Plastic People

In 2012 science writer Annie Murphy Paul published a summary of then-recent research into brain science and language called "This is Your Brain on Fiction." In it, she wrote, “The brain, it seems, does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life; in each case, the same neurological regions are stimulated.” Writer Mike Sowden referred to Paul’s article in his Nov 26, 2025, Substack Entry “Nothing Lies Like Your Own Memory.” Given research that calls into question the mind’s ability to unchangeably hold any memory and to resist bias and illusion, Sowden ultimately wonders what we even anchor ourselves in? “Without the sturdy edifice of our personal history to place ourselves in, how [can] we ever know who we are and where we belong? . . And if even our most fundamental memories [cannot] be trusted, where [does] that leave us?” Sowden goes on to talk about the vivid power of false memories, and how those who object most to the plasticity of memory are those most subject to it. He closes thus:

To avoid your personality flying to pieces, how about leaning into the findings of Annie Murphy Paul, and start regarding yourself not just as an amalgam and summation of your memories of everyone you’ve been and everything you’ve done (both of which may not be far less accessible to you than you think) - but as an ongoing story of your own continuous re-imagining. . . Identity is stories all the way down, and instead of feeling hemmed in and victimized by yours, how about acting like the author you actually seem to unconsciously be at the neuron-by-neuron level, with all of your self-rewritten components in the form of memories. How similar to who you’ve ended up are you to the person you want to be? What would that person be doing and how would they be acting? How about trying to add a few of those things until your fickle memory does its work and you completely forget you haven’t been like that until now?

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Mimesis: a short definition
Hermeneutics is love's desire to know

A short introduction to liberation theology

Robert McAfee Brown. Liberation Theology: An Introductory Guide. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press. 1993. 143 pp.

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What is liberation theology? It is a modern style of theology, an apocalyptic style, that begins with people and, specifically with the poor. It asks questions about now, and applies the gospel concretely to real situations and toward real goals. It says the world, because of the kingship of Christ, should not be the way it is.

Brown identifies four recurring themes in liberation theology.

Compromiso. This word is not a Spanish form of the English word compromise. Quite the opposite. It means commitment of the whole person. And a good test of such commitment, says Brown, is one’s degree of concern for children. Y los unicos privilegiados seran los ninos, “and the only privileged ones will be children.”

Hope. This is the existential dimension that Juergen Moltmann discusses in his Theologie der Hoffnung. This is the attitude resulting from living in the Easter light. This is the possibility that change in every way is not only possible but promised.

God’s Presence. The poor can hope because God is with them and sees them, for he himself did not come as a rich man but as a poor one. And, Jesus spoke of bringing good news to the poor. Jesus tabernacled among us; he labored and lived among us.

Preferential Option for the Poor. Certainly, the gospel is for all people. But the Bible begins with the poor, with widow and orphans. The preferential option points to the kind of change necessary to bring about the justice the lordship of Jesus requires. The question put to any reform must be, “Will this or will it not improve the situation of the poor?” And if so, all of society will benefit.

Someone who wishes to practice liberation theology should do their research. They must open their eyes–-especially if they are privileged. "Criticial thinking without hope is cynicism," said the Bulgarian writer Maria Popova, "but hope without critical thinking is naivety." Seeing requires struggle. The insights of social analysis, economists, and the sciences help. But one cannot stand apart and seek to understanding. In order to open one’s eyes (called conscientization), one must personally cross the gap.

“The commitment being described is not a form of intellectualizing so much as one of experiencing and ‘encountering.’ It is not enough to read books about poverty; commitment means encountering poor people. It is not enough to learn about ‘the root causes of poverty,’ . . . it is a matter of learning about and entering into and making common cause with persons who are being destroyed by these root causes, and seeking for legislative–or more drastic–ways to dispose of the causes. And it is the almost universal witness of those who do so, that in encountering the poor they are somehow encountering God, learning that whoever else God is, God is ‘the God of the poor,’ the one who takes their part, who works with and form them.” (56)

Brown lists three emphases of liberation theology clustered around its call for liberation. All three hang together. This is important: one cannot be over emphasized or considered apart from the rest. (1) Liberation from unjust social structures or “structural evil.” (2) Liberation from the power of fate. Nothing is “the way it is.” Things needn’t remain as they are. (3) Liberation from personal sin and guilt. These all hang together because Jesus, among other things, is the liberator and the gospel is an announcement of the personal and political liberation consequent of his reign. A Christian cannot pray the Lord’s Prayer and not include its second half. There is no theology without ethics; no resurrection without hope.

Brown concludes by calling his reader to some next steps. First, we must consciously form communities of Christians committed to Bible reading and contemporary action. Second comes a commitment to the truth, to speaking the truth. We must be truthful with ourselves, with others, and we must speak the truth to the dominant community. And finally, we must take risks.

“I believe there is an eleventh commandment for Christians: Thou shalt not decide that someone else should become a martyr. . . . Christians must seek to discern the kind of witness that is demanded of them, and then go with it.” (119)

Every Christian must do a hermeneutic of their situation and decide what martyrdom—meaning witness–demands of them. And every church, too, has to do the same. The forces and temptations that buffet the individual will be different than those that afflict a church. “Either we believe in a God of life, or we serve the idols of death.” (Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero)

“A sacrifice from ill-gotten gains is tainted
and the gifts of the wicked win no approval.
The Most High has no pleasure in the offerings of the godless,
nor do countless sacrifices win his forgiveness.
To offer a sacrifice from the possessions of the poor
is like killing a son before his father’s eyes.
Bread is life to the destitute,
and to deprive them of it is murder.
To rob your neighbor of his livlihood is to kill him,
and he who defrauds a worker of his wages sheds blood.”

~ Ecclesiasticus 34.18-22, the passage that “converted” Bartolome de las Casas