FOREWORD

Capturing the Spirit of an Age, intangible and transitory as it is, presents a formidable challenge to the historian, but there is broad agreement among commentators that contemporary popular culture is a useful instrument in detecting how we live now, in that it not only reflects how people react to their daily circumstances but also how it influences them. With this idea in mind we have been examining aspects of popular culture to determine our spiritual profile.

We look at the changing significance of Christmas as depicted in popular movies during the 20th century, in 'Revel without a Claus'. The influence of contemporary culture in establishing our values is discussed in 'Tintin's Adventures in the Congo' in her review of Black Gold, Esse Wise examines how a popular medium, the film documentary, may be used to change social and political attitudes. Sue Good reports her reaction to two books of popular theology in her discussion about our understanding of the God concept and Terry Skene returns to his favourite pursuit of excavating the mythological foundations of Hollywood 'Western classics' .

High culture is also deeply concerned with trying to produce a moral and spiritual profile of our age. In his article, 'Human Nature', John Robinson reflects upon the report produced last year by Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh which adopts a multi-disciplinary approach to the task of establishing the values of our society.

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A REVEL WITHOUT A CLAUSE

St Gregory of Nazianzen who died in 389 acknowledged that the date chosen to celebrate the birth of Jesus was not without its problems, as it coincided with several ancient pagan festivals, including the Winter Solstice, the birthday of the Unconquered Sun (Deus Sol Invictus), the Roman Saturnalia, the Teutonic Yuletide, and the birthday of the god, Mithras, all of which were associated with eating and drinking to excess. St. Gregory sternly advised his Christian flock to resist the temptation to feast to extreme, to dance and to decorate their houses when they celebrated Christmas but to observe it in a 'heavenly and not in an earthly manner'. This wrangle between the spiritual and the materialistic has remained irreconcilable ever since Julius I established Christmas as a Feast of the Church in the 4th. century and doubtlessly reflects a spiritual struggle between aspiration and self - interest that is present in all of us all the year round but which seems to be particularly importunate at Christmas time, inducing guilty spasms in an otherwise complacent conscience, an experience common enough to excite the interest of popular culture. Throughout the twentieth century, the organs of the mass entertainment industry, cinema, radio, television, popular music, have made use of mythology, as the skeleton upon which to construct their narratives of contemporary life, trusting the timeless and traditional to give consequence to the ephemeral. Clearly the tug-of-war between selfishness and generosity, overindulgence and self-restraint, kindness and indifference waged within the individual and the wider community has endless dramatic possibilities, but during this festival of reconciliation and peace, possesses an added resonance and irony.

As with other purveyors of popular entertainment, the early film-makers were quick to realise the artistic and commercial opportunities offered by Charles Dickens' novel, 'A Christmas Carol'. The first silent version appeared in 1908 and there were numerous others both in Britain and in the USA before the advent of talking pictures. It was the ideal Christmas package. Not only did it confer a veneer of literary respectability and provide a plot, structure, characters and theme for their productions, it also fulfilled all the emotional needs associated with Christmas in the popular mind. There is nostalgia for those wonderful Christmases of bygone days; reassurance that all shall be well; a Christmas ethic that reaffirms the values of kindness, generosity and the virtues of family life, mutual support, concern and togetherness. Family life is a major preoccupation of Charles Dickens. Usually his focus is upon dysfunctional families, torn apart by greed, envy and the lust for power, as in 'Martin Chuzzlewit', 'Dombey and Son' , 'Nicholas Nickleby', 'Hard times' and 'Bleak House'; it is, therefore, reassuring to us all that in 'A Christmas Carol' , he acknowledges a more positive view of family relationships, by showing how the Cratchits, humble and of limited means, live in harmony, lovingly caring for each other and happiest when they are gathered together around the family hearth.

Another vitally important feature of 'A Christmas Carol' is its ability to bring about a reconciliation between the opposing forces of, practicality and sentimentality, indifference and concern, mean-ness and benevolence, commercialism and charity, a resolution which during the 20th century became increasing difficult to achieve convincingly. Ebenezer Scrooge, the financier, for whom money is his stock in trade, a precious commodity to be exploited for profit, and as such to be treated with the greatest of respect and spent only on necessities, is induced to change his attitude and acknowledge, willingly, that people, their happiness and well being, ought to be his only concern and that wealth is the means by which he should attain this end. Scrooge, cold as ice and hard as flint, is transformed from within. A remarkable mechanism, the Spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Future - part psycho-analysis (decades before the idea occurred to Sigmund Freud), part social education and an acute awareness of human mortality, his own as well as others - shatters the casehardened shell of the ruthless businessman and releases the vulnerable, love-starved soul within. Scrooge's triumphant emergence into the light launches us upon a tide of hope and optimism that injustice and inequality are not unassailable after all and will yield in time to humane and enlightened attitudes.

 More subtly, 'A Christmas Carol' is able to sustain a Christian ethos without ever becoming overtly spiritual, thus dutifully paying its respects to the religious claims upon Christmas while acknowledging its right also to be considered a secular festival. The humanitarian values that underpin,' A Christmas Carol' and Dickens' work generally, emanate from the New Testament, and provide an alternative (and critical) ethic to Scrooge's monetarism, but his conversion, although apparently achieved by supernatural means (the three Spirits of Christmas) is not acknowledged overtly as a religious one.

The mythological nature of' A Christmas Carol' - the struggle between good and evil - allows it the flexibility to be adapted not only to many different formats, the stage play, the pantomime, the comic strip, the musical, the radio play, the movie, but also to reflect contemporary issues and attitudes and to be transformed into totally different works of art.

The 1951 British film version, 'Scrooge', for instance, a dark-hued, brooding production, typical of the Gothic approach to filming Dickens in the 1940's, and starring Alastair Sim, reflects the post-war years of austerity and rationing, by including scenes which are not in the original book. Tiny Tim is shown staring longingly at a shop window crammed with wonderful toys which are beyond his parents' means, the sort of luxury goods that were unavailable in British shops in the bleak 1940's. Another scene portrays Scrooge refusing to pay for extra bread, a reference to bread rationing which had been introduced in 1946, and the feasting at the Cratchits' and at Scrooge's Nephew's is decidedly restrained, cheerfulness rather than consumption, being the focus of Christmas celebrations. Contemporary commentators associated Scrooge's change of heart with the creation of the Welfare State, and the election of a Conservative government in 1951 with Scrooge's pledge to provide for the welfare of the Cratchits for the rest of his life. The flight from self denial was signalled as people were begil1ning to feel comfortable once again with the notion of affluence and consumption. In addition to its humanitarian and social comment this version had acquired political overtones and in the process had become entirely secular, a symptom that had appeared several years earlier in America, in 'A Wonderful Life' a 'Christmas Carol' spin-off or look-alike.

