So you want to know what happens when SEC football and some of the oldest and prettiest trees in the state of Alabama collide? You guessed it. The trees get killed.
A certain redneck calling himself "Al from Dadeville" - no, I've never met him, and yes, I'm sure he's a redneck -was unhappy that Auburn beat Alabama in the Iron Bowl this year, so he went to Toomer's Corner in downtown Auburn and poisoned two 130-year-old live oaks with a bunch of herbicides. The trees have been a symbol of Auburn football for generations, and every time the university wins a game, a bunch of excited folks go downtown and roll the trees with toilet paper. (Yes, they roll their own town, and I never understood it either, but that's beside the point.)
Now I don't care a fig about football. Never have. I went to both high school and college in Auburn, and the football hype I grew up around caused me basically to hate it. Consequently, I never keep up with developments in football and in fact only just found out tonight that Auburn won the SEC championship this year. Something I do care about, though, is old trees, especially old trees in Alabama, for an old tree in my home state is sort of like the Holy Grail these days, i.e., dern near impossible to find. Those in charge of the state's forests have been doing some remodeling over the last several decades, and they have come a long way toward realizing their dream of replacing all of the indigenous hardwoods with neat rows of scrawny little loblollies that look like decorative toothpicks.
So I'm bummed. Two of the oldest trees left in the town have been killed, maliciously and calculatedly, by a moron who's football team lost.
Now look, guys, I hate to say this, but I have to. The city of Auburn, the university, the fans - most of them have no legitmate right to feel vicimized by this. The only reason those two gorgeous trees made it this long was that they were tied up with a longstanding football tradition (the toilet paper thing); otherwise, they'd have been knocked over to make way for a gas station or a bank a long time ago. Auburn is notoriously unrestrained when it comes to bulldozing landmarks, old bohemian neighborhoods, fields, babbling brooks, you name it; consequently, the "lovliest village on the plains" is quickly becoming the tackiest.
One of the last times I was there (I don't go back often, precisely for this reason), one of the oldest apartment complexes in the town, where my wife and I lived for four years with three of our four kids, was torn down. This place really had character: window units, outdoor clothes lines, massive old sycamores, Koreans and Indians with gardens right outside their back doors. But when I drove by the place, it was just clean gone - sycamores, Koreans, and all. There was nothing but a big fence and a bulldozer. And when I drove by it again a few months later, lo and behold a miracle of modern architecture, a three-story plywood cathedral of an apartment complex with college students driving Hummers around in the parking lot. That's one of the saddest stories for me personally, but they could be multiplied. I watched the city systematically defile itself in this way for years before I finally moved out of there.
But so back to the trees. Naturally everyone is mourning them, and each in his own way. Me, for instance, I'll probably write an extraordinarily bad poem and try to play something mournful on the guitar. As for the city, I'm not sure about this, but I think they had a formal something or other that involved everyone going down there and rolling the trees one more time for old time sake. Of course, they'll have to use a firehose to blow all that toilet paper off of them, which makes it less likely that the work being done to save the trees will actually succeed, but hey. Whatever gets you through it.
Word to my homey Geoff. He still lives near Auburn, and I know he feels it like I do. We'll tend them back to health in the eschaton, my brother. You can show me how.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Thursday, January 6, 2011
On the children being in control of the nursery
I just read on Yahoo News where apparently some Congressmen got a wild hair and actually read the Constitution at a meeting of the House of Representatives. (Unfortunately, according to other sources, 80% of the House failed to show up for the reading; but hey, you gotta start somewhere.) Now of course this was somewhat of a politically correct reading, as various references to slavery were expunged; this apparently drew fire from both liberals (who thought that everything ought to be aired, dirty laundry and all) and conservatives (who figured, hey, it is in there).
Anyhow, according to Yahoo, a certain represenative called the whole thing a "ritualistic reading", and dismissed it as "total nonsense" and "propaganda". Right. Congressmen reading the nation's foundational document - the document that, among other things, defines and limits the powers of congressmen- this is nonsense and propaganda.
