I am a huge fan of 1930s paranormal researcher Harry Price. Price carried out lots of amazing investigations, including studying an alleged talking mongoose and trying to use an ancient spell to turn a goat into a Prince. However, he also investigated Borley Rectory in Essex, and crowned it the most haunted house in England. The Rectory was associated with lots of strange phenomena (including ghostly nuns, mysterious voices, and chilling apparitions), but burned down in 1939.

Working from original photographs, eyewitness descriptions and detailed floor plans, we have have recreated one of the most haunted rooms in the building using virtual reality.  Now, people can step back in time, re-visit the Rectory, and see if they still have weird experiences in this creepy space.

The team consisted of University of Hertfordshire technician Alex Eckford, paranormal expert Paul Adams, and myself. The room (known as The Blue Room) happens to be almost identical in size to one of the labs in the Psychology Department, and so participants can fully immerse themselves in the space by  touching the walls, sitting in chairs, etc.. We can also add virtual ghosts and other strange happenings! It will be fascinating to see how people respond to this space all these years later.

I am excited about the project and love the idea of bringing this special space back from the ashes. If you have any memories or information about Borley Rectory, or would like to get involved in the project, please get in contact.

It’s late summer and the afternoon sun is beating off Shoreditch’s sheer glass facades and gum-littered pavements. My colleagues and I are en route to a “secret location” for our end-of-summer party, anticipating a space to socialise and soak up the last of the year’s warmth. We arrive, and a set of metal doors off the high street quickly dash these hopes. Natural light and the white noise of London’s traffic give way to pulsating music and darkness punctuated by bright colours. Dazed, we wander into the venue and are greeted by a stern-looking bouncer with a thick neck, his arms crossed. He’s guarding the entrance to a ball pit populated by a group of clamorous 20-somethings.

This cocktail bar is one of several similar locations that have opened across the UK in recent years. Technicolor ball pits and retro arcade games are interspersed among bars offering “nostalgic” mixed drinks and over-priced beer. In this particular establishment, a wall flanking one of the pits is adorned with at least a dozen pairs of clumsily crafted papier-mâché breasts. This collision of a seedy adult venue and nostalgic childhood playpens is unsettling. So, what’s the allure of such spaces?

“Kidulting” is a cultural trend that sees adults engage in pastimes traditionally considered more appropriate for children. This can include playing with toys, collecting figurines or cards, dressing up and cosplaying – anything that feels like a reversion to feel-good childhood behaviours. And while this new term hit mainstream popular culture during the 2020s, it’s by no means a new phenomenon. The portmanteau “rejuvenile” was used by American writer Christopher Noxon in his 2006 book of the same name, while Dan Kiley coined the pop-psychology term “Peter Pan syndrome”. Both were describing adults who seemingly struggle to grow up.

Millennials – currently people aged 28 to 43 – have long been tarred with this brush, along with accusations of laziness and narcissism. Now, their Gen Z counterparts are getting the same treatment, with words like “entitled” and “infantile” being hurled at today’s teens and 20-somethings. Comment pieces write them off as over-indulged offspring who are uniquely averse to a hard day’s work.

Proliferating catastrophes during the 21st century have indeed stifled the aspirations and ambitions of many young adults in the UK. The financial crisis of 2007–8 hit many millennials as they moved into the job market and pandemic restrictions kept Gen Zers at home during their formative teenage years. Meanwhile, a housing shortage has inflated property and rental prices to record highs, just as soaring living costs have driven down real wages.

The collective experience of these crises has had a stark impact on conventional life milestones. For example, the number of adult children in the UK living with their parents has risen 14.7 per cent since 2011 to around 4.9 million people. Many are also delaying starting a family or calling it off altogether. As these conventional markers of “adulthood” accelerate out of reach, many seem to have been left in a suspended state of adolescence.

Within this context, the kidulting trend has been frowned upon as further evidence that younger generations are immature and turning their backs on the realities of life. Take the hot-pink cultural phenomenon that was the Barbie movie. With far-reaching implications beyond cinema screens, its use of the doll’s iconic IP was a masterclass in nostalgic marketing, incorporating classic elements of the 60-year-old brand to transport fans back to their childhoods. The playful production was such a hit that Barbie-maker Mattel has since announced a Barney the Dinosaur film “for adults”.

Then there’s the rise of the “Disney Adults” with their devotion to The Walt Disney Company enacted through cosplay, merchandise purchases and multiple theme park visits. They’re often mocked and derided as the most-hated group on the internet and even as a signal of the “end of Western civilisation,” as Jodi Eichler-Levine, a professor of religious studies at Lehigh University, observed in Rolling Stone.

The adoption of childhood aesthetics has likewise emerged in fashion via so-called “kidcore” pieces. Garments adorned with garish childlike patterns and sparkling noughties-style hair clips have cropped up on high-fashion runways and are creeping into popular consciousness via social media. McDonald’s has even heralded the return of its “Adult Happy Meals”, featuring retro collectable toys reminiscent of the 80s. Similarly, the events platform Eventbrite has seen a 53 per cent increase in attendance of “nostalgia” activities in the UK post-pandemic– such as retro gaming, laser tag and discos.

It may seem more natural for younger generations to spend time thinking about the future – excited to make family plans or advance their careers. However, according to 2023 research from Global Web Index, 15 per cent of Gen Zers and 14 per cent of millennials globally prefer to think about the past rather than the future. Around half also say they feel nostalgic for certain types of media – with movies, music and TV shows from the 90s and 00s providing the most potent triggers.

But does the kidulting trend necessarily indicate the growth of the dreaded “Peter Pan syndrome” and a refusal to grow up? Or is it a more complex behavioural reaction to the stress and pressures faced by today’s youth?

