America’s ‘DeValued’ Moral Currency

February 12, 2014 Leave a comment

Pervasive throughout our land is the avoidance of asking the hard questions.  We shun the real questions about life and death and about God.  We do not want to talk “good and evil.”  We glibly talk about body and soul, about reason and revelation, about eternity and time. 

 The other day I happened to watch The Lord of the Rings (LTR):  The Return of the King.  Putting the above statement into LTR terms, we want to live peaceably in the shire without ever having to venture out and deal with the Ring, a Ring which has consequential power over us. We may say to ourselves, “Why destroy the ring when we don’t know for sure it exists? We may have thoughts that all that the shire presents to us is all there is to life. We will go on with our quietude in order to avoid conflict and to live peaceably. We choose society’s ‘safe’ surroundings and its costly ‘insurance’ policies to avoid the dangerous quest that truth demands of us. We fear what it might take to make the journey.  We fear we will lose ourselves on the way and never return to the shire. We fear, we fear and we fear again.

   We fear conflict.  And this is because inherent in conflict are the morals or ethics that each of the disparate parties brings with them. Conflict is the evil we most want to avoid.  Our “dialectics” begin with opposites and often end in synthesis or in the exclusion (or boycott) of the ‘other’.  We will seek out the ‘no-fault divorce’ of our language from its historical meaning. We give a pass to “Political-Correctness” (PC) because PC talk bypasses truth and goes straight to a word originally devoid of any value in and of itself but now given full political power: “diversity.”  

With the acceptance of “diversity,” also a code-word for “whatever” or “it-depends,” moral relativity’s child, lawlessness, increasingly becomes a de facto way to govern and self-govern. Yet, “Wisdom shouts in the street, She lifts her voice in the square; At the head of the noisy streets she cries out; At the entrance of the gates in the city She utters her sayings…”

As we go on and find more and more moral conflicts and in order to avoid angst we find it easier to believe nothing of import so that we do not have to fear disagreement, ostracism or even death for what one believes. And because we do not believe in anything then we cannot be responsible for outcomes. Nihilism’s union with materialism begets the DNA of nihilism – lives drained of any meaning other than the moment. In fact, we are told duplicitously “to live in the moment.”

 To choose to believe nothing means that absolute truth is discharged from our lives.  Its voice is no longer heeded.  In fact its voice is now being drowned out.  The commotion that you hear daily is man’s raucous resistance to leaving the shire ~ his tweeting and texting of empty words, the ever streaming pop/rock music filling the void, the Surround sound of ubiquitous blaring entertainment.  It is as if men and women were walking around in the dark calling out to each other and never finding the light switch. They have chosen to stay in the purgatory of their fears.

 The avoidance of pain and conflict has become our primary goal in life.  This is seen in the young voter’s desire for Obamacare.  The health care reform is seen by them as in line with their “values”.  The reform is also seen as providing a sense of self-esteem in that it affirms the young voters wish to avoid pain and insecurity at all costs. On the surface Obamacare appears to provide security for themselves and for others while in truth it is a compromise of what is good and what is evil – the good being the desire for your well-being and the well-being of others and the evil which is the lie that Obama and the government will somehow provide self-esteem and security for you and others and do it with altruism. Remember, God has now been replaced by social science, social science based on rationalism and egalitarianism (think John Rawls, Laurence Tribe, etc.) all under the banner of “Social Justice.”  Rationalism’s,’ “Social Justice” trumps God every time.  Social science is now becoming the creator of society’s values, e.g., God is not to be talked about in public but homosexuality must be.  All of this in spite of the fact that rationalism without revelation could never create value. As Benedict XVI said in 1969:

“What is essential is that reason shut in on itself does not remain reasonable or rational, just as the state that aims at being perfect becomes tyrannical. Reason needs revelation in order to be able to be effective as reason.”

 The avoidance of truth with its inherent conflicts with other than the truth affects our relationships, our sexuality, our creativity, our culture. In place of absolute truth Americans, as mentioned, have latched on to “values.” And our new “value” system has a new way of talking:  “lifestyle”, “Be Yourself;” “Be original;” “Let go and be;”  diversity;” “I have my rights.” But now “rights” are no longer the natural inalienable God-given rights “of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  Now “rights” have morphed into feelings worn on our sleeve.  We demand that others accept what we feel and that others be open and tolerant. This is what we value above all else. Right and wrong (and love (read not sex)) no longer have a place in our psyche. “Values” – a synthesis of good and evil dominates our diseased culture. And when we ignore serious questions we create words with synthetic meanings to describe our lives.

 “Charisma” is one of those words often heard today. Charisma was once considered a God-given grace but has been used as cover for the “banality of evil” as Hannah Arendt, political philosopher, notes when talking about Hitler’s appeal.

  Allan Bloom, another political philosopher, notes in his 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind:  How Higher Education Has failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students, “Charisma both justifies leaders and excuses followers.  The very word gives a positive twist to rabble-rousing qualities and activities treated as negative in our constitutional tradition.  And it s vagueness makes it a tool for frauds and advertising men adept at manipulating images.” Consider that both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have both been called charismatic leaders.

