My apologies.The
next few posts shade into one another, and even repeat.I have been unable to tighten them up into
bold, pithy statements.I have given up
on the rewriting and post them in their partial states. I will likely identify them as Not Premium Quality or some such. Of course, my audience is pretty clever, and may be able to pick up the ideas and make them clear in their own minds, even as I wander about. The Inklings had to sometimes remind Lewis that some works he liked owed their excellence to the powerful imagination he supplied as a reader, not to the literary skill of the author. Lewis saw little difference. Or so I'm told. I believe David Lindsay's Voyage To Arcturus was mentioned in this context.
I have read objections to Lewis’s trilemma “Lord, Liar, or
Lunatic” – that Jesus’s claims are so stark that anyone who utters them must be
evil, insane, or God as He claimed* – that there are in fact many other
possibilities as to what we might believe about Jesus.In fact, there may be millions of such
positions, and anyway, millions of people who hold other positions do exist.
There aren’t only three possibilities.
I wonder if folks are being deliberately, though perhaps
unconsciously obtuse, or if they really don’t get. the idea.Lewis’s claim is that ultimately, whatever
claim one puts forward to begin with, if one follows the path to its logical
end, it arrives at one of these three places.One can avoid those three clearings only by refusing to think things
through.All opinions about Jesus resolve
into one of those positions.
*Lewis noted that this was a version of an older argument Aut
Deus, aut homo malus: either God or a bad man.
Grand Canyon for Thanksgiving has much of its framework in
place.We will be sharing space with
llamas, and frighteningly for us, the trip involves connections through
Newark.But Norway, Nome, Houston, and
NH will all converge on Williams by various routes.
I am starting off by visiting one son in Houston, from
whence we will take the Sunset Limited along the Mexican border for 27 hours to
Maricopa, AZ a small city almost completely surrounded by Indian communities.
We like each others’ company well enough, but this may be more than our
personalities were designed to bear.Fortunately, we both like our own company for long stretches as
well.We’ll have books, he’ll have a laptop
and podcasts to supplement.Hmm, perhaps
I need to find something that can play into my ears as well.
Conservatives and evangelicals sometimes quietly congratulate themselves that they are reproducing themselves while liberals and secular people tend to be ZPG and disappearing. Our actions - two bio children, two adoptions, and a guardianship, and a hope that all five of them have lots of their own - illustrate that we are pretty sympathetic to that POV. There is a Christian Culture sentiment that we have been aware of, and even been part of, since the 1970's. We work toward the church having cultural influence long after we have gone.
Yet it pays to remember that Jesus (and Paul, Peter, James, John) say little or nothing about this. There is a great deal said about our responsibility toward the individuals we encounter and the church community we live in, but other than rather disassociated good citizenship and not being a bother, they don't say much about amking over society in a godly direction.
The OT tells the Jews a lot about making over their whole society, but their whole society was a religious community. I don't see strong NT indications that this automatically carries over to citizenship in Hillsborough County or the Province of Saskatchewan. What if it is entirely unimportant, so that American Christians of both the right and left - both the "If my people" and "Least of my brethren" crowds - are simply wrong, reading in their political beliefs.
If the world truly is going to hell in a handbasket, so that default culture was so selfish and hedonistic as to be not worth retaining, would it be so terrible if Christians simply said "Our people chose not to participate," and let the world go as it would without us? One might read the Revelation to John as being a record of exactly that ending for the world. Time to roll it up. No more shall be saved on this particular planet.
We have about a half-dozen marinades for meat that we use commonly, plus I like to experiment from time-to-time. But really, Italian dressing ( we tend toward bruschetta or robusto versions these days) is what we like best and we probably use it 50% of the time. Meat. Squeeze bottle. Bag. Freeze or refrigerate. Grill. It doesn't get much easier and we just like it better than the labor-intensive marinades in the recipe book. As is ironically common, we get whimpers of appreciation and requests for the recipe. Yeah. Go to Hannaford's. Find Aisle 3.
This article in Psychiatry Weekly discusses the research on whether the social selection or the social causation theory best explains why married people have better MH outcomes. Generally quite reasonable, but what caught my eye was the information that sociologists come down strongly on the causation side - that social relationships like marriage provide a protective factor - contrasted to the selection theory which holds that it's the healthier people who get to get married in the first place.
If I'm reading this right, I have to ask - is there any sane person who questions the idea that selection is at least a significant factor? Most people offered the two theories would say "I think both are probably somewhat true." Nailing that down with real data might be tricky, but I can't imagine anyone would argue that there is little or no selection. Anyone know enough sociologists to know how firmly they come down in the causation camp?
Additional note: the offhand remark that same-sex marriages might be more protective because they fought so long and hard for recognition is exactly the sort of blather that shouldn't be in a research article. It might be absolutely true. But we aren't shown any evidence for this, just a conventional wisdom assurance that functions as birdsong, letting us know where the researcher stands on the issue. It would be bad enough in an op-ed. In a professional context, it's just ridiculous.
Reading Lewis's essays on art, atmosphere, and Otherness in works of fiction, John W. Campbell's story "Who Goes There?" (Cue words: Antarctica, scientists, shapechanging alien) came into my mind as an example of one of Lewis's point. Sometimes the science part of Science Fiction is unimportant - there are only the trappings of science, but the same story could have been managed in another form.