The same guy goes on to say, "You are not supposed to worship your constitution. You are supposed to govern your government by it." Leaving aside the non sequitur that reading = worshipping, one might at least think that reading a thing would be a prerequisite for "governing a government" with it.
But then, I reckon most Congressmen haven't studied as much logic as the 9th graders at my school - with whom, BTW, I just finished reading, not only the Constitution, but also the Federalist and the Anti-Federalist Papers.
The bright side is that this representative will not always be one; and there's a good chance one of my 9th graders will take his place.
Anyhow, according to Yahoo, a certain represenative called the whole thing a "ritualistic reading", and dismissed it as "total nonsense" and "propaganda". Right. Congressmen reading the nation's foundational document - the document that, among other things, defines and limits the powers of congressmen- this is nonsense and propaganda.
The same guy goes on to say, "You are not supposed to worship your constitution. You are supposed to govern your government by it." Leaving aside the non sequitur that reading = worshipping, one might at least think that reading a thing would be a prerequisite for "governing a government" with it.
But then, I reckon most Congressmen haven't studied as much logic as the 9th graders at my school - with whom, BTW, I just finished reading, not only the Constitution, but also the Federalist and the Anti-Federalist Papers.
The bright side is that this representative will not always be one; and there's a good chance one of my 9th graders will take his place.
Monday, March 8, 2010
All Dogs (Don't Necessarily) Go To Heaven
Do animals go to heaven?
This question keeps coming up. I have discussed it at least three times within the last month, once with my own children after my mother had to have her dog put to sleep. Is that just coincidence? Without going all into that can of worms, I’ll just say I doubt it.
First I must make two preliminary remarks.
One, I am firing this off, so expect it to ramble and to not be anything like airtight.
Two, following N.T. Wright and others, I do not believe that the emphasis in the New Testament is on “going to heaven” so much as it is on taking part of the resurrection, a.k.a., inheriting the Kingdom of God, a.k.a., inheriting the earth. I do not deny that the spirits of the righteous who have departed “go to heaven”, but I believe that this is provisional until the time in which heaven and earth are joined and both the heavens and the earth are made new. So the real question for me in this is Will animals take part in the resurrection? This seems to me a much more scriptural and incarnational way of putting the question.
A seventh grader at the school where I teach recently answered the above question in the affirmative. One of his central reasons was as follows. “Animals have never sinned and never opposed God.” This is an enormously complex issue that must be treated with many fine distinctions that I do not have the ability to make. However, I will say that, generally speaking, I believe this is a true statement. Man is responsible for the Fall. Man is the culprit, and insofar as Creation is fallen, it is fallen as a result of man’s failure as federal head and steward over Creation. That is to say, I don’t believe that God holds Creation responsible for its own fallen-ness in the same way that he holds man responsible for his.
However, there may be gradations of responsibility in this. The closer a creature approaches to rational thought, the more responsibility it may bear for its own fallen-ness. In other words, the more its actions are conscious and volitional rather than just instinctual, it may begin to contribute more to its own fallen-ness; its fallen-ness may become less and less passive, and more and more active, the closer it approaches human consciousness. (I know I'm butchering basic philosophical terminology here, but I admit to being just a regular old guy, so please be gracious.)
George MacDonald or C.S. Lewis (or maybe both) said something to the effect that humans bestow a measure of personhood on the animals that they love. I have no scripture to back this up (although perhaps some could be found), but in my experience with animals, this rings true. At any rate, I am ready at this point to make a rough and provisional distinction between three types of animals.
First, there are wild animals that just sort of do what they do. They hunt. They eat. They defecate. They sleep. They breed. Now this activity may not be ideal. For example, before the Fall, animals probably would not have eaten one another, and I don’t think that God is ecstatically pleased with this arrangement, or that he looks on it with indifference or unqualified approval. However, I do not think that he looks on it with anger, either. I don’t believe that he blames predators for being predatory. I do not believe that he considers this kind of activity to be sin (at least not sin with a high hand), although I think that it does have its origins in man’s sin and is a less than ideal situation. I think God is content to let it be so for now, but that when everything is eschatologically “fixed”, there will be no more of this business. The lion will lie down with the lamb, and so on.