 In the introduction to his book, Bloom writes about what he sees in the classrooms of higher education: 

“There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of:  almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes that truth is relative….They are unified only in their relativism and their allegiance to equality….They have been equipped with this framework early on, and it is the modern replacement for the inalienable rights that used to be the traditional American grounds for a free society…The danger they have been taught to fear from absolutism is not error but intolerance.  Relativism is necessary to openness; and this is virtue, the only virtue, which all primary education for more than fifty years has dedicated itself to inculcating.  Openness ~ and the relativism that makes it only plausible stance in the face of various claims to truth and various ways of life and kinds of human beings ~ is the great insight of our times. The true believer is the real danger.  The study of history and culture teaches that all the world was mad in the past; men always thought they were right, and that led to wars, persecutions, slavery, xenophobia, racism, and chauvinism.  The point (now) is not to correct the mistakes and really be right; rather it is not to think you are right at all.”  (emphasis mine)

  In a later chapter titled The German Connection, Bloom relates how Nietzsche, Heidegger, Hegel, Weber, Freud have influenced American thinking.  Americans, within a “pro-choice” democracy, have assimilated this German thinking sometimes turning it on its head.   Bloom writes, 

“…there is now an entirely new language of good and evil, originating in an attempt to get “beyond good and evil” and preventing us from talking with any conviction about good and evil anymore.  Even those who deplore our current moral condition do so in the very language that exemplifies that condition.”

“The new language is that of value relativism and it constitutes a change in our view of things moral and political as great as the one that took place when Christianity replaced Greek and Roman paganism.” (empahsis mine) …

“Value relativism can be taken to be a great release from the perpetual tyranny of good and evil, with its cargo and shame and guilt, and the endless efforts that the pursuit of the one and the avoidance of the other enjoin. Intractable good and evil cause infinite distress – like war and sexual repression – which is almost instantly relieved when more flexible values are introduced.  One need not feel bad about or uncomfortable with oneself when just a little value adjustment is necessary.  And this longing to shuck off constraints and have one peaceful, happy world is the first of the affinities between our real American world and that of German philosophy in its most advanced form, given expression by the critics of the President’s speech.”

 Here Bloom is referring to the clamor arising when President Reagan referred to the Soviet Union as the “evil empire.”  When yet at another time Reagan said that the Soviets had “different values,” this statement was met “at worst with silence and frequently with approval,” thus revealing our loathing of absolutism in the former statement.

 At the beginning of the chapter Values, Bloom, relates, “We have come back to the point where we began (in the book), where values take the place of good and evil.” (emphasis mine)

And so like Gollum we place the utmost value on the ring of power, becoming blind to its tyranny over us. Along with the ring we call our values “My Precious.”  Under the yolk of temporal “values” and without facing the serious questions of life we lose ourselves, we lose the real.  We lose love, romance, culture, art ~ everything that gives meaning to life.

 Love or charity, a virtue which must be constantly worked at, is replaced with ‘sexual rights.’ Consider that in our culture sexual activity is not to be repressed or self-controlled but rather it is to be given preeminent unrestrained “value.” Think Sandra Fluke and contraception. Think in-your-face homosexuality. Does America “confirm her soul in self-control” or not?

 Romance, apart from truth is portrayed in movie after movie as just a response to nihilism. Nowhere to be found is the expectation, the unrequited desire and the hoped-for revelation of real romance. Without absolutes there can be no true romance.

 We are a culture that seeks therapeutic counseling.  Yet modern psychology, the sworn enemy of shame and guilt, refuses to talk about good and evil and therefore offers nothing for the soul. Freudian psychology only brings the patient back to repressed sex.

 Modern art has nothing of consequence to offer. Consider the pop art of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.

 Deafening music, pop or rock, pummels our ear drums daily evoking barbaric passions and depriving the soul of its senses.

 Tattoos deface our bodies so as to reveal our disdain for the discipline that purity of mind and body requires. Inking is given the (non-)value of counter-culture and rabble-rousing.

 Religion, wherein serious questions are faced, is being replaced by positive thinking as preached from the temples of TV.

 In view of the fact that our nation is becoming increasingly devoid of absolutes and truth while at the same time becoming increasingly laced with relativism and sliding scale “values” consider this:

 Jesus, the Son of the Living God and The Way, the Truth and the Life says, “You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free.” Free from what? Free from fear.  All fear:  the fear of the unknown, the fear of facing ultimate accountability, the fear of death, the fear of loss and personal suffering, the fear of evil.  Jesus’ perfect love casts out all fear. Because of this we can face the serious questions of life head-on knowing that God ~ Father, Son and Holy Spirit love us, that They stand with us and that Jesus has gone before us through the same difficult places. Seek Him and He will be found.

 Going back to the LTR analogy do you remember how Frodo and Sam and the rest rejoiced that the ring had been destroyed, that their arduous life and death journey had been accomplished? Their courage and resoluteness saved the shire, themselves and Middle Earth even while the others in the shire had no clue as to what was going on.  You and I must do the same.

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

What Your Gut is Telling Your Brain and Other True Stories

February 8, 2014 Leave a comment

no bread

Growing older I have become more food aware.  Not because I watch the Food Network or Diners, Drive-ins and Dives (which is rather fun to watch). But rather because I am more conscious of what my body is showing me and telling me. And, because of what I see around me every day. It’s not a pretty sight.

 At work, I sit in a cube. The cube is in a quad.  There are two other women in the quad and one open desk.  Of the three of us, I am the only one that drinks water all day long.  The other two women, one who is about my age and the other who is much younger but very old-looking from cigarette smoking, both drink Mountain Dew and all day long.

I only ever see The Smoker eat bagels and cream cheese and crackers.  The other woman eats pretzels from the vending machine.  The smoker is thin, of course, and no doubt malnourished.  The other woman is extra-sized and seems to be aging quickly.

