Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 139

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Illib­er­al Democ­ra­cy (Kyle Harp­er, First Things): “The fact that democ­ra­cy at its out­set was so flat­ly illib­er­al shows that the mod­ern syn­the­sis of lib­er­al­ism and democ­ra­cy is not inevitable or nec­es­sary.” Harp­er is a pro­fes­sor of clas­sics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Okla­homa review­ing a book by Stan­ford clas­sics pro­fes­sor Ober.
  2. How much to spend on an engage­ment ring (Ramit Sethi, per­son­al blog): “Look at your own finan­cial sit­u­a­tion to decide what you can com­fort­ably afford. I asked more than 1,500 of my read­ers, and depend­ing on income, peo­ple typ­i­cal­ly spent between 4% and 8% of their year­ly income.” Sethi is a Stan­ford grad who is obsessed with per­son­al finance. Gen­tle­men: read this post even if you’re not in a rela­tion­ship right now. It’s infor­ma­tion you will almost cer­tain­ly need some­day.
    • Relat­ed: Plan­ning a Wed­ding? Say Yes to the Guests and Spend Less on the Dress (Scott Stan­ley and Gale­na Rhoad­es, Insti­tute For Fam­i­ly Stud­ies): “the evi­dence sug­gests that the types of wed­dings asso­ci­at­ed with low­er like­li­hood of divorce are those that are rel­a­tive­ly inex­pen­sive but are high in atten­dance.” The authors are pro­fes­sors at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Den­ver.
    • Also relat­ed and bet­ter than the title makes it sound: The Bur­den­some Myth of Roman­tic Love (David C. Dol­lahite and Bet­sy Van­Den­Berghe, First Things):  “…in order for a rela­tion­ship to flour­ish, exis­ten­tial needs should be met out­side it. In study after study, the most suc­cess­ful mar­riages tend to unite reli­gious cou­ples whose shared beliefs con­duce to sta­bil­i­ty and sat­is­fac­tion. These mar­riages not only buck the trends of divorce, abuse, neglect, vio­lence, and dys­func­tion, but also ben­e­fit from the incen­tive reli­gion offers for cou­ples to work togeth­er for some­thing out­side the self.”
  3. We All Live on Cam­pus Now  (Andrew Sul­li­van, NY Mag­a­zine): “When elite uni­ver­si­ties shift their entire world­view away from lib­er­al edu­ca­tion as we have long known it toward the imper­a­tives of an iden­ti­ty-based ‘social jus­tice’ move­ment, the broad­er cul­ture is in dan­ger of drift­ing away from lib­er­al democ­ra­cy as well. If elites believe that the core truth of our soci­ety is a sys­tem of inter­lock­ing and oppres­sive pow­er struc­tures based around immutable char­ac­ter­is­tics like race or sex or sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, then soon­er rather than lat­er, this will be reflect­ed in our cul­ture at large.” What hap­pens on cam­pus does­n’t stay on cam­pus. On the plus side, this is why cam­pus min­istry can change the world.
  4. How the Nation­al Prayer Break­fast sparked an unusu­al meet­ing between Mus­lims and evan­gel­i­cals (Michelle Boorstein, Wash­ing­ton Post): “The first time I met an imam in my neigh­bor­hood, we’re five min­utes into the con­ver­sa­tion, and he said: ‘Do you think I’m going to hell?’ I said: ‘That’s what my tra­di­tion teach­es, yes.’ He said: ‘Good, I think you’re going to hell, too, so now we can have an hon­est con­ver­sa­tion.’” The arti­cle also draws a use­ful dis­tinc­tion between inter­faith and mul­ti­faith activ­i­ties.
  5. Oh God, That’s Me: The Hor­ror In The Mir­ror (Rolf Degen, Google Plus): “When adults who have nev­er before seen their own reflec­tion are con­front­ed with a mir­ror for the first time, they go through an unset­tling expe­ri­ence…” Degen is a sci­ence jour­nal­ist, although this isn’t a ful­ly worked out piece of jour­nal­ism.
  6. Here’s What North Korea Lets You See When You Trav­el There (Fabi­an Muir, Buz­zfeed): “It has occurred to me that per­haps some peo­ple feel cer­tain images are con­trived because their com­po­si­tion makes them feel like tableaux. Such skep­ti­cism riles me since it’s dif­fi­cult not to take it per­son­al­ly when an indi­vid­ual who has nev­er even vis­it­ed North Korea believes they know more on the top­ic than some­one who has com­plet­ed a two-year project and stud­ied every text avail­able.” The top com­ment is insight­ful.
  7. Let’s Ban Porn (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…we are sup­posed to be in the midst of a great sex­u­al reassess­ment, a clear­ing-out of assump­tions that serve misog­y­ny and impose bad sex on semi-will­ing women. And such a reassess­ment will be incom­plete if it nev­er recon­sid­ers our sur­ren­der to the idea that many teenagers, most young men espe­cial­ly, will get their sex edu­ca­tion from online smut.” Tyler Cowen is sym­pa­thet­ic but wor­ries about unin­tend­ed con­se­quences: Should We Cen­sor Porn? (Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion).
    • Also from Douthat’s col­umn: “So if you want bet­ter men by any stan­dard, there is every rea­son to regard ubiq­ui­tous pornog­ra­phy as an obsta­cle — and to sus­pect that between vir­tu­al real­i­ty and creepy forms of cus­tomiza­tion, its influ­ence is only like­ly to get worse. But unlike many struc­tur­al forces with which moral­ists of the left and right con­tend, porn is also just a prod­uct — some­thing made and dis­trib­uted and sold, and there­fore sub­ject to reg­u­la­tion and restric­tion if we so desire. The belief that it should not be restrict­ed is a mis­take; the belief that it can­not be cen­sored is a super­sti­tion.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have No Food Is Healthy. Not Even Kale. (Michael Ruhlman, Wash­ing­ton Post): Peo­ple can be healthy. Food can be nutri­tious. This is a won­der­ful essay about how we mis­use lan­guage to our detri­ment. If you’re sur­prised I includ­ed this, I believe that our cul­ture has a qua­si-reli­gious rela­tion­ship to health and to food, and I also believe that the use of lan­guage is pro­found­ly moral and that our cul­ture is a lin­guis­tic mess (to which I know of no fin­er guide than The Under­ground Gram­mar­i­an). (first shared in vol­ume 33)

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it).

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

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