Frank Capra's film, starring James Stewart, although set at Christmas Time, seemed to deny many of the traditional seasonal values and when it was released in December 1946 found favour with neither the critics nor the general public. However, since the 1970's, due largely to repeated showings on television and the passage of time which has concealed the raw issues of the film beneath a nostalgic dressing, it has been rivalling the various editions of Dickens's masterpiece as the definitive Christmas entertainment.

The plot reveals the process whereby George Bailey, a popular, talented youngster, brought up in the small town of Bedford Falls, by the time he has reached early middle age, is attempting to commit suicide. Life for George as a family man, owner of the local mortgage company, an architect and a builder, well regarded by his fellow citizens, has been a huge disappointment. He wanted to travel the world, study abroad and ,work on vast projects in the great cities of America; instead his own generosity, family loyalty, sense of responsibility and marriage have connived to keep him frustrated and unfulfilled in Bedford Falls. The film opens on Christmas Eve 1946. His wife Mary and his children are warm and comfortable at home decorating the Christmas Tree, while George in utter despair, fights his way through a blizzard to the town bridge from which he intends to jump into the raging torrent below to end the intolerable misery which his life has become. His uncle in a moment of abstraction, oil the way to the bank, has mislaid $8,000 of their company's money. They are faced with bankruptcy. Thousands of their depositors will lose their investment and many will lose their homes. George will be convicted of embezzlement. All day long, George has tried to recover the money or to borrow enough to repay his investors but he has been unsuccessful. Crushed by failure and devastated that he has ruined so many of his fellow citizens, he decides Bedford Falls would be well rid of him, and jumps to his death. Meanwhile, Clarence, a trainee angel with an abysmal record, has been assigned to look after George, and rescues him from the turbulent waters. To restore George's self confidence, Clarence shows what Bedford Falls would have been like had he not been born. The town has fallen into the grasping hands of Potter, the town banker, the richest and meanest person in town and George's arch enemy. Indeed Potter is the author of all their troubles. He found the $8,000 but in order to ruin George whom he regards as an obstacle to his plans for acquiring control of the town, has held on to it. Denied George's benign influence, the town, now renamed Pottersville, has become a squalid slum, occupied by unhappy, quarrelsome people, addicted to gambling, heavy drinking, violence and crime, living in miserable, Potter-owned accommodation, and all indebted to Potter's bank. Clarence, fulfilling the role of the Ghost of Christmas yet to come, convinces George/Bob Cratchit that his life has been an outstanding success, having stood between Potter/Scrooge and the townsfolk to provide them with comfortable affordable housing in a pleasant setting and a lifestyle that gives them dignity and self respect. Reconciled to his insignificant, small-town existence, George returns to the bosom of his family to discover that his fellow citizens have clubbed together to replace the missing money and that even more is forth-coming from out of town benefactors impressed by his integrity.

This happy ending, says Capra, can only be achieved at the cost of credibility. Only a miracle could resolve the mental conflict George is suffering at the beginning of the film. We are not convinced that George by himself would ever have overcome his depression and panic to change his mind about committing suicide. The miracle is provided by the fantasy character, Clarence the Angel, clearly misplaced in a film of stark realism.

Furthermore, all the other issues are materialistic. George is worthy because he provides comfortable homes for his clients and invests their savings wisely to enrich them. Potter is anti-community because he uses money to enrich himself at the cost of others. However, he is not punished in any way for stealing George's money, nor is there any embargo placed upon his future unscrupulous business practices. In this film, Scrooge remains untransformed and unrepentant. The struggle between commercialism and benevolence appears not to have been resolved. At best, only an armed truce appears to have been achieved. Far from leaving us with a warm sense of reassurance that all will be well, Capra, reacting to post-war pessimism in 1946, seemed to be bent upon undermining the magic and fantasy of Christmas forever.

The secularising of Christmas continues in 'Miracle on 34th. Street' produced a year later. Consummerism, materialism, gifts, presents, toys, open-handed generosity and unrestrained consumption are the whole business of Christmas. Stripped of his supernatural trappings, Santa Claus or Kris Kringle, as he styles himself, is a little old man, albeit with a trim white beard, attired in a three-piece tweed suit, and resident in an old folks home. He exerts his influence upon his fellow citizens, not by means of magic, but by common sense, imagination, kindliness and human understanding. Kris is employed as Santa Claus in Macy's Department Store, on 34th. Street, New York. Although he is extraordinarily successful in this role, he has fallen foul of the store personnel officer, an amateur psychologist, wearing the mantle of Scrooge, who claims Kris is insane because he insists he really is the genuine Santa Claus. Committal proceedings are instituted. Kris, in whom we recognise vestigial traces of the Spirits of Christmas, is brought before the Court and required to prove his sanity by demonstrating that he really is Santa Claus.

This identity crisis reflects contemporary (1947) anxieties about the nature of Christmas. There was clearly a reluctance in the popular mind to disavow the claims of the supernatural but an equal determination to hold on to reality and common sense. Christmas is a secular, rather than a spiritual event, but it would appear churlish to state as much. By means of a legal fudge, we are allowed to have our cake and eat it. As a practical joke and in order to rid themselves of thousands of letters addressed to Santa Claus, the New York postmen decide to deliver all this mail to Kris Kringle at the courthouse, demonstrating that the United States Government recognises Kris to be the genuine Santa Claus, and that what may not be acceptable as an article of faith may be validated by a legal quibble. The ingenuity of the denouement is enough to quell our incredulity and forgive its cheek. It is chastening to think that a debate that has persisted for hundreds of years is at length resolved by a joke. Apart from the occasional re-make of 'A Christmas Carol' Christmas films in the following decades ignored the secular/spiritual debate in favour of pure entertainment, Christmas 'Lethal Weapon's, 'Die Hard's, 'Horror's and 'Home Alone's with lots of Christmas violence, blasphemy, cursing and swearing!

