Saturday, July 30, 2011

Opinion 76

On one of the Christian radio stations yesterday: "I remember when television programming started. Each station would come on the air with prayer and devotions. There was no nudity or partial-nudity. No profanity. No inappropriate sexual stuff. Not even an idea of homosexuality, no scenes of sodomy. And the bad guys wore black hats and the good guys wore white".

Followed by a lament that secular programming has led to the downfall of the power of the church in America.

Really, an exercise in completing missing the point. When a group of people has collectively decided to sit down and regularly receive "entertainment" in a passive manner, the content of that entertainment is only an afterthought. The human has already been sold; the door has been opened and culture has walked out - it doesn't much matter what walks in thereafter.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Opinion 75

It's the abstraction of big, national economic problems that make them almost impossible to solve. Like sleepily attempting to run in a dream and being confounded by its impossibility, trying to understand the modern technobabble that has run off with economics leads mostly to blinking eyes and a desire to be find a new subject. I suppose its not just economics, though. Wars for "freedom" involving no one we really know and costing the average American nothing (at least not immediately) also suffer from the same hazy fog of abstraction. General vague feelings evoked at words like "equality" or the "American dream" create a fuzzy feeling and then we look down to see who texted us and the thought sweetly slips away.

It's hard to believe anything anymore. I mean believe, not just "feel". I know a lot of people who feel a whole lot about ______ (if its my generation, its the "environment" and "GLBT rights"; if its those on the right, its the "free market" or "exceptionalism"), but these feelings are just vague self-reinforcing road signs, giving the impression and all the accompanying comfort that one is on the right path. But in day to day life it is not these things that drive a person. It is, rather, the desire to just get the hell out of the office by five, or to make it to the bar before happy hour ends, or to keep the social networks updated, or to get enough to buy a new phone because a new phone is just gonna make the whole thing easier, really - trust me (some of these desires, of course, are more noble than others).

What is this vague and gray, sticky and slow block, this thought-aborting malaise? Again I go back to dreams, where one can't seem to raise one's head, or open the door that really needs to be open. Actions are slowly and inexplicably whisked away. We lower our heads and bow to slumber.

What is it? Who the hell knows. It's something straight from the devil to be sure. I received a letter from Comcast the other day, assuring me that their wondrous machines could provide me and mine with "the entertainment services you deserve". Good Lord! Entertainment services I deserve? First and foremost, what the hell are we doing talking about "entertainment services?" It reminds me of the fact that so much of economy has shifted from manufacturing to the service and entertainment industries respectively. We don't make stuff no more (except for lattes, of course), we just buy stuff and get ourselves entertained. And yet this new reality is no longer shocking (was it ever? is the devil too subtle? does he fly under all our radars?). No, it is so prevalent we don't even notice it. We assume entertainment is something owed, something "deserved". And as much as I hoped that upon opening that envelope, the services revealed of which I assuredly deserved would include a monkey and an accordion...

What is this malaise? Presumably it is the exhaustion of a culture that has just laid on its ass for far too many years. A culture that does not work, a culture that is "entertained", a culture whose gods are celebrities of the most pagan sort. We cannot be but exhausted; we haven't done anything in generations There is no nourishment here, only the opportunity to eat more. No thirst is quenched here, but the cocktail parties are endless. No one believes a damn thing anymore, but we all (God spare my blog in this) have opinions tied to feelings. We like to say things that bring comforting sensations.

The first temptation for men of my sort, is ironic detachment. "The idiotic world is dying- let us drink and chuckle". Let us not condemn these men outright. At least they know something is wrong! And at least they drink whiskey (or they should). Beer drinkers are not allowed to scoff at the world in an ironic fashion.

Secondly, and related to the first option, is the turn to the book. For if one hates what has become of the world, one can learn how it happened, one can find the etiology of the nihilism and then stand triumphant! This, of course, is related to the first temptation, as the knowledge provided through study leads quite often to hopelessness, and then to the irony and then, the cupboard!

I suppose there is also a religious option of a more or less apocalyptic leaning. I mean apocalyptic in the worst sense, the "well this whole place is gonna be gone soon and I'm gonna be sitting pretty with m' Lord up in heaven, so really who cares?!" sense.

