FOREWORD

Some six months ago one of our members asked for an explanation of the term 'Postmodernism', which is routinely applied to contemporary culture. Our regular contributors pondered the matter but failed to arrive at a consensus.

However, there was a general impression that contemporary society is more concerned about the individual than the community, and in the fullness of time each produced a view of life in 2007 with this theory in mind. Thus Terry Skene considers aspects of New Age Spirituality in his essay 'Sacred Self', Essie Wise tries to come to terms with current 'Celebrity Culture', while Bill Stephen reflects on conspicuous consumption in 'Greed'.

This month the abolition of the slave trade in Britain is featuring prominently in the media, and so Sue Good writes about the notorious abduction trade that flourished in Scotland's towns and cities in the 18^th century and considers  the position of labour exploitation in the world today.

In 'Friends & Friendship' Robbie Johnson shares his thoughts on the difficult matter of making and retaining friendly relationships, now and always.

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Over the past few decades we have witnessed a change in emphasis in how our current culture regards the relative importance of the community and of the individual. Increasing we are becoming more aware of the rights and needs of the person. Our quality of life, what we are experiencing in our every-day living, is now seen as an issue worthy of consideration. The significance of the self is less likely to be overlooked by the guardians of the community.

This effect is seen in education which has become child-centred; in the NHS where quality of patient experience is now a concern; in human rights legislation; in health and safety at work legislation; in the liberalisation of legislation dealing with personal relationships, family, divorce, homosexuality etc.

Our spiritual practice is usually closely associated with our general culture and so this shift of consciousness from community to self is also apparent in the field of religion. Although traditional, established denominations have yielded to a kind of bland secularism, a new form of spirituality has been gaining ground since the 1960's. Inspired by the writing of the 19th. century American transcendentalists, chiefly, the Unitarian Ralph Waldo Emerson, and encouraged by Carl Jung, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Lionel Trilling, Rabindanath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo and a host of 20th century sages, about a million people now claim to be seeking and finding spiritual fulfilment in the practices of what is now called New Age Spirituality.

To offer a comprehensive definition of New Age Spirituality is very difficult, since the term means different things to different people, but most New Agers would agree that the central idea is the absolute significance of the Self. Self is the source of all experience, all ideas, intellect, perceptions, beliefs and achievements. 'Know thyself' is the only commandment. Becoming aware of one's own true self is the route to effective spirituality. Only the individual has first hand knowledge of himself/herself and, knowing this therefore, the person is aware of how he/she feels and reacts to the outside world with a clarity and intensity that no one else can share. Each of us is a unique Self. We know what our own thoughts and feelings are, and by acknowledging their authority and giving them precedence in every context, we give them the status of the 'sacred'. That is, our ultimate authority is the Self. The Self is Sacred.

This is diametrically opposed to the practice of traditional religions, such as Christianity, or Islam or Hinduism each of which acknowledges a supernatural Godhead(s) as the final authority in all things.

In traditional Christianity, the believer recognises the existence of a transcendent being and seeks salvation by means of worshipping, praying to and yielding to the wishes of this supreme creator, whose will and involvement in human affairs are recorded in the Bible and interpreted by a priesthood, instructed in the traditions of the faith. God is infinitely superior in every way and knows best. Believers are expected to follow the example of Jesus, surrender themselves entirely to God, even sacrificing themselves if called upon to do so. The Church exerts a strong moral influence upon its members, advising how they should live their lives, clearly differentiating between good and bad behaviour, promoting certain values, compassion, care, love, humility, obedience, generosity, and condemning, self-indulgence, anger, hatred, unbridled ambition and pride. The believer's order of priority must always be God first, neighbour second, self last of all.

New Agers' aversion to traditional religion is typical of their suspicion of most, organised bodies, institutions, corporations, associations, conglomerates, cooperatives, be they governmental, commercial, social or educational, since the impression is that all of them wield their very considerable authority to benefit the corporate entity than any individual who may be involved with them.

The history of the twentieth century records the failure of the big battalions to bring peace and harmony to the human race, having neglected to prevent - when not actively encouraged - the slaughter of untold millions of people, the destruction of their homes and livelihoods and suppression of their human rights. In the titanic struggles of empires and conflicting ideologies, the needs and concerns of the individual are too minute to be noticed.

