Left to Our Own Devices?

May 25, 2026 Leave a comment

“You will own nothing and you will be happy.”

This published World Economic Forum slogan, derived from a reposted blog essay by a Danish politician titled “Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better,” embodies a vision of doing away with the ownership of private property and autonomy in favor of a shared and planned economy overseen by the “providence” of WEF elites.

The proposed systems or platforms would provide technological access to needed resources, thereby providing gratification – so says the Dane. What is not said: in order to produce a hyper-egalitarian world, such comprehensive oversight of humans would require the beating down, leveling, debasing, and tyrannizing of the humans into thinking and accepting what is doled out in terms of what is valued per the elites.

“Have we discovered some new reason why, this time, power should not corrupt as it has done before?” – C.S. Lewis, from the third essay in The Abolition of Man.

The overlords of the modern bureaucratic state (presumptuously) use rational control to solve all problems with (smug) amoral certainty. Rational control?

R.J. Snell writing for Acton Institute regarding Harvey C. Mansfield’s recent book The Rise and Fall of Rational Control: The History of Modern Political Philosophy:

According to Mansfield, modernity is intrinsically linked to Machiavelli. . .

Rational control depended on ending irrational control, meaning custom, which includes social mores, institutions, and “God or the gods.” Rational control requires our liberation from the divine; humanity itself serves as a principle of order, asserting “human rights as against divine rights.” Moral custom can survive the taming of the gods, however, so morality must also be placed on a rational basis. For Machiavelli, princes must learn “how to be not good.” Ancient philosophers constructed utopian principles, but moderns take guidance from the “effectual truth” of action. The ruthless doing of “the necessary” establishes and preserves the city.

Who is Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 -1527)? See below.

The WEF’s Brave New World kind of slogan, with its enchantment of fulfillment via a Soma-like numbing- homogenizing process that divests the individual of all worldly (and otherworldly) concerns, I read as “rational control” ending “irrational control.” The ownership of inherited values and identity from the older cosmic order that included the transcendent Overworld is to be exchanged for the management of affairs by the realpolitik of “princes.” Their new modes and orders will displace what came before, replace the “ought” with the “is,” and effect the ruthless doing of “the necessary” via devices with avatars, apps and AI.

(Our world has many glory seeking manipulative “princes.” They rule their principalities in the WEF, the EU, and the UN. They rule in city, state, and federal government. They are the tech bros pushing AI and data centers down our throats.)

“You will own nothing and you will be happy”represents the presumed gratifying effects of rational control giving materialism and science unquestioned authority over our lives to produce “effectual truth” outcomes. Subjects of the slogan are to sell their souls to the “princes” of this world to make way for “man’s freedom … to answer his own needs with his own arms.”

Those enchanted by a managed existence absent of meaning and free will, such as the Danish politician, are apparently OK with a world that is increasingly disconnected from “the past, people, place, and prayer” and increasingly connected to “science, self, sex, and screens” (Paul Kingsnorth, Against the Machine).

Chuck Chalberg, writing for the Imaginative Conservative:

Kingsnorth might not have needed to define each of his S’s, but he does: Science gives us a “non-mythic” story of our origins; “the highest good is to serve the self”; sex is an “affirmation of individual identity”; and the screen is “both our main source of distraction from reality and the interface by which we are directed into the coming post-human reality of the machine.”

I view such world as cold and indifferent, in a calculating, utilitarian, mechanistic, ad-addled, app-addled, drug-addled, increasingly violent, and wretched way.

Those enchanted by a dystopian existence are apparently OK with living in a pathological environment, one that has “almost no qualities of a sane, wise, productive, creative environment that we would wish for ourselves” (Iain McGilchrist).

“You will own nothing and you will be happy” is scientific reductionism’s disenchantment of the world.

Henri Bortoft writes at The Nature Institute about the 18th to 19th century German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s way of perceiving:

Goethe [sought a method that, in his words] “did not treat of nature as divided and in pieces, but presented her as working and alive, striving out of the whole into the parts.” The first thing we notice here is the reversal of perception: not from the part to the whole, but from the whole into the parts. Goethe was someone who could see the wholeness in nature directly, and, furthermore, had specific practices that could lead to the ability to do so.

C. S. Lewis, in English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (1954), wrote that no longer is the universe thought of as an orchestra “tingling with anthropomorphic life, dancing, ceremonial, a festival.” Now it is thought of in terms of a machine. In terms of language, Lewis’ understood that

“Pre-modern metaphors were animated; the cosmos seemed saturated with presence, soul, and being. In contrast, modern man prefers inorganic metaphors borrowed from the steady, unwavering move­ment of machines.” (Jason Baxter, “Evil Enchantment” versus Platonic Vision: Dante, Lewis, and the Weight of Glory) (The After Dinner Scholar podcast).

Many have witnessed and written about the ongoing deconstruction of our inherited perception of the cosmos.

Below, two poets, a professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature, a modern playwright and a psychiatrist/neuroscientist account the withdrawing from the ages-old animating symphonic signal (objective values of truth, beauty, and goodness) toward modern machine noise (amoral realpolitik’s ruthless doing of “the necessary”):

“Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar”

In 1867, Matthew Arnold wrote a poem about the decline of religious belief in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. Dover Beach speaks of a sea change during the Victorian era: the rising tide of scientific discovery and the withdrawing “sea of faith.” He saw Christian faith increasingly challenged by the influences of materialism and scientific discoveries.

Dover Beach portrays the effect with words describing loss and alienation from what had been so encompassing:

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

“A heap of broken images”

T. S. Eliot’s 1922 poem The Waste Land, written in the wake of WWI, describes the barrenness and alienation of modern life. With a collage of cultural allusions, Eliot portrays modern society as shallow, the rich spiritual and cultural landscape of the past reduced to rubble. Society, he writes, is dealing with “A heap of broken images.”

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.

“a bad spell, an evil enchantment”

Jason M. Baxter, in his essay “Evil Enchantment” versus Platonic Vision: Dante, Lewis, and the Weight of Glory,” writes of professor C.S. Lewis’ take on the negation of goodness referencing a compilation of Lewis’ sermons tiled Transposition (1944) and his book The Abolition of Man (1943):

“The oxford don consistently used the metaphor of a bad spell, arguing that modernity had cast an “evil enchantment of worldliness” that makes the weight of goodness fell less substantial. In fact, Lewis argued that there was a kind of historical chasm or gaping cultural canyon that separated modernity from anything that came before: what he called the “Great Divide.”  . . . This is, in part, because our image of the cosmos and our understanding of its op­erations are radically different from that of the pre-modern world. Our metaphors have changed: “The fundamental concept of modern science is, or was until very recently, that of natural ‘laws.’. . . In medieval science the fundamental concept was that of certain sympathies, antipathies, and strivings inherent in matter itself.” Modern man speaks about how a fall­ing rock obeys a law of nature; medieval man spoke of the rock as desiring or longing to return to its natural place, like a pigeon returning to its nest by a homing instinct. Pre-modern metaphors were animated; the cosmos seemed saturated with presence, soul, and being. In contrast, modern man prefers inorganic metaphors borrowed from the steady, unwavering move­ment of machines. (My emphasis.)

