind when he predicted the pandemics aftermath: Many countries institutions will be perceived as having failed.

The direct cause of Chinas epidemic exploding into a global pandemic was the flagrant refusal of the communist authorities to control it immediately or to allow international experts in to investigate. But, for Kissingers purposes in this essay, that is not a matter worth considering. To argue now about the past only makes it harder to do what has to be done, he writes.

He is not reluctant, however, to identify U.S. shortcomings that span several administrations: insufficient medical supplies, overwhelmed intensive care units, inadequate testing resources, no cure, no vaccine. Still, he acknowledges, The U.S. administration has done a solid job in avoiding an immediate catastrophe.

But, depending on the pandemics outcome, Kissinger sees the consequences for the United States as almost existential. The Trump administrations ability to arrest and then reverse the spread of the virus will determine the prospects for public confidence in Americans ability to govern themselves. As for the Chinese peoples trust in the communist authorities ruling them, he is silent about the signs of further erosion. Nor does the regimes disinformation campaign to deflect blame to the United States merit his attention.

Instead, Kissinger instructs U.S. officials not to neglect the urgent task of launching a parallel enterprise for the transition to the post-coronavirus order. Based on his previous writings and his 50 years of activities since Richard Nixon enlisted him to help with the opening to China, it is likely that the new world order he envisions is some form of China-U.S. condominium, with China increasingly the dominant "partner."

But such a relationship, which essentially means carrying the recent engagement compulsion to its logical conclusion, inevitably would conflict with Kissingers subsidiary admonition to safeguard the principles of the liberal world order. The worlds democracies need to defend and sustain their Enlightenment values. He lists justice along with the usual state responsibility to provide security and economic well-being, but is silent on whether human rights and the expansion of democracy should be pursued.

Kissinger avoids the issue by simply deferring it, saying, This millennial issue of legitimacy cannot be settled simultaneously with the effort to overcome the COVID-19 plague priorities must be established. The problem with this approach, as Kissinger has used it in the past, is that it always prioritizes order over legitimacy or justice. After the communist regimes massacre of peaceful sit-in student demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, Kissinger said Deng Xiaoping acted as any other leader would in a similar situation.

If, as Kissinger argues, political reform cannot be achieved and should not even be attempted during times of crisis, it might be expected that safeguarding the liberal world order and sustaining Enlightenment values should be the Wests priority project at all other times. But those are not the goals of Chinas ruling Communist Party, and Kissinger has spent an entire career prevailing upon Western leaders to accept this China for what it is and to make room for it in the ever-evolving world order.

That, however, was not what Nixon had in mind when he first educated the Soviet nuclear scholar and Harvard professor on the nature of the China challenge and the urgent need to change its system and world outlook. When he dispatched Kissinger to Beijing to prepare for Nixons upcoming visit, he cautioned him about the need to avoid making preemptive concessions to China.

But that advice was not followed, beginning with the abandonment of Taiwan. Decades later, and despite Taiwans full democratization, Kissinger still seeks the consummation of that betrayal, warning the Taiwanese government and people that Beijings patience is wearing thin. True to form, Xi Jinping has repeated Kissingers message and has escalated military preparations against Taiwan.

Just as an increasingly reckless and irresponsible China unleashed the coronavirus pandemic on the world, its actions may well cause war to break out across the Taiwan Strait. If so and like the pandemic, Tiananmen, Uighur concentration camps, live organ harvesting, persecution of dissidents and a range of other moral outrages, the institution of the Chinese Communist Party will be perceived as having failed. It will, at long last, be time for it to go. Priorities must be established.

Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He is a nonresident fellow at the Institute for Corean-American Studies and a member of the advisory board of the Global Taiwan Institute.

Originally posted here:
Kissinger's post-pandemic world order and the demise of the Chinese Communist Party | TheHill - The Hill

In some religions, chanting helps to settle the mind and prepare it for meditation. As much of the world lives in isolation due to the coronavirus outbreak, many have suggested using the time to meditate and be in the here and now.

Buddhists believe the path to enlightenment requires periods of detachment from the world soself-quarantine offers an opportunity.