As a psychologist and leading expert on nostalgia, Dr Clay Routledge recognises nostalgic thoughts and behaviour as effective coping mechanisms. “When people experience stress, anxiety, sadness, loneliness or other unpleasant mental states, nostalgic reflection helps them see a bigger picture,” he says. His work as vice president of research at the Archbridge Institute’s Human Flourishing Lab in Washington, DC has uncovered the profound impact of looking to the past on people’s mental states.

“In a survey my colleagues and I recently conducted, we found that most American adults in every age cohort view their nostalgic memories as a source of comfort, inspiration and guidance. Many of the behaviours that appear to be superficial consumer purchases may actually reflect an effort to cultivate a nostalgic environment that helps people connect with their past in constructive ways. Yes, some of it is just entertainment. But I also think it is something deeper.”

There’s also some evidence that nostalgic activities can better connect people to themselves and those around them – contributing to resilience, optimism and creativity and helping to cultivate personal progress. Speaking to me from a room crowded with musical instruments, LEGO sets and 80s toys, Dr Richard Courtney is animated and reflective about his childhood and the cultural artefacts scattered around his home.

“You can see there’s Optimus Prime. Upstairs in the loft, I’ve got all the original Transformers,” he says as he pans his phone camera around the cluttered room. “We’ve also got a lot of lightsabers in this house. And if you look down there, there are some brand-new Star Wars figures, but packaged like they came out in 1981 – it just takes you back to that place.”

The 47-year-old is head of business entrepreneurship and finance at the University of East London. He acknowledges that financial stress during his formative years meant a conventional path to adulthood was out of reach, leading him to become a self-confessed kidult. “As we grew up through the 80s and 90s, the economic times changed. It put some people like myself in a constant state of being a child where we never really grew up,” he says.

But fast-forward two decades and Courtney had his own child. Now, the passion for the figurines and playthings he has carried into adult life also brings him closer to his son. “I’ve got a nine-year-old boy who we would describe as neuro-diverse,” he says. “He’s very methodical about things and very creative – so it’s always been a really good thing to bring him up in a way that also connects with my own childhood.” Courtney says the toys he has held onto and his desire to mine the past for youthful comforts have helped him become a better father. “They’ve become a really good way to be a parent on a horizontal level. Rather than talking down to [my son], we can sit together and be on the same level.”

Courtney’s bonding with his son is just one of many examples that demonstrate how relishing in nostalgic memories can bring personal benefits and bolster relationships with those around us. More broadly, this can be achieved by participating in play as an adult through anything from board games to collectable figurines or even rewatching a childhood classic movie with a friend. In revisiting these fond memories and engaging with a part of ourselves that is so often suppressed in our adult years, such behaviours can provide a sense of rejuvenation on returning to the travails of modern life.

“It is easy to be critical of the idea of kidulting, to view it as reflecting immaturity or a form of unhealthy escapism,” says Routledge. “But I am increasingly seeing positive aspects of it. And I don’t think it is as new as people think. Humans have probably always looked for ways to seek comfort and re-energise a youthful spirit. We just create new ways of doing it. People don’t realise how creative and innovative nostalgia is as a cultural force.”

Back in Shoreditch, my colleagues and I are led to a corner of the darkened venue, our glass tables filled with drinks that have taken on a luminescent quality thanks to the day-glo fittings. Knocking back the dregs of my “Caprisunha” cocktail, I stride with purpose alongside a colleague towards the youthful revelry on display in the ball pit. The bouncer gives us a knowing nod, and we scramble up the ramp into the arena, channelling our inner children. As we lower ourselves into the sea of glowing orbs to join our fellow kidults, the stress of the workday dissipates, and everything starts to feel okay.

This article is from New Humanist's autumn 2024 issue. Subscribe now.

Wonderstruck: How Wonder and Awe Shape the Way We Think (Princeton University Press) by Helen De Cruz

What is wonder? To try to answer the question requires you to perform the mental act that you are supposedly investigating. Wondering about wondering turns your mind back on itself, seeking the source of its own ability to seek a source. It makes you realise that the capacity of humans to wonder is something of a wonder in itself. Although it is often thought of as a childlike or naïve quality, philosopher Helen De Cruz argues that wonder is actually core to philosophical inquiry and to learning and thought itself. Her new book, Wonderstruck: How Wonder and Awe Shape the Way We Think, is a gently meta undertaking, which encourages readers to turn their curiosity back on curiosity. In doing so, De Cruz suggests, we can find the root of what makes us human – and also take part in a pleasurable inquiry.

That inquiry, for De Cruz, touches on a wildly eclectic range of subjects, from Ursula K. Le Guin’s novels to the environmental writing of Rachel Carson, to magic tricks and Plato. The breadth is indicative of the book’s welcoming attitude. Curiosity and exploration, De Cruz insists, can and should be for everyone. Wonder and the related concept of awe are “emotions that we harness by means of cultural practices … that we nurture deliberately, and that are part of a positive feedback loop.” Wonder isn’t something reserved for the innocent; nor is it a special talent that only scholars can access. Instead, it’s a universal human experience or impulse which needs to be cultivated or exercised to be fully developed.

That cultivation is done through what De Cruz calls “cognitive technologies”– strategies or systems for affecting our own emotions and cognition. Cognitive technologies can be as simple as listening to music to put yourself in a particular mood. Or they can be as complex as religious systems and rituals which, De Cruz says, encourage attention to wonder and awe in everyday life.

De Cruz’s most intriguing discussion of the cognitive technology of wonder involves magic. She defines magic as “the collective term for human practices that harness a perceived, intended, or feigned ability to produce wonders”. That definition is a broad one; for De Cruz it can include genre fantasy stories (like Le Guin’s “Earthsea” series), as well as occult practices and magic shows, all of which encourage participants, readers or viewers to embrace wonder.