Second, there are what we might refer to (for lack of a better term) as feral animals, e.g., alley cats and wild dogs and crocodiles who live in sewers (is that an urban legend?) and hyenas and vultures and so on. Maybe I ought to have just called them scavengers. Anyway, it may be that such animals, some of them living in proximity to humans and absorbing some of their ethos, actually begin to approach something like real moral evil. I’m not sure about that, but it could be, at least in some situations. If an animal becomes bloodthirsty, if an animal eats human flesh and becomes voracious for it, if a woman “approacheth an animal to lie down thereto” – these and similar situations may change the status of the animal in terms of God’s judgment. It appears from the Old Testament laws that animals involved in lewd activities with humans, or animals that killed humans, were at least to be treated as guilty, for they were to be executed (sometimes along with the humans who perpetrated such acts with them). I think God has placed an instinctual knowledge within animals (or at least within certain kinds of animals, perhaps what we would call the higher animals) of the kinds of activities they are not to engage in with respect to humans, and if the animal transgresses these limits, we can say, at least in some sense, that the animal is being presumptuous, i.e., sinful.
Incidentally, I believe this situation was widespread before the flood. Genesis 6: 5-12 includes this: “And the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them…Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.” Man is clearly bearing the brunt of the responsibility for all of this violence and corruption, but the animals are implicated too. Again, I think that man initiated all of this bad behavior, that they recruited animals to go along with their sin, but that the animals then developed a taste for it and began to take part in it presumptuously and volitionally, at least to some extent.
Lastly, there are domestic animals (and, I suppose, the gentler varieties of wild animals, e.g., manatees, dolphins, doe-doe birds, etc.) that find their greatest happiness in obedience to a human master, or at least in some measure of comfortable proximity to humans. Among these are the animals that I believe, in ideal contexts, can most closely approach actual personhood. The humans who are responsible for them can, I believe, develop, cultivate, bequeath, a measure of personhood – and thus perhaps immortality – on them. These are animals that men form lasting, deep, and fraternal relationships with. I would be frankly be surprised if these animals were not present in the new earth, either as a reward for their own fidelity, or as an additional joy for the resurrected humans who once loved them, or both.
I admit to having no proof texts for any of these notions, although I believe there is some indirect scriptural warrant for some of it, especially if one will allow me to speculate a good deal beyond the express content of scripture.
God exercises dominion over creation in two ways that are specifically spelled out for us in Genesis chapter 1. First, he creates all things ex nihilo by speaking. Second, he names – delimits, constrains, defines, bestows being and character on – the things which he has created. Man is of course created in God’s image and shares God’s dominion over creation, and the way that he expressly (according to Genesis 1) exercises his dominion over the animals is by naming them.
There appears to me to be something analogous between God’s relationship with Man (the pinnacle of Creation whom God formed with his hands, named, and then breathed life into) and man’s relationship with the animals. Perhaps this is where man’s creativity is most like God’s in respect to its power. Man cannot create anything ex nihilo, and much less can he create life in this way. Man has the power to form a statue from rock, but he cannot breathe life into it. However, in his dominion over the animals – which is the part of Creation that the scripture actually dwells on in regard to its special subjection to man – perhaps man has the privilege of bequeathing a measure of life to them. God imparted his life to man when he breathed life into him. Perhaps man has the privilege and power to bequeath some measure of this life into the animals as well. Perhaps this would have been a part of subduing Creation: man discovering, then developing, the various and sundry hidden powers of intellect and rationality latent within the rest of Creation. And perhaps it is even now a part of what Creation groans for as it endures the present subjection to futility and awaits the glorious liberty of the sons of God. I don’t swear it is so, but I believe it is so. And I also believe that any animal that has been the recipient of such life from a man will be present with us in the new heavens and new earth.