There are better sorts of the apocalyptic. Saints have achieved these and my stained hands dare not describe them.

No solution is here offered, my friends. If I had it I would have published it and, assuming on its popularity, I would even now be spending these Late and Waning Days in a big bed of cool cash in front of huge screen of some sort, forgetting and making some fun of it.

I leave you with
this encouragement.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Opinion 74

This sentiment is of course cliche, but I've been reminded as of late just how much we religious people love a controversy. Let's be honest: Jesus gets boring after a while. But a good fight, a good fight with the theologically misinformed or just plain infidelic - now that's something worth getting excited about. My God, it makes going to church almost worth it.

Opinion 73

Au contraire


Opinion 72

Opinion 71 wasn't that great.

OPINION 71



DEBT CEILING LIMIT FUNDING DEFAULT BIPARTISANSHIP DOWNGRADE OF CREDIT RATING

HELP!


DEBT CEILING





JOHNBO


EHNEROBAMAREID


DEBT CEILING

Opinion 70

Another good way to start a prayer: "Lord, I know I'm drunk, but..."

Opinion 69

A good, all-purpose prayer: "Please do not destroy us."

Monday, July 25, 2011

Opinion 68

Father said that its not so much about finding the strength within oneself to forgive the other - that's nearly impossible; rather, the trick is learning to see how it is that God and his community can and has forgiven the other. God has given us authority to forgive sins. We, in a way, do best to give that authority back to him, as Christ did, in submission: "Father, forgive them...".

Friday, July 22, 2011

Opinion 65

Lotta talk going around these parts about conversion in and among different churches. I'm told the man who chooses his religion is acting like a Protestant. Good Lord folks, we're all Protestants now days. The Middle Ages have passed. If one is going to be religious in the West these days, by and large one is going to have to choose. And yes, we choose quite often for reasons incorrect and undignified. Does this really need to be a cause of surprise?

Here's the thing, Christianity itself is a choice. At one time or another, many of us decided to try to follow Christ, or at least to tag along with those who said they were following him. There are two roads, aren't there? and we're told that we must choose one or the other. The Gospel itself demands a Protestant choice, a protest against the nations: stick with the political-religious mainstream or give them the finger and follow a crazed Jew of quite unhopeful prospects.

Let me offer a piece of spiritual advice. As one who has seen the divine light, magnified through the shadows of divine unknowable darkness, as one who has... or rather, who knows a man, whom seven years ago ascended through nine heavens (that's right, nine, not a paltry seven) and saw sights -whether in the body or out of the body he doesn't know- as a man who regularly has had fantastic and freaky looking lightsaber-like lasers shooting out of his hands and who on this account has been forced to purchase gloves, as one, quite honestly, who levitates all the time, hovering even over those damn garage door sensors that won't let you run out of the garage after hitting the "shut" button, as one who is clairvoyant, who even now in his gift of clairvoyance realizes that few will believe him and that these shall perish, as one who is a member of the LAST TRUE APOSTOLIC ORTHODOX CHURCH ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH ,OUTSIDE OF RUSSIA, as one who has distuingished between the essence and the engergies on multiple occasions, even over his morning coffee (fair-trade, for God is just) with SOY milk because IT IS A FASTING SEASON, as a humble man, let me offer this advice: if one's conversion leads to the more serious undertaking of the commands of Jesus, and maybe - miracle upon miracles - actually doing one or two of them before death, then the conversion was worth it.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Opinion 64

"In the last five months of World War II, American bombing raids killed more than 900,000 Japanese civilians, not counting the casualties from the atomic strikes against Hiroshima and Nagasaki." -Read the rest of the numbers here.

Opinion 63

The heat with its wretched humidity was turning his every thought, every prayer and intention to the idea of cold beer. In this way, he was being led by the fires of Earth to the very fires of Hell.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Opinion 62

The Minnesota Compromise:

"The plan would raise about $700 million by delaying payments to school districts and another $700 million by selling bonds on future tobacco settlement payments."

And this from grown men and women My God! It's like putting out a burning building by dropping a bomb on it.

Opinion 61

"Just put your faith in the Market. Invest wisely and let go".