De Cruz notes that it’s difficult to make distinctions between “real” and “pretend” magic – a séance is a kind of dare to believe, as is a fantasy story; both are real in the sense that they create a context in which you’re encouraged to question what’s real and what’s pretend. De Cruz points out in particular that stage magic is a “wonder-technology”, which relies on setting up expectations and then defying them.

Magicians don’t really trick the audience, De Cruz says. Instead, they “achieve an effect of impossibility” by exploiting audience members’ sense of object permanence, or the human inability to effectively randomise choice. Magicians essentially use the limitations of human cognition to “trick” people into seeing that their cognition is limited. Magic shows push you to wonder and to want to understand.

Similarly, De Cruz argues, rituals – even simple ones, like removing your shoes when you come in a house or temple – create a sense of estrangement which allows us to question ourselves. “By engaging in ritual, we create an ‘as if’ world ... where things are different from how they are in our everyday environment.” That allows you to look at things in a new way, with a shoeless wonder.

Looking at things in a new way can mean a transformation of self. In that sense, cultivating wonder can be seen as a kind of self-help work. De Cruz also argues, though, that seeing the world with wonder is an important prerequisite for activism and change.

She points to the writing of Rachel Carson, in which the wonder of the natural world is a spur to conservation and virtue. For Carson, De Cruz argues, wonder “is an antidote to our destructive concern with gaining control over nature for our own ends.”

In wondering about wonder, De Cruz is demonstrating the virtue and emotion she discusses; her writing is a kind of cognitive technology, designed to encourage and elicit the very phenomenon she’s talking about. Her work is didactic in the best sense, in that she wants to share what she has learned, and to encourage readers to explore and learn for themselves.

Wonderstruck isn’t just a philosophical analysis. It’s a guide to wondering more and better in our reading, our thinking and our everyday lives.

This article is from New Humanist's autumn 2024 issue. Subscribe now.

Michaela Community School prides itself on its approach to discipline. At this free school in Wembley, north-west London, children walk the corridors in silence and retrieve books from their bags within an allocated 10 seconds. Teachers hand out demerits to pupils for looking out of the window. When it opened a decade ago, with former home secretary Suella Braverman as its chair of governors, Michaela was an outlier. Now the ultra-disciplined approach – often referred to as championing “high behavioural standards,” “strong leadership” and a “no excuses” mantra – is spreading throughout schools in England. Yet many pupils, parents and teachers feel it comes with heavy costs to children’s mental health, wellbeing and educational outcomes. And they are speaking out.

The ultra-disciplined approach to schooling attempts to answer a real problem. Physical assault, threatening behaviour and verbal abuse towards teachers in England have all increased since the pandemic, according to a 2023 Ofsted survey. Students turn up to school but don’t attend classes, and even primary students are becoming noticeably more defiant. Teachers at Oasis Academy on the Isle of Sheppey went on strike in December last year, demanding action over pupils’ threatening behaviour. “Tens of thousands of teachers [have been] pushed prematurely out of their careers,” due to “soaring apathy and aggression among students,” according to Public First’s Commission on Teacher Retention. The government’s national behaviour survey found that only 39 per cent of children in England feel safe in their classroom every day.

Firm discipline, schools like Michaela argue, helps to tackle bad behaviour and provide the optimum learning environment. Michaela has a Progress 8 score (which measures the academic progress of a child) of 2.37. That’s the best in the country. Other free schools, as well as multi-academy trusts (MATs), have attempted to replicate this academic success with a similar approach. Like free schools, academies are state schools run by charitable trusts rather than by the local council – so they have more flexibility in deciding how they operate. MATs are chains of academies, which are free and taxpayer funded. A number of these groups made headlines recently due to policies described as authoritarian, including South Bank MAT in York, Outwood Grange Academy Trust in the East Midlands and north of England, and Athena Learning Trust, which runs eight schools across Devon and Cornwall.

“They say the aim is [to ensure] disruption-free learning,” says Lucy Jenkins*, whose two teenage sons attend a school within the Athena Learning Trust. “[They say] that most children just ‘get it’ – they only need to be sent to ‘reflection’ a few times and then they know what’s expected,” she says. “Reflection” involves two and a half hours sat in a silent former sports hall where desks have been separated by screens and windows covered up. It’s a popular form of “sanction” (i.e. punishment) across ultra-disciplined schools, albeit under varying labels such as “reset”, “consequence booths” and, paradoxically, “inclusion units”.

But while Jenkins says her sons are both well behaved, sanctions have become “so ridiculous ... they don’t stand a chance in hell of getting it right,” with the youngest recently being sent to reflection for wiping glue from his hand onto a table. Not maintaining eye contact with a teacher could also result in sanction, as could fidgeting. That’s one reason why these methods have been said to discriminate against children with special educational needs – children who, regardless of how well-behaved or dedicated they are, says Jenkins, “cannot just sit still, can’t keep quiet from one lesson to the next. Some of them get sent to reflection twice in a day and are left thinking, ‘Why did I bother coming in?’”

Mental health challenges

Thomas Mann, a teacher for 35 years and vice chair of the Campaign for State Education, agrees that this approach to discipline, in which a school will repeatedly sanction a child before “pulling parents in, demonising their child and eventually externally excluding them”, belies a wider issue: that many schools simply do not want to engage with children with behavioural issues and/or special educational needs, “because they generally pull your data down, they’re more intensive as a group and they’re more expensive to educate.”