. . .

“When the animate picture of the cosmos and the organic metaphors used to describe it passed away, two other changes followed. The first is that we began to imagine the sources of deep meaning were located within, not without. As Charles Taylor has put it, we “conceive of ourselves as having inner depths. We might even say that the depths which were previously located in the cosmos, the enchanted world, are now more readily placed within.” Lewis wrote about this displacement of meaning in his impas­sioned critique of modern education, The Abolition of Man.”

(You can read Baxter’s complete essay w/footnotes in my post “Self-Central Casting.” The article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ George Fox University)

The Abolition of Man was published in 1943. Three lectures by C.S. Lewis form the book: Men Without Chests, The Way, and The Abolition of Man.

In identifying the pathologies of the age, Lewis warned about the consequences of doing away with ideas of objective value and natural law. Moral relativism, he claimed, would-result in the Abolition of Man and Men Without Chests. He defended the existence of a moral consensus among mankind that transcends cultures, polities, and historical epochs. 

Lewis sought to reenchant the world with his fiction: The Space trilogy, Till We have Faces, The Chronicles of Narnia and other works.

In a 1946 essay “Talking about Bicycles” Lewis wrote about how understanding changes in terms of “four ages about nearly everything.” He gave them names: the unenchanted age, the enchanted age, the disenchanted age, and the reenchanted age.

We are in a disenchanted age.

Where do values come from?

British playwright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard (1937-2025) was known for plays that are both comedic and philosophical.

This is true of one of his most famous plays, the 1966 absurdist tragicomedy Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Two minor characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet become main figures in a play ‘outside’ the narrative of Shakespeare’s Hamlet (which has a play within a play).

From the play’s synopsis at Stage Agent:

Part Shakespearean tragedy, part Laurel and Hardy comedy routine, part Waiting for Godot absurdity, Tom Stoppard’s masterful debut play calls fate, free will, art, reality, communication, and the very constructs of theatre into question, all the while leading two most honorable, adventurous, brilliant, and inept characters on their path to their unfortunate, unavoidable, infamous fate.

His 1972 play Jumpers “intertwines high-minded discussion with broad comic absurdity.” Stoppard “explores and satirizes the field of academic philosophy by likening it to a less-than-skillful competitive gymnastics display.” It is set in a university “where philosophy has become a battleground rather than a search for truth.” It is a bewildering world of pragmatists and relativists where logic has confounded belief in moral absolutes. The play raises questions of “What do we know?” and “Where do values come from?”

Stoppard’s 2015 play The Hard Problem again deals the ultimate source of objective goodness and value.

Lauren Halvorsen, at Studio Theater:

In constructing Hilary, Stoppard explains, “I wanted to write a character who is good—not goody-goody—and believes that goodness has an objective reality which is not captured by, explained by, or defined by evolutionary science, by evolutionary psychology, by evolutionary biology, by neo-Darwinism.” Hilary’s faith is ridiculed by her colleagues—but they can’t fully refute her stances. Stoppard investigates the interplay of faith and fact, irrationality with would-be rational behavior. How would neuroscientists definitively prove that every instinct is chemical, explicable, and geared for survival? And what happens to our beliefs when science can’t hold all the answers? Can some ideas only be understood through an unquantifiable intuition?

…

In a world driven by empirical data, Hilary is a controversial figure—she argues passionately in favor of free will, defends altruism as more than self-interest, and believes in God, much to the consternation of her materialist fellow scientist and occasional lover Spike. And it gradually emerges that Hilary’s stances are informed, in part, by personal reasons: at age 15, she had a baby and made an adoption plan, and now prays for her daughter as she wonders what became of her.

We are living in a pathological environment

Iain McGilchrist – psychiatrist, philosopher and neuroscientist:

“There is no question. We are living in a pathological environment. It has almost no qualities of a sane, wise, productive, creative environment that we would wish for ourselves. It has very few of those qualities that characteristically lead to those qualities. It maximizes conflict. It incubates extreme points of view. It robs us of embodied and embedded wisdom that comes from the culture and proximity to the natural world.

All these things that used to be taken for granted are now robbed of us and it’s no surprise that responses are massive existential anxiety, depression, suicidal thinking, a sense of hopelessness, complete loss of meaning. . . it is a complete tragedy because it doesn’t have to be like that. We need to break out of the prison we have made for ourselves.”

The above excerpt from the May 2026 video & podcast – Civilization’s Imbalance and Restoring the Humanities: The Divided Brain

https://www.unsiloedpodcast.com/episodes/iain-mcgilchrist

Iain McGilchrist discusses how the brain works, how left and right hemispheres attend to things – thereby making a difference on how we respond to the world.

Ultimate Meaning with objective standards for goodness and value is being explained away by neuroscience reductionist claims that meaning comes down to brain chemistry and atoms. If there is meaning, it is described in terms of an inexorable evolutionary process at work to pass on our genes in the best way possible. (See Is God the answer to our Meaning Crisis? Video below.)

Are we to view life through scientific reductionism’s microscope?

Are we to be viewed life through scientific reductionism’s microscope?

Should we be logical positivists and base all knowledge on perceptual experience and consider metaphysical and subjective arguments not based on observable data as meaningless?

Should we live accepting that there is nothing but matter and disregard intuition or revelation for “the science?”

Is life to be understood using only the science text book of humans (which scientism perverts for “effectual truth” outcomes) and not the gestalt of human consciousness as found in poetry (that provides meaning)?

Admittedly, there is a lot to ponder here.

As I have written before, I am an autodidact. I have no degree. I read and study that which interests and concerns me. Then, I put it down in words. The above is not some term paper to be graded. The above is what I have come to understand: what I was looking for since my earliest days, since The Day the Music Died.

It wasn’t until I reached my 70s that I understood the loss of connection to true mythos and the orchestra “tingling with anthropomorphic life, dancing, ceremonial, a festival.”

~~~

Who is Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 -1527)?

Here’s a brief Yale lecture (video, podcast & transcript) about the Florentine, the founder of the modern state, and his book, “The Prince”: Lecture 10 – New Modes and Orders: Machiavelli, The Prince (chaps. 1-12)

“Machiavelli announces his break, indeed his repudiation of all those who have come before, all those who have come before. He both replaces and yet reconfigures according to his own lights, elements from both the Christian empire and the Roman republic, to create a new form of political organization distinctly his own.” (This description of Machiavelli could be describing today’s Progressive politicians and many church organizations!)

(This being Memorial Day weekend, I doubt that the “princes” of this world will honor the fallen. They’ll be busy barbecuing and planning their next doing of “the necessary.”

