Staying in with Bookchin

Bookchin's books by my bed

Unbelievably, for me anyway, I'm laid low once again with a bad chest infection: this time I'm on a double dose of antibiotics and even an inhaler to help me out. Oi vey. It's time, I think, to say thank you to the excellent "out of hours" doctor who saw me on Saturday and to my excellent NHS doctors at the splendid Trumpington Street Medical Practice. I realise how lucky I am to have access to such free, at the point of delivery, medical services thanks to the NHS and this gratitude is one of the many reasons why I strongly support the junior doctors' in their current struggles.

Anyway,  despite heading downhill, I'm pleased I was able to "fight the good fight" on Sunday and at least go down fighting!

But, as the old saying goes, "every cloud has a silver-lining" and the silver-lining at the moment is having the time to settle down with the work of, and excellent biography (by Janet Biehl) about, Murray Bookchin (1921-2006), an environmental and political philosopher and Communalist about whom, I'm almost ashamed to say, I knew nothing until about a month ago when he was introduced to me by a good friend. I've been hugely impressed by what I've read so far.

My initial entrée into his thinking has been via his writing on what he calls "dialectical materialism" — a philosophy which clearly has powerful and strong connections with and implications for the kind of religious naturalism I've been exploring in this blog for some while now, for example here and here.

Anyway, I'm not up to writing anything detailed about Bookchin at the moment as I need to get better, to have read him some more and to have thought about what he said some more. But, in the meantime, if your interest is at all peeked by the links above then you might enjoy seeing Bookchin talking in 1988 at the "Institute for Social Ecology" which he set up in 1974 with the cultural anthropologist, Daniel Chodorkoff.

I hope you all stay well and warm and don't forget to keep supporting the NHS and the countless number of excellent doctors nurses, dentists, paramedics, ambulance drivers, office staff, cleaners and porters. We need their help and they need ours — it remains as true as it was in Æsop's time that "united we stand, divided we fall." So, before we get to Bookchin himself, here's a link to my own union's, Unite, NHS campaign webpage:

SAVE OUR NHS