So, while Michaela Community School is rated outstanding by Ofsted, Mann cautions against only looking at schools’ results on paper, having witnessed first-hand the “trail of kids who failed, to allow success for the others”. For example, parents can be pressured to remove a child from school, in order to avoid the worse fate of a permanent exclusion on their record. “My last job was at a school in Brent and we ended up with an autistic boy with poor behaviours,” Mann says. The boy was previously at Michaela and was told “that it wasn’t his autism but his behaviour [that was the problem]”. This was despite the fact that the boy had an education, health and care plan in place. “If you dealt with the autistic part of his behaviours, you could engage him,” Mann says. “But they didn’t seem prepared to do that.” (When asked about the case, Michaela declined to comment.)

Mann says that during his three and a half decades of teaching, behaviour has changed, rather than declined. After the pandemic, for instance, certain behaviours have had to be relearned – such as lining up properly, or how to interact with classmates. Meanwhile, societal factors such as poverty and knife crime have “impacted how students experience school and authority”. He says the real problem is a decline in school resources to deal with these issues. “It’s easier to have a disciplinarian shouting and screaming and excluding pupils than it is to spend money on people going in and actually remediating poor behaviour to a level where children can re-engage,” says Mann. This approach has long-term consequences. “If you don’t have relationships with the students, particularly the vulnerable ones, you’re never going to crack behaviour.”

But relationships have been stripped back, along with school funding. Record numbers of teachers are leaving the profession (40,000 during 2021–22), meaning classrooms are often run by cover staff. Pupils spend an increasing amount of time studying and less socialising with their peers (break times in English schools have on average reduced by up to an hour over the past 20 years) while human interaction has been deprioritised, if not banned entirely. “Some children at my sons’ school [were] late to [a] lesson because they’d helped a Year 7 child who was crying because they were lost,” says Jenkins. “And they were sent to reflection for it. Obviously those children aren’t going to help next time.”

Robert Matthews*, also an Athena Learning Trust parent, noticed that “tutor time” (one-on-one time with a teacher) was one of the first things to go when the trust took over his daughters’ school in 2022, to be replaced with “morning inspection” where the student body stands in the hall while their pencil cases are checked. As with Jenkins’ sons, Matthews’ daughters weren’t the ones regularly receiving sanctions. “But something schools don’t understand is that it has a massive effect on the ones who like to follow rules because they don’t want to be in trouble.”

At first, both children would come home from school exhausted. The older daughter, then in Year 10, “had a breakdown one night, saying she was finding it hard to cope,” says Matthews, but his younger daugher Ella*, who was then in Year 8, “was more quiet around it.” Shortly afterwards, she was found self-harming at school. “We spoke to doctors and CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) who said they didn’t have any immediate concerns, then one day she came home from school and was violently sick.” Ella had taken a serious overdose, and while it had happened on school grounds, says Matthews, teachers “were completely unaware. I can’t imagine that she wasn’t acting strange, but they hadn’t noticed.”

Ella was “pretty close to needing a liver transplant,” says Matthews, but she recovered, and now goes to a new school where the discipline approach is rooted in common sense. “They do have an ‘isolation room’ but it’s rarely used,” he says, “and they use detentions for people that are actually misbehaving. You can’t argue with that.” Ella now has to travel 13 miles each way to school (there was only one other school in their town, but it is also part of the Athena Learning Trust) but “she’s thriving, she’s back to herself, and happy when she comes home.” Her older sister remains at the Athena Learning school in order not to disrupt her GCSEs. “The school said they were going to speak to her, to make sure she was OK [following Ella’s suicide attempt],” says Matthews, “[but she says] they never did.”

A freedom of information request made by Matthews revealed that between the period September 2022–October 2023, there were 118 instances of self-harm and five suicide attempts on the school grounds. A spokesperson for the Trust said, “We take our responsibility for any students experiencing poor mental health for any reason extremely seriously. We use a range of internal and external services to support our families and schools. We ensure these services are properly vetted [and] that they put the well-being of all our school community at the heart of their strategy ... Across our schools, there is positive recognition from Ofsted that student wellbeing is prioritised and supported.”

Controlling behaviour

It can be hard to point to any one factor when it comes to the reasons for suicide. Across the UK, the suicide rate of young people has increased in the years since the pandemic. In 2020-21, women and girls under 24 saw the steepest rise since records began. Yet some would say that this general trend provides an even stronger case for prioritising pupils’ mental health. After two pupils attending schools within the Westcountry Trust – another MAT that has adopted an extreme approach to discipline – took their own lives within a week of one other, Penny Logsdail, director of Summerhouse Services, a humanist organisation that promotes mental wellbeing in young people, was moved to speak out in the regional press, suggesting that “toxic, controlling, harsh, frightening and dystopic environments” may have played a part.

While teachers aren’t mental health professionals and “can’t pick up the slack in the government’s lack of funding across society,” as Mann puts it, the school environment should be conducive to encouraging emotional stability in children, while respecting their basic rights. “People have the right to exercise control over their own bodily functions,” says Logsdail, who has worked in the field of mental health for 25 years as a counsellor, therapist and further education trainer. When school rules dictate that you must sit in a certain position and look in a certain direction, while banning toilet breaks during class, that basic right has been removed, she says.

Jenkins agrees that the need for control is one of the most disturbing aspects of the “high behavioural standards” approach. “We had a letter home saying if children want to take off their jumper they have to ask permission,” she says. On complaining to the school, she was told that they are always allowed, as long as they ask. “But I said, ‘That’s not the issue. The issue is you do not trust a child to decide for themselves whether they are too hot or not.’” Similarly, children in Year 11 were told it was compulsory to attend “sixth period” (an extra hour after school) in order to prepare for their GCSEs. When parents highlighted that this was illegal, the stance changed; it was not compulsory, but if they didn’t attend, they would not be permitted to go to their leavers’ ball.