~~~

The modern state increasingly treats culture not as an independent civilizational inheritance deserving protection but as raw material to be supervised, corrected, and ideologically aligned. The old pastoral ideal of the fulfilled and self-reliant individual citizen gradually gives way to the therapeutic subject: managed, supervised, controlled, yet perpetually assured of her freedom in “our democracy.”

A civilization survives only when there remain spheres of life politics cannot wholly absorb. Once politics becomes everything, civilization itself begins to disappear.

The Politicization Of Everything | ZeroHedge

Authored by David Solway via The Epoch Times,

Don’t become a Green grocer.

~~~

Elizabeth Oldfield & James Marriott: Is God the answer to our Meaning Crisis? | Uncommon Ground

Elizabeth Oldfield, host of the Sacred Podcast, and James Marriott, literary critic and Times columnist, join Justin on Uncommon Ground to discuss whether we can find meaning in life without God.
Elizabeth tells of her own search for meaning in Christian faith, while James explains why, as an atheist nihilist, he still loves art and literature. They discuss the search for purpose, and signs of a new interest in faith among young people.

Elizabeth Oldfield & James Marriott: Is God the answer to our Meaning Crisis? | Uncommon Ground

For Elizabeth Oldfield: https://www.elizabetholdfield.com/
For James Marriott: https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/full-fat-faith-the-young-christian-converts-filling-our-churches-x69pd289k?

~~~

Filed under 2026 Current Events, Culture, Philosophy, Political Commentary, social commentary, social engineering, Technocracy, technology Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Of One or Two Mindsets?

March 8, 2026 Leave a comment

A 7th century BCE proverb, attributed to Greek poet Archilochus, speaks of two ways of perceiving the world:

“The fox knows many truths, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”

The fragment on which this metaphor was found doesn’t include what the poet meant or to whom he was referring to. But amplified versions of the two contrasting ways of thinking have come along.

Basically, hedgehog types, it is said, ignore many things available to them and relate everything to a single organizing idea – one big thing – that guides how they understand, think and feel.

Fox types, on the other hand, take in the big picture. They pursue many ends and draw upon many experiences and perspectives, some of which may be self-contradictory. They are pluralistic and know many things and approach issues from diverse perspectives.

In his 1953 essay “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” Sir Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997), a Russian-British social and political theorist, philosopher, and historian of ideas explored these two different approaches to perceiving reality – diversity or unity in thought; breadth or depth in intellectual pursuit.

Berlin saw hedgehog types as possessing a singular, unifying vision that guides their understanding of the world. To get to an essential monistic worldview, hedgehog thinkers simplify the complex and may even accept easy explanations. They hold strict beliefs and are not likely to consider alternatives. As such, they are idealists who are not likely to waver from their purpose. They have a singular focus.

Berlin saw Fox types as being curious and wanting to explore, as knowing many things. They draw upon diversity and complexity. With new perspectives, they adapt. They are practical and not ideological. Foxes see the world in all its intricacy and interconnectedness.

Robert McCrum, writing in The Guardian about Berlin’s essay: “the division of humanity into hedgehogs and foxes had become not only a witty means of classification, but also an existential way of confronting reality. Foxes, for instance, will come to understand that they know many things, that a coherent worldview is probably beyond them and that they must be reconciled to the limits of what they know . . .

“Berlin’s hedgehog, by contrast, never makes peace with the world and remains unreconciled. His or her purpose is to know one thing and” quoting Isaiah Berlin’s biographer’s words, “strive without ceasing to give reality a unifying shape. Foxes settle for what they know and may live happy lives. Hedgehogs will not settle and their lives may not be happy.”

The subtitle of Berlin’s essay: An Essay on Tolstoy’s View of History. The Greek poet’s saying had Berlin seeking to classify Lev Tolstoy as a either a fox or a hedgehog based on Tolstoy’s philosophy of history as expressed in his novel War and Peace. Both War and Peace and Anna Karenina are written with an overarching moral order and with life’s intimate details. And, there are characters in each novel that exhibit the two different mindsets.

Asking whether Tolstoy’s “vision is of one or of many, whether he is of single substance or compounded of heterogenous elements,” Berlin decided, “there is no clear or immediate answer.” Berlin thought that Tolstoy embodied both the fox and the hedgehog types of thinking. 

Berlin did categorize well-known thinkers and artists.

 Those with profound central visions, were systematic and held rigid ideas about life he considered hedgehogs. He included Plato, Dante, Pascal, and Dostoevsky in this category.

Those who took in and thrived on a wide range of multi-layered experiences were the foxlike. He included pluralist thinkers Aristotle, Shakespeare, Goethe, and Joyce in that category.

~~~

The above is a brief summary of a school of thought that summarizes mindsets into two groups. You can read more about the Fox and Hedgehog Theory and how the two ways of thinking have been compared and how each mode is thought to apply at What is the fox and the hedgehog theory? where this table is found:

Using the supposed traits of each mindset, some have extrapolated how each mindset operates in terms of business and politics and in problem-solving and leadership skills.

Some may compare the two ways of thinking as a Fixed or Growth mindset.

Of course, Berlin’s interpretation is not supported by the Archilochus fragment. And there are those like myself who see the project as oversimplifying the multifaceted way we think and do so in diverse contexts.

Consider, for one example, the single-minded focus of a violinist who, in private, rehearses Paganini Caprice no. 5 and then at the time of performance, tunes her instrument to A440 and then plays focusing on the bowing and her performance.

Think of an orchestra conductor who sees the scoring of all the instruments and hears the sound of the whole ensemble. He directs the musician’s phrasing, tempo and sound according to his interpretation of what the composer had in mind.

Both solo violinist and conductor are focused on their “one big thing” and both are aware of the setting and the acoustics. They each listen to what comes forth and adapt as needed to enrich the performance for the listener.

hedgehog–the-fox_Chapter-1

Introduction to Berlin’s Division – Hedgehogs and Foxes

https://www.bookey.app/audiobook/hedgehog-%26-the-fox

~~~

Northwestern professor Gary Saul Morson refers to the fox and hedgehog saying and to Berlin’s essay in the conclusion of his magnum opus on classic Russian literature: Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter.

Throughout the book, Morson provides examples of how certainty and wonder played against each other in the writings during the Soviet era.

The nineteenth-century Russian intelligentsia and its Bolshevik successors embodied Certainty. The intelligentsia or “party-minded” related everything to a single central vision – a scientific-materialist-atheistic worldview – and did so with dogmatic certainty. Everything, everyone, and reality itself had to conform to the iron-grip of ideology. Violence made sure.