Certainly true. In the above, shapeshifting by any means would have been sufficient. No need for aliens. I wonder how often that is the case with Science Fiction, that it is really more speculative fiction with a little science thrown in. I have no idea whether it was more common in the old days or more common now.
Because some people at work are aware of my background and interests, I am sometimes asked about related subjects...
Hahahaha! That is a complete lie. The truth is that whenever a related subject comes up I insert myself in to the conversation and make pronouncements. The people who bring up these topics are social workers, who have no scientific training and will fall for anything. Not that they are any worse than anyone else in that. People who do research seem to have trouble with the conceptual framework of what is evidence and what is trash, and they supposedly do have scientific training.
Thus, they don't want to hear that the idea they read about, or the speaker at the conference, or the program they are spending money on lacks any scientific support. They prefer to be calmed by sciencey things the speaker or the book says.
Lumosity was mentioned this week, with the assurance that there was considerable scientific backing for this program of brain-improvement via brain exercises. I will spare you the details of what was claimed versus what the website actually says, because I am uncertain how much of that is the result of the company's marketing and how much is my coworkers wishful thinking. But let's take a look at what is there, and how much credence we will give to it.
First, it could be true. This could turn out to be great, and the theory that certain types of brain exercise do generalise even though most don't is plausible. We are indeed entering an era where IF it is possible to increase one's intelligence, we might be seeing the intriguing beginnings of it now. I have nothing against these folks. They may be right.
They are selling a product. The first few sessions on the web are free, then you have to pay. This does not in any way disprove their theory. In fact, I consider it similar (or even superior?) to the supposedly disinterested parties who claim to be selflessly committed to an idea. Those often have a worldview to protect, a need to appear noble, or a livelihood based on speaking fees they aren't counting as a similar financial interest. If you are Dr. Horsefeather's kid, you might devote your life to defending Horsefeather's theories, even enduring poverty and ridicule, for reasons of your own.
Yet the fact that they stand to benefit should make us alert to a few things. They cite independent research at reputable institutions as support. Even if all of these studies were very strong, remember that they have no obligation to report those studies which should no result, or even harm from their product. They put a half-dozen up on the page. There could be twenty studies to the null hypothesis which you don't see. Or there could be none. You don't know.
Next, you likely only partially know how research is done in this particular niche and what the standards are. Plausibility is only one tool, and general reasoning only one more, in evaluating the claims. Those ain't nuttin' but you may be missing something that a similar researcher would no is significant. Certain usual measurements may not be mentioned, or problems getting a control group glossed over.
Further, people want this to be true. Everyone would like to think that there are ways of getting smarter and you're one of the first one's to find it!One of the studies linked to sets out the problems and disappointments of this area of research over the decades quite well in the first four paragraphs. (That study, BTW, is the best piece of evidence they show, to my thinking.)
This brings us to some items that are pretty strongly in their favor. No, not the testimonials, or articles in the Best Newspapers, but the people they have been able to interest in this. That they have gotten researchers from Stanford and Columbia and a few other colleges to be interested enough to sit on boards or attempt to research the usefulness is something in itself. Heck, that they even seek research rather than avoiding it is something.
Yet we have to go back to some limitations of the studies which you might not notice if you weren't skeptical: they are focused on Luminosity training for damaged individuals recovering or still developing,* there is not much about how permanent the gains are, and the results, though significant, are fairly modest.
*Which is great, and in fact more important than making me clever, but not the same thing that they are advertising.
I did a series - or more exactly, brought out a discussion - about free will last year, May We Believe Our Thoughts? There's 28 entries on that, so browsing may be the order of the day.
Philosopher Eddy Nahmias, last seen as a contributor to The Oxford Handbook On Free Will has an interesting essay over at Big Questions Online whether contemporary neuroscience supports or challenges the notion of free will. He comes down in favor of the "supports" camp, while acknowledging that many others think otherwise.
Via Maggie's Farm, specifically Bird Dog. Which brings me to another point: I used to have lists of things I should read that I felt bad about not getting to. With the internet, and specifically people like BD who uncover lots of interesting stuff nearly every day, I have the additional problem of things I would really like to read that I can't get to. There is just no way, and it hardly seems fair.
James has three good links over at his site, one discussing what books are most like Tolkien, a second about the problems with criminal law (cartoon illustrated!), and a third describing how the catastrophic raid on Dieppe in WWII was a result of British intelligence tipping off the Germans.
I wonder if there is a generational aspect to suspecting whether an athlete is using PED's. The athletes I watched growing up had a certain look. Even exceptional athletes, who worked out in one form or another many hours a week, looked like Roger Federer, as in this Steve Sailer article. I don't watch much TV or see many photos of the athletes up close, so my impression of what an athlete should look like has a 1970 appearance.
When someone doesn't look like that - when their musculature is far more defined than anything I was familiar with outside of Charles Atlas on the back of a comic book, I immediately think there's something wrong here.
Young people and/or people who see a lot of athletes in close up and popular poses in the media may be much more used to seeing athletes on steroids. Not necessarily the norm, just more common. And as a result, they do not immediately recoil at the improbably-shaped athletes. Their idea of what is possible is slightly different from mine. It could be my eyes that are wrong, though I don't think so.
