Brave Ole World

Day Bidet #37

March 8, 2021 by WFTD, posted in Day Bidet

Fly swifter round, ye wheels of time:

“And so a beer commercial becomes our priest, offering us absolution: You are a good person.” (Related: “[P]ost-Christian and non-Christian progressives feel themselves to be, not elite, but elect.”)
“We have to be resigned to living in a world where social outcomes are substantially determined at birth.” (Related.)
“The true virtue, the true courage, is to maintain hope (and also love and joy) in the face of what can sometimes look and feel like an ocean of darkness. … Sometimes our prayer ‘goes well’ and sometimes it seems ‘dry,’ but if we offer our time to God with sincerity we can be assured that God has worked on our soul and the fruit will come at the right time.”
“1/4 of people in their early 20s have no friends, and many even claim to have no acquaintances.”
“Paul may have coined tapeinophrosynē himself in Philippia…. ‘[H]umility realizes itself concretely as individual … renunciation of one’s own status possibilities in the service of the community….'” (Related: “[W]e dare not risk losing the special connection with the poor and broken. We may serve and empower them, but we are also blessed by them; they have something that we too need.” Related.)
“[M]aximal strength benefits are obtained from the use of heavy loads while muscle hypertrophy can be equally achieved across a spectrum of loading ranges.” (Related: “Western Europeans are collectively losing more than 1.6 million years of healthy life because of traffic noise.” Related. Related. Related.)
“Assuming that the Bible’s Shishak and Egypt’s Shoshenq I are one and the same, if Shoshenq I’s list does indeed refer to location named after King David, this 10th century monument could contain the earliest known reference to the Bible’s King David.”

“How Much Blood Does Black Lives Matter Have on Its Hands?”

“Why was Paul eager to visit Spain (Romans 15:24)?”

You can’t trust the (debunking) experts. Nor the scientific experts, because “science [has become] slave to power.”

“Coups in the Bible”

“A human being is one thing, not two, albeit a thing with both corporeal and incorporeal activities. And since it is one thing, the question of interaction does not arise.”

“The question, ‘What doth hinder me to be baptized?’ was suggested immediately by the appearance of the water; but it could not have occurred to the eunuch had he not been previously instructed concerning the ordinance. He had learned not only that there was such an ordinance, but that it was the duty and the privilege of men to observe it when properly prepared for it.”

False Devils

March 7, 2021 by WFTD, posted in Culture, faith, History, politics, worldview

New York restaurant with a sign in the shop window 'No Booze Sold Here Booze Hounds Please Stay Out'

Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but also by setting up false devils; by making men afraid of war or alcohol, or economic law, when they should be afraid of spiritual corruption and cowardice. The Moslems say, “There is no God but God.” The English Moslems, the abstainers, have to learn to remember also that there is no Satan but Satan.
GK Chesterton

The Puritanical agitators of Chesterton’s day—who, though they too were toxic cultists, stood head and shoulders above contemporary “social justice warriors”—decried capitalism and alcohol. But the Puritanical agitators of our day have a somewhat different list of bogeymen, headed up by the various now-all-too-familiar -ism’s: “racism,” “sexism,” “homophobia,” and so on.

And so our agitators call many things that are good satanic (or “problematic”), and many things that are satanic good. They forget—if they ever knew—that there is no Satan but Satan. (As do most of their “conservative” opponents, who are much more worried about “socialism” than about spiritual corruption.)

There is something fundamentally wrong, but if we do not begin at the beginning, with God as God and Satan as Satan, with good as good and evil as evil, we will never solve even our secular problems. Our problems remain unsolved because we worship false gods—”Diversity,” “Equity,” “Inclusion” —and fear false devils—”capitalism”; “socialism”; straight white men.

The Golden Age of Childhood

March 5, 2021 by WFTD, posted in Culture, History, Parenting

Dean Acheson, Truman’s Secretary of State, on his childhood:

The golden age of childhood can be quite accurately fixed in time and place. It reached its apex in the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first few years of the twentieth, before the plunge into a motor age and city life swept away the freedom of children and dogs, put them both on leashes and made them the organized prisoners of an adult world. … No one was run over. No one was kidnapped. No one had teeth straightened. No one worried about children, except occasionally my mother, when she saw us riding on the back step of the ice wagon and believed, fleetingly, that one of the great blocks of Pamecha Pond ice would fall on us. But none ever did.

Walter Isaacson, on Dean Acheson’s childhood:

Dean had a pony … a dog named Bob (purchased for five dollars), and a ready supply of playmates. … On the three-acre field between the church and the rectory, he and his friends would recreate battles of the Boer War and Teddy Roosevelt’s charge up San Juan Hill … Each evening Dean would walk to the firehouse to watch the men drill and then run to the wharf in time for the arrival of the boat from Hartford. “To me, it seemed that the ladies and gentlemen promenading the deck of that ship were the most fortunate people on earth,” he later recalled.

Arnold Kling, on Arnold Kling’s childhood:

Those of us who grew up many decades ago probably would not want to trade our childhood for today’s childhood.

Day Bidet #36

March 1, 2021 by WFTD, posted in Day Bidet

“Man of sorrows,” what a name:

“Woke speech is simply a ruling-class dialect, which must be updated frequently to keep the lower orders from breaking the code and successfully imitating their betters.”

“The Jerusalem Temple on Mount Gerizim”

“Removing a law-created privilege … meant to subsidize ‘infant industries’ is not ‘regulation’, it is de-regulation.” (Related. Related.)

Some good thoughts here.

Louise Glück, “Aubade.” (Related. Related?)

“Only once in the Old Testament is the word ‘faithful’ applied to a human.” (Related.)

They Talked About God

February 26, 2021 by WFTD, posted in faith, Literature

“Religion” ought to mean a realm in which her haunting female fear of being treated as a thing, an object of barter and desire and possession, would be set permanently at rest and what she called her “true self” would soar upwards and expand in some freer and purer world. For still she thought that “Religion” was a kind of exhalation or a cloud of incense, something steaming up from specially gifted souls towards a receptive Heaven. Then, quite sharply, it occurred to her that the Director never talked about Religion: nor did the Dimbles nor Camilla. They talked about God. They had no picture in their minds of some mist steaming upward, rather of strong, skilful hands thrust down to make, and mend, perhaps even to destroy. Supposing one were a thing after all—a thing designed and invented by Someone Else and valued for qualities quite different from what one had decided to regard as one’s true self? Supposing all those people who, from the bachelor uncles down to Mark and Mother Dimble, had infuriatingly found her sweet and fresh when she wanted them to find her also interesting and important, had all along been simply right and perceived the sort of thing she was? Supposing [God] on this subject agreed with them and not with her? For one moment she had a ridiculous and scorching vision of a world in which God Himself would never understand, never take her with full seriousness.
CS Lewis, That Hideous Strength

There Is Something Fundamentally Wrong

February 24, 2021 by WFTD, posted in politics, worldview

There is something fundamentally wrong and broken with our current society and system of government that is not “government” per se. The libertarian analysis of “this is what you get when any state is in charge” is not correct, it’s what you get when *our* state is in charge. I think it would be more productive to identify what, in particular, is so deeply sick with our particular state, then to merely say “it’s the government” and just leave it at that.
Handle, Comment on “The vaccine, the market, and government”

We assume that crime, broken families, and other social problems are inevitable—or the fault of too much (or too little) government. But countries like South Korea have solved many of our “inevitable” social problems, and not because South Korea is a libertarian country—and not because South Korea is a socialist country.

The point is not that South Korea is perfect. (Far from it.) The point is: There is something fundamentally wrong and broken with our current society. “Conservatives” who think the fundamental problem is “too much government” don’t get it. Leftists who think the fundamental problem is “too little government” also don’t get it. Because the fundamental problem is deeper than the government’s size—even though the government is often overly intrusive and wildly inefficient.

What then is the fundamental problem? That is the ~~million-~~trillion-dollar question. Almost everyone in a position of power and influence is lying about it, because literally all of them are incentivized to do so.

And that means we must resist their easy answers. Think, McFly, think! And not just about the fundamental political problem—over which we have little to no control—but about the fundamental problems in your life and mine.

Day Bidet #35

February 22, 2021 by WFTD, posted in Day Bidet

Love isn’t some place that we fall, it’s something that we do:

“Even after controlling for demographic differences between married and cohabiting adults (such as gender, age, race, religion and educational attainment), married adults express higher levels of satisfaction, trust and closeness than those who are living with a partner.” (Related.)

“Israel seems to have evidence of using two alternative calendars!”

“California is the future of the US, and Latin America is the future of California.”

“What is the Letter of Aristeas?”

“Just as it is necessary to eat, it is necessary to sometimes not eat.” (Related.)

“When you see the evils of politics and this world coming at us, please be certain to remember who you are in Christ Jesus.”

Civilised Man Is Fundamentally an Heir

February 19, 2021 by WFTD, posted in faith, politics, worldview

Western people are convinced that receiving is contrary to the dignity of human persons. But civilised man is fundamentally an heir, he receives a history, a culture, a language, a name, a family. This is what distinguishes him from the barbarian. To refuse to be inscribed within a network of dependence, heritage, and filiation condemns us to go back naked into the jungle of a competitive economy left to its own devices. Because he refuses to acknowledge himself as an heir, man is condemned to the hell of liberal globalisation.
“Cardinal Sarah says world blighted by Europe’s sickness”

May the Judgment Not Be Too Heavy upon Us

February 17, 2021 by WFTD, posted in faith, Literature

Image result for southern gothic graveyard

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?
Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again
Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice
And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us
Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.
Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.
TS Eliot, “Ash Wednesday”