 Now I don’t judge them. I just observe them. It’s not my place to say a word about eating habits.

 Another observation:  I walk to and from work every day from the train station. What I see is that at least one in ten people on the street is obese. I don’t mean heavy I mean obese.  They waddle down the sidewalk with knees that will buckle at any moment.

 Mirror, mirror on the wall:  I see a woman in her early sixties with some facial wrinkles but most people tell me that I don’t look my age when they find out.  I believe this has to do with the fact that I changed my diet a couple of years ago.

 First off, I drink lots of water and an occasional soda drink. I drink wine only the weekends and have stopped drinking beer, except, again, occasionally.  Beer has gluten and I try to avoid all the gluten I can.

 I don’t eat bagels, muffins, oatmeal, cereal or toast in the morning. I eat yogurt, eggs, nuts, and different proteins, including red and white meats and fish. I eat a lot of nuts. I don’t eat peanuts because they are legumes and do not qualify as nuts. I eat salads with olive oil dressings containing almost no carbs or sugar. I always find a good tasting dressing and eat a lot of salads at night.

 I steer clear of gluten, which for me means carbs like breads and pastas and also fruits and sweets. I made other changes as well but let’s move on to how I came about this change. It began when I started reading the following book Wheat Belly. 

 At that time I knew that I never felt good, that I was often depressed and especially after eating a meal I really wanted to eat. I did not sleep well and my belly was an emerging market.

But there was more.  My doctor, after he and I reviewed my bi-annual blood tests found that my Triglyceride number was always above the ‘safe’ level.  My body was turning carbs into fatty cells that would eventually give me heart problems. I need to make some health-smart changes.

 I began noticing that the supermarket seemed to be packed with carbs. Take a look at the frozen food section, the cereal aisle and the snack aisle. Even many condiments have gluten and sugar in them. I learned to be discerning and no longer lazy. I read the labels.

Also, I watched what restaurants offered on their TV commercials.  i don’t have to tell you that all of them offer up all varieties of breaded, carb-ed up, sugared-up filler that is not worth partaking of. I have, infact, learned to think of this ‘kind’ of food as mostly ‘cardboard’ filler and not comfort food.

Now, if you are like me you just might benefit from the following books.  à votre santé

 From the Introduction of Dr. William Davis’ book, Wheat Belly:  Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back To Health:

“You will see that what we are eating, cleverly disguised as a bran muffin or onion ciabatta, is not really wheat at all but the transformed product of genetic research conducted during the latter half of the twentieth century.  Modern wheat is no more real wheat than a chimpanzee is an approximation of a human.  While our hairy primate relatives share 99 percent of all genen found in humans, with longer arms, full body hair, and lesser capacity to win the jackpot at Jeopardy, I trust you can readily tell the difference that 1 percent makes.  Compared to its ancestor of only forty years ago, modern wheat isn’t even close.

I believe that the increase consumption of grains ~ or more accurately, the increased consumption of this genetically altered thing called modern wheat ~ explains the contrast between slender, sedentary people of the fifties and the overweight twenty-first century people, triathletes included.”

 From Part One: Wheat: the Unhealthy Whole Grain, Chapter One, What Belly?:

 “A wheat belly represents the accumulation of fat that results from years of consuming foods that trigger insulin, the hormone of fat storage. While some people store fat in their buttocks and thighs, most people collect ungainly fat around the middle.  This “central” or “visceral” fat is unique:  Unlike fat in other areas, it provokes inflammatory phenomena, distorts insulin responses, and issues abnormal metabolic signals to the rest of the body.  In the unwitting wheat-bellied male, visceral fat also produces estrogen, creating “man breasts.

The consequences of wheat consumption, however, are not just manifested on the body’s surface; wheat can also reach deep down into virtually every organ of the body, from the intestines, liver, heart, and thyroid gland all the way up to the brain. In fact there’s hardly an organ that is not affected by wheat in some potentially damaging way.”

 Heads up:  This brings me to the Introduction of Dr. David Perlmutter’s book, Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth About Wheat, Carbs and Sugar ~ Your Brain’s Silent Killers:

“I’m here to tell you that the fate of your brain is not in your genes.  It’s not inevitable.  And if you’re someone who suffers from another type of brain disorder, such as chronic headaches, depression, epilepsy, or extreme moodiness, the culprit may not be encoded in your DNA.

 It’s in the food you eat.

 Yes, you read that right:  brain dysfunction starts in your daily bread, and I’m going to prove it.  I’ll state it again because I realize it sounds absurd: Modern grains are silently destroying your brain.  By “modern,” I’m not just referring to the refined white flours, pastas, and rice that have already been demonized by the anti-obesity folks;  I’m referring to all the grains that so many of us have embraced as being healthful ~ whole wheat, whole grain, multigrain, seven-grain, live grain, stone-ground, and so on.  Basically, I’m calling what is arguably our most beloved dietary staple a terrorist group that bullies our most precious organ, the brain.  I will demonstrate how fruit and carbohydrates could be health hazards with far-reaching consequences that not only will wreak physical havoc on your brain, but will also accelerate your body’s aging process from the inside out.  This is science fiction; it’s now documented fact.”

 He goes on to say that “Brain disease can largely be prevented through the choices you make in life…This (book) is a game-changer.”

From the book’s cover jacket:  “The cornerstone of all degenerative conditions, including brain disorders is inflammation, which can be triggered by carbs, especially those containing gluten or high in sugar.”

 The book discusses a host of health problems generated by our unhealthy diet:  a low cholesterol number (perhaps due to meds w/statins) has been shown to correlate to depressive mood disorders, Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, diabetes, digestive disorders, memory dysfunction and so on.