Because the money is much better, there is certainly more incentive for athletes to work out intensely. Yet I think that affects the many, not the few. There have always been deeply obsessed people - Dan Gable comes to mind. Do current athletes work out that much more than the few obsessed of yore? Or are the fanatics pretty much the same in each generation? I vote the latter.
Certainly, athletes are better now and it is measurable. But some of that is equipment - shoes, tracks, gloves, and standardization in general. Medical care, protective equipment, and repair explain still more. Technique is more widely known, and good coaching more available. The 100 meter record came down quite a bit from the time of Jesse Owens to Bob Hayes and Jim Hines. Yet they look pretty much the same, don't they, even though Hayes was a more muscular type who went on to play pro football.
Look at the shoes and the track under Hayes, BTW. And the guys behind him. There are still sprinters who look like this. Just not all of them.
Remember also that when there's groups of professional athletes involved, their unions and attorneys work hard to reduce testing, not increase it.
I'm telling you, it's my eyes that are correct here.
A wise character in a Ray Bradbury story "And The Rock Cried Out" only reads the newspaper after it is a week old. At that point, it is usually quite clear which parts are foolish and which are wise. Good advice, which I will follow here. Sort of.
Akins' comment that women don't get pregnant from "legitimate" rape because their bodies reject it is indefensible. It got a lot of play because it goes to the heart of a particular narrative of modern women about themselves, that the abortion, sexual freedom, status and power, and false moral issues are so deeply interrelated as to be the same thing, so that "forcing" a woman to bear a child she has conceived is equivalent to forcing her to have sex. There's some sense in that, as Akins's statement may indeed indicate an interrelatedness of the ideas in his mind. It also got a lot of play because it's part of one of Obama's campaign themes.
Here's the problem: the only time I have ever run across this urban myth was in the late 70's when my wife was pregnant with our first child. We read volumes of pregnancy and childbirth material, including some pretty strange stuff in the alternative childbirth books. (This was an era when having husbands present, gaining more than twenty pounds, and not getting knocked out were considered "alternative," remember.) One of the more mystical offerings reported that exerting mental control over reproductive function was a common idea in Eastern beliefs, and was found in Native American and African peoples as well. These latter, in the spirit of the age, were included as positives because those groups were closer to nature than we modern whites were. I remember feeling glad that I couldn't think of anything in the Bible, or even from any of the crazier Christians I hung out with, that suggested this was remotely true. It seemed a mark precisely in our favor that there wasn't any of this.
I have no idea if her statement was indeed true, or just something she heard and passed on. Plus, it sounds quite different when one puts it in terms of a mystical consonance between mind and body rather than a statement that you won't get pregnant if you're really raped, but it's the same thing. I didn't catch that anyone went there in their criticism, kicking the nonwhite peoples on the matter. Perhaps the belief is that this is a generalised primitive belief found in many cultures, which persist because they are convenient to men. But even that gets us to a place I don't think liberals want to go. Are you saying that these cultures unlike ours are inferior, then? Not only the American fundies, but the Apaches and Thai monks and shamans?
Added: I sometimes think that because I have mentioned something more than once, though years ago, it is in the back of everyone else's mind as well. Part of my argument that this is overblown is based on the idea that neither side is going to move the dial much legislatively, but the activists on both sides hyperventilate as if crushing defeat is imminent, but for their efforts. The Akins of the world must be expelled, even though these ideas have no practical effect, because it is encouragement to the wrong tribe. McAskill's belief that oil companies jerk the price of gas to influence elections - easily disproven with a little arithmetic how much that would cost them - is not considered a problem. And frankly, though it has dire consequences, it's not considered a problem by the right as well as the left, because too many of them have dark Big Oil suspicions and also can't do arithmetic. The right also tends to get activated for narrative issues rather than substantive ones. It's what human beings do.
Armstrong
As a culture, we seem to have decided long ago that Lance Armstrong was being persecuted and began to feel sorry for him. They kept trying to bust him for doping, he kept protesting his innocence, he pointed to his passed drugs tests, and we believed him when he said it was all a witch hunt. Lance Armstrong is a nice guy, and fought back from horrible illness to boot, so it fit our narrative.
We did not extend the same courtesy to Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, note. They acted like pricks and we wanted their asses in jail. Arnold is more ambiguous, but on balance, he was charming and popular, so steroid use was a clear smart move on his part in his younger days.
Lance is almost certainly guilty. If you think about it for awhile and drop the preconceived idea of a poor hounded innocent, you knew that. Why would an entire agency continue to pursue him? There are certainly personal vendettas in this life, and if someone stands to gain - if they were the buddy of a second-place finisher to Armstrong, for example - then we are even doubly suspicious. It is certainly possible, that an entire agency, or powerful people within it, just don't like him, or feel that he showed them up, or are spending the rest of their days in futile efforts to justify accusations they made in the past, are obsessed with bringing Armstrong down. Is it likely? Really? Isn't it more likely that they know he's guilty, and the question has been whether it's worth pursuing?
Is the fact that the pubic is tired of hearing about it a good motive for dropping it? That's the bet that Bill Clinton made, and he won. He protested his innocence and accused the accusers of bad motives, hoping that he could ride it long enough that everyone would get tired of it and turn on them, instead. After that, when it became clear that Clinton had lied after all, it didn't matter. Everyone pretended that they knew all along he was a liar, but they just thought his sins were small and his accusers were worse. That's the opposite of what they said at the time. It is in fact, a lie itself. But a convenient one.