The school, Jenkins argues, is creating an environment where children “learn that their voice doesn’t matter,” and where ultimately “they hate learning.” Her eldest son, for instance, had an interest in pursuing A-levels up until last year, when he decided to pursue an agricultural course instead. “He’s curious and was always interested in lots of things, but now he’s literally counting the days until the end of school and says, ‘I never ever want to set foot in a classroom again.’ And that’s dangerous.”

It’s also ironic, given that the main argument from supporters of this approach is that it better enables children to achieve academic success. “The evidence is clear,” argues Robert Colvile, editor of the conservative online newspaper CapX, “stricter schools get better results” and have “demonstrable success in helping the disadvantaged”. It’s true that Michaela and a handful of MATs that employ this approach do accept children from disadvantaged backgrounds and do have impressive GSCE results and Progress 8 scores. But does the end justify the means?

What really matters

“I’ve always argued that you’re better off measuring your school on what the kids do a few years after they leave, than you are measuring their GCSE results,” says Mann. “Because the next move [university] is incredibly difficult and there’s a high dropout rate of working-class kids in our country.” In Canada, it was recognised a decade ago that “students need competencies beyond literacy and numeracy”. The “measuring what matters” initiative worked to ensure that health, creativity, citizenship and social-emotional learning were considered as important as grades, in order to “provide students with the skills they need to live happy, healthy, economically secure, civically engaged lives.”

Matthews agrees that while he wants his daughters to do well academically – “and they will as they’re bright kids” – he couldn’t care less about his school’s Progress 8 result. “I care about my daughters’ wellbeing. I want them to be good kids, and free thinkers.”

The scale of the challenges facing the education system in England is vast and centres on a lack of funding. When it comes to academies, the first step must be to introduce democratic control. As these schools operate independently of local authorities, while parents’ complaints may be escalated to CEO level, from there, there is often nowhere else to go. Parents may simply be told to find another school, as there are usually plenty of others on the waiting list. In December, Labour MP Rachael Maskell raised concerns in parliament about the running of South Bank MAT, asking for an urgent debate around holding MAT leaders to account. These are state schools, run with public funding, and while there is a dominant narrative – peddled by supporters such as Colvile – that only those on “the left” are raising concerns, this isn’t true. Maskell’s involvement in South Bank MAT, for instance, was instigated by parent protests and governor resignations, while teachers at St Ivo Academy, part of Astrea MAT, went on strike in November 2023 over “draconian” policies.

The problem of extreme behavioural issues in England is real and should not be downplayed. But this newly popular, ultra-disciplinary approach to education undervalues substance, integrity and care, in favour of speed, performance and status. These schools are not the answer. Our children deserve more.

*Names have been changed to protect children’s identities.

This article is from New Humanist's autumn 2024 issue. Subscribe now.

Heresy: Jesus Christ and the Other Sons of God (Picador) by Catherine Nixey

Many of us suffer from the cognitive bias known as the “just world fallacy”. The sense that the world should be a fair place can easily slide into the belief that it is a fair place and that people generally get what they deserve. When it is applied to the victorious history of our own people or tribe, it implies that the events of the past were meant to be and were for the best.

One example of this is the Christian exceptionalism that seems to be thriving, as evidenced by recent popular works such as Tom Holland’s 2019 Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind. Broadly, this is the idea that Christianity in ancient times came as a unique blessing into a world that knew little kindness or compassion, being ignorant of universal notions of humanity. The suffering people of that time embraced the religion of Jesus Christ, with its promise of justice and equality, as an alternative to the chaotic polytheism under which they had previously laboured. From these roots in due course flowered all the values of the west: a unique and Christianity-dependent harvest.

In Heresy, Catherine Nixey strips these pretensions away with a complete (but scholarly) lack of mercy. Her focus is on Christianity’s first few centuries and she brings together three facts that are well known in the niche fields of ancient history and biblical studies, but not by the general reader, and rarely considered together.

The first is that the figure of Jesus, far from being unique, was just one of many strikingly similar god-men and magicians around in the Roman Mediterranean, with some claiming to perform miracles that are near-identical to those described in the Bible. Walking on water, turning water into wine, healing the sick, raising the dead, feeding vast crowds with food conjured out of thin air, exorcising demons out of men – these were their staples. We have many texts now that show this. We also have multiple images of Jesus holding what appears to be a magic wand in early Christian art.

Second, the tales that have ended up in the modern Bible are just a small portion of the stories that early Christians believed – from the one about God’s breast being milked for the Holy Spirit, to the time the infant Jesus struck his school friends dead when they annoyed him. Today, we don’t know these stories because they were branded as the “heresies” that give Nixey’s book its powerful title.

The third is that many educated and virtuous people of the Roman world objected to the rise of Christianity as an irrational and immoral belief system. Nixey gives us fascinating quotes from the works of the philosophers Celsus and Porphyry and from the emperor Julian. Many of their points are similar to those made by non-Christian critics today: the nonsense of resurrection, the question of why God waited so long to send his son to Earth, the relative banality of Christianity’s moral precepts, even dressed up as radical ethics (“Is there any society that doesn’t have a law against murder?”, asks Julian.)

These three facts, taken together, highlight how incredibly contingent the emergence of Christianity was, and even more so the specific version that survived. Even if a similar monotheistic religion was always bound to have dominated the west for those centuries – which is not a given by any means – it still could have been the Jesus with a magic wand who prevailed, or one of the other god-men.

