Toward Attention

Saints and gods

One of my (Secular Protestant) professors just spoke about "the Catholic pantheon of saints." Yikes!

Conversations as Metaphors

I am in class at the moment: a visiting professor just mentioned an AAR meeting that brought up the theme of sexuality, and that the speakers at the conference weren't getting into it the way that some members of the audience wanted them to -- the visiting lecturer then said:

" ...lots of people in the room were fighting to be included in the conversation..."

Doesn't that make it sound like they're not really interested in having a conversation, but something else? Is it really that people weren't being listened to, or was it something else?

Choices and Readings

I do not think we are fully conscious of the implications of this truth: all of our interpretations have an element of choice in them, are shot-through with our own will; interpretations are decisions, even if they are more than this.

Atheist For Secularism and Against Political Atheism

With Western Easter fast approaching, you can be sure that there will be many people who wail about those Christian elements that remain in the public square, those others who actively seek to promote and enlarge the non-Christian elements of the "holiday," and yet others who aren't interested in complaining or re-emphasizing but in actively militating against eliminating and ridiculing every element of the Christian faith. I don't think it will necessarily be as bad as all that, but as with every year, there will be some of it. Anticipating that, here is a video below:

Factories vs. Things That Grow

The performative requirements of the academy are so often disruptive, if not abortive, to the processes of being educated.

I wonder how often education is really on the minds of those who design and run classes -- I wonder how often, when they say "education," they really mean something closer to uploading data or even grooming. 

In these cases we are machines or hardware, clay or stone -- what we are not is alive, not even on the vegetable level, which one needs to be recognized as in order to be educated, or which one needs to feel in order to learn -- to educate is literally to draw out.

Freedom and Nihilism

Whatever comes after Modernity is not a paleo-whatever: it is something new that no one can now dream. Yet we have such weak imaginations that we cannot conceive of this.

I recently shared, with some friends, the quote from David Bentley Hart that I cited here several posts ago. I did not cite the quote to attack Modernity or Secularism or Secularity: I simply sought to describe its contours.

It is interesting that, for some reason, laying out the features of our Modern notion of freedom immediately provokes a kind of theatrical display of Jews, women, gays, and scientists as threatened by any return to "Christendom," which apparently is the only thing that a somewhat-pious person could possibly be interested in if he were to challenge the modern notions of freedom and law as intrinsically nihilistic, for the notion of the Good that they assume is generated from the appetites of men. One can criticize our modern idea of freedom without attacking our modern freedoms (they are not the same thing, even if closely related -- still, the modern freedoms may need a better home than the modern idea of freedom).

It seems that, to critique the modern notion of freedom as license cannot but prompt the alarms of Byzantine Emperors exiling the enemies of their preferred theological parties and Totalitarian regimes annihilating ethnic groups and persecuting those who engage in homoerotic acts. These do not lie behind my complaint, however: the inappropriate use of coercive power by past governments should not be confused with a criticism of the nihilistic tendencies in our modern Liberal polity.

The move to immediately consider women is apparently that they were not free -- not truly free -- before our modern Liberal polities.

The move to immediately consider Jews is apparently that they are always a remainder, and so any polity that does not make room for them is too homogenizing and Totalitarian.

The move to immediately consider homosexuals is apparently that whether or not homosexuality is legally allowed is a real test of whether our modern liberties are real or not.

The move to immediately consider scientists is apparently that science challenges authority with reason and is publicly verifiable, and that we should be critical of all authority, for it is so often private, irrational and arbitrary.

I don't know that any of these cases are as simple as the positions I've here described (I've only tried to sketch an outline of why these four are brought out on stage when the Modern notion of freedom is questioned), and I'm quite sure that in questioning Modernity I'm not pushing for a return to a religio-political model that yokes religious institutions to the State, giving them access to the sword. That works for Paganism just fine, and for Islam, and maybe even for Judaism (though less so): I don't think it can work for the Church. Christianity can't really be a very good religious backbone for an Empire.

It is interesting, though, how political academia is. It's not the place to go for free and open enquiry: it's the place to go to train for war.

A.N. Wilson's Return to Christ

I finally found a book on the "Nous" about a month ago (which I hoped would dispel so much of the nonsense that a certain variety of Protestant converts to Orthodoxy say about it), and thought it looked to be worth reading. Then I came across this piece (three years old) by the same author. I must say, that when he simply offers his intuitions, I agree with him, but when he starts making stronger arguments, I don't think they hold up, even if the intuition that prompted the position being argued for is correct. How many of us are like this, though? --do we know ourselves, and see what we are really doing?

I think he has the right intuitions about academics. Unfortunately, they never come to the foreground. You just have to feel them out.

War is a Force that Gives us Meaning

As I was ranging over one of the courses I took this past semester, I thought about the title to a book that came out not too long ago: War is a Force that Gives us Meaning. In the class I took, historical material was covered in the most superficial way, and contemporary texts (which were often enough nothing more than news-media articles about social justice issues) were brought in to supplement these and to give them historical "relevance."

It's this social justice element that caught my attention. I would have taught this class differently: the students would have been thinking about theology, and no women's rights or power-issues or whatever. They would have had a robust exposure to each period and the issues that were native to each context: I would not have used these ancient writers as a foil for reinforcing and clarifying pre-existent prejudices.

Then I realized: it's war. The social-justicy stuff is simply a conflict to amp-up emotional force to keep some kind of motive power up so that the institution can justify itself. It gives a sense of meaning.

This gave me a window into modern sports culture and reality TV: in the absence of real meaning, people line up behind their favorite sports team or their TV idol to emotionally invest, not in the cause, but in the team or individual's conflicts. Meaning is simple, and is determined by the projected goal of victory.

Then I realized that although the monastic ideal sits rather precariously within the context of the modern academy, which has no ethical commitments or ascetical practices or spiritual ideals, a particular form of the monastic ideal does lie at the root of all of our modern forms of academic pursuit; without this foundation, however, the abandoned child of the academy can only seek shelter in the adopted arms of industry, or else adopt social justice as its pet ascesis, or as its ascetical chatter.

Output

What kind of a person is the form of a graduate program supposed to produce? --or, regardless of intent, what does it effectually produce?

Archaeology and the Bible

One of the T.A.'s in my class sent this out to the class. Interesting stuff: useful academically, but raises unanswered questions.