Some advice a nice Catholic lady gave to the faithful today, who were worried about having to worry about their investments.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Opinion 60

Much of what is discussed in T&ST concerning the transfer of sacred from the church to the state is reminiscent of Cavanaugh's The Myth of Religious Violence, which was published (I believe) last year.

-The discomfort at the thought of someone dying on behalf of their religion ("were they stable?") as opposed to the relative comfort with which we react when someone dies for the state.
-A thought experiment: the disgust and sense of atrocity we feel (and rightly so) when someone kills in the name of their religion as opposed to the relative comfort we have at the idea of killing for the state.
-The general opposition: things done for religion are "irrational"; things for the state, "rational".

In general we are much more comfortable with the state. We don't think about it much. Very few of us fret about the state in the same way we fret about "religion". Thus the state in its assumed obviousness ("what else would there be?") gets away, quite literally, with murder.

Here it is frankly: an F-16 will do a much better job of saving your ass than a crucified Jew. The Jerusalem on high is not armed. It offers no protections from the things which we most wish to be protected against. Its sole ruler (not even elected, mind you) is victorious only in light of the defeat of everything we hold dear.

If you are a betting man, bet on the state.

Monday, July 11, 2011

Opinion 58

Further reflection on T&ST:

The "Free Market" is spoken of by its most vocal proponents (Republican presidential hopefuls and conservative talk show hosts) in tones religious, both in a dogmatic and a charismatic sense. This is its message of hope: the full unleashing of the Free Market, the time to come when regulation and government interference will be done away with, and the Free Market will truly show that it can reinvigorate the nation. Things erring in the world will be set aright. Ma and pa, sitting around their kitchen tables and fretting about their mortgage will suddenly be swept into the great upward motion towards something wealthier and stronger. It is the Idea and the Genius of America. It is America's Gospel, spoken about in quivering anticipatory voices, the vague and ephemeral rock on which all future hopes are placed.

And when confronted with the manifold failures of capitalistic enterprises, it is always the same excuse: well, the market was not really free in this situation. If only x would be allowed to happen, then the Free Market would prove itself. And if a disaster occurs even in a setting where the aforementioned x was allowed to happen, then one will be told that both x and y were really what the Free Market needed to thrive - if only it would have been allowed both! Of course, economics is not a simple art, and a working economy requires many an x and y, yet the suspension of incredulity which one must assent to in order to accommodate every single apologia for the re-occurring failures of the Free Market seems to have no limit.

There is a religious fervor to the defense of the Free Market's doctrines which leads to such bizarre and unthoughtful dead ends that it reminds me in many ways of fundamentalist attempts to fix all the oddities in Scripture, defending them desperately before the standards of MODERN SCIENCE (with its hubristically large caps). The explanations of the inconsistencies in the Gospel become more and more unbelievable and unlikely; the conspiracy theories of hidden scientific evidence that would validate a 7,000 year old earth become more and more elaborate. The defenders of that which really cannot be defended make asses of themselves. And then they carry on.

It is this same bizarro world which many on the Right now live. This transfer of religious fervor and language from things of religion to the market and (in a different but equally important manner, the state) is a most fascinating and terrifying aspect of Modernity. We shall have our gods and sacrifices, we shall have our holy doctrines, nevermind the fact that we are supposedly done being superstitious.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Opinion 57

"By 1977, they determined, doctors in Seoul were performing 2.75 abortions for every birth -- the highest documented abortion rate in human history."

From this article on sex-selective abortion in Asia, and the Western funding that drove it.

Though I must say, there is a special creepiness in this article stemming from the fact that the author does not so much find moral outrage in the killing of 160 million persons, but in the fact that these killings were an affront to proportion and gender equality. But a good article despite the blaring moral blindness.

Opinion 56

A striking impression I've received at the beginning of Theology and Social Theory is that of the very set way modernity is popularly explained. The rise of modern is seen as the fruit of the Enlightenment and its love of knowledge and of the human. Yet told from another perspective, a neglected yet undeniably convincing perspective, the rise of modernity is not philanthropia but philmammon and phildynamis (to make up words: the love of capital and the love of power). For the rise of the modern is in historical fact the rise of unbridled capitalism, the rise of the power of the nation-state, and the startling collaboration of the two sans virtue or a virtuous end. Modernity's parents are therefore wealth and power, and the love for these two as an end. If the human, if knowledge and science and the artistic can be used by these two to further themselves, then indeed they are supported and celebrated. But one would be a fool to assume that these are considered worthy of celebration in and of themselves. Not, at least, by the ones calling the shots.