Classicists have long known that the Mediterranean world was full of miracles and magic, so why does Heresy still stand out as a shocking intervention? A lot is down to the conspiracy of silence (Nixey calls it a “gentlemen’s agreement”) between theologians on one side and classicists and ancient historians on the other. I once asked one of my ancient history tutors at university what he thought about the historical Jesus and he scoffed. “That’s myth – not history.” But you wouldn’t hear him saying that in his public lectures. Nixey’s book, therefore, breaks an important taboo. It’s a gripping and well-crafted mix of scholarship and polemic, and a challenge to any who still believe – whether they are religious or not – that Christianity was somehow fated to emerge and shape the west.

This article is from New Humanist's autumn 2024 issue. Subscribe now.

It’s the start of the rainy season in Sierra Leone, the west African country known for its beautiful beaches and tropical rainforests. The coming of the rains brings relief from the heat, but also something else: mosquitoes. While Sierra Leone suffers all through the year, the rainy seasons are the worst for mosquito-borne diseases.

The mosquito is responsible for more deaths worldwide than any other animal – more than snake bites or even homicides. The winged insect carries diseases like Dengue fever, Zika virus and, of course, malaria. There were 249 million malaria cases and 608,000 deaths in 2022, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Africa shoulders by far the heaviest burden, with 94 per cent of cases and 95 per cent of all deaths.

Throughout Africa, malaria is a serious threat to older people, pregnant women, children, and those with weakened immune systems. In Sierra Leone, it accounts for a quarter of all child deaths. But this year, the president gave the country hope that the disease would finally be contained. On World Malaria Day in April, President Julius Maada Bio launched a landmark malaria vaccination campaign, initially targeting babies. Since then, the Ministry of Health, working alongside the United Nations body Unicef, has been busy rolling out the first 550,000 doses to the furthest corners of Sierra Leone.

The vaccine, RTS,S (commercially named Mosquirix), is made by the British pharmaceutical company Glaxo-SmithKline. As part of pilot programs in 2019, it was delivered to more than two million children in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi and subsequently became the world’s first malaria vaccine to receive prequalification from WHO, meaning it has been assessed for quality, safety and efficacy. It was found to prevent around 75 per cent of all malaria cases in high-transmission areas where children were also given seasonal anti-malarial medicine when the risk was highest. This prompted WHO to recommend widespread use of the vaccine among children in sub-Saharan Africa.

Sierra Leone is one of the first countries to begin a nationwide rollout, alongside Cameroon and Burkina Faso. Ghana, Kenya and Malawi are also due to get more doses following the pilot programs, along with Benin and Liberia. While this is cause for celebration, the vaccine still has its limitations. Unlike other routine immunisations, this malaria vaccine requires four doses to achieve long-term protection. The shots must be stored at certain temperatures – a challenge for areas with regular power outages or no electricity at all.

Sierra Leone is planning to deliver the vaccine to 15 of its 16 districts. It’s an ambitious plan for a coastal country with remote and island communities, some of which can only be reached by motorbike or boat. But if the rollout is successful, it may provide a model for other African countries. It is not only a tragedy that so many children and vulnerable people die each year from this preventable disease; malaria has also held these countries back from crucial economic development. An effective, scalable vaccine would be a huge boon for the future of the continent.

Decades in the making

Given the large-scale and devastating effects of the disease, why has a malaria vaccine taken so long to develop? Malaria is caused by a parasite called Plasmodium, which infects female mosquitoes after they have fed on the blood of an infected human. Malaria parasites enter the human bloodstream and in serious cases can cause irreparable damage to the liver, kidneys and other organs. After maturing, the parasite infects red blood cells, destroying the body’s ability to supply oxygen to its tissues, leading to anaemia. Infected blood cells can clog up the circulation leading to organ failure and death.

Development of a vaccine began in 1987 through a partnership between GlaxoSmithKline and the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, run by the US Department of Defense. But there were multiple challenges in developing a vaccine with effective, long-lasting immunity. The mosquito has a complex life cycle and high genetic diversity, with over 3,000 species currently recorded, varying in their capacity to transmit different strains of the malaria parasite. This led to difficulties in creating a vaccine that would be effective across different countries and regions. It was not until 2019 that Mosquirix was deemed ready for major clinical trials.

Dr Desmond Kangbai is one of the civil servants leading the vaccine rollout in Sierra Leone. In a gloomy government office in the bustling capital of Freetown, he takes calls from several phones on his desk, while aides shuffle in and out. It’s hot and humid, and several fans flutter the corners of papers stacked into wobbly towers on his desk. Dr Kangbai leads the Ministry of Health’s Expanded Program of Immunisation. He’s stressed, but also hopeful about the rollout’s prospects. “It could be a silver bullet,” he says, wiping his brow. “But we do need more resources.”

The government is initially focusing on delivering the vaccine to young children. All babies and small children are more vulnerable to malaria, with their immune systems still developing, but in Sierra Leone there is the added challenge of malnutrition. Meanwhile, keeping children free of mosquito bites can be an impossible task. This means that the constant threat of death hangs over families with babies and young children. Sierra Leone’s under-five mortality rate is one of the highest in the world.

The program has identified around 1.5 million children under the age of five who need the vaccine, but only currently has enough doses to give the jab to one-third of them. Distribution is also an issue, particularly reaching far-flung rural areas. Dr Kanbai explains that the program needs more funding and resources for everything “from coaching [of medical staff and unpaid volunteers] to refrigerators, boats to reach river and island communities, and to cover the costs of delivery.”