Russian realist prose, with questions posed, evoked Wonder. Realist authors drew upon the complexity in the world, its many human experiences and perspectives. They wrote about the world and the human condition in realist terms – as it was and not as it was end-of-history supposed. They knew life had contingencies and that there was no one single way to go about things

You can read more about this in my previous posts A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Hand Over and Reentry.

Implicit throughout Wonder Confronts Certainty is the contrast of the fox and hedgehog mindsets in Russian writers. Only in Conclusion: Into the World Symposium does professor Morson refer to the fox and hedgehog saying and to Berlin’s essay. He does so to make the point about “true dialog.” He writes:

Life is eternal dialogue, a world symposium that never ends. In Bakhtin’s notebooks we discover his core belief:

The dialogic nature of human consciousness. The dialogic nature of human life itself. The single adequate form for verbally expressing authentic human life is the open-ended dialogue. Life by its very nature is dialogic. To live means to participate in dialogue: to ask questions, to heed, to respond, to agree, and so forth. In this dialogue a person participates wholly and throughout his whole life: with his eyes, lips, hands, soul, spirit, and his whole body and deeds. He invests his entire life in discourse, and his discourse enters into the dialogic fabric of human life, into the world symposium.[i]

Further on, under the subheading The Fox Knows Many Things, Morson writes:

Given human difference and the plurality of viewpoints, wisdom consists in learning to see the world from the perspectives of others. By intellectual as well as emotional empathy, we can bring discrete positions into open ended-dialog. When we do, we enrich both ourselves and the world.[ii]

~~~

I don’t see a need to classify myself as a fox or hedgehog. There are benefits of both mindsets. I can hold two different things in my mind at the same time, and I am able to adapt to new situations.

I don’t have a degree in any area. As an autodidact, I have an open-ended humanities attitude toward life.

I am by nature a fox that takes in the big picture and I am also a hedgehog that focuses. I see the whole and wonder. I then drill down to explore my wonder. The game is afoot. A reader of my blog over time will notice this. I touch on various topics and often drill down to explore meaning. I do this so that I may understand what I think and to send it out in a post and have it come back to me as wisdom I can use.

I avoid binary, black or white, either/or, left-brain oriented thinking. The “dialogic nature of human life,” if invested in, can make a person knowledgeable and wise. And so can Michael Polanyi’s concept of knowing: ‘from-to’ subsidiary-focal-integration. See the video below.

~~~~~

How Can We Know Anything? Artful Knowing with Esther Meek

Philosopher Esther Lightcap Meek to explore how our understanding of knowledge shapes everything, from faith to creativity to everyday life. Esther challenges the modernist assumption that knowledge is merely information gathering, arguing instead for a view of knowing that is personal, participatory, and artful.

“Polanyi will argue that apart from personal epistemology as he describes it, not even knowledge is possible, let alone realism. Positively, he will view realism as integral to personal knowledge and vice versa” Esther Lightcap Meek

Discussed:

How the “knowledge as information” paradigm cuts us off from reality

Michael Polanyi’s concept of subsidiary-focal integration

Why imagination is essential to all knowing (including science!)

The relationship between attention, love, and knowledge

How artful knowing can help us navigate crises of faith

The doctrine of creation and wonder in the ordinary

Re-enchantment vs. the “lively real”

Comparing Esther’s work with Iain McGilchrist’s brain hemisphere research

https://www.estherlightcapmeek.com/

~~~~~

Hedgehog Mindset?

Monologue – Death at the President’s Lodging by Michael Innes

We are clerks, medieval clerks leading this mental life that is natural and healthy only to men serving a transcendental idea. But have we that now? And what then does all this thinking, poring, analyzing, arguing become – what but so much agony of pent-up and thwarted action? The ceaseless driving of natural physiological energy into narrow channels of mentation and intellection… (p. 80)

Hedgehog TDS:

In a January 2026 media article in The New Criterion – A range of derangement: On the persistence of Trump hatred – James Bowman notes a Wall Street Journal article Is Trump Derangement Syndrome Real?

We now have it on the authority of a licensed psychotherapist that “Trump Derangement Syndrome” (tds) is clinically real—though it’s probably not destined to have its own entry in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association any time soon. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Jonathan Alpert claims that he finds a mental illness worthy of the name in his Manhattan-based practice,

where the presentation aligns with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorders: persistent intrusive thoughts, emotional dysregulation and impaired functioning. Patients describe sleepless nights, compulsive news checking and physical agitation. Many confess they can’t stop thinking about Donald Trump even when they try. They interpret his every move as a threat to democracy and to their own safety and control. Call it “obsessive political preoccupation”—an obsessive-compulsive spectrum presentation in which a political figure becomes the focal point for intrusive thoughts, heightened arousal and compulsive monitoring. (Emphasis mine.)

~~~

Speaking of hedgehog TDS:

Responses to a squishy feminized elite:

Late Friday, New York Times columnist David French snarkily referred to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth as a “walking MAGA caricature” on X.  

Four hours later, Hegseth’s troops were pounding Iran in an intricate series of strikes that left its evil regime reeling.

The response to French — who has not withdrawn his sneer — was unsympathetic. 

My favorite: “Let’s have a contest . . . you and Pete show up at Fort Bragg, see who the troops respect more.”

Is Hegseth a caricature? 

To French and his ilk, maybe; but to many others, he’s a guy who gets results. 

Presumably a 1945 David French would have considered Gen. George S. Patton a caricature, too . . .

As commentator William Wolf observed on X, “The fact that a billionaire real estate playboy who liked to slap his name on steaks and wine has proven to be a better diplomat and military strategist than every other politician and foreign policy expert over the last 30 years is such a damning indictment of the DC establishment I honestly don’t know how they recover.” Emphasis mine.)

Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee and founder of the InstaPundit.com blog.

Why Trump and Hegseth’s swagger leaves the ‘elite’ seething

Fox Mindset?