Milbank notes another interesting fact in that the aristocracy threw away their actual weapons and tendency towards engaging in warfare for the "playful agon" of the marketplace. The rich no longer were to fight on fields of battle, but rather in skyscrapers. Waterloo became Wall Street, so to speak. Yet this was not the whole story, for the rich only managed to escape actual combat by the actual combat of the poor. The Wall Streeter or the Senator (and is there now a difference?) was allowed to enjoy playful combat because the young boy from Arkansas was actually being shot at somewhere far away. And yet the proponents of such a system of government and commerce would call it the greatest system for peace and security and wealth that the world had ever seen - and many of the poor on whose backs it was built and by whose blood it was financed believed them, and voted for them and died for them.

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Opinion 55

Take some time and listen the program, both sections if you can, only the second if you must.

Friday, July 8, 2011

Opinion 54

Thoughts on the University of Minnesota, after three years:

Some Cons:

The vapidity and lack of intellectual curiosity of the student body.

The same for a healthy share of the faculty.

The vague haziness of an assumed leftism, which works itself out not so much in elegant public defenses of its content but in little nods, sighs, eyes rolled, looks of disgust, etc. It is than unspoken sense that “we’re all on the same side here”. Whose side? Tenure and Obama bumper stickers?

Absurdly large class sizes

Mindless, mindless, mindless mission statements and self-promotions loaded with terrible and technocratic prose.

Some Pros:


A surprisingly efficient financial aid department that doesn’t leave one with a bureaucratically induced headache.

Professors, few though they may be, who are gems.

By and large an aesthetically pleasing campus.

The ability to obtain from time to time interesting speakers who speak interesting speeches on interesting topics – even in the Classics department. Followed, bless God, by free wine and food.

A good library with a large and virgin theology section.

Many bars (all of them, admittedly terrible) close to campus.

And a general sense of camaraderie in the CNES department, due mostly to its small size and oddball denizens.


Obviously the cons and many of the pros are similar to any American university.

Opinion 53

Perelandra is the most insightful thing Lewis wrote.

Opinion 52

There are days when a man just might as well eat his socks.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Opinion 51

Father, forgive me: I'm reading Theology and Social Theory.

Opinion 50

The drink, the book, the pipe, the crossed legs and porch - Lord! I don't know whether I'm drifting into heaven or hell!

Opinion Interlude 3: a report on television

At the bar last night (the first time since the baby was born, I swear - and I had permission, I swear!!), we found ourselves watching A&E, as there were no acceptable sports happening (not even women's college softball?!).

Some of the "reality" television shows I saw advertised:

-"Sons of Guns" wherein people request odd and destructive weapons to be made and then they are made.
-"Hoarders" something about trying to get an old, skinny lady out of a house of trash.
-"Interventions" the name is quite clear.
-My personal favorite, "Gene Simmons' Family Jewels". Some scene with the former lead singer of KISS introducing his date to his mother, and then traveling to Israel. WOW he looks terrible.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Opinion 49

The man who upon having a child does not eventually come to hate Target was simply born without a soul

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Opinion 48

A Roman Catholic and an Eastern Orthodox bickering with each other about who is right: two gnats on opposite ass cheeks of an elephant, arguing about the smell.

Opinion 47

The worst part about being God: having to attend all the terrible liturgies week after week.

Friday, July 1, 2011

Opinion 42

A prayer for our nation:
Father, forgive them: they all have their heads up their asses. But remember, Lord, that you created those heads and those asses. Remember your love for each part, despite their unfortunate collaboration.

Opinion 41

This man prefers to curse the poor; this man prefers to nostalgia-ize the poor. One seeks reform, the other sentimentality. Either way, Christ still ends up killed.

Opinion 40

Idiocy, vapidity, narcissism and bullshit. Give me the fourth!

Opinion 39

Damned if you do...but it's worth it.