Christian literature

No, not the Left Behind series. By chance or providence, my mind has recently gravitated toward several popular works that do not wear Xianity as a crest on their crusaders' shields, but have a great deal more to say to the individual soul what takes X and his tradition seriously.

The first is Stephen King's epic The Stand, which contains some unforgettable metaphors for the workings of evil, the nature of the struggle for spiritual health, and the tricky relationship (too often forgotten) between moral decision and amoral chance.

The second is the film Magnolia, which used to occupy a zone in my heart alongside five or six other superior works of 1999, but now undoubtedly surpasses them all. This cathartic work speaks to some deep part of us that keeps quietly asking the very same questions that Jesus urged us to ask.

The third is the Harry Potter series, the labeling of which as satanic has more than a hint of irony, sneaking as it does a powerful form of Christian ethics through the side door of the imagination.

I intend to pursue these references further. Thought I'd put it out there for you to ponder not just the works themselves, but the reasons why so many explicitly religious people are incapable of seeing that so much of what is interesting in Christianity is alive and well in the collective unconcious, kept vital by works such as these.

Fire building

Although I have plenty of Duraflame on hand, I typically balk at using it to start my fires. Perhaps owing to my Boy Scout background, I find something mildly sacrilegious (perhaps 'unkosher' is the right term) at bypassing or distorting the progression of fuels: from a bit of paper or needles to twigs and splinters, to small dry softwood, and ultimately to the heavy oak log that lays in a bed of coals and burns for hours.

This thought often leads me deep into thought on the nature of value, what might truly be called 'metaeconomics'. Building a fire is something I know how to do, rather efficiently, and the efficiency is substantial enough that its occasional frustration leads to, well, substantial frustration. Yet, paradoxically, I am negatively inclined toward getting a fire going in the most efficient way available. And it's not as if I feared atrophy of such a basic skill, sleeping in the cold some day because Duraflame has suddenly become unavailable. Nor is it, as far as I can tell, captured by the concept of 'challenge' (with its own attendant metaeconomic complications): this is a basic skill, lacking in higher degrees of success, one which I seemingly neither risk nor improve my faculties by performing. Why do I so deeply want to take longer, move slower, and expend more effort to reach the goal of a roaring fire?

Low-percentage pick-up lines

From Jason Roth.

I think you'll enjoy the punchline of this one, my friend.

academic philosophy

Hey, sole reader! You'll be interested in this personal statement from Tom Runnacles, who seems to share many of our experiences and sentiments. I was struck by the reference to McGinn on subjectivity, of course, and also by the sentence (won't give it away :->) that ends with "...the Times Crossword over breakfast." Feel like going back now?

Pepsi Holiday Spice Sucks

Is it supposed to be the Christian equivalent of passover herbs? This drink is as close as our society will come to suffering. It has a wimpy, simple bitterness that doesn't blend at all with Pepsi. It has an aftertaste like a spoonful of unsweetened cinnamon. Worst of all, there are some weird metallic notes. If you want festive, drop some Altoids in your coke. (And aspirin in some lucky lady's.)

The Soul of Madison (P.S.)

Check out this quote from the playwright of the above-mentioned "Audrey Seiler, Where Are You" --

"We're more culpable than she is. The play kind of points the finger at the audience and at Madison, and at American life in general. We want things to be the way we want them to be, and we'll go to extremes to make them that way. And if it turns out not be that way, we get really upset."

from Doug Moe

The Soul of Madison

Remember Audrey Seiler?

If she had been found raped and mutilated in that marsh, chances are you would. Instead, she was curled in the fetal position, her inner world crumbling, in need of what we all need, ultimately.

"Concocting", as one typically says. She concocted a kidnapping hoax, costing the city of Madison and other parties well over $100,000. She diverted precious law enforcement resources from real crimes. I cannot deny that what she did was damaging. And yet, I have not forgotten the night, lying on a motel bed in Eugene, Oregon, when I heard that the nation's latest victim-celebrity had falsely laid claim to that increasingly precious title, nor have I forgotten my overwhelming emotion: a deep yet viscerally impotent sympathy. Heightened by the impending national outrage, and subsequent purging from collective memory, my feeling for this face, name, and story left a lasting mark. I believe it continues to teach me essential lessons about myself, about "human nature", and, indeed, about Christianity.