 Do you think you should read this book?  You better before you lose your mind!no-Grains

 My son gifted me a book this past Christmas:   Death By Food Pyramid:  How Shoddy Science, Sketchy Politics and Shady Special Interests Ruined Your Health…and How to reclaim It! by Denise Minger.

 From Denise’s blog Raw Foods SOS, “About:”

“This site isn’t specifically low-carb or high-carb, vegan or carnivore, raw food or cooked food, or anything else that could be neatly labeled. My own experience as a (recovered) raw vegan taught me that diet-dogma is killer, so the emphasis here is on unraveling research rather than building an ideology. My goal is to make nutritional science accessible and non-boring to those who really care about their health”

Denise takes on the well-known food pyramid that most of us were taught as school kids.

 “Though my faith in white coats would eventually crumble, I started in the same place most people do:  a state of blissful ignorance.  We grow up thinking nutrition is a fine-tuned science ~ one carefully guarded by the National Institutes for Health, the American Dietetic Association, the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, and other big-name authorities with clout and confidence far beyond our own.  We spend our lives soaking up their ubiquitous advice, filing it away in the brain cabinet where true things go.

Saturated fat clogs your arteries.

Whole grains are heart-healthy.

Lowfat dairy makes your bones strong.

White meat is better than red.

Vegetable oils are healthier than butter.

High-cholesterol foods cause heart disease.

In most cases, we can’t pinpoint where we first heard these things ~ we just know they must be right.”

As usual I am reading several books at the same time. So, I am just getting into Death By Food Pyramid.  And, as usual, I will question what I believe to be factually true against further evidence or knowledge. More food for thought.

Filed under Health Tagged with , , , , , ,

Egalitarianism. Is It Equal To The Task?

February 5, 2014 Leave a comment

The 2014 Olympics is fast approaching… starting-line

 Should Olympians ‘race’ when everyone gets the same prize at the finish line?

 Egalitarianism = equal outcomes.  And equal outcomes are what Progressives want to have happen within our legal system, within our education system ~ within society as a whole.

 Egalitarianism is posited as a means to create the unspoken Utopian bureaucratic island where near-perfect socio-politico-legal systems exist and where no one has advantage over another except for the so-called elite who have been ‘blessed’ with “superior intellect.” Only they know enough to define life for you. (e.g., Cass Sunstein’s recent Nudge book).

 In my younger days I was a sprinter.  I would run many heats and then the final events.  To do so I had to prepare for the weekly track meet. I will use my own ‘summer event’ experience to help you to consider whether egalitarianism is equal to the hard work and discipline required for life’s trials and to decide whether the rise of “egalitarianism” will benefit or hurt our society.

 I wrote the following as a ‘real-life’ depiction of my understanding of the “Constrained Vision” and the “Unconstrained Vision” as delineated by Thomas Sowell in his own favorite book A Conflict of Visions:

A Tale of Two Foot Races

Race Number One:

Eight men enter a race.  They are roughly about the same height and weight but come from very different backgrounds. The eight men enter the race knowing that there will only be one winner.  It was for this outcome that they had prepared themselves with rigorous discipline during the past four years.

Months prior to the track meet the eight men are told of the rules:  A runner must run in qualifying heats. If the runner is successful in those heats the runner will then be allowed to compete in the final race with the other qualifying runners;  a runner who jumps the gun twice at the starting line will be disqualified as having a “false start”;  the commands “Ready”, “Set” and a gun shot will be used by a track official to start the race fairly;  each runner must stay in his lane or he will be disqualified;  runners will be timed and the first runner to cross the finish line will be the winner of the race.

The runners all agree and sign off on the rules before the race.

On the day of the race and after qualifying in the heats eight runners come to the starting line.  They know that they must run straight ahead in their own lane to reach the one-hundred meter line. They know that if they jump the gun twice they will be disqualified from running. They know that they must sprint as hard as they can to cross the finish line first. They are knowingly competing for first place. The race before them has now become the culmination of years of exhausting training and dedication to finishing the race and receiving first prize.

When the race is announced the runners shed their sweats and come to the starting line. The track official then announces, “Ready”. The runners will then carefully position their legs into the starting blocks and place their open hands stretched behind the starting line.  

Once the runners have settled the track official then snaps “Set”.  The runners immediately come up to a “set position”, coiled in their starting block. With the burst of the starting pistol eight men bolt from their starting blocks and run down the track as fast as their disciplined bodies will carry them.

The winner of the race is the one who breaks the tape. There is also a second, a third and fourth place finisher. The runners-up each congratulate the winner for his speed and, implicitly, for his fidelity to the rules and his commitment to the sport of racing.

The first three finishers receive medals, adulation and wreaths of honor from the thousands who have come to watch a fair race between those who have so vigorously prepared themselves. The experience of the race has bolstered each runner’s self-esteem. The cheering crowd is also moved by each runner’s self-sacrifice, dedication and self-discipline. This spectacle has confirmed the crowd’s understanding of athlete’s playing by the rules and aspiring to excel within those rules. Those who witnessed the race that day are stirred, encouraged to excel at what they do.

All eight racers later return home.  The runners-up are now more dedicated than ever to prepare for another day of racing and to receiving their own crown of victory. Ciltius, altius, fortius.

Race Number Two:

Eight men enter a race.  They are roughly about the same height, weight but come from very different backgrounds. The eight men entered the race knowing that everyone will be a winner.  It was for this outcome that they saw no need to prepare themselves with rigorous discipline during the past four years. They just had to show up.

