La “tregua unilaterale” con il mondo

Gilbert Keith Chesterton dice: “In un mondo dove tutto è ridicolo, nulla può essere ridicolizzato. Non si può smascherare una maschera”. Ci sono alcune persone che affermano di non capire che cosa significano queste righe. Quindi vi spiegherò.

La nostra arte e i nostri spettacoli deridono la morale tradizionale, al punto che ciò che è normale è ritratto come sbagliato e ciò che è aberrante è ritratto come perfettamente normale e giusto. Il nostro giornalismo distorce la verità ed esclude i fatti pertinenti e degrada le credenze religiose semplicemente aggiungendo qualche aggettivo dubitativo. Le nostre scuole insegnano filosofie transitorie e ignorano la saggezza dei secoli. Nel tentativo di affrontare tutto questo con una certa penetrante intelligenza per rivelare la follia di questo mondo, i credenti sono stati derubati di una delle grandi armi della retorica: il ridicolo. Non si può far sembrare queste cose ridicole quando esse sono già ridicole. Non si può fare la parodia di qualcosa che è già di per sé una parodia. Non si può far sembrare pazzo un pazzo; un simile sforzo su di lui è vano.

Il mondo moderno è diventato irreale. È diventato irreale perché rifiuta la realtà ultima. Rifiuta Dio. Offre invece distrazioni e diversivi, tutti diretti verso un vicolo cieco. Riempie l’etere di persone che si atteggiano, il cui commento non è altro che scherno, senza nulla di sostanziale da offrire. Quando solleviamo le loro maschere, non c’è nulla dietro di loro. Non si può smascherare una maschera.

Allora perché dico questo?

Continua qui: La “tregua unilaterale” con il mondo

Dominic

Stamattina è nato Dominic.

This is Not a Day Care. It’s a University!

Dr. Everett Piper, President

Oklahoma Wesleyan University

This past week, I actually had a student come forward after a university chapel service and complain because he felt “victimized” by a sermon on the topic of 1 Corinthians 13. It appears this young scholar felt offended because a homily on love made him feel bad for not showing love. In his mind, the speaker was wrong for making him, and his peers, feel uncomfortable.

I’m not making this up. Our culture has actually taught our kids to be this self-absorbed and narcissistic. Any time their feelings are hurt, they are the victims. Anyone who dares challenge them and, thus, makes them “feel bad” about themselves, is a “hater,” a “bigot,” an “oppressor,” and a “victimizer.”

I have a message for this young man and all others who care to listen. That feeling of discomfort you have after listening to a sermon is called a conscience. An altar call is supposed to make you feel bad. It is supposed to make you feel guilty. The goal of many a good sermon is to get you to confess your sins—not coddle you in your selfishness. The primary objective of the Church and the Christian faith is your confession, not your self-actualization.

So here’s my advice:

If you want the chaplain to tell you you’re a victim rather than tell you that you need virtue, this may not be the university you’re looking for. If you want to complain about a sermon that makes you feel less than loving for not showing love, this might be the wrong place.

If you’re more interested in playing the “hater” card than you are in confessing your own hate; if you want to arrogantly lecture, rather than humbly learn; if you don’t want to feel guilt in your soul when you are guilty of sin; if you want to be enabled rather than confronted, there are many universities across the land (in Missouri and elsewhere) that will give you exactly what you want, but Oklahoma Wesleyan isn’t one of them.

At OKWU, we teach you to be selfless rather than self-centered. We are more interested in you practicing personal forgiveness than political revenge. We want you to model interpersonal reconciliation rather than foment personal conflict. We believe the content of your character is more important than the color of your skin. We don’t believe that you have been victimized every time you feel guilty and we don’t issue “trigger warnings” before altar calls.

Oklahoma Wesleyan is not a “safe place”, but rather, a place to learn: to learn that life isn’t about you, but about others; that the bad feeling you have while listening to a sermon is called guilt; that the way to address it is to repent of everything that’s wrong with you rather than blame others for everything that’s wrong with them. This is a place where you will quickly learn that you need to grow up.