Next door, in a separate building, refrigeration units house the precious vaccine. Using solar powered generators, thousands of doses are loaded into mobile refrigeration units that drive to the furthest corners of the country, where malaria hits hardest. Sierra Leone is roughly the size of Ireland or the US state of South Carolina. But its geography, and lack of roads and medical infrastructure, means delivering vaccines across the country isn’t easy. From 1991, the country was pummeled by an 11-year civil war that killed over 50,000 people, decimating its hospitals and wiping out many of its medical personnel. In the decade or so it took to begin rebuilding the country, it fell victim to an Ebola outbreak – a fatal virus that took 4,000 lives in just two years at its peak, many of whom were healthcare workers.

Trust in health workers

Now it’s the rainy season, which lasts for six months between June and December, producing torrential rainfall, deadly floods and mudslides throughout the country. Although malaria prevention is especially important in this season, the weather means that a six-hour trip to remote rural areas can easily double. When vaccines lose their refrigeration, it decreases their potency, meaning that rural populations risk getting a weaker dose if the solar-powered fridges in the vehicles run out of battery, or if they are improperly refrigerated in the last stretch of a journey, which can be by boat or motorbike. The growing volatility of the climate is set to add to these challenges.

Raising more funding will be crucial to the ultimate goal of nationwide immunisation. Alongside Sierra Leone’s government, the rollout is being funded by a nexus of global health organisations. Gavi, an international organisation that works on vaccine access, is a major contributor, while Unicef provides both technical and financial assistance. The UK government provides some aid, as does the United States, alongside other national governments and international NGOs.

But even if the funding is secured for comprehensive supply and distribution, there will be additional challenges. Uptake still relies on the people of Sierra Leone, the majority of whom live in isolated areas with little access to televisions or internet. People might venture to a nearby shop to hear news on the radio, but mass media communication programs have limited reach. Instead, the government must send its own people or rely on NGOs to travel out to villages and rural areas, working alongside local religious, tribal-ethnic and civic leaders to raise awareness. This could take the form of announcements in church, or the distribution of pamphlets and newsletters.

Thankfully, Sierra Leone has comparably high rates of trust in healthcare workers and low rates of vaccine hesitancy, partly due to having gone through the 2014 Ebola outbreak and experiencing first-hand the positive effects of vaccination programmes. The Ebola outbreak also exposed weaknesses in Sierra Leone’s healthcare facilities, supplies, storage and training. To survive, the whole healthcare system was in many ways forced to revamp itself, and today there is a much keener awareness of how to handle major public health issues.

A silver bullet?

Given this recent history, and the urgent need to reduce infant mortality, the vaccination rollout could be transformative for Sierra Leone, making it one of the models that could provide important lessons to other African countries. However, it is still hard to tell how effective the rollout will be. Post-vaccination figures on malaria infection rates will only start to become available next year and may not be reliable until four or five years’ time. Some are not as optimistic about the program as Dr Kangbai.

“I don’t know if this is a silver bullet. I would call it ‘life-saving intervention’,” says Baboucarr Bouy, an immunisation specialist for Unicef in Sierra Leone. The UN body has been active in the country ever since Sierra Leone gained its independence in 1961. In contrast to Dr Kangbai’s office, to visit Bouy at Unicef you have to pass through security and the room is air-conditioned – an indicator of the balance of funding between government and international organisations.

He addresses the efficacy of the vaccine, which is complex. “There are different numbers for different trials, different regions, and in different periods,” he notes. But overall, “the efficacy is probably about 50 per cent.”

Bouy points out that the vaccine has to be used with other existing anti-malarial measures, like antimalarial medicine, mosquito nets, insect repellent and larval control. Unicef has also been working on improving transport lines and healthcare facilities. “Over the past two or three years, we have been able to procure over 800 sets of new solar refrigerators, installed successfully in various health facilities for the storage of vaccines,” he said. “We’ve also been able to procure and deliver over 900 motorbikes.” Working with large NGOs and international organisations like Unicef has its benefits for the government. But Dr Kangbai is keen to point out that they need different types of support from various kinds of partners. “We want innovative solutions like drones for last-mile delivery, especially to our riverine communities during the rainy season,” he said.

The road ahead

There is no panacea for these complex issues, which are also bound up with broader problems faced by Sierra Leone. “We need more trained personnel, we need more drugs to treat illnesses in general,” says Fatim Jabbie, a clinic nurse at Njala University Hospital in the southern town of Mokonde. “We need more lab diagnostics equipment, we need more malaria test kits. We need a better healthcare infrastructure overall.”

Jabbie notes that the country needs to strengthen its economy in general, which would better equip it to deal with public health crises. However, this is a chicken-and-egg situation, as malaria is detrimental to Sierra Leone’s economy and weakens its workforce. Estimates suggest that malaria-related issues cost Sierra Leone nearly $30 million per year, a significant amount for a nation with a GDP of $4 billion.

“Sierra Leone is a beautiful country and its people are peace-loving,” Jabbie says, “but we have a poor road network, we have financial challenges, we have poor environmental sanitation, and inadequate drugs in most health facilities.” She therefore emphasises the need for a holistic approach to supporting public health initiatives. The good news is that Sierra Leone’s history of health-related crises makes it a case study for recognising the importance of community engagement and trust. This is one of the factors that has enabled the country to adopt the malaria vaccine and integrate it into its national immunisation programmes far quicker than many other African countries. However, it does not have an easy road ahead.

In the meantime, another vaccine may soon be rolled out in Africa, which looks set to be more affordable than Mosquirix. The vaccine, R21, known as Matrix-M, was developed by the University of Oxford and the Serum Institute of India, with technology from the American biotechnology company Novavax. At the end of 2023, it became the second malaria vaccine to receive WHO prequalification. In May, 43,000 doses were delivered to the Central African Republic, while Chad, Ivory Coast, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Sudan and Uganda are all preparing to receive shipments.

So far, Matrix-M has shown comparable efficacy rates to Mosquirix, although further studies are needed to confirm this. It also could be more affordable. At present each dose costs between $2 and $4, while four doses are needed per person. That is about half the current price of the RTS,S vaccine.

“Having two safe and effective vaccines means we have greater supply security and can be more confident about meeting countries’ needs,” Dr Sania Nishtar, CEO of Gavi, said in a press release. “That is what matters most – that countries where our vaccines can be most impactful are able to access them, saving thousands of lives each year and offering relief to families, communities and entire health systems.”

While this year’s rollouts in Sierra Leone, Cameroon and Burkina Faso are promising, we also won’t know how successful they are until at least next year, when post-vaccine data becomes available. Sierra Leone is a country to watch for many reasons. They had lessons for the world when the nation came together to confront the devastating challenge of Ebola. The high level of trust in healthcare workers bodes well for the success of vaccination rollouts. Now they are once again on the frontline when it comes to the fight against malaria. Time will tell whether this is a first step towards the eradication of a disease that has ravaged the continent for centuries.

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Two quick bits of news from me.

First, my new book on how learning magic promotes wellbeing is out very soon. It’s called Magic Your Mind Happy, and I am very excited because it provides a new perspective on magic. I will be doing lots of events to promote the book and it’s available to pre-order here.

Second, I have invented a new optical illusion! Well, to be more accurate, a new variant on a known illusion. The Beuchet Chair is one of my favourite illusions and involves a person appearing to be much smaller than they are. Invented by Jean Beuchet in the 1960s, it relies upon forced perspective created by chair legs that are close to the observer, and a large chair seat further away.

I have come up with a variant. This one centres around a plinth rather than a chair. The legs of the original chair are replaced by two pieces of hinged cardboard (these can easily be cut from foamboard and hinged with tape), and the large seat and back of the chair are replaced with a piece of cloth.

The hinged screen forms the base of the plinth and is positioned in front of the photographer, and the cloth appears to form the top of the plinth and is placed on the floor behind the screen. To help to create a sense of continuity between the large cloth and the plinth, two small pieces of matching cloth are draped along the top of the screens. The front and side panels of the screen help to conceal the front and left edge of the cloth, and make lining up the photograph much easier than in the original illusion.

This entire set up can be constructed in a short space of time, is quick to set up, and folds flat after use. Because of this, it’s ideal for those wanting to create a convincing version of this classic illusion that is easy and cost effective to build, assemble, move, and store. I hope that you like it.

UPDATE: So, it turns out that illusion creator Olivier Redon had exactly the same idea  a few years ago. You can see his great version here and watch his other illusion videos here.

Hi there,

I am delighted to say that I am back performing at the Edinburgh Magic Festival this year.

First, on the 28th December I will be exploring the strange world of illusion, mystery and magic in a show called MIND MAGIC. This will involve showing some of the best optical illusions in the world, revealing whether paranormal phenomena really exist, showing how we can all achieve the impossible, explaining how to transform a tea towel into a chicken, and much more. All the info is here.

Then, on the 28th and 29th December, I am presenting a new and experimental show about the invention of magic. This will be an intimate affair for a small number of people. It will examine how magicians create magic, and explore the mind and work of a magical genius who created the world’s greatest card trick. Info here.

So, if you are around, please come along, and fun will be had!

Some exciting news from me! I have just written my first book for children.

It uses magic to teach youngsters a range of essential life skills, including social skills, confidence, creativity, lateral thinking and much much more. Readers will learn how to perform lots of seemingly impossible feats, including how to defy gravity, read minds, pluck coins from thin air, and predict the future. Most important of all, these tricks have been carefully chosen to help boost mental wellbeing and resilience. It’s fun, it’s easy, it’s magic!

I am delighted to say that Magic Your Mind Happy will be published by Wren and Rook in May 2024, and is available to preorder now here.

check, 1, 2…is this thing on? hi everyone! it’s been a while.

Two quick bits of news.

First, The Royal Society have kindly given me the prestigious David Attenborough Award. This is a lifetime achievement award for my work promoting psychology and critical thinking, and focuses on my research combatting pseudo-science and examining the psychology of magic. Previous recipients include Professor Sir Jonathan Van-Tam and Professor Alice Roberts, and I will give an award lecture about my work in August 2024.

Second, I have a new academic magic book out! It is part of the well-known Arts For Health series and reviews work examining how watching and learning magic is good for your wellbeing, including how it boosts confidence, social skills, dexterity, curiosity and much more. It was lots of fun to write and also includes interviews key practitioners, including Richard McDougall (Breathe Magic), Julie Eng (Magicana), Mario the Maker Magician (USA), David Brookhouse (UK), David Gore and Marian Williamson (College of Magic), and Tom Verner (Magicians Without Borders).  More details here.

Someone contacted me hoping to find young atheists who might be interested in being part of a new series. I’m not particularly interested in having my mug on TV, but I would love to have some great personalities represent atheism on the show, so I offered to repost his email on my blog: My name […]

All throughout my youth, I dreamed of becoming a writer. I wrote all the time, about everything. I watched TV shows and ranted along with the curmudgeons on Television Without Pity about what each show did wrong, convincing myself that I could do a better job. I flew to America with a dream in my […]

A friend linked me to this. I was a sobbing mess within the first minute. I sometimes wonder why I feel such a strong kinship to the LGBT community, and I think it’s because I’ve been through the same thing that many of them have. So I watched this video and I cried, because, as […]

UPDATE #1: I got my domain back! Many thanks to Kurtis for the pleasant surprise: So I stumbled upon your blog, really liked what I saw, read that you had drama with the domain name owner, bought it, and forwarded it here. It should work again in a matter of seconds. I am an atheist […]