This question keeps coming up. I have discussed it at least three times within the last month, once with my own children after my mother had to have her dog put to sleep. Is that just coincidence? Without going all into that can of worms, I’ll just say I doubt it.
First I must make two preliminary remarks.
One, I am firing this off, so expect it to ramble and to not be anything like airtight.
Two, following N.T. Wright and others, I do not believe that the emphasis in the New Testament is on “going to heaven” so much as it is on taking part of the resurrection, a.k.a., inheriting the Kingdom of God, a.k.a., inheriting the earth. I do not deny that the spirits of the righteous who have departed “go to heaven”, but I believe that this is provisional until the time in which heaven and earth are joined and both the heavens and the earth are made new. So the real question for me in this is Will animals take part in the resurrection? This seems to me a much more scriptural and incarnational way of putting the question.
A seventh grader at the school where I teach recently answered the above question in the affirmative. One of his central reasons was as follows. “Animals have never sinned and never opposed God.” This is an enormously complex issue that must be treated with many fine distinctions that I do not have the ability to make. However, I will say that, generally speaking, I believe this is a true statement. Man is responsible for the Fall. Man is the culprit, and insofar as Creation is fallen, it is fallen as a result of man’s failure as federal head and steward over Creation. That is to say, I don’t believe that God holds Creation responsible for its own fallen-ness in the same way that he holds man responsible for his.
However, there may be gradations of responsibility in this. The closer a creature approaches to rational thought, the more responsibility it may bear for its own fallen-ness. In other words, the more its actions are conscious and volitional rather than just instinctual, it may begin to contribute more to its own fallen-ness; its fallen-ness may become less and less passive, and more and more active, the closer it approaches human consciousness. (I know I'm butchering basic philosophical terminology here, but I admit to being just a regular old guy, so please be gracious.)
George MacDonald or C.S. Lewis (or maybe both) said something to the effect that humans bestow a measure of personhood on the animals that they love. I have no scripture to back this up (although perhaps some could be found), but in my experience with animals, this rings true. At any rate, I am ready at this point to make a rough and provisional distinction between three types of animals.
First, there are wild animals that just sort of do what they do. They hunt. They eat. They defecate. They sleep. They breed. Now this activity may not be ideal. For example, before the Fall, animals probably would not have eaten one another, and I don’t think that God is ecstatically pleased with this arrangement, or that he looks on it with indifference or unqualified approval. However, I do not think that he looks on it with anger, either. I don’t believe that he blames predators for being predatory. I do not believe that he considers this kind of activity to be sin (at least not sin with a high hand), although I think that it does have its origins in man’s sin and is a less than ideal situation. I think God is content to let it be so for now, but that when everything is eschatologically “fixed”, there will be no more of this business. The lion will lie down with the lamb, and so on.
Second, there are what we might refer to (for lack of a better term) as feral animals, e.g., alley cats and wild dogs and crocodiles who live in sewers (is that an urban legend?) and hyenas and vultures and so on. Maybe I ought to have just called them scavengers. Anyway, it may be that such animals, some of them living in proximity to humans and absorbing some of their ethos, actually begin to approach something like real moral evil. I’m not sure about that, but it could be, at least in some situations. If an animal becomes bloodthirsty, if an animal eats human flesh and becomes voracious for it, if a woman “approacheth an animal to lie down thereto” – these and similar situations may change the status of the animal in terms of God’s judgment. It appears from the Old Testament laws that animals involved in lewd activities with humans, or animals that killed humans, were at least to be treated as guilty, for they were to be executed (sometimes along with the humans who perpetrated such acts with them). I think God has placed an instinctual knowledge within animals (or at least within certain kinds of animals, perhaps what we would call the higher animals) of the kinds of activities they are not to engage in with respect to humans, and if the animal transgresses these limits, we can say, at least in some sense, that the animal is being presumptuous, i.e., sinful.
