When you pay attention, you find people with learning disabilities, despite the myriad ways the world diminishes their worth, stubbornly and fully inhabiting their humanity - John Casson

On Thursday 19 October, L’Arche National Leader John Casson delivered the 2023 Tablet Lecture to a packed audience in central London, hosted by BBC journalist and broadcaster, Mishal Husain.

John explored the prospects and pitfalls of Artificial Intelligence, and the possibility that our freedom may already be more constrained than we realise. Drawing on encounters with people who have learning disabilities in L’Arche, he showed how liberation can come through engaging with regions of the full human experience we too easily ignore.

“These are footholds in a richer way of being alive and being human. Practices of reality in resistance to modernity’s illusions. Practices of freedom and recovery from our addictions and idolatry. Practices of meekness instead of mastery. Practices of receiving instead of grasping.”

Click below to watch John’s talk in full or read an edited version from The Tablet.

The Tablet article