Time for climate education:

Dr. Willie Soon Reveals the Real Driver of Climate Change in New Video – PJ Media

~~~~~

[i] Morson, Gary Saul. “Conclusion: Into the World Symposium.” In Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter, 384. Harvard University Press, 2023. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.1791936.16.

[ii] Morson, Gary Saul. “Conclusion: Into the World Symposium.” In Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter, 388. Harvard University Press, 2023. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.1791936.16.

Filed under Culture, Philosophy, Psychology Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Palm Sunday and the Problem of Evil

April 10, 2022 Leave a comment

Just a few centuries before the first Palm Sunday, Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 B.C.) promoted to his followers the notions of another ancient Greek philosopher, Demetrius (c. 460 – c. 370 B.C.). Demetrius’ had proposed the theory of Atomism to account for nature.

The theory in brief: the universe is a material system governed by the laws of matter. The fundamental elements of matter are atoms. Random, unguided ‘atoms’ smash into each other, thereby creating the world and life as we know it. Epicurus went on to tweak Demetrius’ theory by saying that atoms do not always go in straight lines but can “swerve, avoiding atomism’s inherent determinism and allowing for free will – just like the gods.

Per Epicurus, the gods were off somewhere happily doing their thing unconcerned about anything. They existed without needs, were invulnerable to any harm, and were generally living an enviable life, not anxious about anything. As such, they exemplified what Epicurus’s followers should seek to attain in their limited human nature.

For Epicurus, the purpose of philosophy was to attain the happy, tranquil life, characterized by aponia, the absence of pain and fear, and by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends. He taught that pleasure and pain are the measures of what is good and bad, that death is the end of the body and the soul and should therefore not be feared, that the gods do not reward or punish humans, that the universe is infinite and eternal, and that events in the world are ultimately based on the motions and interactions of atoms moving in empty space. –The Epicurus Reader

Epicurus also taught that nothing should be believed except for that which was tested through direct observation and logical deduction – believed via the sensate and reason. Based on such thinking along with having the viewpoint that the gods were distant and uninvolved and therefore unrelated to ‘thinking’ and ‘sensing’ man’s life, man had to make do with the atoms he had been dealt. Don’t look to a personal God for help.

What was most important in Epicurus’ philosophy of nature was the overall conviction that our life on this earth comes with no strings attached; that there is no Maker whose puppets we are; that there is no script for us to follow and be constrained by; that it is up to us to discover the real constraints which our own nature imposes on us. ―The Epicurus Reader

As Epicurus evaluated the Greek and Roman gods of his time and man’s attempt to please and cajole the gods to obtain favors, it would make sense for him and his followers to deduce that “there is no Maker whose puppets we are”. And, for Epicurus to further reason the problem of evil paradox:

“The gods can either take away evil from the world and will not, or, being willing to do so cannot; or they neither can nor will, or lastly, they are able and willing. If they have the will to remove evil and cannot, then they are not omnipotent. If they can but will not, then they are not benevolent. If they are neither able nor willing, they are neither omnipotent nor benevolent. Lastly, if they are both able and willing to annihilate evil, why does it exist?” ― Epicurus

 The Epicurean paradox was answered with another paradox: What is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? Psalm 8:4

In the fullness of time, including Epicurean times, the Lord of the universe put on human flesh – dust fashioned from the created elements including about 18% carbon – to deal with the problem of evil. There was nothing ambiguous or theoretical or abstract about the appearance of God’s own son Jesus. There was direct observation -seeing, hearing, and touching – by his followers.

Philosophers and atheists, before and after Epicurus, pronounced judgement on God for all the evil in the world.

The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven. – George MacDonald, C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce

To address evil, Jesus announced the kingdom of God on earth. What was begun in Genesis – the ordering of material creation to build God’s temple on earth so that God would dwell with man – was reinstated by Jesus. This blueprint or worldview was on the books long before Epicurus arrived on the scene. And so is the record of God’s faithfulness. God, as revealed in Jesus, puts things to right.

Jesus entered space and time flesh and blood to pronounce judgement on evil. He did so without equivocation. Jesus did not succumb to pleasure seeking to avoid pain. He did not succumb to Satan’s temptations to find happiness. Evil unclean spirits were cast out. Hypocrites were denounced and death itself was overturned. Jesus suffered the full force of evil on the cross – an act of redemption from evil’s ransom.

The King of Glory wept over Jerusalem and his chosen people. The Israelites had so often rejected their reveal-to-the-world-the-one-true-God vocation. They had not been faithful stewards of God’s vineyard. Did Epicurus see no difference in their God and the Greek and Roman gods?

On that first Palm Sunday, just a few centuries after Epicurus taught that there was no personally involved God, the King of Glory, emptied of his glory, rides a donkey into Jerusalem to meet evil head on and to put the world right. The “Epicurean Paradox” would be addressed and soundly answered.

What will you do with the knowledge that the infinite-personal God, embodied in human form, speaks to the very human concerns behind Epicurean philosophy?

Filed under Christianity, Epicureanism, Evil, Palm Sunday, Philosophy Tagged with , , , , , ,

Are You Witnesses of All This?

April 21, 2019 Leave a comment

 

Over the last several posts I’ve written about philosophers (Epicurus in particular and Protagoras) and philosophies (Epicureanism and Stoicism). Taken together they state, among other things I described earlier, that this life is all there is. There would be no hereafter in that way of thinking. During the first century the Apostle Paul, the “the apostle of the Gentiles”, encountered those worldviews on the streets where he sold his tents and in the early churches where he taught.

Writing to those in the Corinthian church whose Gentile members denied a resurrection of the dead, Paul responded in a rather taunting manner to their philosophical take on death as final. The gospel he proclaimed – Jesus is Lord, forgiveness of sins, new creation, the kingdom of God on earth has been launched – all hinged on the resurrection of Jesus.

And if the Messiah wasn’t raised, your faith is pointless, and you are still in your sins. 1 Cor. 15:7

After addressing and closing the dead are raised issue with an eye witness defense (1 Cor. 15: 3-8), Paul responds to the heart of the Corinthian objection to resurrection: the nature of future bodies. He mocks their materialist objections using an analogy from nature:

But someone is now going to say, “How are the dead raised? What sort of body will they have when they come back? Stupid! What you sow doesn’t come back to life unless it dies. 1 Cor. 15: 35

No doubt, Paul also heard that Jesus responded in a similar fashion when he rebuked the Sadducees who denied the resurrection (as recorded in Luke 20:38 and below, in Mark 12:

“Where you are going wrong,” replied Jesus, “is that you don’t know the scriptures, or God’s power. When people rise from the dead, they don’t marry, nor do people give them in marriage. They are like angels in heaven.

However, to show that the dead are indeed raised, surely you’ve read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, what God says to Moses? ‘I am Abraham’s God, Isaac’s God, and Jacob’s God’? He isn’t the God of the dead, but of the living. You are completely mistaken.”

In the same letter (1 Cor.15:19), agitated Paul, in talking about people’s motivations in light of their position on the resurrection, recommends Epicurean self-pity if the dead are not raised.

If it’s only in this present life that we have hope in the Messiah, we are the most pitiable members of the human race.

He later quotes a popular Epicurean saying that embraces self-pity and self-indulgence in light off…

…If the dead are not raised,

“Let us eat and drink,

for tomorrow we die.”

1 Cor. 15:32

What was Paul’s background that offered him insight into Greek philosophies? We learn from Acts 21: 37 -39 as he defends himself against highly agitated Jews who clamored for his arrest.  He is brought before a Roman tribune:

“Am I allowed to say something to you??” he asked.

“Well!” replied the tribune. “So you know some Greek, do you? Aren’t you the Egyptian who raised a revolt some while back and led those four thousand ‘assassins’ into the desert?”

“Actually, replied Paul. “I am a Jew! I am from Tarsus in Cilica. That’s not an insignificant place to be a citizen of. Please let me speak to the people.”

Inferring his Roman citizenship, Paul goes on to defend his Jewish background in the face of his Jewish accusers:

“I am a Jew, he continued, “and born in Tarsus in Cilicia. I received my education here in this city, and I studied at the feet of Gamaliel. I was trained in the strictest interpretations of our ancestral laws and became zealous for God, just as all of you today.”

Paul had significant first-hand knowledge of Greek, Roman and Jewish worldviews. Paul was more than able to respond to the Epicurean context of the Gentiles. Paul was more than able to present the gospel in the context of the Jewish worldview, a worldview of monotheism, the Temple, eschatology and …resurrection.

The narrative of the resurrection and an eschatology of the age to come took on great import during the Second Temple Judaism. Other than the words of Moses and some metaphorical allusions to resurrection by Isaiah (Isaiah 26:19) and Ezekiel (37), there isn’t mention of the resurrection in the Old Testament. Those allusions were applied during the Babylonian exile. They refer to the restoration of Israel as a nation and the reoccurring theme of exodus from bondage. The scribe Daniel is the first to mention the resurrection in non-metaphorical terms when he describes the “wise”, the Jewish resistance to Antiochus, not dying in vain (Daniel 11).

It was during the intertestamental period that scribes began writing about the resurrection of the dead, among many other topics of concern during late Second Temple Judaism. The Qumran community kept these writings in clay jars within caves in case the community was taken out by the Romans.

The Jewish religious leaders in Jesus’ time knew these writings, e.g., The Epistle of Enoch and 2 Maccabees. The disciples knew them. Paul knew them. The writings were talked about in the synagogues and on the streets. These writings offered a Messianic hope for the coming day when God would put things right. In the meantime, they stoked courage against the looming threat of Roman authority. It is very likely that Mary and Martha would have known about these writing as well. It appears that Martha had an understanding of them when she confronts Jesus after her brother Lazarus dies.

When Martha heard that Jesus had arrived, she went to meet him. Mary, meanwhile stayed sitting at home.

“Master,” said Martha to Jesus, “if only you’d been here! Then my brother wouldn’t have died! But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask him for.”

“Your brother will rise again,” replied Jesus.

“I know he will rise on the last day.”

(Notice the role reversals from the previous Mary and Martha encounter with Jesus in their home? Martha, the fussbudget homebody, is now interested to hear what Jesus has to say. She goes to meet him. Mary, who doted on Jesus at his feet, stays at home where she grieves and perhaps sulks that Jesus wasn’t there for her brother. She was given another chance at Jesus’ feet.)

Jesus responded to Martha.

“I am the resurrection and the life,” replied Jesus. “Anyone who believes in me will live, even if they die. And anyone who lives and believes in me will never, ever die. Do you believe this?”

“Yes, master,” she said. “This is what I’ve come to believe: that you are the Messiah, the son of God, the one who was to come into the world.”

Jesus responded to Martha’s eschatological understanding with, in effect, “I am revising your understanding with personal present tense knowledge of me”. Jesus then asks for Mary. Proximity to Jesus matters and not only for Mary and Martha’s sake but also for Jesus’ sake. He wants to see for himself the loss, the grief and the pain we feel. He would carry our griefs and sorrows to the cross and then remove the sting of death with his (and then our) resurrection.

When Mary came to where Jesus was, she saw him and fell down at his feet.

“Master!” she said, “If only you’d been here, my brother wouldn’t have died!”

When Jesus saw her crying, and the Judeans who had come with her crying, he was deeply stirred in his spirit, and very troubled…”

Mary and Martha witnessed the resurrection of their brother Lazarus. The three of them would learn of and perhaps be among the over five-hundred brothers and sisters who saw Jesus alive after his resurrection (1 Cor. 15: 5). All of them were witnesses of the things that came to pass. And what came to pass was not a doctrine or a philosophy or an apparition – a ghost. It was bodily resurrection.

No mere manmade philosophy, ancient or otherwise, could ever revive the dead or comfort the living in their loss with “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” No amount of pleasure reduces the pain we feel. No amount of materialism and its cheerleading proponent Progressivism – a political pandering to self-pity – will provide hope for today. Those philosophical positions are about nursing wounds. Those philosophical positions are ephemera compared to the reality of the bodily Resurrection of Jesus and the new life offered to those who believe.

Only the Resurrection and the Life can reverse the downward spiral of mankind and provide hope that doesn’t pass away with a meal. Live in the present tense Resurrection and Life as Mary and Martha and hundreds of early followers of Jesus did.

Are you witnesses of all this? Of the resurrection? Or, are you witnesses of the Easter bunny? I think that’s what Paul had in mind when he mocked the Corinthians.

Empty tomb

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

The Resurrection is the central theme in every Christian sermon reported in the Acts. The Resurrection, and its consequences were the “gospel” or good news which the Christians brought: what we call the “gospels,” the narratives of Our Lord’s life and death, were composed later for the benefit of those who had already accepted the gospel. They were in no sense the basis of Christianity: they were written for those already converted. The miracle of the Resurrection, and the theology of that miracle, comes first: the biography comes later as a comment on it. Nothing could be more unhistorical than to pick out selected sayings of Christ from the gospels and to regard those as the datum and the rest of the New Testament as a construction upon it. The first fact in the history of Christendom is a number of people who say they have seen the Resurrection.

– Miracles, C.S. Lewis

Filed under Christianity, Death, Easter, Greek History, History, Philosophy, Short Story Tagged with , , , ,

Six Other Degrees of Separation

August 20, 2017 Leave a comment

 

Six blind men live in Metropolis, Illinois. They were born in the eighties and have been blind from birth.  

These six men consider the earth to be round. They came to this understanding during their grade school education which included handling of the classroom globe. Their day-to-day experience told them that the world was flat and with many sharp corners.

From Mrs. Foley, their high school physical science teacher, these six men learned about Ptolemy and Copernicus. They learned that the sun and not the earth is at the center of our universe. Their day-to-day experience taught them that their universe was a big as the darkness in which they lived.

One day in August, as they listened to the news on the radio, these six men heard about a total solar eclipse. To their delight the path of totality, the announcer said, would be through Carbondale, Illinois.

When the morning of the total eclipse came, the six men took a bus to Carbondale. When they arrived the men soon became separated by the rush and noise of the crowds. While sitting on the bus the men had agreed to return on the 6:30pm bus to Metropolis.

One blind man found his way to a corner where there was talk of a shuttle bus to the viewing site. He got on.

The second blind man asked for the directions to where everyone would be for the event. A young couple said, “Follow us”. The blind man held onto the woman’s arm.

The third blind man heard a man with a loud speaker say that people should park “over there and walk to the university.” So, he found his way to the university.

The fourth blind man was hungry. So, he asked anyone who could hear if there was food nearby. An old man stopped and said, “there’s a hot dog stand around the next corner”. The blind said, “Thank you” and found his way to the hot dog stand.

The fifth blind man was tired. The noise and confusion made him tired. He found a bench and sat down. Soon he fell asleep.

The sixth blind man heard some street vendors hawking tee shirts and eclipse glasses. He followed the footsteps.

 

By late afternoon the six men had arrived at the bus station. At 6:10 pm they boarded the bus. The bus headed back to Metropolis at 6:30 pm.

As they rode along the six blind men began to talk about the day’s event.

The first blind man spoke. “The eclipse is of great spiritual value. I heard street people everywhere as I walked. They were offering remembrances and spiritual items like incense candles, crystals, and, and, special glasses to see it with. One kind man told me that no one should look at the great phenomenon without special glasses. But since I am blind, I bought a tee shirt instead. They told me it says, “I survived the 2017 Total Eclipse”.

The second blind man spoke. “No. How can it have any spiritual meaning? It is just a novelty, something unique-‘a Magic Shadow-show’. It only happens once every so many years. People should go to the carnival, have some food and entertainment, enjoy themselves. The eclipse is good times.”

The third blind spoke. “The eclipse is inclusive. It brings people together. I heard a woman say that she heard that all her friends were coming to view the eclipse. So, she had to come to. ‘Everyone was doing it,’ she said.”

“What?” The fourth blind man jumped in. “Not everyone is doing it. Someone told me that the older Navajos will not look at it when it is happening. They fear bad things can happen if you look during the eclipse, like health issues. The eclipse is taboo.”

The fifth blind man spoke. “All I know is that the eclipse is eerie. When I heard the people around me say “It’s happening,” it was like the earth stood still. I suddenly felt a chill like the sun had been unplugged. And the birds even stopped tweeting. The eclipse is scary.”

The last blind man spoke. “It’s worse than you can imagine. Someone next to me said “This is super cool. I’ve never seen anything like this before in my life.” I looked up for a long time but of course I saw nothing. But now, my eyes burn so much I want to tear them out. The eclipse is a deep burning darkness.”

 

 

 

© J. Ann Johnson, 2017, All Rights Reserved

 

~~~

 

August 21, 2017 – 1:21p.m. CDT

Filed under Philosophy, Science, Short Story Tagged with , , ,

Palm Sunday and the “Epicurean Paradox” is Solved

April 9, 2017 Leave a comment

 

“The gods can either take away evil from the world and will not, or, being willing to do so cannot; or they neither can nor will, or lastly, they are able and willing. If they have the will to remove evil and cannot, then they are not omnipotent. If they can but will not, then they are not benevolent. If they are neither able nor willing, they are neither omnipotent nor benevolent. Lastly, if they are both able and willing to annihilate evil, why does it exist?” ― Epicurus

 

Just a few centuries before the first Palm Sunday, Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 B.C.) promoted to his followers the notions of another ancient Greek philosopher, Demetrius (c. 460 – c. 370 B.C.). Demetrius’ had proposed the theory of Atomism to account for the change he saw around him.

The theory in brief: random, unguided ‘atoms’ (as he called them) smash into each other, thereby creating the world and life as we know it. Such a hypothesis turned philosophy by Epicurus gave Epicurus the ‘means’ to do away with a personally involved god and remove human accountability. He went on to tweak Demetrius’ theory. He said that atoms do not always go in straight lives but can “swerve”. As such, his philosophy was then able to avoid atomism’s inherent determinism and to allow for man’s free will.

“What was most important in Epicurus’ philosophy of nature was the overall conviction that our life on this earth comes with no strings attached; that there is no Maker whose puppets we are; that there is no script for us to follow and be constrained by; that it is up to us to discover the real constraints which our own nature imposes on us.” ― Epicurus, The Epicurus Reader

Epicurus also taught that nothing should be believed, except for that which was tested through direct observation and logical deduction – believed via the sensate and reason. Hence, the beginning of the fact/value split so prevalent in man’s thinking today. Epicurus formed this dichotomy when he decided that he had to fend for himself.

He taught that the ‘gods’ were off angry somewhere upstairs. The Roman and Greek ‘gods’ were distant and uninvolved and therefore unrelated to ‘thinking’ and ‘sensing’ man’s life. Man had to make do with the atoms he had. So, too, Deism, began to take root.

“It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.” –Epicurus

 

Palm Sunday. Enter Jesus. Divine glory is riding on a donkey weeping over Jerusalem and the people who rejected their vocation. He is riding on a donkey to meet evil head on and to put the world right. The “Epicurean Paradox” had been addressed and solved. On Palm Sunday, every theory about God had been proven false. Jesus would be everything you need to know about God.

Epicurus didn’t see this “swerve” coming, but the prophet Zechariah did.

 

 Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion!

   Shout, Daughter Jerusalem!

See, your king comes to you,

   righteous and victorious,

lowly and riding on a donkey,

    on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

I will take away the chariots from Ephraim

    and the warhorses from Jerusalem,

    and the battle bow will be broken.

He will proclaim peace to the nations.

  His rule will extend from sea to sea

   and from the River to the ends of the earth.

As for you, because of the blood of my covenant with you,

   I will free your prisoners from the waterless pit.

Return to your fortress, you prisoners of hope;

   even now I announce that I will restore twice as much to you.

Zechariah 9: 9-12

 

Coincidental fact:

“Epicurus’ school, which was based in the garden of his house and thus called “The Garden”, had a small but devoted following in his lifetime.”

 

 

More about Epicurus:  Aren’t You a Bit Epicurious?

Filed under Palm Sunday, Philosophy Tagged with , , ,

On the Brink

January 11, 2017 Leave a comment

 

On the Brink

 

“Why?” the child asks.

“Who says?” the youth asks.

“When can I?” the teenager asks.

“Why not?” the twenty-year old asks.

“Who are you?” the thirty-year old asks.

“Where are you?” the forty-year old asks.

“Who am I?” the fifty-year old asks.

“When can I?” the sixty-year old asks.

“What did you say?” the seventy-year old asks.

“Whatever.” the eighty-year old says.

 

 

 

 

 

 

©Ann Johnson, Kingdom Venturers

Filed under Human Interest, Philosophy, prose, Short Story Tagged with , , ,

Leszek Kolakowski-The Sacred and Profound

October 31, 2015 Leave a comment

“We learn history not in order to know how to behave or how to succeed, but to know who we are.”