This is not a day care. This is a university.

 http://www.okwu.edu/blog/2015/11/this-is-not-a-day-care-its-a-university/

How I Didn't Become A Conservative

HOW I DIDN’T BECOME A CONSERVATIVE

December 7, 2015

Some time ago I saw an amusing description of the gathering known as the Philadelphia Society, a meeting that takes place every year in that Pennsylvania city. The writer called it a place for anyone who considers himself a conservative, from those who want to sell off public parks to the highest bidder to those who yearn for a restoration of the Hapsburg monarchy. But I have a question about this: What unites those who attend this meeting? Obviously it could be hostility toward those who call themselves liberals. After all, are not liberals those who favor abortion, same-sex unions, a government that grows annually bigger like a cancer? Perhaps, but some libertarians (who also attend the Society’s meeting) have nothing against abortion or same-sex unions, and some of those who call themselves liberals hold positions similar or identical with some attendees at the Philadelphia Society, e.g., on the American invasion of Iraq or the need of some kind of restraint on private economic activity to orient it toward the common good. These sorts of reflections produce one conclusion in me: the term “conservative” is so meaningless that we would do well to abandon it altogether. It is not a helpful shorthand to simplify our thinking, but a sure way to muddle our thoughts.

More here: How I Didn't Become A Conservative

THE STONE

Are These 10 Lies Justified?

By GERALD DWORKIN

 

CreditGetty Images

Most of us believe that lying is wrong. We teach our children that it is wrong, and hope or expect that value judgment is shared by our friends and family. In public, we decry politicians and public officials when they lie, which we have frequent occasion to do these days. But the truth about lying is more complicated.

We tell lies to one another every day. But when we commit other acts that are generally believed to be immoral, like cruelty and theft, we do not seek to justify them. We either deny that the acts we committed are appropriately described by these terms, or we feel guilt or remorse. But many of us are prepared to defend our lies: indeed, to advocate their general use. Of course the Nazi at the door inquiring about Jews within ought to be lied to.

But perhaps this example only shows that there is not an absolute prohibition on lying. Such cases are rare, the harm to the innocent clear, the wickedness of the aggressor obvious. I want to argue that the number and types of permissible lies are much wider than one might have thought.

I am not arguing for the view that lying is morally neutral. I accept the fact that there ought to be a strong presumption in favor of honesty. But it is a presumption that not only can be, but ought to be, overridden in many more cases than we assume.

More here.

The Yale Problem Begins in High School. Walking on eggshells, demanding orthodoxy.

A month before the Yale Halloween meltdown, I had a bizarre and illuminating experience at an elite private high school on the West Coast. I’ll call it Centerville High. I gave a version of a talk that you can see here, on Coddle U. vs. Strengthen U. (In an amazing coincidence, I first gave that talk at Yale a few weeks earlier). The entire student body — around 450 students, from grades 9-12 — were in the auditorium. There was plenty of laughter at all the right spots, and a lot of applause at the end, so I thought the talk was well received.

But then the discussion began, and it was the most unremittingly hostile questioning I’ve ever had. I don’t mind when people ask hard or critical questions, but I was surprised that I had misread the audience so thoroughly. My talk had little to do with gender, but the second question was “So you think rape is OK?” Like most of the questions, it was backed up by a sea of finger snaps — the sort you can hear in the infamous Yale video, where a student screams at Prof. Christakis to “be quiet” and tells him that he is “disgusting.” I had never heard the snapping before. When it happens in a large auditorium it is disconcerting. It makes you feel that you are facing an angry and unified mob — a feeling I have never had in 25 years of teaching and public speaking.

After the first dozen questions I noticed that not a single questioner was male. I began to search the sea of hands asking to be called on and I did find one boy, who asked a question that indicated that he too was critical of my talk. But other than him, the 200 or so boys in the audience sat silently.

After the Q&A, I got a half-standing ovation: almost all of the boys in the room stood up to cheer. And after the crowd broke up, a line of boys came up to me to thank me and shake my hand. Not a single girl came up to me afterward.

After my main lecture, the next session involved 60 students who had signed up for further discussion with me. We moved to a large classroom. The last thing I wanted to do was to continue the same fruitless arguing for another 75 minutes, so I decided to take control of the session and reframe the discussion. Here is what happened next:

More here: The Yale Problem Begins in High School. Walking on eggshells, demanding orthodoxy. http://heterodoxacademy.org/?p=606

The African Who Brought Chesterton to Sierra Leone

In October of 2002, Sierra Leone was an extremely poor African country worn out by eleven years of civil war. The war left 50,000 dead, two and a half million homeless, and 10,000 missing a hand or an arm, mutilated by machete blows. John Kanu was a willful 30-year-old man from Sierra Leone who, after heroic efforts, was able to obtain admittance to Oxford and managed to earn a master of applied Social Science. The story of how he convinced his family to send him to school (the only child in his village to do this), and how he continued his studies after the death of his father, and how he managed to obtain a visa and a scholarship to study at an English university, could in itself have been the subject of a whole book.