Because everyone else is guilty, after all. And LA's new statement is that he used no "unfair advantage." And I am willing to believe that he did work harder, and suffer more, and was more talented. But not that he didn't dope.
Added: The Bill Clinton part is that it's different when you know the bastard is guilty and you think you've finally got him. Armstrong's accusers don't think that maybe he is, maybe he isn't, lets find out. The believe they have proof, if only they can get their day in court. In 1998, conservatives had been denied because the public didn't care about Travelgate, or Filegate, or the obstruction around Foster's suicide, or Whitewatergate, or closed health care planning. And the "not caring" was largely a result of "not pressed by journalists." When the Monica story came around, they thought they finally had him.
Steroids came to Muscle Beach, and thus Southern California, in the 1960's. They could well have been in many sports, not just bodybuilding and weightlifting. I recall saying humorously in the 1970's, looking at clips of defensive linemen pursuing QB's "How can a man 6'4" and 295 lbs be fast?" But I thought it was just finding the freaks of nature, and training them right that did it. Only later did I come to understand why. I loved track and field in that era, and hope that few or none of my heroes were 'roided. It's even been rumored about Roger Maris (unlikely, but not impossible). Heck, even Babe Ruth drank a patent medicine that was supposedly made from sheep testes.
Augusta National
The fun part has been watching people get upset that it's the wrong sort of woman who got in. They don't care about women. They don't care about black people. They care that their own tribe gets rewarded. Never forget that. BTW, there are still all-male golf clubs. The critics only care when it fits the narrative.
You Didn't Build That is getting its own post. Obviously, to say that "You could never have grown all that food if I hadn't sold you the seeds," or "You wouldn't have scored 47 against the Lakers if I hadn't turned the overhead lights on" doesn't impress me much as an argument. But I have a deeper objection from that, about the nature of government.
Folks skeptical of the claims of Christianity, or preceding that, Judaism, complain that it seems unsupportable to them that God would be so unfair as to select one people to reveal Himself too. It just feels wrong, as if millions of others are being condemned to a horrible eternal fate for no reason that can be considered remotely fair.
Christians of the soul-winning persuasion have encouraged this line of thinking, for the good reason of encouraging each other to evangelism in difficult, dangerous, and discouraging places, but mostly to the detriment of of evangelism in general. At least, in the last century people in the west have claimed it is an obstacle to their embracing belief - it may just be a good rationalisation to hand. Yet rationalisations are at least rational and deserve an answer, even if they are secretly not the real reason.
I recommend to such people some of the writings of CS Lewis, especially in God In The Dock. In brief, his claim is that God revealed some of Himself, even much of Himself, to the other peoples of the world as well, as St Paul also hints. They are not 100% wrong. Indeed, it would be hard to be 100% wrong about anything in eternal truth - even the demons believe in one God, and tremble. (Epistle of James). As a metaphor, God gave all the peoples of the earth pictures. To the Jews he allowed no pictures, but He gave them the captions.
But I have a greater complaint of the skeptics. The adherents of other religions do not object to this claim of exclusivity anywhere near so much. They agree with it, in a sense, except that they believe their beliefs are the exclusively correct ones. Even the supposedly flexible areas, such as China with its Confucian/Daoist/Buddhist mix has the core belief that this very flexibility, whether one calls it fuzziness or accommodation, is itself the key factor. And socially insisting on such is quite an interesting dogma, when one comes to it.
The main group of people who object to this claim of exclusivity, and are quite sure that their more modern understanding is superior, are northwest Europeans or their descendants, living in the last 100 years, who value skepticism and doubt and are proud of taking religious matters on personal experience rather than from authority, and have left the Jewish or Christian faith of their parents.
That seems an even narrower group for a Chosen People, I think.
I was surprised to see a mention of the anti-vaccination crowd in CS Lewis, as far back as the early 40's.
The man who "just feels" that total abstinence from drink or marriage is obligatory is to be treated like the man who "just feels sure" that Henry VIII is not by Shakespeare or that vaccination does no good. ("Why I Am Not A Pacifist" 1940)
There is a good deal of interesting material in that talk to a small pacifist society, and I hope to get back to it. I keep saying that, I know. One can generalise its principles to many other grand liberal schemes - Lewis in fact does so at several points. A paradox: he skewers the actual reasons liberals put forward to justify their ideals; yet he gives them back a separate set of reasons by which they might ethically pursue much of their program - reasons conservatives should be interested in.
I have many things to write about but can't seem to get to them. Perhaps there are too many and that is the problem. Also, we are involved in discussions about going as a family to Grand Canyon for Thanksgiving. Chris will be coming from Norway, JA from Nome, etc. Very exciting.
Speaking of JA, he is discouraged by his coworkers simply not showing up for work. Apparently, this lack of work ethic is not uncommon in Nome. He has said quite clearly that he could offer a job to someone who would simply show up five days a week. So if you have some job-seeking person willing to join the adventure of living in Nome - there are downsides and inconveniences, but it is one of those great-in-the-biography things - point them toward Nome. Contact me, if you want.