In addition globalisation means that many people are now employed by vast multi-national corporations, in which the person is stripped of his/her humanity to become a standard work unit, an operative, a pair of hands or eyes or a brain, occupying a certain space, fulfilling a required task at maximum efficiency, reaching a prescribed productivity target to justify the cost of his/her employment. Furthermore, there are the various roles most people are obliged to play, the wage-earner, the parent, the commuter, the carer, the tax-payer, the house-holder, the citizen, all the obligations to and expectations of other people that confound our urgent need - to be ourselves and not that stranger we have been taught to be. Personal freedom is so precious that many of us are reluctant to undertake any commitment that is not essential to our role as a law-abiding citizen. Formal membership of a club or organisation or congregation or society or political party seems to many of us to impose restrictions upon how we may choose to spend our free time, and so we prefer ad hoc, open-ended arrangements that don't commit us to anything binding or long-term. 'In my own time, when I feel like it, I'll get round to it, just don't push me'. This is the casual, unstructured approach that New Age Spirituality caters for.

New Age Spirituality is a portmanteau term that embraces a vast variety of activities, practices, concepts, styles and systems of worship, ritual and celebration. It is a vast resource that makes available the whole of recorded spiritual experience to the individual searcher. All the world's religious literature, mythology, legend, folk-lore, magic, recorded oral spiritual insights of nomadic peoples, wicca, mysticism, spiritualism (channelling), natural religions, yoga, holistic medicine, herbaria, reiki, reflexology, crystal therapy etc. a vast warehouse in which the searcher may browse and select from whatever age or tradition or system, whatever seems likely to satisfy his/ her spiritual needs.

Although New Age Spirituality is largely a d.i.y. operation, it is not without its teachers, facilitators, guides and gurus who will share their own experience but will not dictate. Seminars, retreats, short courses, support groups in whatever activity appeals to the individual are available, as are books, magazines, videos, DVD's etc. all intended to bring about a change in the inner being of the individual and so enhance his/her life experience. There are also regular yearly gatherings, as at Glastonbury and more permanent institutions, such as the Findhorn Community.

For many people, new Age Spirituality means little more than achieving a sense of well-being, of being at ease with one's self and one's body, by means of some physical therapy, such as massage or aromatherapy or reflexology or tanning or even cosmetic surgery, whatever asserts the person's unique qualities and so changes the person's outlook for the better.

Transformation, re-birth, is the principal aim of New Age Spirituality. By discovering our true selves, who we really are, how we really function in this world, what we really want to achieve, we may affirm our own individuality, express ourselves freely, enhance our experience of living, find some meaning in life, and even empower ourselves to perform more successfully and profitably. This is brought about by trusting our intuition, listening to 'the inner voice' moving beyond the intellect and restraining the powerful influence of ' ego', that is, that 'so-called self' created by society, the false self that constantly obstructs access to the true self, so causing stress, anxiety, low self-esteem, conflicts and emotional upsets etc. This is the pursuit of wholeness, 'centering', harmonising all our feelings, thoughts, aspirations, honestly examining our motivations and actions, omitting nothing that may appear unworthy, facing up to our short-comings, recognising any sense of guilt, accepting full responsibility for our life, in order to bring into balance all the different aspects of our being, thus minimising, if not altogether eliminating, internal conflicts and achieving an awareness of peace and love. Many different routines, rituals and practices are used to achieve wholeness and eventually enlightenment, two of the most popular and effective being Yoga breathing exercises and meditation.

Many New Agers regard spirituality as an exclusively personal phenomenon, in that it does not exist outside the mind of the individual. Since our whole knowledge of the world beyond our selves is the product of our mind, our world and everything in it, at least in one sense, is our own creation, is our responsibility and' therefore' we have a god-like relationship with it. Others extend the range of spirituality to the whole of creation, perceiving a spiritual energy that flows through everything, a vital force, animating, sustaining, and linking together every natural thing. Thus, since we all share this energy, we all have a responsibility towards every other living thing, requiring of us specific values of love, human-kindness, compassion, honesty, caring, respect for all life, equality, tolerance, inclusiveness and forgiveness.

New Age spirituality places enormous importance upon personal experience and personal authority and this creates for it serious ethical consequences, It is argued that it encourages in its followers, some of the worst aspects of our materialist society, self-absorption, an obsession with physical appearance, selfishness, self-indulgence. In fact it is an ego-trip sanctioned by the inner-voice. which is no more than the expression of selfish desires. It has become commercialised and trivialised in emphasising physical well-being as an undemanding and pleasurable route towards spiritual well-being, tanning and massage parlours, 'make-overs', personal pampering sessions, etc. A matter for serious concern is the recent appearance of the 'spiritually significant experience' created by a combination of the 'right music, the right drug, the right beat, the right computer generated images controlled by a skilful DJ'.