Of the six Oxford graduate students at Oxford from Sierra Leone, five headed for the United States or Canada or stayed in the United Kingdom. Only one, despite a job offer on English soil, decided to return to his devastated homeland—the same John Kanu. Was it nostalgia for his home, regardless of its derelict condition? Political ties? Not at all. You will never guess. “I had discovered Gilbert Keith Chesterton,” says Kanu, “and I wanted to apply his ideas about man and economics to my country”.

Except for those who are passionate about this English Catholic writer, there are only a few who know that Chesterton, together with Hilaire Belloc and Vincent McNabb, is considered the main proponent of Distributism, the economic philosophy that is an interpretation of the social Christian doctrine contained in Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII, and offered as a third way between Socialism and Capitalism.

Among the Oxford professors, Kanu found Stratford Caldecott, director of the Chesterton Institute for Faith and Culture. They became friends, and the Englishman introduced Kanu to Chesterton’s thought. “Three themes struck me in particular: the need for, as much as possible, the wider distribution of property among all members of society; the importance of the local economy and the artisans who live by the work of their hands; and the vision of the family as the main unit of society and consequently the base of a more extended multi-generational family. I told myself, ‘This is the best of the traditional African culture, reflected in the economic philosophy of a Catholic writer born at the end of the 19^th century. And we are about to lose him.’ I started to think that, when I returned to my homeland, I would found a Chesterton Society in Sierra Leone”.

More here:  The African Who Brought Chesterton to Sierra Leone

And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,

Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

Why broken sleep is a golden time for creativity

It is 4.18am. In the fireplace, where logs burned, there are now orange lumps that will soon be ash. Orion the Hunter is above the hill. Taurus, a sparkling V, is directly overhead, pointing to the Seven Sisters. Sirius, one of Orion’s heel dogs, is pumping red-blue-violet, like a galactic disco ball. As the night moves on, the old dog will set into the hill.

It is 4.18am and I am awake. Such early waking is often viewed as a disorder, a glitch in the body’s natural rhythm – a sign of depression or anxiety. It is true that when I wake at 4am I have a whirring mind. And, even though I am a happy person, if I lie in the dark my thoughts veer towards worry. I have found it better to get up than to lie in bed teetering on the edge of nocturnal lunacy.

If I write in these small hours, black thoughts become clear and colourful. They form themselves into words and sentences, hook one to the next – like elephants walking trunk to tail. My brain works differently at this time of night; I can only write, I cannot edit. I can only add, I cannot take away. I need my day-brain for finesse. I will work for several hours and then go back to bed.

More here.