– Leszek Kołakowski, Polish philosopher and historian of ideas

Filed under Christianity, Philosophy Tagged with , , , , ,

HOW to COMMENCE: “Fail Big; Be Grateful, Seek Wisdom, Get On Your Knees…”

May 23, 2015 Leave a comment

Denzel Washington’s remarkable commencement speech points these graduates forward and away from, hopefully, the dead-end route of Marxist black liberation theology.

Denzel speaks of God-given human desire, of aspirations beyond one’s self, of failing big, of seeking wisdom from above out of a heart of gratefulness and a daily dependence on God. All of these characteristics, he concludes, culminate in a life that makes a difference for the good toward the graduate and to the others he or she may encounter.

Here is something else to ruminate on:

“Today, many people, especially academics, assume that intellectual work takes places in the objective world of the hard sciences, and that the more you move in the direction of the so-called arts, especially things like metaphysics and theology, the more you are simply talking nonsense about nothing. This is the function of Epicurean assumptions, not of the hard sciences themselves; many periods and cultures have developed sophisticated scientific work without assuming that you had to split off from other kinds of knowledge.

Nevertheless, many leading scientists today were brought up on the split-world viewpoint. Some have even, with unintended irony, made it an article of faith that one should not allow articles of faith into the classroom or laboratory….the mistake… of confusing science with scientism, of placing the proper and wise investigation of the natural world within the worldview of Epicureanism, which itself is unproved and indeed unprovable.

So, what’s the alternative? Here, perhaps to the surprise of some, the Christian worldview has a great deal to offer, when you trace it back to its beginnings in ancient Israel, then to Jesus and the writings of the first two or three Christian centuries. The category that emerges again and again in the scriptures and the great teachers of the faith is wisdom, sophia in Greek, Chokma in Hebrew….Wisdom (being) what you need, according to scripture, to become genuinely, fully human. And genuine, fully rounded humanity is what our culture, with its pretense of religion and its variety of unnamed but powerful gods, has been remarkably short of.” (emphasis mine) N.T. Wright, “Surprised by Scripture.”

Our ability to imagine, to intuit and to be wise has been greatly damaged by education that presupposes a fact/value split.

“What renders man an imaginative and moral being is that in society he gives new aims to his life which could not have existed in solitude: the aims of friendship, religion, science, and art.” George Santayana

Regarding “Epicurean assumptions” see my previous posts:

Aren’t You A Bit Epicurious?

Aren’t You a Bit Solipsistic?

Epicurus “High-Horse” Mal-Ware v. 2.015

One Nation Under Epicurus?

***

This post is dedicated to my nephew Joseph (Joe) who has just graduated from high school. The open house is next Saturday. Congrats Joe!

Joe, I know that you already have God-given desires in your heart. May God grant you the desires of your heart. And don’t forget. Enjoy the ride and “Every girl’s crazy about a sharp dressed” grad.

Filed under Christianity, Current Events 2015, Education, Philosophy Tagged with , , , , , , ,

College Trigger Warnings-Nothing New Under the Hard Sun

May 4, 2015 Leave a comment

So one day, as Plato conveyed to me over a glass of ruby-red Greek wine, he goes back into the claustrophobic cave where he once had the courage to flee. He excitedly tells his former neighbors-the self-shackled cave dwellers-that there is brilliant light outside. Everything can be seen clearly. Truth and beauty await them outside the cave.

He tells them that the large fire at the back of the cave is casting the shadowy flickering images on the walls of their cave. This is what is scaring them. He tells them that their understanding of life, their vision is veiled and distorted. “Come and see”, he tells them.

Most of the cave dwellers respond apathetically. Some had tried to read the shapes on the wall and to discern their meaning but to no avail. (The images are the cave dwellers themselves as distorted silhouettes projected onto the walls by the firelight. They cannot figure this out. Besides, they tell themselves, “Truth is what our cave dwelling friends let us get away with saying.”)

After Plato’s pleading the cave dwellers tell him that they do want anyone to stop the picture show. They know what to expect day after day. They look forward to the same known foggy reality.

Plato, my friend, was then denounced as part of a lunatic fringe element for his Ideas. He was ridiculed and banished from the cave. If the cave dwellers had been not shackled they would have killed the ‘prophet’ of a new and illuminated world. Instead they invented trigger warnings to fend off intruders.

The end.

Plato's Cave

Plato’s Cave

The video link at the bottom of this post sheds some light on the scary shadow developed skepticism of many people hunkered down in their trigger warning guarded thought caves.

Tim Keller, introduced in the video, is also a contributor to the Christian-based theistic evolution science blog Biologos.org.

After Keller’s presentation, about 44 minutes into the video, there is a question and answer period.

Several students question Keller including two philosophy students who ramble on trying to form a question that Keller can answer. It is an interesting discourse, to be sure. Kant is brought out and dusted off.

It was Kant and the thinkers of Enlightenment that brought out and dusted off the “Upper” and “Lower” storybooks stashed away on the shelves of philosophy for centuries – basically, the ‘atomistic’ philosophy promoted by the Greek philosopher Epicurus.

Once Darwin came on the scene the thought-value split quickly became the Western mindset. Man, we were told, had evolved out of his unenlightened cave to live in his new cave of Scientism. Religion was dismissed as only flickering sentimental shadows of the past. Truth had been divided into Continental and Analytical thinking, with no middle ground between.

Once I built an ivory tower

so I could worship from above

when I climb down to be set free

she took me in again

from “Hard Sun”, written by Gordon Peterson

Francis Schaeffer, the founder of L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland, used the following diagram to describe modern man’s dualistic thinking to those who studied at L’Abri.

The Two-Story Concept of Truth

Values

Private, subjective, relative

Facts

Public, objective, universal

 

This dichotomy has grown so pervasive that most people do not even recognize they hold it. It has become part of the cultural air we breathe. Consider two prominent examples:

Martin Luther King Jr.: “Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals with mainly values.”

Albert Einstein: “Science yields facts but not “value judgments”; religion expresses values but cannot “speak of facts.”

 

Modern man, hiding behind easily tripped trigger warnings inside his cave, shackled to soulless hand-held materialism denies the existence of the whole outside world, a world brightly illuminated. It was a medievalist poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, who understood the magnitude of the illuminated whole: “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”

Once out of the cave, reality for man is the Hard Sun. Yet, Man will see and then, if willing, embrace both Continental and Analytical thinking. He can embrace both nature and grace, both facts and values, both Truth and Beauty.

And Man can also walk in the eternal light of God’s Son, for he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

The Veritas Forum: Belief in an Age of Skepticism?

Added:

If you are skeptical about the reality of the resurrection of Jesus then I have some light for you:  Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony by Richard Bauckham

Filed under Christianity, Culture, Philosophy Tagged with , , , , , ,

← Older posts