In Depth:  Kirsten Birkett

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The dark side of manifesting your dreams

The dark side of manifesting your dreams
Kirsten Birkett
Kirsten Birkett

If you have been at all aware of popular thinking about wealth over the past 20 years or so, you have probably come across the phenomenon of manifesting. Apparently it’s very popular on TikTok at the moment; it was beloved of the New Age teachers long before that.

'To manifest something means to make your dreams, goals, and aspirations a reality by believing you can achieve them' says one popular website. It is based on a so-called 'law of attraction', positing that if you think about something often enough, hard enough and positively enough, you can make it happen by the power of your thought alone. It focuses your 'energy' to affect future events out there in the universe.

We're losing our farmers, and much more with them

We're losing our farmers, and much more with them
Kirsten Birkett
Kirsten Birkett

I read recently that farmers, who have made up the majority of the world population for millennia, have all but disappeared from Europe ‘in the blink of an eye’.

Up to the mid twentieth century almost half the working population was involved in food production in European countries – now it has fallen to single percentage figures. It has been replaced by large-scale agribusiness, with vast amounts of land farmed by a small number of landowners. It has resulted in much more food being produced, much more efficiently. It has also been ‘heavily subsidised, economically unjust, and ecologically disastrous, in a climate-threatened economy of shortages, destabilised supply chains, growing economic protectionism, and degradation of soils all over the world’. [1]

Why are weather disaster movies so fascinating for us?

Why are weather disaster movies so fascinating for us?
Kirsten Birkett
Kirsten Birkett

I have just watched the movie Twisters, a remake of the 1996 movie Twister, which I enjoyed back in the day.

There are some differences, but the same basic plot; a weather scientist who has an almost mystic ability to predict tornadoes, trying to find a way to prevent them and so stop the tremendous damage that they wreak to human lives. It’s well made and fun; but this is not a review of the movie. What it made me reflect upon is why I like disaster weather movies so much.

Another happiness ranking

Another happiness ranking
Kirsten Birkett
Kirsten Birkett

The 2024 World Happiness Report is out, and Finland is on top (the UK is number 20).

I have recently been listening to the marvellous Moomin books by the Finnish author Tove Jannson (on Audible, read by Hugh Dennis). They reveal a quirky sense of humour and a penetrating understanding of human nature that, if typical of Finnish people, might contribute to a happy experience of life. On the other hand, understanding human nature well could equally lead to despair. (There is, indeed, a dark undercurrent in the stories, which may be why not everyone likes them.)

On prayer, mindfulness and contemplation

On prayer, mindfulness and contemplation
Kirsten Birkett
Kirsten Birkett

A lot of people seem to mean a lot of different things by ‘prayer’.

I once went to what was advertised as an Augustinian prayer day. That sounded eminently attractive, I thought: I’m interested in Augustine, and I’m interested in prayer. What we were told to do, however, was to sit in silence, individually, for 30 minutes, concentrating on our breathing.

The different concepts of purity today

The different concepts of purity today
Kirsten Birkett
Kirsten Birkett

Jonathan Haidt is a moral psychologist who has been extremely helpful in explaining why people think about right and wrong in the way they do.

One particularly useful insight of his was to point out that those who leaned to the liberal left tended to decide that things were morally wrong if they harmed people; conservative people would agree, but also tended to have a whole extra moral category – purity.

Richard Dawkins, Christians, and brain experiments

Richard Dawkins, Christians, and brain experiments
Kirsten Birkett
Kirsten Birkett

I recently read that Richard Dawkins underwent an experiment in 2003 where magnetic fields were applied to his head.

It was meant to stimulate the temporal lobes and create a religious experience. It failed on Dawkins; apparently his temporal lobe sensitivity is much lower than average. On others, however, the same treatment had triggered a sense of an invisible presence or out-of-body experiences.

Evangelical Futures: How do we survive as evangelicals today?

Evangelical Futures: How do we survive as evangelicals today?
Kirsten Birkett
Kirsten Birkett

What are we to say in the face of such a confusing and violent world? Read the Bible? Pray more? These are always necessary and always true, but can anything else be said to the point?

It was looking at Romans 12 recently in church that my thoughts coalesced.

The way we live now
Kirsten Birkett
Kirsten Birkett

Book Review CHRIST AND CULTURE REVISITED

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The Essence of Feminism
Kirsten Birkett
Kirsten Birkett

Feminism is a profoundly moralistic movement.

It is a system of ideas that not only states or argues for certain items of knowledge, or facts, but gives guidelines as to how to live.

Although this may seem strange in our post-modern world where no one is supposed to tell us how we 'ought' to live, feminism is strongly directive as to what we ought to do. Feminism is a way of life, a way of making decisions, something that will influence life choices and affect the basic values on which individual lives and society is run. In other words, it is a highly moral ideology.

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