Months prior to the race the eight men are told the rules.  They are told the rules are subject to change at the time of the race based on the current ad hoc articulated reasoning of one superior intellectual with unquestionable virtue.  A runner must run in qualifying heats but this will not be a constraint. Whether or not a runner is successful in those heats he will be allowed to compete in the final race with other ‘qualifying’ runners. The heats are basically events created to satisfy the need for more equality.

More rules: a runner who jumps the gun twice at the starting line will not be disqualified from running. Instead he will be given another chance; the commands “Ready” and “Set” and a gun shot will be used by a track official to start the race fairly, though any sincere attempt to cooperate with the official will be accepted; each runner must stay in his lane or he will be disqualified unless, of course, their background is such that they have never stayed within the lines; runners will not be timed because such keeping of minutes would be discrimination against slower runners.  The first runner to cross the finish line will wait at the finish line so that everyone will be considered a winner of the race. This must be done at any personal cost to the first one crossing the finish line.

The runners agree and sign off on the rules before the race.

On the day of the race all of the runners come to the starting line.  They know that they are supposed to run down to the finish line before the outcome-determining patrons. They know that there will be equal prizes and the egalitarian appreciation of well-wishers to look forward to. They are going to run for this reason. This race is now the culmination of years of knowing that the battle is just showing up and doing what you are told.

When all the runners are in their starting blocks and their hands are behind the starting line the track official then says, “Ready”.  After a long moment of reasoned judgment the official says “Set”.  The runners come up to set position.  Then the race official shoots the starting gun. The eight men come out of their starting blocks and run down the track as fast as their unfocused discipline has trained them.

At the finish line everyone is a Finisher, even those who left the race due to being out of breath. There are hand-shakes and kudos all around for having shown up for such an event.

At the awards ceremony all the runners receive medals and congratulations. Thousands have come to watch a race between runners who have shown up for a race where the outcome was predetermined to be fair ~ fair as defined by the few judges of superior intellect and of unquestioned virtue.

Later, all the runners return home and rest for another day of showing up.

*****

A Tale of Two Foot Races:  Equal Opportunities vs. Equal Outcomes by Sally Paradise © Sally Paradise, 2013, All Rights Reserved

Added 2/7/2014:

Communism Leads to Slavery Not To Equality

Filed under Egalitarianism, Political Commentary, Politics, social commentary Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

“It depends” – The New/Old ‘Truth’

February 3, 2014 Leave a comment

Remember the serpent? You know, the thing that questioned what God had said about not eating from the Tree of Life?  The snake in the grass… in the Garden…”Did God really say…?”

Consider the relativism of our postmodern culture, a culture born out of the fact/value split I touched upon in my post Saving Leonardo and Modern Man From Himself.

The article below will give you some well-known real-life examples:

Politics, Postmodern Lying And Our Poisoned Culture By Victor Davis Hanson of , Investor’s Business Daily

Filed under Christianity Tagged with , , ,

Exclusion & Embrace in the Garden of Good & Evil

February 1, 2014 Leave a comment

Tomorrow, before I receive the Body and Blood of the Lord I will again kneel and pray the Lord’ s Prayer:

Our Father, which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth,
As it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive them that trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,

The power, and the glory,

For ever and ever.

Amen.

(Traditional, taken from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, 1662).

And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive them that trespass against us.

Wow, Lord, you want me to forgive that person or that group who has done me so much harm and who even now shows so much hatred towards me?!

When someone wrongs us often our first thought is to retaliate, to lash out and to return to the ‘other’ the same pain caused to us. But, then, at other times, our response may be to become silent and later, perturbable to others. We will constantly gripe and complain, projecting onto others the self-justifying anger and resentment that we bear from the original hurt. The inception of unreality quickly takes shape. It’s not the reality from above.

The story of revenge is as old as the Scriptures but Jesus put an end to this cycle of anger born out of an unforgiving spirit.

Think about the following words in the context of personal relationships and also in the unfolding drama of human relationships across the globe.  Global warming, as a public ‘issue’, is silly compared to the rage, hate and evil which turns brother against brother in a continuing cycle of violence.

Quotes from Miroslav Volf, Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation

“Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans even as I exclude myself from the community of sinners. But no one can be in the presence of the God of the crucified Messiah for long without overcoming this double exclusion ~ without transposing the enemy from the sphere of monstrous inhumanity into the sphere of shared humanity and herself from the sphere of proud innocence into the sphere of common sinfulness. When one knows that the torturer will not eternally triumph over the victim, one is free to rediscover that person’s humanity and imitate God’s love for him. And when one knows that God’s love is greater than all sin, one is free to see oneself in the light of God’s justice and so rediscover one’s own sinfulness.” (p.124)

“Only those who are forgiven and who are willing to forgive will be capable of relentlessly pursuing justice without falling into the temptation to pervert it into injustice.” (p.123)

“When God sets out to embrace the enemy, the result is the cross. On the cross the dancing circle of self-giving and mutually indwelling divine persons opens up for the enemy; in the agony of the passion the movement stops for a brief moment and a fissure appears so that sinful humanity can join in (see John 17:21). We, the others ~ we, the enemies – are embraced by the divine persons who love us with the same love with which they love each other and therefore make space for us within their own eternal embrace.” (p.129)

Volf on the Parable of the Prodigal Son:  “relationship has priority over all [moral] rules” that reconciliation ~ the ultimate goal of justice – could be made complete.” (p.164)

“Without entrusting oneself to the God who judges justly, it will hardly be possible to follow the crucified Messiah and refuse to retaliate when abused. The certainty of God’s just judgment at the end of history is the presupposition for the renunciation of violence in the middle of it. The divine system of judgment is not the flip side of the human reign of terror, but a necessary correlate of human nonviolence.“ (p.302) (emphasis mine)

Also consider forgiveness as practiced…

Cornelia “Corrie” ten Boom (April 15, 1892 ~- April 15, 1983) was a Dutch Christian Holocaust survivor who helped many Jews escape the Nazis during World War II. Listen to her story here and this short video about her forgiveness.