Incidentally, I believe this situation was widespread before the flood. Genesis 6: 5-12 includes this: “And the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them…Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.” Man is clearly bearing the brunt of the responsibility for all of this violence and corruption, but the animals are implicated too. Again, I think that man initiated all of this bad behavior, that they recruited animals to go along with their sin, but that the animals then developed a taste for it and began to take part in it presumptuously and volitionally, at least to some extent.
Lastly, there are domestic animals (and, I suppose, the gentler varieties of wild animals, e.g., manatees, dolphins, doe-doe birds, etc.) that find their greatest happiness in obedience to a human master, or at least in some measure of comfortable proximity to humans. Among these are the animals that I believe, in ideal contexts, can most closely approach actual personhood. The humans who are responsible for them can, I believe, develop, cultivate, bequeath, a measure of personhood – and thus perhaps immortality – on them. These are animals that men form lasting, deep, and fraternal relationships with. I would be frankly be surprised if these animals were not present in the new earth, either as a reward for their own fidelity, or as an additional joy for the resurrected humans who once loved them, or both.
I admit to having no proof texts for any of these notions, although I believe there is some indirect scriptural warrant for some of it, especially if one will allow me to speculate a good deal beyond the express content of scripture.
God exercises dominion over creation in two ways that are specifically spelled out for us in Genesis chapter 1. First, he creates all things ex nihilo by speaking. Second, he names – delimits, constrains, defines, bestows being and character on – the things which he has created. Man is of course created in God’s image and shares God’s dominion over creation, and the way that he expressly (according to Genesis 1) exercises his dominion over the animals is by naming them.
There appears to me to be something analogous between God’s relationship with Man (the pinnacle of Creation whom God formed with his hands, named, and then breathed life into) and man’s relationship with the animals. Perhaps this is where man’s creativity is most like God’s in respect to its power. Man cannot create anything ex nihilo, and much less can he create life in this way. Man has the power to form a statue from rock, but he cannot breathe life into it. However, in his dominion over the animals – which is the part of Creation that the scripture actually dwells on in regard to its special subjection to man – perhaps man has the privilege of bequeathing a measure of life to them. God imparted his life to man when he breathed life into him. Perhaps man has the privilege and power to bequeath some measure of this life into the animals as well. Perhaps this would have been a part of subduing Creation: man discovering, then developing, the various and sundry hidden powers of intellect and rationality latent within the rest of Creation. And perhaps it is even now a part of what Creation groans for as it endures the present subjection to futility and awaits the glorious liberty of the sons of God. I don’t swear it is so, but I believe it is so. And I also believe that any animal that has been the recipient of such life from a man will be present with us in the new heavens and new earth.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
The Olympunks
The Olympics coverage on Yahoo (which is practically the only source of establisment news that I ever encounter - probably not the best situation) is getting on my nerves. Yes, a great deal of it is that Yahoo News itself just gets on my nerves, but there's more to it than that. I have no great insight here, and I couldn't care less about the Olympics, really, but it's annoying and alarming that professional athletes who are also high profile representatives of their repsective countries are carrying on like such babies. Moreover, the journalists who are disseminating stories about them aren't behaving much better. I mean, I've seen some decent writing, at least in terms of rhetorical skill, but the judgement of these writers seems skewed and adolescent in the extreme.
The people who are in control of our world right now are children, at least in terms of their ethical development. I know this already, but it is becomingly increasingly impossible to ignore as it begins to define the prevailing culture more and more totally.
Apparently I'm not fully grown myself. I say this because I keep being dumbfounded at all the silliness going in projects that adults are supposed to be in charge of. Like the Olympics, for instance. I assume that the people who are in charge of the Olympics, hello, are adults and know how to behave. Now, I have no reason to assume this. I know that Western culture is presently suffering from an acute state of arrested development. I know that spending bookoo bucks on a bunch of hyped-up, tacky opening ceremonies (replete with malfunctioning machinery - didn't those things look disturbingly like Superman's ice home in the movies from the 70's?) doesn't guarantee that anything dignified is going to occur. And yet this Russian skater with his self-awarded platinum medal still astounds me.