Audrey lived a bit longer in the memory of Madison, and the vitriol issuing from her community has had a disturbing quality to it. There was a sentence judged very light, a truly bad poem, a play that apparently used Audrey as a hook for a local playwright's farcical material. "Five days of worry, and five months of outrage." The occasional voice distinguished pyschological disorder from immorality, in the typical fashion of insulating our desire for revenge. The general tambour of righteous cruelty is inescapable, and it frightens me in some sacred place. It makes me doubt humanity, or my place in it.

Don't live in a world teeming with evil, of the institutionalized kind as well as the kind that spurts unsummoned from my heart-spring? Indeed, how pure are the impulses that glue millions to the screen at the reported kidnapping of a beautiful coed? Dare I say it, how much outrage at Audrey was a projection of disappointment that her mangled body was not found, a redirection of that heady anger which a populace felt entitled to direct at her accused killer? Do we dare to ask ourselves whether a homicidal demon might be easier to confront than a weak, scared, fractured young student, who could not deal with what seemed like overwhelming problems, and tried to evade them with a sympathy-inducing lie? Does this latter offense strike too close?

Red v. Blue: What Really Matters

Divided America is the blogging topic du jour, not to mention the basis for some broadly humorous shirts and other wholly uninspired modes of expression. If your sensors are properly tuned, it's a great time to study the fascinating intricaties of irrationality in our reasoning about society. Bush-backers are touting a 3% popular advantage as a "mandate", while many opponents, convinced that Bush cannot be popular enough to have won fair and square, continue to hold that the election was rigged against them. Hey, as a linguist, I'm bound to accept a little intuition in sociology as well, but sorry guys, not even the most sensitive of fingers on the throbbingest of pulses could sense the difference between 51% and 49% support in Ohio. Yet we humans have an undeniable affinity for clean conceptual models: triumph and defeat, golden age and impending doom, Enlightenment and Dark Ages, liberator and tyrant, slavery and freedom. In the face of this deep instinct, my philosophy resists -- for the last five or six years, at least, I've usually been a fairly tough guy to polarize.

Nevertheless, there are cases where the Red-Blue culture war unmistakably strikes me, setting my (blue?) blood aboil. We must never forget the West Memphis Three, innocent boys who grew to manhood in prison because they happened to have the wrong kind of clothes, music, and spiritual curiosity. Eleven years they have sat in cells, while a moralizing murderer walks free, all because Arkansans are great at seeing the devil everywhere but in their mirrors. Red and Blue maps, pithy T-shirts, may be today's fad, but This can never be old news.

Bush no one wins, Kerry everyone loses

Wirkman Virkkala has a nice little bit on the possible implications of being "undecided", complete with a survey I can feel good about answering.

Since going from no T.V. to a temporary roommate with HBO on demand, I've been watching quite a bit of Bill Maher. Unlike the old P.I., the new show doesn't make an attempt at supersimplistic panel balance -- it's basically a hate-in against Bush, but infused with clever humor and many impresive auxillary points on cultural issues. The one point that especially unnerves me, though, and it's made frequently by Bill and guests, is that "undecided" voters at this point must be bat-shit crazy, since Bush and Kerry are so glaringly different. Yeah, well so were the Bolsheviks and Tsar Nick. Also rather different are overpaid xenophobic hothead union workers and miseducated pompous management goons.

Far from making such decisions easier, the different sets of negatives should make such choices harder, not easier. By analogy, consider the following binary choices:

(1) Would you rather be given a Camry or a Lexus?
(2) Would you rather be given a Lexus or all-expense-paid two-week trips to Cancun and the Swiss Alps?

Any moron should be able to answer (1) very quickly, precisely because the great similarity of the choices highlights a small number of dimensions on which they differ. The choices in (2) are substantially different, and it is here that one is more likely to be undecided for a long time, perhaps even right up until the decision is demanded. Similarly, if both candidates were born-again conservatives with similar economic policies and personalities, but one had a more impressive resume, then it would indeed be idiotic to remain undecided. In short, Maher has things back-ass-ward.

The idea that this choice should be easy is particularly frustrating for libertarians like myself, who feel that our clusters of views (many of which we regard as transparently interdependent) are regarded by much of society as the ideological hippogriff, "half-liberal, half-conservative". Hey, that's it! Libertarians have the heads of centaurs and the bodies of Egyptian gods...