How to stop evil:

“To triumph fully, evil needs two victories, not one. The first victory happens when an evil deed is perpetrated; the second victory, when evil is returned. After the first victory, evil would die if the second victory did not infuse it with new life.”

– Miroslav Volf
The End of Memory, Remembering Rightly In A Violent World

 *****

Romans 12:21: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

*****

“The only way to overcome evil is to let it run itself to a standstill because it does not find the resistance it is looking for. Resistance merely creates further evil and adds fuel to the flames. But when evil meets no opposition and encounters no obstacle but only patient endurance, its sting is drawn, and at last it meets an opponent which is more than its match.”

–Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

Filed under Christianity Tagged with , , , , , ,

Check Your Motives At The Door

January 31, 2014 Leave a comment

Consider the following when you listen to the media, read the news and formulate the motives behind your actions:

Evil & Antilove

“There really are people and institutions made up of people, who respond with hatred in the presence of goodness and would destroy the good insofar as it is in their power to do so. They do this not with conscious malice but blindly, lacking awareness of their own evil — indeed, seeking to avoid any such awareness. As has been described of the devil in religious literature, they hate the light and instinctively will do anything to avoid it, including attempting to extinguish it. They will destroy the light in their own children and in all other beings subject to their power.

Evil people hate the light because it reveals themselves to themselves. They hate goodness because it reveals their badness; they hate love because it reveals their laziness. They will destroy the light, the goodness, the love in order to avoid the pain of such self-awareness. My second conclusion, then, is that evil is laziness carried to its ultimate, extraordinary extreme. As I have defined it, love is the antithesis of laziness. Ordinary laziness is a passive failure to love. Some ordinarily lazy people may not lift a finger to extend themselves unless they are compelled to do so. Their being is a manifestation of nonlove; still, they are not evil.

Truly evil people, on the other hand, actively rather than passively avoid extending themselves. They will take any action in their power to protect their own laziness, to preserve the integrity of their sick self. Rather than nurturing others, they will actually destroy others in this cause. If necessary, they will even kill to escape the pain of their own spiritual growth. As the integrity of their sick self is threatened by the spiritual health of those around them, they will seek by all manner of means to crush and demolish the spiritual health that may exist near them.

I define evil, then, as the exercise of political power — that is, the imposition of one’s will upon others by overt or covert coercion — in order to avoid extending one’s self for the purpose of nurturing spiritual growth. Ordinary laziness is nonlove; evil is antilove. (emphasis mine)

M. Scott Peck, Psychiatrist & author

The Road Less Travelled 

 

  • Evil is not simply the absence of goodness ~ it is actively hateful and destructive.
  • “Evil” is “live” spelled backwards ~ likewise, evil is in opposition to life.
  • Evil people are to be pitied, not hated.

 “Since [narcissists] deep down, feel themselves to be faultless, it is inevitable that when they are in conflict with the world they will invariably perceive the conflict as the world’s fault. Since they must deny their own badness, they must perceive others as bad. They project their own evil onto the world. They never think of themselves as evil, on the other hand, they consequently see much evil in others.”

“The difficulty we have in accepting responsibility for our behavior lies in the desire to avoid the pain of the consequences of that behavior.”

“I shall, however, break with tradition and use the neuter for Satan. While I know Satan to be lustful to penetrate us, I have not in the least experienced this desire as sexual or creative—only hateful and destructive. It is hard to determine the sex of a snake.”
from People of the Lie

“Since the primary motive of the evil is disguise, one of the places evil people are most likely to be found is within the church. What better way to conceal one’s evil from oneself as well as from others than to be a deacon or some other highly visible form of Christian within our culture”

Consider these variations of antilove:

Freed Palestinian “Hero” Terrorist Boasts of his Murders

Pinkwashing, Redwashing, Greenwashing ~ the multi-colored world of anti-Israel hate

Shooter targeting Family Research Council wanted to “smear Chick-fil-A in their faces” after murders

SPLC’s hatewatch gives cover to hate

More confrontation outside Chicago Chick-fil-A

Chicago Chick-fil-A Kiss-In protesters “chalk” homeless street preacher

Filed under Evil Tagged with , , , , , ,

SOTU: “Same-o, same-o; “We’re from Chicago.”

January 30, 2014 Leave a comment

A Paul McKinely/Chicago Black Grassroots Response to SOTU or Same as he always was:

Filed under Chicago, Politics Tagged with , , , ,

If this is crazy, I don’t want to be sane!

January 26, 2014 Leave a comment

If this is crazy, I don’t want to be sane!.

Filed under Short Story Tagged with

Saving Leonardo and Modern Man From Himself

January 25, 2014 Leave a comment

dual mindHave you read Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals & Meaning by Nancy Pearcey, B & H Publishing Group, Copyright 2010?  

It has been a while, 2010 actually, since I read this Christian-perspective-of-culture concordance. A certain blog post triggered a memory redux of Saving Leonardo.