Luciamorgon i Kungsholms kyrka

Miracolo alla fermata dell’autobus

Arrivo alla fermata dell’autobus per andare a scuola, il freddo mi intorpidisce e sono anche un po’ di malumore (la scuola è occupata) e mentre sto per chiudermi definitivamente al resto del mondo, inserendo anche il secondo auricolare della cuffia del mio Iphone qualcosa, anzi qualcuno attira la mia attenzione: due bambini stanno lì, girellando intorno al palo della fermata e schiamazzano, già ora, alle sette del mattino. Sono evidentemente due fratellini, devono avere 7 ed 8 al massimo, uno, il più piccolo, gioca con il suo smartphone mentre l’altro canticchia e gira tenendosi con una mano al palo. Ecco che da lontano, si vede il bus che sta curvando per dirigersi a prenderci; “Urrà!” grida il più grande e aggiunge: “Un miracolo! Un miracolo di Gesù!”. Mentre grida al miracolo saltella alzando le mani in senso di giubilo. Il fratello più piccolo si incammina verso l’autobus che sta frenando e aprendo le porte e gli dice con un pizzico di stizza: “Io lo sapevo, già lo sapevo…” e gli mostra il suo smartphone: non ci stava giocando, ma indagando sull’App dell’Atac le notizie relative all’arrivo degli autobus di quella fermata. Ne L’uomo che fu Giovedì Chesterton aveva ricamato una bel gioco di parole partendo dalla famosa Victoria Station, per cui è davvero una “vittoria” l’arrivo di ogni treno: “Tutte le volte che un treno arriva alla stazione, io ho il senso che si sia aperta la strada sotto il fuoco di innumerevoli batterie, e che l’uomo abbia vinto il caos […] Tenete per voi il vostro Byron che commemora le disfatte degli uomini. Io verserò lacrime d’orgoglio leggendo l’orario delle ferrovie”. Dallo humour inglese all’ironia romana: subito penso che in effetti quando arriva l’autobus a Roma c’è proprio da esultare e gridare al miracolo, ma a volte è meglio girare disarmati e deporre lo scudo dell’ironia, è proprio la gioia di questi ragazzi a costringermi al disarmo. Guardo questi due fratelli, il più alto e grosso che ancora salta di gioia, l’altro più scaltro e tecnologico e mi viene in mente il famoso aforisma di Einstein: “Ci sono due modi di vivere la tua vita. Una è pensare che niente è un miracolo. L’altra è pensare che ogni cosa è un miracolo”. La scena che ho davanti agli occhi è impossibile da catturare con le parole: come racchiudere in linguaggio verbale quel saltello giubilante del bambino? Penso alla verità racchiusa in un’altra frase di Chesterton: “La misura di ogni felicità è la riconoscenza. Tutte le mie convinzioni sono rappresentate da un indovinello che mi colpì fin da bambino, L’indovinello dice: che disse il primo ranocchio? La risposta è questa: “Signore, come mi fai saltare bene”. In succinto c’è tutto quello che sto dicendo io. Dio fa saltare il ranocchio e il ranocchio è contento di saltellare”. Quel bambino che grida al miracolo è davvero un ranocchio e può saltellare perchè è un anfibio: vive in due mondi, uno soltanto è lo stesso in cui vivo anch’io, qui, vicino alla stessa fermata dove ogni mattina aspetto ansiosamente l’autobus. 

Andrea Monda

 https://andreamonda.it/?p=1645

Alice Boman - Red Eyes (The War On Drugs Cover) /// Berlin Sessions (Bonus)

Da Tempi - Ero “drogata” di fecondazione assistita. Ora svelo orrori e fallimenti di una scienza che vende illusioni

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Warrior / Hiromi The Trio Project (13th Tokyo Jazz Festival)

NUMM’O PIAC’ ‘O PRESEPIO

Ho sempre amato Eduardo e il suo teatro; adoro Napoli e la sua parlata. Ma non avrei mai pensato di dover assumere un giorno a mio motto, a mia divisa, una battuta di Natale in casa Cupiello che personalmente disapprovavo. Ebbene, invece ora sì, sono d’accordo: non in assoluto, ma finché questo tempo di matti non sia passato. E fino ad allora, lo proclamo con dolorosa fermezza: “Numm’o piac’ ‘o presepio”. E mi spiego meglio.

All’indomani del tragico 13 novembre parigino, assieme alle reazioni inconsulte del presidente-bombardiere Hollande in cerca di vendetta e ovviamente di quella popolarità che progressivamente è andata calando attorno a lui, nonché ai successivi tentativi di porre riparo alla sua ennesima sciocchezza che hanno condotto allo spettacolo del duplice schieramento degli “alleati-rivali” formalmente nemici dell’IS ma in pratica ben decisi a scavalcarsi e a silurarsi a vicenda – da una parte la NATO cui si era rivolta la Turchia con la benevola attenzione di Arabia Saudita e Israele, come si è visto al “vertice” fiorentino del 26 novembre; dall’altra Hollande che, dopo aver tentato di coinvolgere l’Unione Europea strappandole la legittimazione del suo raid solitario su Raqqa, si volgeva alla Russia e quindi alla sua alleanza siriano-curdo-irakeno-iraniana, facendo intravedere a Putin la possibilità di una maggior apertura a proposito del domani di Assad –, abbiamo assistito anche alle reazioni dell’opinione pubblica: dalla commovente elaborazione del lutto nazionale da parte dei francesi fino al dibattito ampio e articolato nei giorni successivi dal quale è tuttavia emersa una netta avanzata delle tesi indirizzate ad addossare le responsabilità dell’accaduto all’Islam nel suo complesso, nonostante le molte e importanti prese di posizione di organizzazioni musulmane che con decisione e senza ambiguità condannavano il terrorismo (“Not in my name”), fino a un’allarmante crescita dell’islamofobia più bécera e volgare, con punte di autentico delirio psicotico. La parata dell’imbecillità ha raggiunto livelli che il più pessimista degli osservatori avrebbe giudicato impossibili a conseguirsi. Continue reading →