Well, this is what adults are like now, regardless of socio-economic background. All the various spheres of civilized life - the sports world, the academic world, the corporate world, the entertainment world, the art world, the politcal world, the medical world - they are all governed by children. Except these children have grown up bodies and ambitions, along with lots of money.
I can't help wondering if things were like this when I was a kid. Maybe so. They didn't seem to be. But then, I was just a kid.
The people who are in control of our world right now are children, at least in terms of their ethical development. I know this already, but it is becomingly increasingly impossible to ignore as it begins to define the prevailing culture more and more totally.
Apparently I'm not fully grown myself. I say this because I keep being dumbfounded at all the silliness going in projects that adults are supposed to be in charge of. Like the Olympics, for instance. I assume that the people who are in charge of the Olympics, hello, are adults and know how to behave. Now, I have no reason to assume this. I know that Western culture is presently suffering from an acute state of arrested development. I know that spending bookoo bucks on a bunch of hyped-up, tacky opening ceremonies (replete with malfunctioning machinery - didn't those things look disturbingly like Superman's ice home in the movies from the 70's?) doesn't guarantee that anything dignified is going to occur. And yet this Russian skater with his self-awarded platinum medal still astounds me.
Well, this is what adults are like now, regardless of socio-economic background. All the various spheres of civilized life - the sports world, the academic world, the corporate world, the entertainment world, the art world, the politcal world, the medical world - they are all governed by children. Except these children have grown up bodies and ambitions, along with lots of money.
I can't help wondering if things were like this when I was a kid. Maybe so. They didn't seem to be. But then, I was just a kid.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Inconclusive Psuedo-Scientific Postscript
I fear this postscript will appear to be an example of the very thing I was criticizing in my next to last post. Neverthless, it's important to me that I make clear that I do not approve of the word nigger as a description of African-Americans. (Or is it "blacks"? Or "people of color"? See, everywhere you step around this issue, whether you zig or whether you zag, there's always some other can of worms to trip over. But I digress.) That is, it is a word that I would not allow my children to use in this way. I grew up in the South where the word is prevelant, and I applied it quite liberally as a lad. But now, as a semi-responsible adult and (most importantly) a Christian, I try not to use words with the conscious intention of insulting, shaming, defrauding, or otherwise oppressing human beings. And I do recognize that the word nigger has historically been used in this way.
Now then, that being said, the fact remains that the word-gestapo has a noxious, misanthropic, and devious agenda, and giving in to their intimidation is cowardice and results in cultural and intellectual death.
Now then, that being said, the fact remains that the word-gestapo has a noxious, misanthropic, and devious agenda, and giving in to their intimidation is cowardice and results in cultural and intellectual death.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Wal-Mart Isn't An Eschatology, Either
As the old folks say back home, I'm "outta heart" with Doug Wilson. First of all, I can't remember my username for his blog, and since he changed the furniture around on there, I can't figure out how to get it to send me a reminder. Second, he posted something on there that I desperately want to respond to, but, like I said, I can't remember my username.
In this post of his, he starts out talking about the Pretenders song in which Chrissy Hynde asks what happened to the Ohio she used to know, since now instead of rivers and trees, it's a shopping mall. Then he goes into how folks who get fixated on the good old days are experiencing a type of arrested development and refusing to move ahead with the general eschatological momentum. He sums all of this up by saying that "Nostalgia is not an eschatology".
Well, let me begin by confessing that I decide what I am going to think largely by checking Doug's blog to see what he thinks. I am a product of American public education. As a result, I am mostly untrained in the art of thinking for myself, and my ideas are largely derivative. Whatever, it's one of the things us average folks just accept at some point. Nevertheless, I'm going to go out on a dialectical limb and disagree with the guru on this one.