The Christian author Nancy Pearcey writes about the dualism behind modern man’s worldview.  Her book informs us as to how secularism emerged to be a prominent worldview. She also tells us how she sees that worldview affecting us, destroying our culture.  Her desire in writing this book is to make every Christian knowledgeable and aware, prepared to take on the current secular worldview:

“A worldview approach enables Christians to move beyond merely denouncing social ills such as abortion, which can sound harsh, angry and judgmental.  And, it equips them to demonstrate positively that biblical wisdom leads to a just and humane society.  Protests and placards are not enough.  To be strategically effective in protecting human dignity, we need to get behind the slogans and uncover the secular worldviews that shape people’s thinking.”

For starters there is this curious quote at the front of the book and the only reference to book’s title reference, Leonard da Vinci, that I could find aside from a section titled “Da Vinici versus Degas” (regrettably, there is no index at the back of the book):

Leonardo da Vinci

Hence the anguish and the innermost tragedy of this universal man, divided between his irreconcilable worlds.

(Giovanni Gentile, Leonardo’s Thought)

I’m not sure why Pearcey chose Giovanni Gentile’s quote to provide the “Forward” for her book about modern man’s dualistic thinking.  Giovanni Gentile was known at one time as the official philosopher of Fascism in Italy.  His theories contained rejection of individualism, acceptance of collectivism, with the state as the ultimate location of authority and loyalty to which the individual found in the conception of individuality no meaning outside the state (which in turn justified totalitarianism). Wow! In essence Giovanni Gentile didn’t believe a person could have a thought of his own apart from the state. 

In any case, as a student of art, music, literature and science as well as some philosophy and a good bit of theology and being something of a Leonardo da Vinci/Sherlock Holmes type that I am, this book, found on a table in a local book store, caught my eye.

Nancy Pearcey studied under Francis Schaeffer at L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland. She begins her book by referring to a simile Schaeffer used to describe modern man.  She writes:

“Using the metaphor of a building, he (Schaeffer) warned that truth had been split into two stories.  The lower story consists of scientific facts, which are held to be empirically testable and universally valid. The upper story includes things like morality, theology, and aesthetics, which are now regarded as subjective and culturally relative. Essentially the upper story became a convenient dumping ground for anything that the empiricist world view did not recognize as real.  Schaeffer used a simple graphic, which we can adapt like this:

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 deal 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.””

As you are well aware by the verbal sparks flying everywhere around us, the dichotomy within our own honed thinking as it engages with others with their hardened dichotomy is like steel striking a flint rock. Truly, the fact/value split has inflicted great damage to our culture.  It clearly affects the worlds of politics, education, religion and societal norms such as marriage.  Saving Leonardo is a good place to begin your research into how we as a culture came to be this way.

Saving Leonardo gives the reader an overview of the history behind modern man’s fact/value split (shown above as the “lower story” and the “upper story.”).  The book presents the two basic worldviews that are prevalent today: Continental and Analytic. These two streams are manifested throughout today’s culture via art, music, literature, movies, politics, education, law, sexual mores, societal institutions and pop culture.

Pearcey uses the following descriptive dichotomies to describe our evolved mindsets:

Facts/Values
Box of Things/ box of the mind
Machine/ghost (Descartes)
Nature/Freedom (Kant)
Formalism/expressionism
Mind (autonomous self)/body (biochemical machine) or in toto, the Liberal view of the human being
Imaginative truth (art)/rational truth (deterministic world of science)

In discussing the Continental worldview Pearcey notes that there are the schools of idealism, Marxism, phenomenology, existentialism, postmodernism and deconstructionism.

The Analytic worldview stream, she says, holds empiricism, rationalism, materialism, naturalism, logical positivism and linguistic analysis.

In comparing the two worldviews John Stuart Mill is quoted: “the antagonism already separating the two traditions: The lower story, with its materialism, “is accused of making men beasts” while the upper story, with its irrationalism, is accused of making men lunatics.”

Pearcey notes that culture has reflected the dueling mindsets since their inception during the age of Enlightenment. Artists, composers, writers, dramatists and producers have portrayed the philosophies of their day through their art. Saving Leonardo gives prominent examples of those creative forces that have either mirrored the prevailing thought or who have worked to oppose it.

In brief, you will encounter Hemingway, London, Huxley, Hegel, Duchamp, Picasso, Kandinsky, Darwin, Nihilism, Abstract expressionism, Christian realism, John Cage and a host of others – philosophers, painters, composers and writers who influenced culture from where they stood in the house: the upper story or the lower story.

As an example of the constant interplay between dueling mindsets, the split in thinking, as shown below, shows how those of the Romantic period tried to view their ‘art’ as separate and above the newly arrived scientific fact proposed by Darwinism:

The Romantics’ two-story of truth

Imaginative truth

Creative World (Art)

Rational truth

Deterministic world (Science)

Within a Christian worldview there is no need whatsoever to divide man’s thinking into separate spheres such as spiritual fact versus science or materialism.  A Christian man or woman who is whole is a romantic-rationalist.  One very good example of such a person would be the Christian apologist and fantasy writer C.S. Lewis. Lewis, as revealed by his writing and talks, had integrated the upper and lower stories.

 Pearcey, in the section C.S. Lewis: We Can’t All Be Right, quotes Lewis:

“The Christian and the Materialist hold different views about the universe.  They can’t be both right.  The one who is wrong will act in a way which simply doesn’t fit the real universe.”