One of my themes for the year is that most discussion about the Red Sox' problems this year has been irrelevant, focusing on communication with the manager and getting injured hitters back in the lineup. I contend that they have been hitting well enough to win a pennant, but pitching terribly, and one can see this with two simple stats: Runs Scored and Runs Against.
Part of the point has been to suggest that sports discussions in your town may be similarly flawed. Two months ago, I used those simple stats to predict what would happen from here. I don't even know who plays for these teams, remember. I'm working from two numbers. I picked four teams to improve and five to decline with two maybe declines. I stated that 8 of the 11 would bear me out. I could say that I got only two badly wrong while whistling and looking up at the ceiling, hoping no one would press me. But there were four that were weakly against me as well. That's just not 8 for 11.
In my defense, I will note that the remaining five were spectacularly correct. I told you that Oakland and St Louis would improve and they have. I told you that Cleveland, the Mets, and Miami would collapse and they have.
The big mistakes: I said the Red Sox would slightly improve, but they have been much worse. The pitching remains bad, and now their hitting is only average to boot. (Sox speculation below.) I said Pittsburgh would fall beneath the waves but they have done well. Their offense has been spectacular.
The middle four, neither correct nor incorrect are interesting. I predicted Baltimore would drop off but they have been only slightly worse, and remain in the pennant race. I predict again they will drop off. This can't last. I thought their other main competitor for the wild card, Tampa, would also decline, but they have improved. TB's hitting has been the same, but their pitching has been the best in baseball the last two months, by a healthy margin. Baltimore is cooked. I picked Arizona to improve, but they have stayed the same. I picked SF to revert to .500, but they have been slightly better than that and remain in the race. The scramble for the second WC in the NL is going to be interesting.
I bring all this up now, rather than in September, because the Red Sox have fired their pitching coach, which may show some recognition of what's happening. At last. It seemed a good time to mention again that how much the position players like Valentine is not very important. If his presence screws up pitchers' heads, that could be a factor. But I think that Varitek gone and McClure here have been bigger factors.
We had this today because it was a Covenant heritage Sunday of some sort. We have had this at a few funerals in my family, and it will likely be at mine. So it's misty for me as well as for the old Swedes who grew up on it. (Despite my Swedish ancestry, I never heard this until my twenties.)
It puts me in mind of CS Lewis's introduction to JB Phillips' Letters To Young Churches, the first published portion of his New Testament paraphrase.
...it may seem a sour paradox - we must sometimes get away from the Authorised Version,* if for no other reason, but simply because it is so beautiful and so solemn. Beauty exalts, but beauty also lulls. Early associations endear but they also confuse. Through that beautiful solemnity the transporting or horrifying realities of which the Book tells may come to us blunted and disarmed and we may only sigh with tranquil veneration when we ought to be burning with shame or struck dumb with terror or carried out of ourselves by ravishing hopes and adorations.
Exactly what happened to me. I thought of my mother, of my Great Aunt Selma Nordstrom, of cute children being taught this in Sunday School, and of Swede Nelson and Lois Palmquist singing this a few pews away. I didn't think of the Heavenly Father once, until just at the end when I realised what was happening.
I saw a news clip of Obama commenting on the selection of Paul Ryan as Romney's running mate. He made polite comments that Ryan was a decent man, etc, but that his vision for America was very different from Obama's.
Stop right there. I don't want either of them to have a vision for America at all - at least, not in the sense that is usually meant. To Barack Obama, it is the most natural thing in the world to have a vision for America, and he believes it is a necessary thing for a leader to have. That is very much a liberal assumption, and carries with it a lot of dangerous stuff. It involves other people having plans for what they want to do with your life.*
It may go to the heart of what is different between statists and the various leave-me-alone types. The interviewing media likewise assumes that candidates should have a vision. They pressed the idea that Bush 41 lacked "The Vision Thing." Well good on him for that. But they saw it as a fault. If you seek examples of how the media biases the discussion by enforcing a liberal framing on the very questions themselves, this one should go front and center. Republican candidates eventually have to come up with some vision thing, and the nearest items to hand are usually general prosperity and/or American Greatness. Fine, I suppose. But why be so focused on that?
Religious conservatives tend to do it as well, though I think it is tied up with a vision of the past. I don't like that any better. They get caught up with "My people perish for lack of vision," bending the meaning of that considerably. It's not what the vision is that bothers me, it's having one at all. All of the visions accentuate only the positive possibilities and disregard the potential negative consequences, so they all look like a pretty comfortable place to live. Everyone has a nice job and gets along, children laugh, all the poor are deserving and given enough to live without fear and make something of themselves, all illnesses and conditions are taken care of and quickly banished. Who wouldn't want to live there?
Nor do liberals have to be motivated in such a fashion - or at least, they didn't used to be - MLK's "I Have A Dream" speech is remarkably free of it. That picture is of how individuals will live, not groups, nor what we're all going to do together. Individuals might have a vision, or families. Groups or even communities might edge in that direction, for everyone to sign on to be an adoption community, or a beautiful town, or devoted to a particular industry so that more jobs may come. Even states might have a character, and seek to accentuate that in some official way, taking care that even social pressure to go along is minimised.
But a country? Shouldn't happen. It's a terrible idea. Statists, especially liberals, and most especially wealthy and powerful liberals have these lovely visions of what we should become. It's not generous. It's evil.
*If this seems an exaggeration, I have just finished Lewis's essay "Membership," and was deeply disquieted by the changes in how much privacy and solitude have been sacrificed since the 1940's. I fear I haven't minded most of it, because it grew up gradually, and I like what I've traded for it. But to read how far from that we now are - how statism is just so natural to us - has me wondering.
My two oldest sons got the idea they would like to recapture bits of their childhood and tent-camp at Camp Calumet Lutheran, where we brought them from 1982-99 (though the last few years they were there less). They brought Jonathan's wife and two daughters, attempting in 44 hours to hit all the high points: Pizza Barn, Big Yellow Tent, sandbar, Jackman Ridge, Yankee Smokehouse, Conference Center breakfast...
Church camps have activities for children, of course, and Emily not only went to tie-dye, but a story time as well. My daughter-in-law described it to me. Santa Goes Green, in which Santa notices one November that the North Pole ice is melting, and so decides to save everyone by giving extra toys to children who recycle. I would have predicted that both the children's and adult activities had focused on the environment, but the grown-ups' study - and I use all three units of that advisedly - was about Wellness. I should have seen that one coming. The New Lutherans have more than one new god, after all.
I would like to be clear that I don't object to any Lutherans owning the book or being involved in Wellness, and teaching it all to their children. It's silly, but it's the current fashion, and people do lots of silly things. On their own time. But when you bring it into church, you are making a declaration that this is part of the faith as received. And these aren't. Not close.
This is where they were going decades ago, especially at camp.
Ben points out that since that kid gave grade-school compliments to LeBron during the NBA playoffs, telling him he had a great game because he put in "good effort," James's teams have gone 19-1, and he has been the late-game powerhouse in many of them.
There was an essay at Slate ranting that two spaces after a period is no longer necessary and just wrong. As if. It is left over from the age of manual typewriters, when all characters took the same space, yada yada yada. He even notes that it's a convention, but it bugs him no end that it's an outmoded convention. He pays attention to which of his friends persist in this solecism. No, I'm not linking to it.
If my double-spacing after a period marks me as someone who was properly educated in the age of manual typewriters and paid some attention, I'm regarding that as a feature, not a bug.
I met knitblogger and simple-living attempter Kris Causton, who was the week's speaker at Pilgrim Pines. I never go to those sessions myself, but several of you might like her blog Wishing For Pine Needles
Lewis starts right out hitting me between the eyes in his 1941 essay "The Weight of Glory".
If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any great Christians of old, he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative idea of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love...If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith
.
Lurks? Lurks? Try overwhelms. This root notion persists in me after decades of Christian belief. I am enormously grateful that I read this essay early in my walk, before I had children, and was able to consciously work against it throughout their upbringing. I believe I have had some, though not entire, success in teaching them that enjoyment can also be holy - that Fezziwig and King Smoit are worth imitating.
Yet the idea of drawing back from joy out of false modesty and politeness - waiting to be invited so as not to be thought grasping - remains. I can make convincing cases who in my upbringing and instruction might be to blame for all this, but "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves..." Wm. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 1.
Gone for less than a week. 120 emails. 87 were reports of comments here. 81 of those were spam, mostly ads for xanax or valium. It's what happens when you disable Captcha.
But I deleted all that and have dozens of things to write about. A lot of CS Lewis.
In his introduction to The Weight of Glory, Lewis reports why he declined to edit the essays for this edition, even though some of the ideas he had later improved and expanded on as he pondered them further. He felt they belonged to an era, two decades earlier, and needed to be understood in that context. He changed a word here or there for clarity's sake, but otherwise left the text as originally written. He did not think he disagreed with anything he had said then, but would put it differently now. He saw a faint deceit in doing that - he was a different age, and lived in a different culture. The essays seemed to be by another person.
That rang true for me. I have extended series and repeated themes from the earlier years of this blog which I have thought worth a little something. I have sought ways to go back and collect them, repackage them, or revisit them. I now think the distance is too great, even after only few years. A year ago I would have thought that one did not really understand what is going on here without that background. I no longer agree with that. Blogging is more like old newspaper columns (or Letters To The Editor) than like collections of essays. Only a few columnists get their Best Of's arranged between covers, and even then, all the other columns just slip away. Ephemeral does not mean "unimportant or worthless," though it has taken on that secondary understanding. It means "for the day only." Facebook and Twitter are even more ephemeral, of course, but that is their nature, and things should be what they are.
I might look things over and see if my understandings have changed in any way, and write up the changes if they seem important. But they are what they are.
I have lent out or given away many copies of CS Lewis's The Weight Of Glory over the years, and thus have not reread it for some time. "The Inner Ring," "Transposition," and the title essay have rung in my head for decades now. "Why I am Not A Pacifist" was one of the most powerful single reading experiences I have ever had. When I started the essay, I was a pacifist, and was quite certain that God and the scriptures demanded this POV. When I finished the essay a few minutes later, I knew that belief was in ruins forever.
I just finished it, but will have to go straight back and start again. I seem to have lost flexibility, or tolerance, or kindness over the years. I read each essay and kept thinking how Other People really needed to hear this part or that - liberals, fundamentalists, mainstream denominations, young men - group after group of people who are Not I.
That can't be healthy. I must read it again with attention to how it applies to me.
I lied when I said I care only about the theological connection when people reflexively prefer the natural to the artificial. I also care about the poor logic that boils down to "Well it only stands to reason that..."
Things that "only stand to reason" often turn out to be wrong. It's called having a theory without evidence but applying it anyway. It can be right, but there's just no guarantee. None. "Natural" things, by some definition, might also be superior to artificial ones in any individual instance. Or might not.
Chance thought: there are certainly plenty of conservatives and libertarians who lean in a whole foods/natural foods direction, but the main appeal for organic/vegan/alternative medicine types is among liberals. Odd that they should prefer lots and lots of human intervention and control by large, distant entities when it comes to an economy, but not when it's food or medicine. I imagine that's related to their dislike and distrust of corporations (because they don't understand how they work) contrasted to their trust and confidence in nonprofits and ahem, Public Servants.
This would bring me back to my Arts & Humanities Tribe discussions pretty quickly.
Borrowing money to go to a school is not the same thing as education. The one may lead to the other, but it isn't even a 50% overlap. This misuse of the term is common in society - both parents and students have an emotional interest in keeping up the pretense - but none use it more than the government agencies that distribute the money and the politicians who want to be closely associated with such things in the public mind.
The money is used to 1) pay for part of a credential, which may never be completed; 2) maintain student status, whether one is learning anything or not; 3) provide entry into a program where getting an education might be more efficiently accomplished, because professionals who know what the goal and what the pitfalls are work there. Even this last, clearly the best use of the three, is not synonymous with "education."
One course at a prestigious university costs $5000, BTW. One.
Worse, Warren doesn't promise to actually do anything about this debt the students have racked up. She simply notes it, expressing outrage and sympathy. Feelings. Whoa-oh-oh-feelings.
If someone pays X in taxes, you think they should pay 2X, but that's not the law and they still pay X, that is not a "tax break," nor is it the government "giving" you money. (Yes, even if they used to pay X + 20%.) The underlying assumption to that statement is that society really owns all that money and society can and should move it where it likes. And as we all know, society means government. There is not even much charade about this anymore, arguing that government is an arm or expression of society to do things efficiently. When I listen to Democrats, I don't think they are making that distinction anymore. Society should do X, government is in charge of society, so letting the government direct where it goes is only natural.
Reader and commenter Mark Stoler has his own interesting blog, Things Have Changed. Current offerings include the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, a One-hit Wonder, Satchell Paige, a newscaster slip, and a few discussions of Cass Sunstein's Nudge. Not all in the same post, of course.
It is a staple of Bible studies to mention that the Gnostics thought spirit was good and matter bad, and how this common belief in general society created confusion and even heresies in the early church. I often think we have something similar going in modern times with natural versus artificial. Natural things are believed to be direct from the hand of God, and therefore good, while artificial things have been messed with by fallen humans, and are therefore always substandard.
I've been up a church camp, so hints of this come up more often. The beauty of God's creation gets mentioned a lot, and I have certainly heard many over the years sigh that being among the trees, lakes, and mountains helps them get back to God.
The quick answer is lightning, floods, earthquakes, of course. We don't like Nature so much as our taming of it and our relative safety in the face of powerful forces. People who are more at the mercy of nature are less rhapsodic about it. Also, we're on vacation, so wherever we are might look like good world versus evil, tainted work world. There are moral compromises we are no longer making, so it all feels a bit holier.
I don't say that it rises to the level of heresy in all its adherents, but the general term does apply. It has nothing to do with the gospel and needs to be expunged from our thinking. It creeps in when we think that some foods or medicines are on a better spiritual track - more in God's plan - because of their more primitive state. It is certainly true that when we have to pack foods for shipping they lose something, and even that our choices of what varieties travel best influences this. It is also true that when man can make something cheaply in quantity he tends to overdo it. Commercial fertilisers come to mind. But "natural" items are not exempt from this idiocy. We associate the idea more strongly with things man-made, but they are not restricted to them.
There is also a significant problem, universally ignored, about the definitions we use for natural. If a plant is cultivated, that is artifice; so too if it is dried, boiled, washed, or frozen anywhere along its journey to you. Vitamins in isolation do not occur in nature - those are thus artificial. Food storage and medicine decoction are labor-intensive, artificial acts, and have been for millennia. The modern idea that God gives us what we need naturally, with no need to go mucking about with humanly-tainted factories, laboratories, and corporate interests, would be rejected immediately by the writer of every book of the Bible. Yes, even Daniel.
I don't mind at all people preferring whatever foods and medicines they want, nor their methods of growing them and preparing them for table. Whatever you will. Yet people seem unable to stop at mere preference. We are bound, I fear, to regard our preferences as God's preferences almost automatically. I mention here again that the resistance to vaccinations, and the pointless desire to "space them out" for safety, seems related to the secret worship of the natural as God's Better Plan.
In this case, the belief in the spiritual superiority of natural things owes more to German paganism than to Christianity. I think I will write on that shortly.
I had forgotten how bad the footing is, and how much harder that makes the hike. I suppose I should be glad that steepness per se does not bother me as much as before, neither up nor down. But the rarity with which one can take a normal-sized step and put one's foot down flat - I'm not asking for horizontal - got very wearing.
It is often repeated up here but likely less-known outside of NH that the geographical term monadnock, which is obscure but still used, comes from this mountain.
I wrote the 100th anniversary congregational history for my Lutheran church in the 1980's. My grandmother had written the 75th and my great-great uncle John August Lindquist had written the 50th, so it seemed a natural.
In documenting the years of service of all the pastors, I noted that from 1951-78 the church had gone through 9 straight pastors at just about exactly 3 years each. All had subsequently left parish ministry, as far as I could tell. There was no pattern to that - one to retirement, one to teaching and farming, one fired for ripping off the congregation, one to a radio ministry. But in all cases, Gethsemane was the last stop before leaving parish work.
At the time, I attributed that to the congregation, that it was particularly difficult or obstreperous, chewing 'em up and spitting 'em out. I thought it was a very black mark against us, and may have been part of our decision to leave four years down the road.
I no longer think that. I now think the congregation was very typical, an aging Swedish church trying to adjust but not knowing how, with the usual mix of gentle souls, irritable old codgers, and earnest young mothers willing to put in hours of work. I don't know if the three-and-out track record is more an indictment of the denomination (LCA became ELCA), of secular New England or Scandinavian culture, or of the type of person who went into ministry in postwar Lutheranism. But I assigned responsibility wrongly the first time around.
Matthew Berry, "The Talented Mr. Roto," has an essay on fantasy football that has more general applicability. Even if you don't like FF, i think you will appreciate his explanation that all facts presented to you, even if they are black-and-white, neutral items, are also opinions, because they have been carefully chosen by the author to illustrate his hypothesis. Berry describes, for example, two running backs - one you would clear ly want to draft and another you would wish to avoid. They are both Darren McFadden. It depends on what you want to look at.
Bill James' Baseball Abstracts used to entertain me every year not because I was the least interested in the fortunes of the Milwaukee Brewers for the coming season, but because he would ask questions and try to answer them from the numbers. Are there hitting streaks or slumps significantly greater than what one would get simply rolling the dice for a thousand players every years? (Answer: Slumps yes, usually related to injuries. Streaks - maybe. But not a lot.) Do some catchers reduce staff ERA's significantly? (Answer: Yes, and Jarrod Saltalamacchia is not one of them.)
Statistics don't really lie, but sometimes you have to grab them by the throat, shove them against the wall, and ask them where they have been and who their friends are before you get the truth out of them.
I am rereading "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" and find I am physically unable to read it to myself, however hard I try. I cannot even merely mouth the words but must at minimum whisper dramatically, playing the scene.
And I must be Guildenstern.
And I must reread - respeak - sections that did not go as well as hoped, until I have the right sound.
My oldest son, when he was eight, nine, ten years old, used to ask who I was talking to when we were driving in the car. I'm accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature, Jonathan...I'm arguing with your mother about vacations - I'm winning this time...I am preaching sermon to a group of fundamentalists who will never ask me to speak to them...
He stopped asking, after awhile. I can't imagine this is likely to improve as I age. It seems to be getting worse.
In the discussion of the Olympic opening ceremonies,
Dubbahdee mentioned that Brits are quite fond of the NHS – something we don’t
often appreciate here.I couldn’t think
of a good equivalence at first, but I wonder if it is similar to how Americans
used to look at the postal service, before competing services came in.We knew and liked our letter-carrier.More of the mail we received was from
relatives, girlfriends, friends traveling to far places.We sometimes waited anxiously for the mail to
come, and knew the appointed time.There
were bills, sure, but those weren’t Mr. Cohen’s fault.There was a charm to small-town post-offices,
especially the older ones, which suggested something quintessentially American.
They got used as movie sets or in still photos to evoke a place or an era.And the big city post-offices – whew – they
were impressive marble edifices, which included other rich-people services such
as passports, and long rows of PO Boxes with secret codes for locks.
We rather marveled that they could get cards and letters
such great distances so quickly – most of the time, anyway.We complained about them losing things or
mashing them up, dropping them in the wrong box occasionally or returning them
for teeny postage due, but we liked them.They mostly got it right, after all.We heard from time to time how much money
they lost and groused about the rate increases. We laughed that some cranks
thought it could all be handled privately.We knew that was crazy!
Until it started to happen - with some specialised, larger
business mail at first, and then with personal shipping and packages. Then we
got angrier with the USPS, even as they improved, because we discovered that
someone else can do the job – it’s not magic – and there’s no need to lose
money on it.Especially now, as our
mailboxes have more catalogues and fliers, and less actual personal mail, we
see the USPS as rather hollow.An irony,
that we loved them when they were far less efficient and dislike them now.
European health services came in at about the same time as
actual improvements in medicine came in, especially pharmaceuticals and medical
devices.In England, the contrast is
between the bad old pre-NHS days, when doctors couldn’t do much for you -and bright, shiny modern times, with
antibiotics and valiums and cancer treatments that actually worked.Look at the era that they costumed the NHS to
evoke:not only the childhood of all but
the oldest Brits, but just as national care came into being in the 1950’s.They rode the wave of the great successes of
the evil pharmaceutical companies and corporate manufacturers of medical
devices and diagnostic equipment.But
the association remains.Avant moi, le deluge.
So no wonder they love their systems and think we are crazy
not to have them.Without realising it,
they have no standard for comparison.