At the philosophical level, it is argued that the cherry-picking approach to spirituality, encourages people to choose only what serves their own best interests, and to ignore moral issues that transcend the self. The creation of a self-ethic, -'I instinctively know what is right and wrong' - may not accept a contribution from the wisdom of the past and arrogantly lead the individual on to disaster. One really cannot live happily in a community without encountering and acknowledging the needs of that community. The individual must therefore be prepared to negotiate and compromise, or withdraw altogether from contact with other people, or create or find a community of like-minded people. Furthermore, our own self-identity requires the active presence of other people in our lives and it is difficult to imagine how self-fulfilment could be achieved in a society of one.

Another problem is the source of the' inner voice' or 'intuitive wisdom'. It is very difficult to determine the provenance of our ethical values. Is conscience an innate faculty, the product of intelligence? Is it an amalgamation of experience, social conditioning, education and the wisdom of influential teachers?

These criticisms highlight the problem of New Age spirituality of trying to reconcile that which comes from within with that which comes from without and how it arrives' at an authoritative decision.

New Age spirituality, is clearly at one with our current culture and responds to a need which is not apparently served by traditional religion. It is also important in that it offers a viable alternative to secularism. At its best it espouses important values and promotes the idea of an inward life. Its innate lack of cohesion, however, tends to reduce its effectiveness as a religious movement and one wonders how long it can survive in its present form.

New Age spirituality has many things in common with Unitarianism. Both agree that spiritual development is a personal issue and that each individual finds his/her own path towards spiritual fulfilment. Neither is dogmatic about the source and nature of the divine. They share similar values, tolerance, freedom, respect for the natural world, humanitarianism, inclusiveness, celebration of life in all its diversity, and the virtues of honesty, thoughtfulness, decency and compassion.

Although Unitarianism is an organised movement based on congregational worship, its structure is in no way prescriptive but shelters a wide diversity of spiritual experience and practice, allowing them to flourish in an indifferent and sometimes hostile, materialist culture. There are already New Age inspired groups within the Unitarian fold, such as the "Earth Spirit" group. Unitarianism has long offered an alternative to traditional denominations, a counter-culture for all who are unfulfilled by established institutions or disillusioned with secularism.

New Agers who feel their spiritual development might benefit from the support of a sympathetic community may very well find that haven in the Unitarian movement.

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REFLECTIONS ON THE SLAVE TRADE
THE STORY OF PETER WILLIAMSON

By Sue Good

Later this month (March 2007) we'll be celebrating the bicentenary of the Act of Parliament that abolished the transatlantic slave trade in Britain, a trade that laid the foundations for the wealth and industrialisation of our country whilst at the same time inflicting immeasurable damage on the African continent. I don't think it is stretching truth to say that the unfair world trade rules that trade justice campaigners seek to change are largely the result of the industrialised nations' acquisition of wealth through the slave trade. The Fairtrade Movement is some way towards a solution, but only a part. The idea of some sort of Christian response to injustice is a strong one in the Fairtrade movement, in the same way that many of the early abolitionists came from religious backgrounds, particularly Quakers, evangelicals and Unitarians.

The campaign to achieve the passing of the 1807 Abolition Act was the first example of an extra-Parliamentary campaign in which a broad range of British citizens were involved and it was perhaps the most successful' pressure group in modern parliamentary history. In 1792, more than 350,000 people, including a third of the population of Manchester, signed a petition calling for the abolition of the slave trade. Nearly a third of the individual area petitions came from Scotland. The key mover behind the upsurge of public opinion was a Church of England clergyman called Thomas Clarkson, who as a student had won a competition with an essay on slavery. He couldn't shift the subject from his mind and decided to launch the campaign for abolition. His methods were very modern and included visual aids of the sorts of equipment used to torture slaves, promoting a campaign medallion made by Wedgwood and printing a plan of the slave ship Brookes, showing 482 slaves crammed on board. Many women were involved in the campaign and although they had no vote they had a great influence on spreading the word. A boycott of sugar from plantations that used slave labour was organized, a forerunner of the modern boycotts on South African produce. Even with all this awarenessraising going on, there was great resistance to change in Parliament, particularly in the House of Lords, many ot' whose members were slave-owners. William Wilberforce, who fronted the bill in the Commons had to introduce it every year for eighteen years before its final acceptance.

One of the most important aspects of the campaign was the testimony of former slaves like Olaudah Equiano, who married an Englishwoman and wrote a book about his life of slavery. Here is a short extract:-

In the late eighteenth century there was massive public support for the abolition of slavery, just as in 2005 many people marched to gain justice in trade, yet in both cases reform was, and is, very slow to happen. The reason for that is the same today as it was in 1793; a vested interest in keeping things just as they are. The triangular trade of British goods to Africa, slaves to the West Indies and then sugar and tobacco back to Britain, made many fortunes. Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow all became rich and prosperous cities on the back of the trade and the knock-on effect was felt all over the country. But even the vast numbers of slaves shipped from Africa didn't satisfy the needs of the plantations in the American colonies for labourers. Sometimes people would go out willingly, hoping to build themselves better lives, but still the demand outstripped supply. It was then that merchants in places that had not been involved in the triangular. trade stepped in, to reap the lucrative benefits of the labour supply industry. If they couldn't get willing workers, they resorted to trickery and kidnapping, operating with ruthless efficiency and securing either collaboration or perhaps just a turning of the blind eye from officialdom. It was a different kind of slave trade, but the one that is still rife today throughout the world.

In Aberdeen the practice was widespread, one estimate of the number of children abducted in the 6 years between 1740 and 1746 being 600. The history of the town known as "The Book of Bon Accord" states: "The inhabitants of the neighbourhood dared not send their children into the town, and even trembled lest they should be snatched away from their homes. For in all parts of the country emissaries were abroad, in the dead of night children were taken by force from the beds where they slept; and the remote valleys of the Highlands, fifty miles distant from the city, were infested by ruffians who hunted their prey as beasts of the chase."

This is the story of one boy who was kidnapped and shipped off to America from Aberdeen. He lived a very adventurous life, even if his tales grew a bit in the telling. Indian Peter, as he became known, was famous in his own lifetime and it was sometimes suggested that he was the inspiration for David Balfour in Stevenson's "Kidnapped" Peter Williamson was born in Hirnley, near Aboyne, in 1730 and when he was ten he was sent to Aberdeen to stay with his aunt, where he remained for three years, becoming a "stout and robust boy". He was then taken prisoner and kept with other boys, some as young as eight, firstly in a barn on the Green, then in the Tolbooth and finally with a sort of house-mother in a secure house until the numbers for shipment were complete. Peter's father came to Aberdeen to try and get him released, but he could get no support from local magistrates and by the time he got a rural magistrate to issue a search warrant, Peter had gone, shipped to Philadelphia on The Planter, with sixty-eight other children.

Conditions at sea in those days were horrific, although Peter himself in later years was to say that they were unremarkable, but one seaman reported that he had been allowed to climb the ship's rigging, presumably to help with the sails and had proved himself an active, clever boy. Most of the time though would have been spent crammed into the hold, riding out whatever the Atlantic might throw at them and it was there that they were abandoned when after a particularly bad storm the ship ran aground on a sandbank off an island near the coast of New Jersey. The crew took the lifeboats and made for the island, only venturing back when the storm finally blew itself out to reclaim their valuable human cargo. They took great care of those that had survived for three weeks on the island, until a ship finally arrived to take them to sale in Philadelphia, ironically "The City of Brotherly Love"

It was here that Peter Williamson had his first stroke of luck. For around sixteen pounds he was sold for a period of seven years to a Scotsman, Hugh Wilson, who had himself been abducted from the streets of Perth. "Happy was my lot in falling into my countryman's power", Peter was to write, "as he was, contrary to many others of his calling, a humane, worthy, honest man." The childless Wilson treated him very kindly, even sending him to school, so that unlike many of his fellow slaves, he could read and write. In a world where ill treatment was common and attempts to escape were punished by flogging and an additional period of servitude, he had fallen on his feet. Peter could expect to receive a lump sum of cash and possibly some land when his seven years were up, but when he was seventeen his master died and left him $200 (around £150), together with his best horse, saddle and all his wearing apparel. So Peter was his own master and set about seeing something of his adopted country, working as he went, until he was 24 when he decided to get married. We know only that the lady was called Rose, she was the daughter of a wealthy planter and her father gave the couple some land on the Pennsylvania frontier, where Peter settled to the life of a farmer. However, marauding Indians began to prove troublesome, instigated by the French who paid for every British scalp taken. On the night of October 2nd 1754, Peter was in his house alone when Lenape Indians surrounded it, plundered it and burned it and all his stock. The Indians used him as a pack-horse and he was force marched many miles, witnessing along the way the murder and scalping of numerous settlers. Peter somehow managed to survive, and made a daring escape from his captors, returning home only to find that his wife had died.

He enlisted as a soldier and went to fight the French and their Indian allies, serving for three years, becoming a lieutenant, receiving a bad hand wound and finally being taken prisoner by the French at the Battle of Oswego in 1756. He was marched to Quebec where he became part of a consignment of 1500 prisoners being exchanged for French prisoners of war and he was shipped back across the Atlantic to Plymouth. After all the formalities had been completed and the decision that he could not be provided for in the Royal Hospital Chelsea made, Peter was discharged and given the sum of six shillings, a reasonable amount, but not enough to get him home to Aberdeen. He set off to walk, earning some money along the way by telling his tale and giving demonstrations of the Indian way of dressing, body decoration and war-dancing. In York he found sympathetic listeners who helped him write and publish a book entitled "French and Indian Cruelty, exemplified in the Life and various Vicissitudes of Fortune of Peter Williamson, who was carried off from Aberdeen in his Infancy, and sold as a slave in Pennsylvania", which became an instant bestseller. And so he finally reached Aberdeen, where he tried to trace his family, without too much success. His book sold well in Aberdeen, but the merchants and councillors who were implicated in the kidnapping trade, although not named, were furious. Peter was charged with offering for sale a 'scurrilous and infamous libel upon the merchants and magistrates of the town'. The magistrates' own tribunal heard his case, so it was not difficult to secure a conviction: the magistrates being the aggrieved party as well as the judges. Copies of the book were seized and burned at the market-cross by the common-hangman. Peter was imprisoned until he signed a declaration that the account of his kidnapping was false, then he was fined ten shillings and banished from Aberdeen as a vagrant.

He settled in Edinburgh and continued to tell his story and sell his book, but he also had other plans. The large hall in which the Scottish Parliament had met was then a meeting place associated with the adjoining law courts, and here Peter established a coffee-house that became a favourite meeting place of lawyers and their clients. It became known as "Indian Peter's" and he also ran a second tavern in Old Parliament Close where judges and baillies would meet to enjoy the "deid chack" or traditional dinner held after a public hanging had taken place. With lawyers for friends and, despite his earnings from his boo~ and taverns, he managed to wangle himself an early form of legal aid and set out to !?ue the magistrates of the city of Aberdeen. The case was heard in the Court of Session and the verdict was unanimous. The Provost of Aberdeen, four Bailies and the Dean of Guild were ordered to pay a fine as compensation to Peter. Peter then proceeded to raise an action for damages against the individual Bailies who had been personally responsible for his kidnapping and whose names he now knew. There was a great deal of delaying tactics employed, plus successful bribing of the Sheriff Substitute hearing the case. His decree exonerated the kidnappers, but Peter was able to produce evidence to the Court of Session of the involvement of the bailie and his companions in his kidnapping. The court reversed the earlier decision and Peter was awarded damages with 100 guineas legal costs.

While all this was going on, Peter had not been idle, for he had a lively and ingenious mind and was always thinking up schemes. He acquired a portable printing press, taught himself to print and travelled to various fairs with a press he had invented himself, giving demonstrations of printing to what he called "the astonished rustics". For a while he even printed a weekly paper, full of local gossip and articles. In 1773, Peter compiled Edinburgh's first street directory. This pioneering work contained an 'alphabetical list of names and places of abode of the Members of the College of Justice, public and private gentlemen, merchants, and oth~r eminent traders; mechanics, carriers, and all persons in public business' The directory cost one shilling and Peter continued to publish it until 1796. Another innovative idea was his establishment of a postal service for Edinburgh. He appointed seventeen shopkeepers in different parts of the city as official receivers of letters and employed four uniformed postmen, who wore on their hats the words Penny Post and were numbered 1,4,8 and 16, so that the business would seem much larger than it actually was. Peter's Penny Post was the first in Britain and he ran it for thirty years, until the government run scheme took its place and Peter received the acknowledgement of an annual pension of £25.

He married twice more, once in 1760 to Jean Colin, though nothing more is known about the marriage and lastly to Jean Wilson, who bore him nine children and led him a merry dance before he finally divorced her. He was very well-known in the city of Edinburgh and a prominent Freemason, featuring in a famous painting within the Edinburgh Grand Lodge that is supposed to commemorate the inauguration of Robert Burns as Poet Laureate to the masons. He died in 1799 and for someone who had had such a bad start, his life could be held up as a model of never losing hope. From an illiterate farm boy, he had become the man who had overcome astonishing vicissitudes to take on the might of Aberdeen City and win. Aberdeen is acknowledging his adventures this year in a project to celebrate the bicentenary of abolition and there will be lots of events taking place in the city throughout the year.

 We have strayed from the story of the abolitionists, but I would like to end by giving the last word to William Wilberforce, who tried for so long to convince people of the evils of slavery. His words are still true today: "Having heard all of this you may choose to look the other way but you can never again say that you did not know."

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THE CELEBRITY OF CULTURE

By Essie Wise

Five years ago, a young woman appeared on the 'Big Brother' television show and immediately became famous, not for her talent, but because she was uncouth, loud-mouthed, poorly educated and offended everyone. The tabloid press and the gossip magazines however, loved her. Advertising agencies loved her. Merchandisers loved her. She promoted a perfume. She wrote a book. She amassed a fortune estimated to be £4 million. She was famous for nothing more than being and for having been briefly on a television screen. Recently, now a 'celebrity', she appeared on 'Celebrity Big Brother' a de luxe version of the ordinary 'Big Brother' shows, offended the sub-continent of India, was interviewed by the police as a suspected racialist,' lost her promotional contracts, was demonised by the tabloid press which had invented her in the first place and retired, briefly, to an exclusive clinic to recover her composure, before planning a tour of India. The victim of her alleged racialist abuse, a Bollywood actress, became the darling of the tabloids and the gossip magazines, toured the House of Commons, gave audience to the Prime Minister, dined with members of the Cabinet, while Members of Parliament fawned upon her and begged for her autograph. Meanwhile, the Indian press accused her of exploiting poorly paid workers in her factory in India.

Channel Five recently devoted an hour of prime viewing time to a detailed analysis of Victoria Beckham's physical condition. Did she have bad skin? Was she too thin? Was she eating healthily? Had she been plumpish as a teenager? Had her figure been artificially enhanced? Did she use hair extensions? Was her mental health dependent upon her physical appearance and so on? Was she a suitable role-model for young girls? A parade of style gurus, hair-dressers, make-up artists, a cosmetic surgeon, her child-hood dance teacher, ex-boyfriend and her tattooist who had privileged access to more intimate parts of her anatomy, in deadly seriousness, debated her past and present physical appearance and speculated about her future shape, weight and skin texture. At least one tabloid newspaper, having spent some time describing this programme then subjected the producers, the participants and the principal subject to venomous abuse. Such is the body and soul of 'Celebrity Culture' .

A celebrity in this context, need not be famous for anything in particular, he or she is simply well-known for being well known, but it helps if the subject has earned a vast amount of money from celebrity-hood, or by inheritance or by some other-undeserved means, and such individuals may be found in their thousands all over the westernized world.

Celebrity-hood is a product of image making and mass communication. For thousands of years people have been aware of the power of the image. "A picture is worth a thousand words". Ancient people made images of their gods; kings and warlords declared their power by having images of themselves created and distributed across their realms; and before the invention of photography, European monarchs in search of a bride had their portrait peddled around the royal courts. Usually, the portrait was a much pleasanter prospect than the original, and more than one prospective bride received a nasty shock at the altar. Confusion between the reality and the image and its consequent disappointment is equally common today.

Mass communication has now insured that the image may be flashed around the world in a matter of minutes and anyone with access to a television set, or the internet or a mobile picture-phone can receive whatever image the broadcasters decide to send them. The age of instant celebrity was inevitable once satellite communication became an essential tool of post-modernist culture.

The concept of the nonentity-celebrity was born in Hollywood in the early years of the 20th century as a device to promote films by involving the fans in the lives of the performers. Cinemagoers were already entranced by the magic of the silver-screen and so were ready to accept any fanciful tale the publicity men invented about these wonderful people who thrilled them and moved them to laughter or tears, in picture after picture. Biographies and life-styles, as exciting and glamorous as those they portrayed on the screen were created for the stars and retailed in film magazines and newspaper gossip columns. Their lavish life-style; their expensive clothes, their super-fast cars; their first-class state-rooms on ocean liners; their palatial abodes; their loves; their marriages; their divorces; their addictions and obsessions; their despair; their ecstasy, their royal condescension and god-like physique, were all there, in black and white on the printed page with obligatory photograph, a rich diet of fantasy dressed as actuality, to delight and bedazzle the man and woman in the street. Eventually the line between fact and fantasy became so obscured that succeeding generations expected their film stars to behave in this way and that by means of the mass media had a right to share in their highly charged and non-conformist private lives. In other words their private lives had to be made available for public consumption and, of course, had to be arresting and entertaining. The performers, therefore, became puppets in the hands of the puppeteers, who were their public. The exploiter exploited.

This process became intensified in the television age, as the competition became more severe with more and more channels pursuing a limited number of advertisers. The current celebrity cult is a stratagem to catch advertisers for television companies, newspaper and magazine proprietors. So why are we bothered to peer into the lives of these so-called celebrities? Over the past thirty years or so, sociologists, anthropologists and psychologists have been studying the celebrity phenomenon. A considerable academic literature has been amassed and the study of celebrity is now available as an undergraduate course at certain universities. There are as many answers to our question as there are academics writing about it.

First of all, of course, most of us have a taste for gossip and this does more than just satisfy plain noseyness. We tend to use other people as a check on how we are getting on. We compare ourselves with them; it's like keeping up with the Joneses. Many of us never quite grow out of the teenage anxiety of being one of the pack, of keeping instep with our peers. Observing the fate and careers of celebrities, especially the untalented ones, can be a reassuring exercise, in that we can tell ourselves that had we had the same good fortune as they, we would have done much better.

Taking a close interest in the lives of TV personalities may also be a measure of our own insecurity. Many of us now live alone. We lock our doors and are reluctant to open them to anyone. We feel threatened by strangers. However, we are still interested in other people and television provides us with a wide variety of human interest, fantasy friends and enemies, through soap operas, reality shows, talk shows and documentaries about the private lives of other people. We can engage with these people but at the same time keep them at a safe distance behind the TV screen, so that they can never appear to threaten us. We know about them, but they don't know about us. We peer at them from our living-room hides, like bird watchers.

Television also gives us a chance to live life vicariously. We can escape our own hum-drum, unexceptional, undramatic existence and experience a whole range of situations and emotions without ever suffering any consequences. We can have a whole library of alternative lives. We observe human nature at its best and at its worst as people try to deal with situations either imaginary or actual, and speculate about our own reactions in these circumstances, without ever being exposed to danger or embarrassment or humiliation or failure. We can also share moments of triumph and exhilaration without ever having made any of the effort to win or achieve.

Personality television, is all about feeling, not about reason and thought. It is mostly heart and very little mind. Television personalities, these celebrities, therefore, seem to be fulfilling a spiritual need in our lives; they are called upon to carry our emotional burdens. We feel while they suffer. At a certain deep level of consciousness, the whole celebrity culture provides hundreds of millions of people with a surrogate religious experience, what Aristotle would have called a catharsis, that is a spiritual cleansing, a purifying of the emotions and a restoration of harmony and contentment within the soul.

The mass media, particularly television, because it is immediate and can place a viewer in a situation anywhere in the world, as soon as a camera crew can get there, creates an instant community of feeling. It may be the aftermath of a tsunami, a volcanic eruption, a flood, a famine, a terrorist outrage, where-ever they may be devastation, suffering and death, the sense of horror and pity will flash around the earth in minutes and billions of people will be caught up in a great community of feeling, in a democracy of compassion, that will reverberate through each of us to the depths of our being. Suffering and death on a massive scale, however, is just too painful an experience for an individual to absorb. Thousands of people die, each individual with a life history and hopes unfulfilled, but we do not know them and we cannot focus on them or identify any one of them among the thousands who may have perished.

 However, when the emotions of billions are focused on the fate of one universally recognised and celebrated individual, he or she attains the significance of myth, a symbol of the human condition, of human destiny and becomes an object of worship, even a sacrificial offering.

This year is the tenth anniversary of the untimely and violent death of Diana, Princess of Wales. The unprecedented reaction world-wide to her death and funeral which apparently was viewed by 5.5 billion people is an instance of this effect. Diana was already a super celebrity, the most visible woman on earth, every aspect of her life pored over by hundreds of millions of people. She was physically attractive, fair-haired, slim, doe--eyed. She had revealed her victim-hood on television, in books in countless newspaper and magazine articles. She had been badly treated by her husband, his family, the British establishment. She had been ill. She had been depressed. She was a mother who loved her children. She had no claim to great intellect or even much of an education. She made mistakes, acted foolishly, seemed to be without guile and frequently appeared to be out of her depth. However, she insisted upon living her own life, pursuing her own interests, making her own friends, demonstrating her independence of tradition and royal protocol. She was a free spirit. She was glamorous, affluent, lived a luxurious life in palaces, sped around the world in private jets, relaxed aboard fabulously appointed yachts at exclusive resorts, wore the most expensive clothes and jewellery and was courted by most of the other celebrities people had read about, pop-singers, film-stars, dress designers, political leaders and had even had an audience of the Pope. She toured the trouble spots of the world. She searched for land-mines and kissed their limbless victims; hugged HIV sufferers, and aligned herself - with suffering humanity everywhere. She radiated warmth, love, compassion, pity, tenderness. She had the common touch. She was the Queen of people's hearts, the People's Princess, a secular saint, whose faith resided in her own instincts and feelings. Her religion of heart-felt emotion swept around the globe and found converts in every corner. She was the goddess of feeling. Then she died, a victim of a car-crash. Billions of people felt bereaved. Orchestrated by the mass media, an enormous tide of grief swelled across the world, crashed down upon the British establishment, threatened to sweep away the royal family and undermine the Constitution. Familiar to almost every TV viewer on earth, Diana was the sacrificial victim with whom almost the whole human race could identify. This was mourning raised to the level of myth. She was no longer a real person; she was now a concept; she now symbolised all the victims of unjustified, untimely death. She had attained her apotheosis as a celebrity.

But, in the end nothing dramatic happened. There was no revolution in the streets of London. The Royal Family recovered its popularity very quickly. The Constitution was unshaken. The feeling on this occasion was motivated by self-indulgence or even fashion, rather than true commitment. When put to the test, fantasy yields quickly in the face of reality, and sanity is restored. By a strange co-incidence, Diana's death was followed five days later by the death of another world-class personality, Mother Theresa, the Catholic nun who had spent a long life-time caring for the incurably ill and the dying in the slums of Calcutta. The difference between these women who had met each other, clearly establishes the gulf between celebrity and fame, and the separate worlds they inhabit. Diana existed in a world of glamour, bright lights, show, gesture, where appearance is all; Mother Theresa in a world of pain, poverty, obscurity, commitment and unremitting toil. Diana lived in a New Age world of personal freedom and feeling, even self indulgent feeling; Mother Theresa in a world of iron discipline, obedience, duty, and an uncompromising faith.

Diana like all the many lesser celebrities was regarded as a consumable by the media which pursued her rapaciously to record everything she did and said and the more intimate the material the better. Mother Theresa was acknowledged by states and institutions who lavished their highest honours upon her, Nobel Peace Prize, the British Order of merit, The US Congressional Medal of Honour, the French Legion of Honour, and so on, and on her death was beatified by the Pope, the first step towards sainthood. The media approached her with deference and recorded her achievements, not her wardrobe. Celebrity equals triviality; fame equals worth.

This celebrity culture clearly challenges religious communities such as ours. Setting aside its origins in blatant commercialism, it has a kind of spiritual influence which is clearly great and growing. Millions of people seek spiritual satisfaction from observing the lives of their celebrities, from whom they absorbed their moral outlook, in whom they place their highest aspirations and seek to find a meaning to their lives. Unfortunately, the nature of celebrity is the cultivation of selfhood, self-indulgence, personal gratification, amassing possessions, riches through the exploitation of self and others. The religion of self is the religion of feeling good about one's self, being in tune with one's inner self, believing that contentment is to be found deep within one's self in other words trying hard to satisfy the needs of self, whether reasonable or excessive. We know this to be a fantasy, however, because a religion that is divorced from the outside world will never bring contentment. Spirituality without morality leads to total isolation. We cannot live in a world of people, be indifferent to the welfare of these people and expect to find contentment. The relationship between celebrities and the rest of us is one of mutual exploitation, not of co-operation or of giving or of healing. We have plenty evidence to show that exploitation never leads to harmony. The culture of celebrity, then, may appear, to engender a kind of world-wide community, held together by the mass media, dedicated to egalitarianism, but in fact it is a culture of victims and exploiters, in which each group shares the characteristic of both, sometimes being the exploiter, sometimes being the victim, an extremely unstable arrangement not one likely to lead to happiness.

Unitarians believe that religion is a very personal matter, each of us seeks his /her own route to spiritual fulfilment, but we don't travel in isolation. We don't exist in a vacuum, and personal fulfilment is bound to involve relationship with the world around us. We are aware of other people, of their needs and our moral obligations which quite clearly excludes their exploitation for personal gain. Our role in the world, should be that of healer rather than victim or exploiter. If we need an icon to inspire us, perhaps it should be St. Theresa rather than St. Diana.

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