(Little wonder that homosexuality is given credence in our culture.)

Saving Leonardo is good starting point for further research.  It will certainly pique your interest when the dots start to connect to form our deformed culture right before your eyes.

End thoughts:  Unlike Pearcey I do not have an issue with modern music or with modern art.  I find them both to be revealing and stimulating each in their own way. 

Jazz is not mentioned in this book, as best I can recall.  This is a shame. I hear jazz as a very human and creative outlet within our world. I find it rather strange that the author never mentions the spontaneity, sonority and musical improvisation of jazz. I love Bach and Shostakovich and Henryk Górecki. But I also listen to Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk and Wynton Marsalis.

I also listen to the Blues:  Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, et al. My tastes in music, art and literature run eclectic.

I certainly don’t agree with the author that art has to have unifying narrative to be of value.  One of the earliest painters I connected with was Jackson Pollack.  I remember seeing a painting of his in a Life magazine article and then later at the Art Institute in Chicago. This was a time back in my junior high school days. 

Jackson’s drip paintings reminded me of a brain’s neural network being charged with emotion. Perhaps, his paintings are a one-nanosecond glimpse of a much larger narrative. In any case, art is something you can take or leave as you see fit based on your own life narrative.

There will be places in the book where you will take issue with her opinions, just I did (see below).  This is good.  Find out why you agree or disagree with her. I urge you to become knowledgeable about the current world view encircling you by reading this book. Form your own Christian-romantic-rationalist worldview to withstand secularism’s pressures.

Nancy Peacey pushes for there to be narrative and a teleological basis to paintings, music and literature.  Again, I disagree about the need for narratives.

There will be times of narrative and Newtonian Classical Physics and Bach and Norman Rockwell and Shakespeare and Charlotte Brontë where cause and effect and resolution are clearly known.  There will also be times of seeming disarray and unknowns and lack of resolution as in Quantum Physics and the music of György Ligeti, John Cage and Schoenberg and the paintings of Picasso and Jackson Pollock and the poems of Jack Kerouac.  We need both. As creators, though, we are all teleologically dependent whether we like it or not.  Intelligent design is baked into the pottery.

Jackson Pollock No 28

Jackson Pollock – No.28, 1950. Enamel on canvas

 In the final words of the book Pearcey encourages parents to not push their kids into being conservative (keeping things as they are).  Rather, she encourages parents to push for “revolutionary” children.

Like the “Forward” quote source I find this curious. From my reading of Saving Leonardo, there seems to be no direct context given for defining her word “revolutionary”.  Perhaps she means being an ‘out-side-the-box’ artist, composer or writer.  Apparently she hasn’t read Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood.

 *******

Point of contention with the book:

The book is divided into two main parts: The Threat of Global Secularism and Two Paths to Secularism. As a side note I became particularly interested in Chapter Three of the book’s Part One. The title of Chapter Three: Sex, Lies and Secularism.

In this section of Chapter Three “Hooking up, Feeling Down” Pearcey begins “Let’s move to the most contentious sexual issues of our day such as homosexuality, transgenderism and the hook-up culture.” She then goes on to say that having an understanding of the two-story dualism of modern thinking will help the Christian in providing a holistic biblical alternative.

Because of her shotgun approach of scoping transgenderism in the same sights as homosexuality, Pearcey does, I believe, relegate transgenderism to be on par morally with acting out homosexually and one-night stand sexuality. I would state emphatically here that transgenderism by definition is not about acting out sexually. Transgenderism is not equal to homosexuality whether as a sexual issue or a gender issue. It IS about gender identity/gender dysphoria and seeking to become a whole person ~ a romantic rationalist.  Or, to describe it using her term, it’s being “revolutionary.”

Further information about transgenderism:

 The Transgender Moment

A ‘Naturalized’ Woman

The Church and Gender

Other ‘related’ dichotomies: Robert Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” Pirsig’s distinction between the “classical” and the “romantic” view is conceptually analogous to Thomas Sowell’s distinction between the constrained and unconstrained visions in “A Conflict of Visions”

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

Ache W/O Outlet: Friends Growing Different

January 18, 2014 Leave a comment

 

A brief synopsis:

 Frances Ha, a B & W film infatuated with French cinema, tells a story of Frances Ha (Greta Gerwig) a young woman who finds she is becoming at odds with herself and with her roommate and close friend, Sophie.

 With circumstances and relationships quickly beginning to shift from away from her dreams towards reality, Frances, one of the “green girls”, wants to relive the fantasies born out of their friendship.  She asks Sophie to retell the “story of us.”

 Contrasted with the recent upheavals in her life is Frances’ return to Sacramento, her childhood home, for Christmas.   It is this time spent with her parents and with their congregation, though brief, that helps ground Frances apart from the fanciful “story of us.“

 While in Sacramento she is surrounded by those who are mature and stable.  They speak of “integrity and acceptance…spiritual growth…intellectual stimulation.”  They are no longer ‘green’ in their thinking.

 After returning to New York City Frances begins moving away from being co-dependent to a place of self-acceptance, “her capital S-Self.”  No longer a “green girl” she begins adulthood by accepting the changes and by moving on.

 Frances soon finds an apartment where she is roommate free.  And although she can only put 2/3rds of her name onto her mailbox she is OK with this.  She is now living alone, moving in only with herself.

  Just a note:  How great it would be if instead of a homosexual union between two people these two people were just friends, friends who were not sexually or emotionally co-dependent, friends who related to one another as grown-ups.

Filed under Movies Tagged with , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →