My reaction to Bill Nye’s recent bit of controversy.
“And I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, in your world that’s completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that’s fine, but don’t make your kids do it because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need people that can—we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems.”
“We live at a time when man believes himself fabulously capable of creation, but does not know what to create. Lord of all things, he is not lord of himself.”
José Ortega y Gasset (May 1883 – October 1955)
(excerpt from The Revolt of the Masses, 1930)
This post cribbed straight from The Rooted Man.
Ah, sweet irenicism. Why would anyone want to pick a side when we can all just live in peace together?
Because peace comes through resolution and reconciliation. Passive-aggressive behavior only increases division and bitterness. I believe that Americans have lost, after the Baby Boomer break with our fathers, the ability to have resolution and reconciliation through frankness, conflict, and forgiveness.
Instead, ours is a society of passive one-upmanship in which the game is to get the other person to misstep and show that he is the one being mean and unkind. Once someone has been exposed in that way he must back down, humiliated. Because of this, conflict almost never happens. We usually see where our position will become untenable within the culture of tolerance, evaluate where our enemies stand on the same scale, then decide to back out if it seems that we might be shown to be unkind. The paramount goal of our verbal manouverings is to be the one who takes offense.
The best way to gain standing in a society like this is to constantly be bringing “tolerance” into focus, to make it appear as if there is hatred and anger and unforgiveness all around you while you stand in the storm as a rock of moderation.
This is so ingrained in us that, even if we are not always actively playing the game I described above, it shapes how we speak.
Am I talking about the business world? or academia?
No, mes amis. I’m talking about regular old life in society. I’m talking about community. I’m talking about the Church.
Take this sign, for example, versions of which have been flying around Pinterest for weeks (yes, I dig Pinterest, here’s my profile). And if you’re someone who has posted this or even used this in her wedding, don’t be offended. I see the cuteness of it. But maybe consider the assumptions behind such a sign.
Look how sweet this sign is. It’s all about unity. It’s about two families becoming one!
You didn’t come to this wedding with some sort of cruel agenda to be divisive by sitting with your friend’s family, did you? Didn’t think so. So pick a seat. Any seat. ANY SEAT!
Forget the built-in traditions of a wedding which have the families divided before the giving of rings, then generally mixed afterwards. You know, making two families one. You might have a better idea for the liturgy of marriage, or simply one you prefer for yourself. There’s no reason your wedding has to be just like grandma’s. But consider what a sign like this says.
Its very phrasing is manipulative. It’s an example of how the way we speak has become passive-aggressive; we’re always phrasing things divisively, paralyzing those who disagree but wish not to offend.
Christians should be all about positive phrasing. Unfortunately we’ve lost the ability to phrase things positively because saying “yes” or “it is so” is too strong. Saying “no” or “maybe” leaves us wiggle room.
This sign could have said, “Today, two families become one. Sit anywhere!” Instead, it phrases negatively. These are the effects:
Am I making mountain of molehill? Only a bit. It is only that I tire of how we have begun to use language.
Let us be open. Let us be generous. Let us be expansive and liberal and considerate whenever possible. And (here’s my negativity, my prohibition) let’s avoid prohibition. It’s ought not to be “You can’t pick a side”. It ought to be “sit anywhere”.
Let’s be rid of the hipster language that assails us and speak plainly and openly. As in, “This is my party. Please, sit anywhere. Eat anything. Drink anything. Speak to anyone you wish.” And let the Captains of Unity stop being aggrieved and resentful, and get back to their good work.
El Greco, “The Pentecost”
Please find here the text of Peter’s post-Pentecost sermon, a.k.a. The Sermon. One of the best things about The Sermon is that it is a response to mockers; to those who in another age would be known as player haters.
The mockers say “These men are full of new wine.” Peter doesn’t try to justify himself to the haters, as is the compulsion of so much of the modern church. It would be easy to read the passage that way if your only way of thinking of the pulpit was as a place to “meet people where they are”. He doesn’t hasten to explain, “No, no, no, don’t worry guys, this isn’t what it looks like,” then spend time making excuses and explaining away, nor to say that God longs to be accepted by them as they are.
Peter pricks them in the heart. He hurts them. He tells them that Jesus has been exalted as king and will put all his enemies under his feet. He accuses the listeners of being traitorous regicides.
He tells an amazing drunken story of resurrection, repentance, baptism, and salvation.
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There are a lot of separatist “fundamentalists” in my neck of the woods. These Christians separate themselves from the world, refuse to drink alcohol or expose their arms, and leave tracts instead of money in tip jars.
Who are these people? What do they matter to you and me?
They don’t matter at all.
They haven’t filled themselves with excuses and a longing to be liked by men, but neither have they been awesome. No one accuses them of being full of new wine. No one is amazed, or in doubt, or says to another, what meaneth this?
Pentecost Sunday is past. We are now in Ordinary Time. You have been given the Holy Spirit. The Kingdom is come in you. The Kingdom makes demands, it pricks in the heart. Live a life that demands the question, what meaneth this?
And if I may suggest it, perhaps you’d like to do that with the emphasis that I’ve chosen for my own good-spell telling: unapologetic feasting. Listen, these are not drunken as you suppose; they are filled with joy, and the Holy Ghost.
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We are a special people.
Yes, special like the short bus.
Special like Batman.
If you are single-mindedly obsessed with saving the world, you will look ridiculous. If you act as if God is your joy and comfort, as if all your needs will be met by him, you will look ridiculous.
Live the sort of profligately joyful life that the world could only call foolhardy. As if the resources of all of Creation were yours. Because they are; your Father has promised them to you. Suffer and rejoice. Feast in your poverty. Give alms; care for widows; you will always have enough. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.
This summer the Swait family is throwing a party, our second “Swait Summer Soiree”. Last year’s was a blast. We bought all the beer and provided all the food and hosted over a hundred people in our back yard. We made a huge deal out of it. Friends came from all over. We invited everyone we knew, and so many people came. There were children running all over, kicking beach balls into the street and making Kimberly fret about her newly planted blueberry bushes. There were young married couples sharing beers with divorcees on the stoop. There were rugby players and artists playing poker and smoking cigars under the dogwood trees. I tell everyone this, so you’ve probably heard me say it, but I went to sleep around two and left a dozen people hanging out around a table in our yard, keeping the party vigil. It might have been the most awesome party ever.
It was a wonderful refresher and source of joy for us.
The reason we decided to host that party last year was because I was not getting enough work, and not getting payed enough. We couldn’t pay our bills. We were struggling and weary to the point of exhaustion. We were dry and lost and grieved.
So we threw a party. Seriously. It was crazy.
And now that we’re not in crisis, and haven’t been for months, we’ll throw another party.
Let the mockers say that you are full of new wine. The truth is that you are full of the Holy Spirit. You know that you are held in the palm of God’s hand; that is why you behave the way you do. That is why you are full of joy.
This year we’ve hit Ordinary time. Easter and Pentecost are over. Where is my Risen Lord? How can I live without you here, Lord Jesus?
I have a Comforter.
Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.
In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.
These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you.
But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.
Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I.
And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe.
Hereafter I will not talk much with you: for the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me.
But that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us go hence.
Now Jesus knew that they were desirous to ask him, and said unto them, Do ye enquire among yourselves of that I said, A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me?
Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy.
A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.
And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.
And in that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you.
Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.
Last week when the wife was hanging out with a friend, the topic of French people came up. The friend was frustrated because she had been treated rudely and condescendingly by a French person. So this sophisticated and cultured woman vented a bit, making the comment that every French person she’d ever met has been rude.
There might have been a bit of exaggeration on her part, due to the offense she’d taken. I’ve certainly known some nice-ish French people. But most of the Frenchies I’ve known have been sort of rude.
Of course, what’s taking place is simply cultural crossed wires. These rude French people aren’t actually being rude to us on purpose, are they?
Well, yes and no. Mostly yes, but it’s nothing personal.
Contemplez-vous cette femme ridicule, cavalier.
To the French, conformity to the normes courantes are a requirement for respectability. Americans are individualistic to a vicious fault; this leads to a self-regard that is relatively unaffected by the opinions of others. “Self-esteem” is a real thing to Americans, but is meaningless to a Frenchman, to whom estime is the admiration you develop for people you have a relationship with. The French have no self-esteem, but they have their honneur, which is defined by others. The estime that others hold you in is what defines your self-regard as a Frenchman. Whereas Americans have historically been aggressively individualistic, the French are as thoroughly a face-saving honor culture as the Japanese.
That is what leads to the bullying and rudeness. Being witty and clever is rewarded in French culture, as is philosophy and academic research. But only when it falls into accepted norms. This is why the French Academy spends so much time making pronouncements regarding the French language, and fighting change to a point that looks ridiculous to us. It is why their philosophers and fashionistas are so famed for their brutality toward les étrangers. It is because that which we have all agreed upon is what is right.
Therefore an intellectual mob mentality. When French people were rude to you (assuming a real conversation, not a request for directions to the metro) you noticed that it was done in a very laissez faire sort of way, which only offended you more. But it was done casually because it was done instinctively, not personally.
Europeans all agree that you should have few children; it’s not rude of a French person to talk about how you have too many kids because it is you who is outside the norm. Europeans agree that religion and religiosity are barriers to enlightenment; it’s not rude of a French person to tell you that you’re stupid and superstitious because it is you who is outside the norm. The French agree that there’s a radical separation between one’s work and one’s “private life”; it’s not rude of a French person to tell you that you’re overreacting to that politician’s scandal because it is you who is outside the norm.
French society allows for a range of what is intellectually and behaviorally acceptably, of course. It is, after all, a human society. But you’ll know it when you bump up against the boundaries of what is acceptable. The French learn early on that they’ll get bashed by those who are older and more established if they step outside the norm, so they become masters of navigating that river. But they will (almost) never put the boat up and go exploring in the woods.
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Well, that was a nice little article, wasn’t it? What does it have to do with the controversial recent amendment to North Carolina marriage law?
It has to do not so much with the referendum and amendment as it does with some of the reactions I’ve seen.
On Facebook you could tell the moment the results were cemented. That’s because there were hordes of people ready with one-liners, photos, cartoons, and memes galore. They all exploded out early in the evening. These were not attacks on the theological, anthropological, or political ideas in play. They were all “look how stupid those people are”.
This is one of the least rude ones out there.
A republic is representational, but is structured to protect the rights and political power of minorities as well as majorities. It is easy to see how the political life and structure of these United States has changed over the years as it became less of a republic and more of a democracy, in which the straight majority decides all. American intellectual life, of course, has always been ahead of and informing the political trajectory.
The glory of American intellectual life was its individualism. Sadly, the natural entropic course of that is atomization to the point of becoming the demos masses. We have decayed intellectually to the point that our thinking is utterly defined by the polarized group we belong to. Anyone outside that norm is to be ridiculed instead of engaged.
We are becoming like the French. If you say something contrary to what the Academy says, you are only to be mocked. Public dialogue and political discourse has never been so easy!
If anyone disagrees with you and your group, they must be stupid. You don’t need to talk to them or even respect them. Just start calling people names and bashing away.
Forty years ago today The Godfather premiered. It is one of the greatest movies ever, and together with its sequel perhaps the finest opus of American cinema.
I wouldn’t at all mind being an olive oil exporter.
Perhaps one of the greatest aspects of the film is the way it illuminates how we choose to live. As you watch the film, and consider it in retrospect, everything that happened seems somehow to have been inevitable. Every betrayal, every move for power, every assassination. Fate as much the puppet-master as the Godfather.
In a sense, The Godfather is a very pagan movie. Not pagan in the earth mother sense, but in the Dying Gaul sense. If there was one thing the Danes or the Greeks or Gauls could teach us, it’s to take yourself seriously enough to want to die well, but not seriously enough to be unwilling to die.
When the norns conspire against you, you are still a responsible agent. Moderns take it personally, they get bitchy with God; Christians ought to be, but are not, exceptions. We’re all bitchy about it. Today’s pagans lack the balls to die well, they want to put off death as long as possible, no matter the cost. And today’s Christians prefer to pretend that there is no arena, that there is no lion.
The Godfather resurrects a pagan ethos toward fate and death. I think that’s why it’s the film that all American males must love. We recognize that these men are men of will and strength, ethos and gravitas. Those who are not die badly. We sense that this is right somehow.
From "The summons of death on the medieval and Renaissance English stage" by Phoebe S. Spinrad.
Christian men have been running away from manhood for generations. Christian manhood, in a way, lies on the other side of pagan Godfather manhood. It doesn’t run away from power and strength. It goes through it. Even pagan men know they ought to look after their own; that’s what The Godfather’s about. Christian manhood is not afraid of that. It is stronger than that. Christian manhood looks after its own, and beyond. Christian manhood takes care of the entire world. Really. Personally.
If a man only protects those who are his, those who are like him, those who in some immediate way belong to him, only power and ruthlessness matter. He is The Godfather.
A man who protects what is not his, a man who gives up his own inheritance, who shares with outsiders what would have otherwise gone only to his own son, that man is a redeemer, an actual godfather. You know, like at a baptism. But we can’t get there if we don’t grow a pair. Christian manhood isn’t the opposite of pagan manhood. It’s pagan manhood grown up, grown selfless. It’s unnatural. It’s unrealistic. It would make an unbelievable movie. It is the manhood made possible by the Holy Spirit.
Your life is fated. The story told. You can’t escape your story. If you look back you will see that you had to end up here, at this crossroads, facing this decision. What will you choose?
(Make sure you stay away from oranges.)
Why would I write a post about my philosophy of hand-washing?
It is not impossible to waste thought. It is. Some things aren’t worth thinking about at length. But it’s the “at length” that’s key. Everything is worth thinking about. Not because all things are complex, or profound, or multi-faceted, or whatever other variation on the idea of complicated you can come up with. It is because all things are consequential; nothing is inconsequential. There is nothing morally neutral: every thing, every action, is either for good or for evil. Or a little both. Or a lot of both. So you’d better know which is which. And which is which in your hands.
Good grammar can be used for good or evil. Bad grammar can be used for evil or good. “Good” and “evil” are meaningless without the presence of person. An apple is neither good nor evil. But an apple in an equation involving a person cannot help but have a moral weight. There is no equation involving personal action that is morally neutral; it all has weight and meaning.
It is impossible to waste action. Even sitting still to think requires me to sit still, not an insignificant action. If all action has meaning, all thought must at least have the significance of being potential fuel for good or evil. It is possible to waste thought so far as it is possible to be morally irresolute. Havering in a moment requiring a display of physical courage is, in one sense, a waste of action. But that waste itself has a moral weight. There are no weightless thoughts if there are no weightless actions.
This is just my long-winded way of saying that you should pay attention! If you’re spending twenty hours a week playing XBox, you’d better have a good reason for it. I say that as a man who spent an unspeakable number of hours on this game; I am not a model of this good behavior, I only explain it so that you understand some of my actions. If you have a good reason for spending so much time playing video games, then playing video games that long is good.
If we are to evaluate every single action morally (this ought not to be burdensome; it ought to be simply human), we must be sensitive. Or sensible. Depending on how you define those words.
Every man ought to be sensitive, if by that we mean alert, responsive, and affective. But we cannot mean cast about by every wind.
Every man ought to be sensible, if by that we mean cognizant, keenly aware. But we cannot mean non-committal.
Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, know why you do it. Know what you do it for. I’ve been asked more than once why I have an opinion about everything. This is why. I don’t want to do a single thing without having some idea why. And I don’t apply to myself the pressure of having to be sure. That’s the non-committal version of sensible; I simply want to have considered everything I possibly can without slowing or avoiding the moment of action.
That’s the reason I probably don’t disagree with your different opinion: you’re trying to do something else with the situation. Having an opinion about everything, I believe, is a good thing. Being an ass**** is not. I must have the sensibility to realize that I’m operating on a lot of contingencies; I’m acting from imperfect knowledge and will.
If I do disagree with you, there’s still no disrespect intended. I could be very wrong, but I cannot be paralyzed by that thought. I ought to do what I believe to be good. And if you’re doing evil, I might not even hate you, even as I oppose you; I might even believe that you believe you’re doing good.
There are only two whom I hate. The one who actively and consistently seeks evil, the one with no glimpse of grace, that is, the one who is evil. And the one who is thoughtless, who takes this world of things and deeds and acts as if it is meaningless, that is, the one who is evil; this one is the scourge of this age.
We must all be keenly aware. We must all the responsive. It is this that combats the leeching holocaust of unspeaking neighbors.
We pay attention to every little good. When we bake. When we eat. And when we go to the bathroom. We cannot expect to do the great deeds, to fight the great fights, or sail the great seas until we have passionately thrown ourselves at the lesser deeds.