The most hopeful version of ' A Christmas Carol' I have seen recently is not set at Christmas time, boasts none of the Christmas trappings, does not claim to be a Christmas film, nor acknowledges any debt to Charles Dickens, but, yet, although dressed in modern clothing, pays tribute to his work and values. The film has the unpromising title, 'As Good as it gets' suggesting that life for anyone of us is never going to get any better.

There is no such social arrangement as a traditional. 'nuclear' family, no Mr and Mrs Cratchit and the kids. Instead we have three households, two of which are accommodated next door to each other in a block of luxury flats in New York, one comprising a bachelor writer, Melvin. Udall, the Scrooge character, and the other of a bachelor painter, Simon, the Bob Cratchit look-a-like. Melvin Udall, is a successful romantic novelist, but ironically, is incapable of forming any kind of relationship with other people. He is selfish, insensitive, tactless, cynical, sneering, homophobic, hostile towards black people, Jews and emigrants, particularly from South America and dogs. Simon is gay and lives alone with his little dog, called Bradelle and standing in for Tiny Tim. The third household, accommodated in a squalid, tidy flat, in a run-down building, in a low-rent district, consists of Carol Connolly, her severely asthmatic son (another Tiny Tim) and her mother. Carol, another Cratchit look-alike, works as a waitress in the diner where Melvin, whom she detests and despises, takes his meals.

Simon is seriously injured when he disturbs a group of thieves ransacking his home. While he is recovering in hospital Melvin is induced to look after the dog by Frank, Simon's art dealer, a large black man by whom he is intimidated. Melvin, starved of companionship, forms an affectionate relationship, the first In his life, with the little dog.

Overhearing that Carol cannot afford proper medical care for her son, who frequently suffers life-threatening asthmatic attacks, Melvin decides to pay all their medical bills to ensure her presence in the diner to serve him his lunch. This is not altogether an unselfish, charitable act. He is a compulsive - obsessive, that is, his life is rigidly controlled by habits he cannot ignore, and so he will only eat if Carol serves him his meal. Simon's medical expenses bankrupt him and he loses his apartment. Melvin with the aid of Carol tries to arrange a reconciliation between Simon and his parents who have disowned him because of his homosexuality. The attempt fails and Melvin, without any prompting from Frank the fixer, allows Simon to move in with him. Carol's son, quickly responds to superior medical attention and she is grateful to Melvin, who has become so deeply attached to Carol and her son, that he tries hard to change his behaviour to gain her good opinion of him and even perhaps to consider embarking upon a romantic relationship. The film ends happily for everyone; good will is triumphant; caring relationships are established; optimism is restored; the audience is reassured, and all achieved without the aid of any supernatural agency or religious reference. Suspension of disbelief is scarcely called for. The process of changing his behaviour and humanising Melvin Udall, has been achieved by natural means, a combination of fear of a black man (the Spirits of Christmas) and the love of a lonely man for a little dog which returns his affection. Although cynicism has melted away, realism is never challenged; Simon's parents, for instance, remain alienated to show that some dysfunctional families are indeed incurable; effective medical care is only available to the affluent; people try to realise their dreams in night-mareish circumstances; people still live in rundown, unromantic tenements.. Even when dowsed by buckets of freezing cold reality, however, the flame of hopefulness refuses to be extinguished.

This is a 21st. Century secularist Christmas parable, without Santa Clause, without magic, tinsel and twinkling stars, and assuredly, although not aggressively, without religion, but which reflects a longing for those age old Christmas values of love, compassion, good-neighbourliness, generosity, happiness and peace, re-discovered by Ebenezer Scrooge, another secularist on the way to spiritual enlightenment. That hardheaded film producers still consider these values to be a sale-able commodity in our unsentimental and self-centred culture, I find most reassuring and an indication that the debate between materialism and the spirit has not yet been adjourned. 

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Prompted by the controversy that immediately followed upon its publication, I recently bought and read Herge's 'Adventures of Tintin in the Congo', the comic-strip cartoon, which first appeared in print in the children's supplement of the 'Le Vingtiem~ Ciecle' a newspaper published in Brussels, in 1930. Although an earlier English translation accompanying black and white pictures appeared in 1931, the publishers decided that a full-colour edition was required to complete! the set of 20 Tintin books available in English to meet the wishes of serious collectors. I am not a serious collector of Herge's work, 'Tintin in the Congo; being the only one I have ever read. However, its appearance now and the predictable negative reaction with which it has been received, once again demonstrate our difficult and ambivalent relationship with our past. This year, for instance we have been encouraged to shoulder the guilt and opprobrium bequeathed us by our forefathers for their participation in the slave-trade. We have been called to account for the bombing of German cities during W.W.2, the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Catholic Church has recently apologised for the Crusades. Although hardly on the same scale, the unexpurgated edition of the youthful Herge's fantasy, 'Tintin in the Congo' nevertheless, in the view of a vast number of people, displays an attitude towards the citizens of the Congo in particular and all Africans in general that is thoroughly reprehensible and its appearance now in this age of ethnic awareness, shows, at best, a deplorable lack of sensitivity on the part of the publishers, Egmont, and at worst a gratuitous racialist insult.

'Tintin in the Congo', I have to admit, is, none the less great fun. It dashes helter-skelter from one giddy escapade to the next, frothing with suspense, white-knuckle pursuits, vertiginous cliff-hangers, near-death experiences, heart-stopping surprises, shocks, frights, pitfalls and booby-traps, all served up at break-neck speed with searing helpings of cruelty laced with violence.

Tintin, a world famous cub reporter with an irrepressible curiosity and unquenchable thirst for high adventure, sets out with his faithful dog Snowy to explore the sootiest corners of the dark continent and slaughter the creatures with the loudest roar, the sharpest fangs, the fiercest appearance and angriest mood. Wicked white men in the pay of Al Capone the American gangster, pursue Tintin, anticipating that he will discover their plot to seize and control the African diamond trade. Aided and abetted by a cunning and deranged African Witch-doctor, they display a remarkable ingenuity in arranging Tintin's urgent demise by drowning, throttling; crushing, stabbing, shooting, goring, tearing, ripping, slashing, falling and suffocating. He is pursued by elephants, rhino, lions, leopards, buffalo and enraged tribes-men, and set upon by crocodiles, hippos, monkeys and an expatriate anaconda. A combination of co-incidence, good-fortune and his own resourcefulness; ensures his survival and final triumph over the forces of evil, although only the appearance of a rope ladder dangling from an aeroplane at the last moment saves him from a herd of charging buffaloes, thus emphasising the persistent dangers of the dark continent.

This is all thrilling fantasy for children, and while children usually manage to separate what happens in the land of story from what happens in their own lives, impressions, attitudes, misconceptions, prejudices embedded in the story are much more insidious, being absorbed unconsciously and may influence the reader for a whole life-time. The status of the various ethnic groups in this comic strip, for instance, clearly reflects contemporary (1930) European attitudes. The assumption is that white Europeans set the standard for civilised behaviour, knowledge, technology, language, lifestyle and any deviation from this norm is bound to be inferior and worthy of ridicule. The physical characteristics of the northern European races are also regarded as the preferred human model; other racial types are clearly disadvantaged. Thus the skin colour and physical features of the Africans are exaggerated in Herge's drawings to establish that these people are entirely different from his readers. Furthermore, they wear outlandish garments, live is straw huts; carry spears and shields, speak in pidgeon English and are awestruck by Tin tin's magical devices, such as his movie camera and projector. (One wonders where his power source is.)

 They are portrayed as simple-minded and child-like. One tribe elects Snowy, Tintin's dog, as its king arid Tintin himself is regarded as. the god-1ike fount of all wisdom and becomes the role-model for all young Africans. 

This book emerges from a white supremacist attitude that had been developing in Europe for more than two centuries, the inevitable consequence or the trans-Atlantic slave-trade and the colonial exploitation oft  the African and South American Continents by the British, the French, the Belgians, the Germans, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch and the North Americans. Nineteenth century and early twentieth century popular culture and literature is redolent of attitudes and language usage that, acceptable then, today are considered to be inappropriate, prejudiced, deeply offensive and racially divisive. Many of the books, approved by the great, good, learned and devout that I read as a child reflect a white European superiority towards all other races and cultures. 

Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer novels in language, characterisation, comment and incident show little regard for the dignity and sensitivity of black Americans. I can recall a tale entitled 'Little Black Sambo', several in Enid Blyton's 'Jolly Story Book' and 'The Three Gollywogs' which are now considered to be highly offensive. The novels of H. Ryder Haggard, who had served as a District Commissioner in various African colonies, 'King Solomon's Mines' and the Alan Quartermain stories also emphasised the message of white European superiority. At Sunday School, we were urged to emulate the Christian commitment and sacrifice of David Livingstone, Dr Laws of Livingstonia, Mary Slessor of Calabar and to donate our pennies to further missionary work among the "heathens of the dark continent". At day school we were taught to be proud of the British Empire, upon which the sun never set,  to pray for the Royal Family, to sing patriotic songs, to honour the great explorers and Empire builders, Clive of India, Cecil Rhodes, General Wolff of Canada, Captains Cook and Flinders of Australia and even highly such heroes like General Gordon of Khartoum, who had perished in defence of Christian values, bearing the White man's burden to the very last. On Saturday afternoons, I would go to the cinema and applaud the US Cavalry as they slaughtered thousands of native Americans, The Sioux, The Apaches, the Pawnees, the Shawnees, the Arapahoe, at The Little Big Horn, or at the Powder River, or at Wounded Knee where hundreds of prisoners were summarily executed, and in numerous skirmishes in Red River and the Black Hills country and acknowledge that such carnage was justified because the 'redskins' were savages and an obstacle to the onward march of white European civilisation. On other occasions, I would watch 'Sanders of the River' or better still, 'Tarzan of the Apes, the heir to an English estate and aristocratic title, swing through the high jungle canopy, fight with crocodiles, outwit evil witch-doctors and their spear-carrying assassins, slay snakes, hyenas, vultures and other ignoble scavengers of the great savannahs, to save an innocent white damsel in distress, betrayed and abandoned by her cowardly African porters. I Had never seen a black or brown person in the flesh until I was about sixteen and never spoken to one until I was nineteen yet deep, deep, in the archeology of my mind there exists a layer of suspicion, prejudice and antipathy, laid down than sixty years ago, the second, even third hand, impressions deposited by travellers' tales, sermons, drawings, books, lectures and films. This is mental baggage of which, try as I might, I cannot rid myself; it is there, like a guilty conscience, an uncomfortable reminder of a national attitude which we in our innocence absorbed and could not escape. In a sense we have been betrayed by the popular culture that raised us. How does it come about that attitudes considered appropriate half a century ago are now rejected out of hand?

I think the answer is to be found in an overpowering sense of. guilt; a consequence d the Holocaust. In devising a political programme based upon the premeditated murder of a hole race of people, not motivated by anger or greed, or self-defence but by a political doctrine, Hitler shattered our belief in the perfectibility of human society. but human morality was on a par with that of the jungle beasts. We killed without a conscience. The devastation of W.W.2 was an unanswerable reproach to our claims to be a civilised society. We were overwhelmed by shame and remorse. Action had to be taken to recover the moral high-ground, to clear our collective mime, to demonstrate to ourselves that we were capable of behaving decently and justly. The Nuremburg Trials were set up and the Nazi leaders condemned; the United Nations Organisation was instituted; the European Empires, the British, the French, the Belgian, the Italian and the Dutch  were dissolved as quickly as possible; the Human Rights Charter was composed and accepted by the United Nations; racial, religious and social equality was to be guaranteed to everyone; groups which considered themselves victimised and ignored by society were encouraged to seek equal rights with everyone else. Feminism, the Civil Rights and the Gay Rights movements developed rapidly in the United States and spread to Western Europe as a result. Prejudiced attitudes and assumptions were remorselessly sought out and exposed. Language was examined minutely and words and phrases considered offensive to minority groups or revealing inappropriate attitudes were altered and so political correctness came into being.

Simultaneously major demographic changes were happening. The rapid growth of air travel brought the people of the world within a day's journey of each other; the stability and affluence of the west attracted migrants in their millions from impoverished strife-torn nations and eventually western society became an amalgam of many different races, cultures, languages and religions, people with different traditions, different susceptibilities and loyalties, different histories, and all wishing to pursue a way of life as close as possible to that of their home-land. Suddenly, we and the rest of the world are neighbours, living in the same street, so close to each other, that our different traditions, histories and assumptions are bound to clash from time to time. We now have the great grand-children of the oppressed living next door to the great grandchildren of their oppressors in complete equality, a most remarkable and positive state of affairs, as long as past history does not interfere to create conflict between them. Unfortunately, the poison of the past wells up from generation to generation, spilling over and spreading bitterness and resentment among people who are innocent of any involvement in the original events, but who feel compelled to continue the conflict because of tradition and loyalty to their ancestors. The troubles in Northern Ireland, the bitterness between Moslems and Christians, between Sunni and Shia Moslems, between Jews and Palestinians, between Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis and so on demonstrate this tragic situation.

The feelings of guilt prevalent in the West after W.W.2 have not been experienced elsewhere in the world. Massacres of innocent people, often amounting to genocide, have stained human history over the past fifty years or so. The brutal excesses of African warlords, in Biafra, Katanga, the Congo, Sierra Leone, Ruanda, the Central African republic, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and now in Darfur; of unscrupulous politicians in the Middle East like Sadam Hussein; of the Communist Dictators Mao Tse Tung, Ho Chi Min, Pol Pot and Fascist Dictators in South America, like Pinochet and Galtieri have left behind a historical legacy of hatred and unsatisfied need for retaliation, retribution, reparation and justice that will survive in the memory of their victims and their descendants for centuries to come. Unsatisfied vengeance convulses the soul until at last it erupts in violence and conflict. Recognition of guilt and expressions of remorse are not enough to assuage the bitterness left behind by historical events, what is also required is forgiveness on the part of the people who identify themselves as victims. 'I forgive you,' is more difficult to enunciate than 'I'm sorry'. However, this year a bronze statue, nine foot high, was erected in parliament Square, in London, to an African Leader who made a political doctrine out of forgiveness. After the defeat of apartheid in South Africa, Nelson Mandela, set out to unite the divided races in his country by setting up the Conciliation Commission to expose the excesses of the apartheid system by allowing each side to tell of its feelings and experiences in a spirit, not of revenge but of forgiveness. A similar approach was used to try to heal the divisions between the Tutsis and the Hutus after the Ruanda massacres. Enormous restraint and maturity are required of the victims to say 'I forgive you' to the people who destroyed their families, homes and livelihoods, and many thousands found they could not ignore their feelings of rancour and bitterness to do so, but many more found that they could. These people deserve our admiration and gratitude, because their attitude allows us to continue to believe in the ultimate goodness of humankind and give us encouragement that eventually, may be a thousand years from now, we will have found away to put the past behind us, to tame History at last. It is ironic that those people who have taught the rest of the world how to forgive, are the grand-children and great grand-children of the primitive, simple-minded creatures ridiculed by Herge more than seventy years ago in his deplorable comic strip 'Tintin's Adventures in the Congo'. 

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COFFEE CULTURE

by Essie Wise

The camera swoops out of a cloudless blue sky, skims over a lush, green landscape to hover over a line of women slowly pushing their way between chest - high shrubs, before settling above nimble fingers foraging for berries among the leaves.

Next we are thrown into a maelstrom of gyrating figures gesticulating arms, darting eyes, shouting mouths clamouring to be heard in the cacophony concentrated within this huge, reeling cavern, pulsating with electronic displays recording, unit by unit, the changing fortunes of the rivals in this conflict that is the New York commodities exchange. A feverish child, racked by pain, is cradled by her mother, tender, loving care, her only medicine. We get a quick glimpse of a sparsely furnished hut and of sunlit foliage beyond the open doorway, before we're dropped at a table in a crowded, down-town coffee shop, effervescing with the hiss of espresso machines, screeching discords from the CD player and the shrieking of over-stimulated voices.

Two worlds are juxtaposed by British film-makers, Marc and Nick Francis, in their documentary, Black Gold, the world of the Haves and that of the Have-Nots, of the consumer and of the producer, of the affluent West and of the impoverished farmers of Ethiopia. Coffee is the topic, injustice is the theme and Fair Trade is the proposed solution.

For over two and a half years, the Francis brothers filmed Tadesse Meskela of Sidamo, Ethiopia, General Manager of the Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union as he tries to win a fairer price for the crops harvested by the 70,000 coffee farmers he represents. We follow him from the simple dwellings of his association members to the hectic bear-pit of the commodities exchange where the price of the raw coffee is hammered out, to the plush offices of the great conglomerates which dominate the coffee trade, Procter and Gamble, Kraft, Nestle and Sara Lee, to the tasting rooms, where the educated palates of a college of American coffee professors establish the relative merits of hundreds of worldwide samples and decide upon the blends that will appear on the super-market shelves, and finally to those very supermarket coffee aisles where among dozens of competing, brands, Meskela at last, finds a can of his Sidamo Fair Trade coffee, tucked away at the back of a shelf.

 Tadesse Meskela is an impressive hero, calm, realistic, patient, untroubled by the commercial difficulties ahead of him, and conscious that upon his skills as a negotiator and salesman, rest the fate of hundreds of thousands of fellow Ethiopians. Whether they can afford to have a clean water supply, education, a health service, better housing- etc. depends largely on the price of coffee, over which they have no control. Ironically, although the coffee shrub is native to Ethiopia and some of the finest coffee beans, valued by connoisseurs the world over, are grown there, its earning power has declined steadily over the past 30 years.

Statistics rather than human interest stories carry the principal argument for the Fair Trade position. After oil, coffee is the next most widely traded commodity. internationally. It is estimated that the coffee trade last year generated an income of $140 billion. Two billion cups are consumed worldwide every day. The average cost of a regular coffee in a UK coffee shop is 2.00, of which the farmer receives less than 1p. The current market rate for a kilo of unroasted beans is 22 cents. 'If we could get 57 cents, we would be delighted,' said one farmer, while admitting that twice that amount would be required to furnish his village with a clean water supply and their children with a rudimentary education. If Africa could increase its world trade by 1 % it would earn an extra $70 billion dollars, five times the amount it receives in aid. However, - this seems unlikely in the near future. Blac1k Gold includes a film report of the 2003 World Trade Organisation Conference which ended in uproar because the EU and the US refused to cancel subsidies to their own farmers while the International Monetary Fund insisted that African nations should not pay subsidies to their farmers. It is impossible for African farmers to earn a decent living in a market which is clearly and unjustly biased against them.

Faced with continuing poverty and hunger, Ethiopian farmers are uprooting their coffee shrubs and replacing them with 'Chat' a plant which produces a narcotic drug banned in many western countries but one for which they can find a ready market and a fair price. Black Gold argues its case forensically, patiently and calmly leading its evidence, without histrionics. There is no high profile presenter like Michael Miles ('Bowling for Columbine' etc.) or Martin Spurlock ('Supersize Me'), no clever cross-examining, uncovering hidden agendas and pillorying the witness etc. The conviction that the Ethiopian farmers deserve a fair deal for their produce is there but it is expressed rationally rather than passionately. Indeed the only emotional outburst occurs at the WTO talks when African negotiators, frustrated and angry by the intransigence of the EU and US storm out of the conference chamber in utter despair. There are no patronising, hard-done-by human interest stories. The camera is not intrusive or prying but restrained. There are no heart-wrenching tragedies to prompt a guilty reaction. The Ethiopian farmers and their families are portrayed as dignified, hard-working people, proud and self-reliant, who are doing their utmost to maximise their income in an unjust market and who certainly do not consider that the rest of the world owes them a living.

 The case for Fair Trade is well made in this film. Unfortunately, its message may be overlooked as its exhibition tends to be limited to Art House cinemas and private viewings etc. since lacking in notoriety value and being informative rather than entertaining, the main cinema chains don't wish to screen it. It is available in DVD format and a list of screenings is posted on the internet. However, it has not gone unnoticed. The Starbuck's Coffee House chain has embarked upon a charm offensive to persuade its customers that they indeed have the interests of the coffee farmers at heart by paying a few cents above market price for their supplies. Perhaps that's a grain of comfort!

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THE MYTH OF THE WILD FRONTIER

By Terence Skene

We shall begin with a few endings; bitter endings; satirical endings; ironic endings. In John Ford's 1939 classic western, 'Stagecoach' the hero, the Ringo Kid and the heroine, Dallas, are despised by the respectable passengers on board the coach, in spite of Ringo's having saved them from a band of marauding Apaches and Dallas having nursed the Major's Lady, through child-birth during a rough and hazardous journey. Ringo, involved in a vendetta, and a fugitive from the penitentiary and Dallas a young woman of easy virtue are clearly unfit for decent society. The Sheriff contrives their getaway so that they may, as he says, 'escape the blessings of civilisation'..

In George Stevens 1953 adaptation of Jack Shaffer's novel, 'Shane" the hero, a world-weary gunfighter who has foresworn the gun, inadvertently saves a township of terrified settlers from a bullying rancher and his hired assassin. Wounded and deeply distressed that he had to resort to killing again, he quickly leaves the settlement and loses himself in the vast western desert, beyond the frontier.

Finally, in 'High Noon' Sheriff, Will Kane, having single-handedly killed the members of the Miller Gang while the citizens of Hadleyville cower behind locked doors, plucks the badge from his shirt, throws it contemptuously into the dust and gallops out of the town for ever, heading for the wilderness.

In these concluding scenes, we begin to understand the nature of the Wild West Myth in which Americans have invested so much imaginative effort during the 20th century and which has been transmitted to the rest of the world by means of print, the radio, the cinema and television. The Western Frontier as depicted in scores of films is the dividing line between civilisation and the wilderness, between authority and total freedom, between law and anarchy, between pacifism and violence, between religion and atheism, between the homesteaders and the westerners; between the respectable and the disreputable. At a deeper level, the frontier myth is about erecting, maintaining and extending borders, all kinds of borders, between races, between social and economic groups, between customs, cultures, traditions and religions. At the centre of the myth there are several ironies and contradictions created by human attempts to solve the moral and spiritual dilemmas that human nature and fate produce in every generation and in every clime.

The mythical hero is always a westerner, a man be the wilderness, who saves civilisation not as a deliberate act, but as an unintended consequence of some private, moral imperative he is obliged to address. The westerner despises civilisation and is contemptuous of the settlers who try to tame the wilderness. The homesteaders are suspicious of and highly defensive towards the westerner, whom they consider to be wild, uncouth, antisocial, unpredictable and dangerous. Their values, their life-style, their ambitions, their concept of their role in the world are all totally different. They do not understand each other; they have nothing in common; they live in parallel universes and their only relationship is generated by the violence occasioned by their clash of cultures.

The westerner lives according to a set of clearly defined principles. Above all he values his total independence, his freedom his honour and dignity as a human being, values which he respects in other people. As J. B. Books (John Wayne) says in 'The Shootist': 'I won't be wronged. I won't be insulted and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people and I require the same from them.' This attitude inevitably leads 'to conflict as every westerner is obliged to respond to a challenge or any kind of attack. The men of the frontier value courage, self-reliance, loyalty, friendship, steadfastness above all. They detest treachery in any form, surrender or flight, lying, cheating, bullying, and hypocrisy. They totally reject civilisation and Christianity which they see as an unprovoked assault upon their traditional way of life. Civilisation destroys their wilderness and , their freedorm; Christianity is too narrow and restrictive for survival on the frontier.

In 'The Plainsman' , Wild Bill Hickock says, 'There ain't no Sundays west of Kansas City, no law west or Hays city, and no God west of Carson City.'

Ben Rumson sums up the westerner's attitude to civilisation and Christianity in 'Paint your Wagon'. He says,' The West is where people can look civilisation straight ht the eye and spit. And you don't have to please anybody. And you don't have to love thy neighbour. It's wild, human and free. And al over this nation, they preach against it every Sunday.'

Having rejected Christianity, they reject forgiveness, turning the other cheek, the Day of Judgement, Heaven and Hell and a life hereafter. All scores, therefore, have to  be settled on earth. Death is simply the consequence bf being born. As they said of an accident victim in 'Hondo', 'Everyone gets dead. It was his turn.'

All this contradicts the values of the settler. They wish to erect fences, establish property rights, create communities, build towns with streets, churches, schools, gaols, rail roads, shops and factories, impose law and order, set moral standards, recognise economic and social class differences, while doing their utmost to discourage saloons, music-halls, gambling joints and houses of ill repute. The women have a tendency towards militant Puritanism in their religious observance whereas the men are more liberal, regarding church-going as a social ob1igation and a proof of honesty and respectability.

When our own borders are transgressed and our personal space is invaded our susceptibilities become inflamed. In the myth of the wild west frontier, where civilisation encounters the wilderness, hostility usually erupts, and here gunfighters find ready employment. Shane, the gun-fighter, (played by Alan Ladd) anxious to escape his past, is riding west into the Wilderness, away from the frontier, when fate leads him into the sort of trap he is trying to avoid, a turf war between a rancher and a group of settlers. Shane is a westerner, bound by the westerner's code, as indeed is Ryker the rancher, but economic necessity, frustration and impatience have forced him to bully and threaten the homesteaders to surrender their land to him, thus violating the code of the wilderness. In addition, his men, stupidly and gratuitously insult Shane, a challenge which he cannot ignore, and so an ironic fate and the code of the West align him with Joe Starrett, the leader of the settlers, whose world, as Shane knows full well is fair set to destroy his wilderness. Circumstances thus prevent his continuing his journey westward until he has visited his vengeance upon the cowboys who invaded his personal space. Ryker has also engaged a notorious gunfighter, Jack Wilson, to intimidate the settlers who, being farmers and men of peace, have no answer to this menace and must, therefore, abandon their homes and livelihood.

The myth reveals to us the irony of this situation. Civilisation abhors violence, but in order to survive, must employ violence: make war to preserve peace.

 In 'High Noon' the Sheriff, Will Kane (played by Gary Cooper) is about to step down. Like Shane he is a westerner, weary of violence and conflict, about to travel westward into the wilderness with his new wife, a Quaker (played by Grace Kelly). However, fate and the code of the West prevent it. The leader of the Miller Gang has been prematurely released from a prison in the East and he is returning to Hadleyville, the scene of his many crimes, so that he and his gang may settle scores with the Sheriff who arrested him, in fulfilling his duty to maintain law and order in the town. The townsfolk try to persuade Will Kane to flee the town, arguing that if he is absent, the Miller gang will simply depart without creating any damage. However, flight is not an option for the Sheriff, bound as he is by the code to face his challengers. His wife, a pacifist, refuses to support him in confronting the Millers as do the people of Hadleyville. One group, the rougher element who frequent the saloon and suffer the censure of the respectable people, are in favour of the Millers, anticipating they will reinstate a period of lawlessness in the town; the other, the church-goers, the businessmen and the property-owners, argue that it is the Sheriff's duty to protect the town since he is paid to do so. The Minister, a pacifist, reflects the Church's quandary; he cannot advise his parishioners to kill, but on the other hand he is unable to protect them against the killers. He says the Church has nothing to advise in such a situation. Rejecting violent action on their own part and recognising their vulnerability, the townsfolk take refuge behind locked doors. The Sheriff is obliged, therefore, to face the four outlaws on his own.

The great western heroes are all tragic figures, because fate decrees that their dreams cannot be fulfilled and that in saving the innocent they must violate their own code. The myth implies that doing good always requires sacrifice and also, that in doing good, it is difficult to avoid doing harm. Shane realises that his violent past-life prohibits any hope of reconciliation with civilisation; and to add to his distress, in order to save Joe Starrett's life he has to stun him with his gun, a deed that is anathema to the Western code, and one for which he can never forgive himself. Will Kane tries hard to foreswear violence but fate acts against him and his wife, who, impulsively betraying her pacifist beliefs, to save his life, shoots one of the gangsters in the back, a crime which will haunt them both for as long as they live.

The twentieth century myth of the wild west demonstrates the fact that myths are still germinating and flourishing in our scientific age, because they expose an aspect of human experience with which we struggle and for which we can find no resolution. A myth is not a description of a one-off event but an account of an ongoing situation. The wild west myth is a particularly bleak one dwelling as it does upon our inability to reconcile our aspiration to foster enlightened and civilised values with our need to protect what we regard as our own frontiers, personal and communal, against the incursions of malign forces. How many barriers we erect to quieten so many fears! How many conflicts we engage in as a result! The myth reflects our concerns that civilised behaviour and violence are not compatible, but also our doubts that pacifism is a luxury a free state cannot afford.

However, this myth possesses an oracular quality that leaves room for hope. Although the hero's departure is overshadowed by bitterness and disillusionment, he is headed westward beyond the frontier where the wilderness stretches into the unknown. Here, he may find at last the contentment and salvation he seeks. This unknown territory without borders and dimensions, is the future, the realm of infinite possibilities, of second chances, the Golden City, the New ,Jerusalem of which the hymn writers sing, where all aspirations are fulfilled, guilt is shed and hope, blessed, sustaining hope, dwells for ever. Let us keep singing the hymn by all means but let us also pay heed to the message of the Myth.

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HUMAN NATURE

By Dr John Robinson

There can be few subjects that philosophers, theologians and indeed researchers in the fields of psychology, medicine and biology have been more intrigued by than human nature.

Convinced that it "ad an obligation to integrate recent advances in our understanding of human nature the Royal Society of Edinburgh brought together international groups with expertise in medical genetics, structural biology, developmental psychology, neuropsychology, cognitive neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, social anthropology, social psychology, forensic medicine, philosophy, philosophical theology and divinity to discuss the subject. The outcome of their deliberations was published last year by the Royal Society in a book entitled Human Nature'. The motivation for such a comprehensive multi-disciplinary approach to the subject came from the view that many of today's advances in science that impinge on human nature have their greatest impact, not at the centre of their discipline, but at the interface with other disciplines. Gone are the days when pronouncements regarding human nature solely involve philosophers and theologians. The dominant influence that Bible teaching once had on moulding our thoughts and actions has long since given way to the impact of scientific discoveries that reveal the enormous complexity of who and what we are. Add to this the sensationalism that so often is used by the media to report new scientific findings and the impact on human nature, more often than not, falls well outwith the bounds of rational thought and reasoned debate. It was against this background that the Royal Society experts held their deliberations.

Whilst accepting that consciousness is essential to the discussion of our origin, nature and destiny the medical geneticists in the group focussed on the need for consciousness to have a physical substrate made up of molecules and cells acquired from but ancestors. They were seeking an answer to the question, how much of what we are and what we become is inherited and how much is imposed by physical constraints on our development froth the time we were a newly fertilized egg, and incidentally when over one-third of a million of us could be fitted into a cubic centimetre, until the time we became an adult? Recent advances in our scientific understanding of the genetic factors that influence our personality raise the important ethical question of how far down the gene-manipulation route should we go for the perceived benefit of humanity. In the absence of informed public debate and with a media view that we are more interested in watching the less savoury aspects of human nature, as expressed in TV programmes such as Big Brother, than discussing ways to improve it, decisions regarding the application of science for the improvement of human nature are likely to be based more on fear and prejudice than reasoned debate.

In addressing what is known about our evolutionary history and its impact on human nature, evolutionary biologists express divergent views. Most accept that it is reasonable to look at human nature in the context of the biological advantage that flowed from millions of years of natural selection, but point out that our moral evolution embraces an additional environmental dimension involving cultural traditions and religious beliefs. One evolutionary biologist however draws on examples from animal studies to argue that even our moral standards may be solely genetic in origin. Yet another is adamant that it is "high time we recognised that our humanity, far from having been set for all time as an evolutionary legacy from our hunter-gatherer past, is something that we have continually to work at, and for which we alone must bear responsibility". That surely is evidence that there is at least one evolutionary biologist cum anthropologist who possesses a modicum of Unitarianism!

In grappling to understand the complexity of human consciousness, the neurobiologists and cognitive neuroscientists present information on the neuronal pathways and substrates within the brain relating to two of humankind's most important capacities, seeing ,and remembering, which in turn facilitate reasoning. In terms of the structure and chemistry of the brain, humans and animals are very similar, yet we stand apart from all other animals with regard to our ability to recall and reason. Monkeys for example appear to see the world much the same as we do yet lack the ability to programme the events within their environment in order to rehearse past experiences for the purpose of planning for the future. At this point you may be wondering why anyone should want to unravel the complexities of human consciousness anyway. A major justification of course is to gain a better understanding of conditions such as autism and Alzheimer's disease for which there is now cautious optimism amongst neuro and cognitive scientists for the development, from their research, of effective treatments. Another justification is the exploration of the social, ethical and theological components of human nature for these are central to our everyday living.

Our success as a species in evolutionary terms is regarded by Andrew Whiten, Professor of Evolutionary and Development Psychology at the University of St Andrews; to lie in our unique capacity for "cognitive social interpenetration", or in other Words, our ability to know intuitively what others are thinking; Herein, as he puts it "lay the evolutionary advantage by which our predecessors were able to compete and survive, and herein also lies a vital clue to understanding human nature, culture and society". Clearly, existence of such a phenomenon means that much of what defines and dictates the nature of human nature is our social mentality. But an inevitable consequence of our social mentality is dependency on others. As Anthony O'Hear, Director of the Royal Institute of Philosophy in London reminds us we owe to others, our language, our family our locality, our nation, our culture, our education and our horizons and aspirations. W, are a multiple dependency species but, as O'Hear points out, contemporary society is posing major threats to multiple dependency. We are losing respect for virtually everything in society that has made us what .we are; our families, our friends, our local communities, institutions, seats of learning law and order, other countries and their traditions, cultures and religious faiths. In so doing we are threatening "the essential fabric" of our social being and denying its very existence. From the privileged position that we are in, it is our duty to acknowledge our indebtedness to others, both past and present and to behave and act in a manner that recognises our obligation to the well-being of future generations, yet contemporary human nature seems to be downgrading the importance of these maxims; maxims which religious leaders would regard as matters of the soul.

But as Keith Ward, Emeritus Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford points out in his writings on "Human Nature and the Soul", official doctrines of the human soul are very different from popular understanding of it. In Hinduism the soul as the basis of one's being and consciousness, has always been regarded as being spiritual. In the Semitic religious traditions of Judaism Christianity and Islam, however, this is not the case. For them the origin of human life is dust into which God breathed life. The Soul, whatever it is, did not exist before the body nor could it exist without the body. In the subsequent development of Christianity, it was the earlier philosophy of Aristotle that influenced thinking regarding the human soul, defining it as the "Form" of a living body. In so much as everything has "Form" Aristotle's view was that there were many different souls, intellectual or human, animal and indeed vegetable. Thus the distinction between man and animals, or indeed any other material form, involved a distinction between types of soul. For human beings, the human soul, as Aristotle envisaged it in the "Form" of the person, created "the capacity within matter to imagine and reflect on information obtained from the environment..." It was only after the birth of Jesus and under the influence of St Angustine and almost a thousand years later, St Thomas Aquinas, that the Christian tradition evolved to "know and love a purely spiritual reality, God", with the "breath of life" becoming synonymous with the soul. For Aquinas, the intellectual or human soul was acquired at 60 days after conception. Up to that point, he regarded human embryos and foetuses as having vegetable or animal souls which God destroyed and replaced with human souls. For Muslims the intellectual soul does not occur until 120 days of pregnancy and for the Jewish tradition, it is when the head of the baby exits the birth canal. You may well be wondering what all this history regarding the religious origin of the soul has got to do with human nature; well in the context of modern society quite a lot. It plays an important part in how we deal with, or more precisely how the divergent views within and between religions regarding the sanctity of human life, deals with issues such as abortion and the use of research involving the genetic manipulation of embryos for the prevention of debilitating diseases. It enters into the debate regarding euthanasia. It provides the historic perspective for our reverence for life. Yet for many of us, the orthodox Christian doctrine also seems to "dehumanise human nature". It comes across as antagonistic to reason and learning. It demands that we confirm to creeds and dogmas thereby stifling human intellect which is the life blood of human nature. No wonder then that one of the best ways of keeping the seat opposite you on the train free to stretch our your legs is to say to the person inquiring of you if it is free, "Yes it is, please sit down, I want to talk to you about God!" 

Passionate Unitarians, if that is not a contradiction in terms, believe that Unitarianism embraces the best attributes of human nature. It is charitable and humane, alert to the changing needs of society and prepared to evolve its moral philosophy to meet these needs. It is built on tolerance, reason and freedom. I was pleased to read that in his address to Aberdeen College graduates recently, Sir Ian Wood, emphasised that tolerance was one of the greatest skills that they could take away with them into the workplace. "Your progress in life", he said, "is not just about getting across your good ideas and concepts, but about listening and learning - across languages, across cultures, between faiths and different value systems". What could be more Unitarian than that? With regard to reason the current rate of acquisition of scientific information in the field of molecular genetics and its application for the perceived benefit of humankind raises important moral and ethical issues requiring reasoned scientific debate and in so doing poses new questions regarding the contribution and relevance of orthodox Christian teaching to human nature, as we ." now view it. Ever mindful that a central feature of human nature is our dependence on others, that brings into play "freedom"; freedom which is viewed in the context of our relationships with others, is sensitive to the needs of others and, which has as its goal a fairer distribution of earth's resources to those in need. It, therefore, seems to me that, with its religious faith founded on rational conviction, Unitarianism is uniquely placed to enrich and strengthen all that is good in human nature.

(Dr Robinson is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh)