Toward Attention

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.

History of English

Man of Steel

Finally. First pics here and here.

Truth and Representations

“Social networking affects all the things you do in real life now.  Like, if you go to a party, one of the most important aspects of going to the party is to document yourself for online posts.  You have to prove you were looking good, you were having fun, and that you were actually there!  It’s not about the party anymore but about the pictures of the party.”  

--Caroline, 14 years old

Read about it here.

Nietzsche seems to think that one should approach one's life this way -- for the representation. One is one's own fundamental work of art. Ruthless disregard for the sense of lived experience. Then he seems to yo-yo in the other direction. 

This is what happens when everything is a surface, and when social media is the privileged surface.

Written sagely by a man who maintains a blog...  :-/

Armies and Poachers

I've been following the discussions on a friend's Facebook page for several months now, and have recently been chiming into the discussions. Often the issue of fear-driven theologies comes up, and the regular suspects brought out and flogged. One of the regular portraits is that of the fearful, tradition-loving, backwards Orthodox who cling to an outdated cosmology and anthropology.

The subtext for much of this is, of course, pro-women's ordination and pro-homosexual agendas. I have no interest in hunting that duck, or defending it: the two will simply never go down among the majority of Orthodox, except in odd pockets here or there, mostly under the radar. One cannot rally to change the feeling of the faithful on this issue.

What I find saddening, and frightening, is that this duck is just a distraction: there is a much greater threat, and it is already crouching at the tent-flap. Many busy themselves with this duck simply in order to make themselves feel in control, feel competent: character assasinate the perversely-traditionalist herald, and one does not need to deal with the issues he represents. He lies dead. But the army he was warning about still makes its advance, all the while these men and women go about preoccupied with their fowl.

"Nihilism is at the door: whence comes this most uncanny of guests?" --Nietzsche

On Specialization; Also, On Totality and What is Beyond Totality

I was thinking about Morten Lauridsen's O Magnum Mysterium (and other composers and their Christian faith), and about Richard Dawkins (and other chemists/biologists and their frequent Atheism) and thinking: how much do our occupations and pre-occupations shape our souls! We are all so narrow, so specialized, and we cannot grasp at anything outside of our little sandboxes. Dawkins talks about the whole, the world, and writes of his sense of wonder at it all; Lauridsen gives this wonder voice, and speaks of it as Wonder, as laced with divinity. There are so many perversions of mind and heart that set upon us Hollow Men. We have forgotten how to grasp the universe in a grain of sand; we have forgotten how to be human.

We speak of the whole of a thing and the Whole of things, but whether we speak of a totality (a flower or a planet) or the Totality (the cosmos and everything in it), it is grasped provisionally, and supplemented by horizons beyond what is under consideration. Are we to say it is meaningless? Are we to take a slice of things, the mere quantitative models we dream up to master the world, and reverse-engineer this anemic portrait, thinking that such an act will deliver to us all we can know of primordial realities? How can we speak of this portrait without supplementing pure quantity with that which is not quantity? How can we talk about the end of all things with such finality when it has not yet arrived, but is only grasped provisionally, and very often only through the projections of our anemic models? How can we then pronounce upon the Whole as though it has not the beauty and thus goodness implied by the wonder which Dawkins & Co. wish to ascribe to the experience of it available in the present?

Sufjan Stevens -- The Transfiguration

Enjoyable

Moving

See here.

SNL Short "A Great Day"