Now on one hand I can of course appreciate what he's saying. The past is filled with many heroic epochs infinitely more valuable the 1950's but nevertheless infintely less valuable than whatever it is we will experience when God's will is done on Earth as it is in Heaven. From this perspective, for me to lament the archetypally fecund first half of the 2oth century is a bit retrograde. If eschatological man is going to be infinitely greater than Charlemagne, it goes without saying that he will surpass Barney Fife.
But on the other hand, the sentimental thing we refer to as nostalgia is not the only thing folks experience when they meditate on, or value, or even long for, the past. C.S. Lewis touches on this in The Weight of Glory. Wordsworth was wrong to consider his childhood the actual source of the loftiness and transcendence he perceived in the world, but he was not wrong to mine his childhood for the intimations of glory that his childhood actually did contain. The past is as much God's work as the future is. The acorn exists for the sake of the oak, but an acorn is not contemptible because it is not an oak.
Speaking of Lewis, I think he might agree with me that what we call decadent nations are those which more nearly attained their own measure of glory in the past than they are doing at present. I am thinking of something like what Lewis calls Logres in That Hideous Strength: that true angel of the British Isles that has always existed along with that other development we call merely England. If anything like this is possible, then looking back is sometimes really a type of looking forward, a way of hoping that what is and always has been best and most glorious about a nation will finally prevail.
Lastly, there's the whole thing too where what we call progress really ain't. That's what I mean when I say that Wal-Mart isn't an eschatology, either. Nostalgia or no, I would have preferred the indigenous live oaks and cypresses around Orlando to all the plastic trees in Disneyworld.
In this post of his, he starts out talking about the Pretenders song in which Chrissy Hynde asks what happened to the Ohio she used to know, since now instead of rivers and trees, it's a shopping mall. Then he goes into how folks who get fixated on the good old days are experiencing a type of arrested development and refusing to move ahead with the general eschatological momentum. He sums all of this up by saying that "Nostalgia is not an eschatology".
Well, let me begin by confessing that I decide what I am going to think largely by checking Doug's blog to see what he thinks. I am a product of American public education. As a result, I am mostly untrained in the art of thinking for myself, and my ideas are largely derivative. Whatever, it's one of the things us average folks just accept at some point. Nevertheless, I'm going to go out on a dialectical limb and disagree with the guru on this one.
Now on one hand I can of course appreciate what he's saying. The past is filled with many heroic epochs infinitely more valuable the 1950's but nevertheless infintely less valuable than whatever it is we will experience when God's will is done on Earth as it is in Heaven. From this perspective, for me to lament the archetypally fecund first half of the 2oth century is a bit retrograde. If eschatological man is going to be infinitely greater than Charlemagne, it goes without saying that he will surpass Barney Fife.
But on the other hand, the sentimental thing we refer to as nostalgia is not the only thing folks experience when they meditate on, or value, or even long for, the past. C.S. Lewis touches on this in The Weight of Glory. Wordsworth was wrong to consider his childhood the actual source of the loftiness and transcendence he perceived in the world, but he was not wrong to mine his childhood for the intimations of glory that his childhood actually did contain. The past is as much God's work as the future is. The acorn exists for the sake of the oak, but an acorn is not contemptible because it is not an oak.
Speaking of Lewis, I think he might agree with me that what we call decadent nations are those which more nearly attained their own measure of glory in the past than they are doing at present. I am thinking of something like what Lewis calls Logres in That Hideous Strength: that true angel of the British Isles that has always existed along with that other development we call merely England. If anything like this is possible, then looking back is sometimes really a type of looking forward, a way of hoping that what is and always has been best and most glorious about a nation will finally prevail.
Lastly, there's the whole thing too where what we call progress really ain't. That's what I mean when I say that Wal-Mart isn't an eschatology, either. Nostalgia or no, I would have preferred the indigenous live oaks and cypresses around Orlando to all the plastic trees in Disneyworld.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
What's With All The Tearful Apologies, Then?
Apparently rock star John Mayer used the word nigger in an interview recently then made an impromptu "tearful apology" about it to an audience in the middle of a concert. Apparently it was a very emotional experience not only for Mayer but also for his audience and his band.
Mayer has said that as a result of the media hype following his interview, he is not going to play the "media game" anymore because, he laments, the media twists one's words all out of whack. But if he's been misrepresented, why is he crying and apologizing? He says he never should have used the word and will never use it again. Come on. Never? Not even to say, "Honey, please don't say nigger, you know how much I hate it; now be a dear and pass the AllFruit"? Or what if he wants to request Gayniggers from Outer Space from Netflix? Is he allowed to as long as he is white and sensitive?
Isn't it curious how even a person who doesn't think they've done anything wrong and who insists they've been misrepresented is still compelled to apologize for what they didn't do? And isn't it curious too that they don't see how wierd and irrational this is?
Okay, look, I'm annoyed by Mayer's moody rocker persona. And I'm annoyed that he has tried to intellectualize his tearful pandering to political correctness by saying (this was almost semi-clever) that he used the "N word" because he thought he could be clever and intellectualize it. In other words, he is pointing out how he made the kind of error that only impulsive, well-intentioned, intellectual pop stars make. Something along the line of Hiedegger saying, a couple decades after his stint as Nazi apologist: "Those who think greatly must err greatly."
But despite the fact the he is kind of annoying, hadn't folks ought to just let him "say what he needs to say"?
I don't care for Barak Obama's method of being president any more than I care for Mayer's music. Or of Obama's wife's method of being, you know, whatever she is. But when Obama calls some reporter sweetie; or when off the record (or so he thought) he calls Kanye a jack ass; or when his wife mentions that one of her kids used to be a bit overweight; must the same word- police who voted Obama into office haul him before the public opinion tribunals for speech crime? (Or maybe just speech faux pas. It may technically only be a crime when white folks and Republicans do it.)
Anyway, I don't admire any one of the three all that much, but there are more important things to worry about. And Kanye is a jackass.
Mayer has said that as a result of the media hype following his interview, he is not going to play the "media game" anymore because, he laments, the media twists one's words all out of whack. But if he's been misrepresented, why is he crying and apologizing? He says he never should have used the word and will never use it again. Come on. Never? Not even to say, "Honey, please don't say nigger, you know how much I hate it; now be a dear and pass the AllFruit"? Or what if he wants to request Gayniggers from Outer Space from Netflix? Is he allowed to as long as he is white and sensitive?
Isn't it curious how even a person who doesn't think they've done anything wrong and who insists they've been misrepresented is still compelled to apologize for what they didn't do? And isn't it curious too that they don't see how wierd and irrational this is?
Okay, look, I'm annoyed by Mayer's moody rocker persona. And I'm annoyed that he has tried to intellectualize his tearful pandering to political correctness by saying (this was almost semi-clever) that he used the "N word" because he thought he could be clever and intellectualize it. In other words, he is pointing out how he made the kind of error that only impulsive, well-intentioned, intellectual pop stars make. Something along the line of Hiedegger saying, a couple decades after his stint as Nazi apologist: "Those who think greatly must err greatly."
But despite the fact the he is kind of annoying, hadn't folks ought to just let him "say what he needs to say"?
I don't care for Barak Obama's method of being president any more than I care for Mayer's music. Or of Obama's wife's method of being, you know, whatever she is. But when Obama calls some reporter sweetie; or when off the record (or so he thought) he calls Kanye a jack ass; or when his wife mentions that one of her kids used to be a bit overweight; must the same word- police who voted Obama into office haul him before the public opinion tribunals for speech crime? (Or maybe just speech faux pas. It may technically only be a crime when white folks and Republicans do it.)
Anyway, I don't admire any one of the three all that much, but there are more important things to worry about. And Kanye is a jackass.
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