Karma Lekshe Tsomo is a Buddhist nun and social activist who splits her time between India and the US. She is from California andwas an avid surfer growing up a practice that she says helped prepare her to embrace Buddist teachings. After being ordained in 1977, she has worked on nonprofits focused on Buddhist women and education.

Lekshe is also a professor of Buddhism and world religions at the University of San Diego. She spoke withThe World's Marco Werman about the role of meditation and reflection during the spread of COVID-19.

Related:'Kung Fu' nuns empower women at risk of climate-caused trafficking

Karma Lekshe Tsomo: It happened to me in India about 30 years ago when I got bitten by a viper, a poisonous snake, and my whole world changed in that one moment. I faced death head-on for three months, not knowing from day to day whether I would be alive tomorrow. This really taught me the value of these teachings on how to be completely in the present moment. Let go of the past. Let go of the future, and focus completely on this precious, present moment.

So the teachings on impermanence, for example, teach that all things change. Why are we surprised? The Buddha taught that beings encounter unpleasantness and suffering in life. It's unavoidable. So again, why are we surprised? Clinging to our expectations that life is supposed to be a bowl of cherries only makes us unhappy and dissatisfied. If we accept the reality of the human condition, then we can accept these things. We can understand.

Related:How AmericanBuddhismevolved into something distinct and its own

There are so many different teachings and so many of them apply to this situation. Like, for example, a lot of people are feeling restricted. They're feeling angry. They're not liking confinement. And yet, our situation, whatever it may be, can't be compared to the sufferings of refugees in the camps, who are struggling even for water and food. So loving kindness is an excellent method for cutting through our own anger and aversion. Also, the teaching on compassion for the sufferings of others not to turn away, but [use] whatever resources we have to try to contribute to relieve the sufferings of others.

Another teaching would be contentment. The Buddha said that contentment is the greatest wealth. So, no matter what inconveniences or sufferings that we are personally experiencing right now, contentment helps us to cope with unfulfilled situations and unfulfilled expectations. And it's a real remedy for dissatisfaction, the kinds of dissatisfactions that people are feeling by having to stay inside.

Well, the Buddhist teachings give us lots of practices for how to calm the mind. So it may seem a bit idealistic, on the other hand, it could be survival, to cultivate a calm and quiet mind. If we're frantic, if we're panicked, we can't really be a resource for those around us. So they have a practice of mindfulness, of breathing. It's a very simple practice that can be done by anyone of any religion or no religion, just simply to be aware of the gentle flow of our breath as it flows in and flows out. In other words, to just calm down, be completely in the moment and be aware of our own breathing.

Another practice would be to be flexible, to be able to flow with the circumstances, pleasant or unpleasant. This is called the practice of equanimity. You know, usually we reel from, you know, highs and lows, and we're on a roller coaster of emotions. And in this case, we bring a suffering to ourselves and also disturb those around us. So if we can handle any circumstance calmly, then we'll be happier campers. And the people around us will certainly appreciate it, too.

Related:When does life begin? It might depend on your faith.

Well, when I was young, my whole life was surfing. I mean, I dreamed surfing. So I am very grateful for being in touch with the ocean, having this opportunity to be in solitude. It gave me a kind of perspective. You know, when you're out in the ocean waiting for a set, you see the world from a different viewpoint. You recognize that you're basically alone in the universe, but also that you're not the most important thing in the universe. So I'm really grateful for that. You learn to be quiet in the present moment, to be prepared for any situation.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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Buddhist nun recommends calming the mind to cope with pandemic - PRI

Posted April 11, 2020 06:01:45

In 2011 the writer Shokoofeh Azar found herself in a strange country, with a strange dilemma.

As a journalist in Iran, words and language had been her weapon of choice a way to speak out about the injustices she saw around her. But suddenly she was a refugee in Australia, where she couldn't speak more than a few words of English.

"When I came to Australia I felt that I didn't have language and the journalism that I loved," Azar says.

"But then I said to myself, 'OK, you don't have language, but you have freedom of expression'. I had language in my country but I didn't have the freedom to write whatever I wanted, without being arrested because of my writing."

So, in her new home in Perth, Azar began writing a novel in her native Farsi language a novel highly critical of Iran's Islamic government.

That book, The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree, has now been shortlisted for the International Booker the top writing prize for a book translated into English.

She's the first-ever Iranian writer to make the list.

Shokoofeh Azar came to Australia by boat in 2011. She was seeking political asylum.

Back in Iran, she had been jailed multiple times for her journalism, which was critical of the theocratic Iranian Government, in power since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

After her most recent arrest, which included three months in isolation, Azar's family had advised her to flee.

"After I came out of the jail my mother and my older sisters said 'they will keep on arresting you, and next time it will be longer'," Azar recalls.

The journey to Australia was difficult. Azar spent five nights on the ocean, on a boat with no roof, and by the time she arrived at the Christmas Island detention centre, she was having trouble breathing. She was sent to the mainland for treatment for suspected tuberculosis, and after being given the all-clear, was settled in Perth.

Far from her family and unable to speak a word of English, Azar says she was depressed and angry. But she eventually realised that distance gave her scope to write critically of Iran without fearing prosecution.

In the foreword to her book, she pays tribute to her new home, and the freedom it gave her.

"I am profoundly grateful to the Australian people for accepting me into this safe and democratic country where I have the freedom to write this book, a liberty denied me in my homeland of Iran," she wrote.

The Enlightenment of The Greenage Tree follows one family as they are caught up in the violence and fear of the years after the Islamic Revolution.

The book opens in 1988, when the matriarch of the family achieves enlightenment at the top of a plum tree at the same moment that her only son is hanged without trial. It's a shocking revelation that sets the tone for the rest of the book, which expertly weaves classical Persian storytelling techniques with clear-eyed accounts of atrocity.

Jinns (genie-like spirits), demons, ghosts and mermaids sit side-by-side with dictators and torturers.

It is a precarious balancing act between light and shade that took Azar long nights of writing to perfect.

The book is narrated by the teenage Bahar, another character whose past combines violence and mythology. Azar, who was born just seven years before the Islamic Revolution, says Bahar is a version of her own teenage self.

The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree is one of six novels in contention for this year's International Booker, an annual prize for a book translated into English, which is published in the UK or Ireland.

The shortlist is normally announced at a packed party in London, but this year, with the COVD-19 outbreak keeping everyone home, it was revealed in an online video.

At her home in Geelong, Shokoofeh Azar got an email from her UK publisher to tell her she'd made the shortlist. The first person she shared the news with was her 8-year-old daughter.

"And then I sent a message to my mother in Iran, my sisters in Iran and my best friends in Iran, so everyone was so thrilled and happy," she says.

As the first-ever Iranian writer to be shortlisted for the prize, Azar says she's getting a lot of support from home despite the fact that her book has not been published there.

"It's really feeling amazing that both Iranians and Australians are happy that I've been shortlisted," she says.

Azar joins on this year's shortlist an impressive line-up of authors, whose books have been translated from five different languages Spanish, German, Japanese, Dutch and Farsi.

The International Booker celebrates translators as well as authors, with the 50,000-pound ($98,000) prize split equally between author and translator. If Azar wins, she will share the prize with a translator who has chosen to stay anonymous for their own safety.

"They still go to Iran and back, and it would definitely be dangerous for them because my novel is all about critiquing Islam in Iran," she says.

The winner of the 2020 International Booker Prize will be announced on May 19.

The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree is published in Australia by Wild Dingo Press.

Topics: arts-and-entertainment, books-literature, awards-and-prizes, novel, australia, perth-6000, geelong-3220, iran-islamic-republic-of

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Australian author Shokoofeh Azar shortlisted for International Booker Prize with novel inspired by Iranian history and folklore - ABC News

When the poet John Donne was struck down by a sudden infection in 1623 he immediately found himself alone even his doctors deserted him. The experience, which only lasted a week, was intolerable. He later wrote: As sickness is the greatest misery, so the greatest misery of sickness is solitude.

Its hard to believe now, but until relatively recently, solitude or the experience of being alone for significant periods of time was treated with a mixture of fear and respect. It tended to be restricted to enclosed religious orders and was thus a privileged experience of a male elite. Change was only set in motion by the Reformation and the Enlightenment, when the ideologies of humanism and realism took hold and solitude slowly became something that anyone could acceptably seek from time to time. Most people in the West are now used to some regular form of solitude but the reality of lockdown is making this experience far more extreme.

I have spent the last few years researching the history of solitude, looking into how people in the past managed to balance community ties and solitary behaviours. This has never seemed more relevant.

Take the example of my own community. I live and now work in an old house in an ancient Shropshire village in England. In the 11th-century Domesday Book it was recorded as a viable community, on a bluff of land above the River Severn. Over the centuries, its self-sufficiency has declined. Now it has no services beyond the church on Sunday.

But it has long displayed a collective spirit, mostly for seasonal entertainment and the maintenance of a village green, which contains the ruins of a castle built to keep the Welsh in Wales. Planning was taking place for a formal ball in a marquee on the green this autumn, which has yet to be cancelled. In the meantime, the Neighbourhood Watch group, in place to deal with very rare criminal activity, has delivered a card to all residents, offering to help with picking up shopping, posting mail, collecting newspapers, or with urgent supplies. There is a WhatsApp group where many locals are offering support.

For the first time in generations, the attention of the inhabitants is not focused on the resources of the regions urban centres. The nearby A5, the trunk road from London to Holyhead and thence to Ireland, no longer goes anywhere important. Instead, the community has turned inwards, to local needs, and the capacity of local resources to meet them.

This experience of a small British settlement reflects the condition of many in Western societies. The COVID-19 crisis has led us to embrace new technologies to revitalise old social networks. As we begin to come to terms with the lockdown, it is important to understand the resources at our disposal for coping with enforced isolation.

This article is part of Conversation Insights The Insights team generates long-form journalism derived from interdisciplinary research. The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.

History can assist with that task. It can give a sense of perspective on the experience of being alone. Solitude has only become a widespread and valued condition in the recent past. This gives some support to our capacity to endure the COVID-19 lockdown. At the same time, loneliness, which can be seen as failed solitude, may become a more serious threat to physical and mental well-being. That failure can be a state of mind, but more often is a consequence of social or institutional malfunctions over which the individual has little or no control.

At the beginning of the modern era, solitude was treated with a mixture of exaggerated respect and deep apprehension. Those who withdrew from society imitated the example of the fourth-century desert fathers who sought spiritual communion in the wilderness.

St Anthony the Great, for example, who was made famous in a biography by St Athanasius around the year 360 CE, gave away his inheritance and retreated into isolation near the the River Nile, where he lived a long life subsisting on a meagre diet and devoting his days to prayer. Whether they sought a literal or metaphorical desert, the solitude of St Anthony and his successors appealed to those seeking a peace of mind that they could no longer locate in the commercial fray.

As such, solitude was conceived within the frame of a particular Christian tradition. The desert fathers had a profound influence on the early church. They conducted a wordless communion with a silent God, separating themselves from the noise and corruption of urban society. Their example was institutionalised in monasteries which sought to combine individual meditation with a structure of routine and authority that would protect practitioners from mental collapse or spiritual deviation.

In society more broadly, the practice of retreat was considered suitable only for educated men who sought a refuge from the corrupting pressures of an urbanising civilisation. Solitude was an opportunity, as the Swiss doctor and writer Johann Zimmermann, put it, for self-collection and freedom.

Women and the less well-born, however, could not be trusted with their own company. They were seen to be vulnerable to unproductive idleness or destructive forms of melancholy. (Nuns were an exception to this rule, but so disregarded that the 1829 Catholic Emancipation Act, which specifically criminalised monks and monasteries, did not mention convents at all.)

But over time, the risk register of solitude has altered. What was once the practice of enclosed religious orders and the privileged experience of a male elite has become accessible to almost everyone at some stage in their lives. This was set in motion by the twin events of the Reformation and the Enlightenment.

Attitudes were changing by the time Donne, poet and Dean of St Pauls Cathedral, was struck down by that sudden infection and deserted by all and sundry. He wrote that the instinctive response of the healthy to the afflicted did nothing except increase his suffering: When I am but sick, and might infect, they have no remedy but their absence and my solitude. But he found solace in a particularly Protestant conception of God. He saw the supreme being as fundamentally social:

There is a plurality of persons in God, though there be but one God; and all his external actions testify a love of society, and communion. In heaven there are orders of angels, and armies of martyrs, and in that house many mansions; in earth, families, cities, churches, colleges, all plural things.

This sense of the importance of community was at the heart of Donnes philosophy. In Meditation 17, he went on to write the most famous statement of mans social identity in the English language: No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

In the Catholic church, the tradition of monastic seclusion was still the subject of periodic renewals, most notably in this era with the founding of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, more commonly known as the Trappists, in 1664 France. Within the walls of the monastery, speech was reduced to an absolute minimum to allow the penitent monks the greatest opportunity for silent prayer.An elaborate sign language was deployed to enable the monks to go about their daily business.

But in Britain, the work of Thomas Cromwell had devastated the enclosed orders, and the tradition of spiritual withdrawal was pushed to the margins of religious observance.

In the era following Donnes time of anguish, the Enlightenment further emphasised the value of sociability. Personal interaction was held to be the key to innovation and creativity. Conversation, correspondence and exchanges within and between centres of population, challenged structures of inherited superstition and ignorance and drove forward inquiry and material progress.

There might be a need for withdrawal to the closet for spiritual meditation or sustained intellectual endeavour, but only as a means of better preparing the individual for participation in the progress of society. Prolonged, irreversible solitude began to be seen essentially as a pathology, a cause or a consequence of melancholy.

Towards the end of the 18th century, a reaction to this sociability set in. More attention began to be paid, even in Protestant societies, to the hermit tradition within Christianity.

The Romantic movement placed emphasis on the restorative powers of nature, which were best encountered on solitary walks. The writer Thomas De Quincey calculated that in his lifetime William Wordsworth strode 180,000 miles across England and Europe on indifferent legs. Amidst the noise and pollution of urbanising societies, periodic retreat and isolation became more attractive. Solitude, providing it was embraced freely, could restore spiritual energies and revive a moral perspective corrupted by unbridled capitalism.

Read more: Walking with Wordsworth on his 250th birthday

At a more everyday level, improvements in housing conditions, domestic consumption and mass communication widened access to solitary activities. Improved postal services, followed by electronic and eventually digital systems, enabled men and women to be physically alone, yet in company.

Increasing surplus income was devoted to a widening range of pastimes and hobbies which might be practised apart from others. Handicrafts, needlework, stamp-collecting, DIY, reading, animal and bird breeding, and, in the open air, gardening and angling, absorbed time, attention and money. Specialised rooms in middle-class homes multiplied, allowing family members to spend more of their time going about their private business.

And although monasteries had been explicitly excluded from the epochal Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, Britain subsequently witnessed a bitterly contested revival of enclosed orders of both men and women.

By the early 20th century, declining family size combined with council houses began to supply working-class parents and children with domestic spaces of their own. Electric light and central heating meant that it was no longer necessary to crowd around the only source of warmth in the home. Slum clearances emptied the streets of jostling crowds, and adolescent children began to enjoy the privilege of their own bedroom.

In middle-class homes, domestic appliances replaced live-in servants, leaving the housewife, for good or ill, with her own society for much of the day. The motor car, the aspiration of the middle class between the wars, and increasingly the whole of the population in the second half of the 20th century, provided personalised transport, accompanied by privately-chosen radio and later musical entertainment.

After 1945, society more broadly began to self-isolate. Single-person households, a rare occurrence in earlier centuries, became both feasible and desirable. In our own times, nearly a third of UK residential units have only one occupant. The proportion is higher in parts of the US and even more so in Sweden and Japan.

The widowed elderly, equipped for the first time with adequate pensions, can now enjoy domestic independence instead of moving in with children. Younger cohorts can escape unsatisfactory relationships by finding their own accommodation. Around them a set of expectations and resources have developed, making solitary living both a practical and a practised way of life.

Living by yourself, for shorter or longer periods, is itself no longer seen as a threat to physical or psychological well-being. Instead, concern is increasingly centred on the experience of loneliness, which in Britain led to the appointment of the worlds first loneliness minister in 2018, and the subsequent publication of an ambitious government strategy to combat the condition. The problem is not being without company itself, but rather, as writer and social activist Stephanie Dowrick puts it, being uncomfortably alone without someone.

In late modernity, loneliness has been less of a problem than campaigners have often claimed. Given the rapid rise both of single-person households and the numbers of elderly people, the question is not why the incidence has been so great but rather, in terms of official statistics, why it has been so small.

Nonetheless, the official injunction to withdraw from social gatherings in response to the escalating threat of the COVID-19 pandemic throws renewed attention on the often fragile boundary between life-enhancing and soul-destroying forms of solitary behaviour. This is not the first time governments have attempted to impose social isolation in a medical crisis quarantines were also introduced in response to the medieval plague outbreaks but it may be the first time they fully succeed. No one can be sure of the consequences.

So we should take comfort from the recent history of solitude. It is certain that modern societies are much better equipped than those in the past to meet such a challenge. Long before the current crisis, society in much of the West moved indoors.

In normal times, walk down any suburban street outside the commute to work or school, and the overriding impression is the absence of people. The post-war growth of single-person households has normalised a host of conventions and activities associated with the absence of company. Homes have more heated and lighted space; food, whether as raw materials or takeaway meals, can be ordered and delivered without leaving the front door; digital devices provide entertainment and enable contact with family and friends; gardens supply enclosed fresh air to those who have one (now made still fresher by the temporary absence of traffic).

By contrast, the pattern of living in Victorian and early 20th-century Britain would have made such isolation impossible for much of the population. In working-class homes, parents and children passed their days in a single living room and shared beds at night. Lack of space continually forced occupants out into the street where they mixed with neighbours, tradesmen and passers-by. In more prosperous households, there were more specialised rooms, but servants moved constantly between family members, ran errands to the shops, dealt with deliveries of goods and services.

The history of solitude should also encourage us to consider the boundary between solitude and loneliness because it is partly a matter of free will. Single-person households have expanded in recent times because a range of material changes made it possible for young and old to choose how they lived. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the most extreme form of modern solitude, penal solitary confinement wreaks destruction on almost everyone exposed to it.

Much will now depend on whether the state engenders a spirit of enlightened consent, whereby citizens agree to disrupt their patterns of living for the sake of their own and the common good. Trust and communication police the boundary of acceptable and unacceptable isolation.

It is a matter of time. Many of the forms of solitude which are now embraced are framed moments before social intercourse is resumed. Walking the dog for half an hour, engaging in mindful meditation in a lunch break, digging the garden in the evening, or withdrawing from the noise of the household to read a book or text a friend are all critical but transient forms of escape.

Those living alone experience longer periods of silence, but until lockdown was imposed, were free to leave their home to seek company, even if only in the form of work colleagues. Loneliness can be viewed as solitude that lasts too long. For all the science driving current government policy, we have no way of knowing the cost to peoples peace of mind of isolation that continues for months on end.

We must remember that loneliness is not caused by living alone itself, but the inability to make contact when the need arises. Small acts of kindness between neighbours and support from local charities will make a great difference.

There is an expectation that, for good or ill, the experience of the COVID-19 epidemic will be standardised. Outside the lottery of infection, most will endure the same constraints on movement, and, through quasi-wartime financial measures, enjoy at least the same basic standard of living. But by circumstance or temperament, some will flourish better than others.

More broadly, poverty and declining public services have made it much more difficult to gain access to collective facilities. Last-minute funding changes by government will struggle to compensate for underinvestment in medical and social support over the last decade. Not everyone has the capacity or income to withdraw from places of work or the competence to deploy the digital devices which will now be critical for linking need with delivery. The more prosperous will suffer the cancellation of cruises and overseas holidays. The less so are in danger of becoming isolated in the full and most destructive meaning of the term.

Some may suffer like Donne. Others may enjoy the benefits of a change of pace, as Samuel Pepys did during another bout of plague-induced quarantine a few years after Donne. On the last day of December 1665, he reviewed the past year: I have never lived so merrily (besides that I never got so much) as I have done this plague-time.

David Vincents book A History of Solitude will be published by Polity on April 24.

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Lockdown lessons from the history of solitude - The Conversation UK