Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 364

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.

This, the 364th install­ment, can also be expressed as the sum of con­sec­u­tive primes: 11 + 13 + 17 + 19 + 23 + 29 + 31 + 37 + 41 + 43 + 47 + 53

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. One Man­ner of Law (Mar­i­lynne Robin­son, Harpers): “Almost fifty years ago, I learned by pure acci­dent that a code of law was drawn up in Mass­a­chu­setts in 1641 that sub­stan­tial­ly antic­i­pat­ed the Bill of Rights. I hap­pened to read a let­ter to the edi­tor in the New York Times that men­tioned the Mass­a­chu­setts Body of Lib­er­ties. I had a PhD by then and was sup­pos­ed­ly an Amer­i­can­ist by train­ing, yet I was learn­ing of this for the first time. When I final­ly read these laws, I won­dered why the nar­ra­tive of Amer­i­can his­to­ry did not begin with them.”
2. The Girls Who Resist­ed Boko Haram (Jonathon Van Maren, First Things): “While the world demand­ed their return, the cap­tive girls were under relent­less pres­sure to con­vert to Islam and mar­ry mil­i­tants cho­sen for them. They were threat­ened with behead­ing or bru­tal slav­ery if they refused. Many of the girls, par­a­lyzed with fear, suc­cumbed. Oth­ers buck­led under the brain­wash­ing of a mil­i­tant assigned to incul­cate them into the doc­trines of Islam. He forced the ‘daugh­ters of infi­dels’ to take hours-long class­es in which they mem­o­rized the Quran. The girls were told that if they mar­ried, they would receive homes, slaves, and hon­or. In secret, the girls shared Bible pas­sages and prayed fer­vent­ly togeth­er for strength and res­cue. They sang hymns into their hands and cups of water to sti­fle the sound.”
3. Why I Left Acad­e­mia (Since You’re Won­der­ing) (William Dere­siewicz, Quil­lette): “…it wasn’t so much that I want­ed to be treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly than every­body as that I want­ed every­body to be treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly. I want­ed the rules to change; I played by the ones that I thought we should have. I insist­ed on behav­ing as if I exist­ed in an envi­ron­ment that val­ued teach­ing as much as schol­ar­ship and intel­lec­tu­al­ism as much as spe­cial­iza­tion. Where open­ing the eyes of a hun­dred under­grad­u­ates was worth as much as super­vis­ing one more dis­ser­ta­tion, and pub­lish­ing an essay in a peri­od­i­cal that’s read by tens of thou­sands was as valu­able as adding one more item to the pile of dis­re­gard­ed stud­ies.” This is quite good, more rel­e­vant to the human­i­ties than to the sci­ences. 
4. I Didn’t Want It to Be True, but the Medi­um Real­ly Is the Mes­sage (Ezra Klein, New York Times): “Amer­i­cans are cap­i­tal­ists, and we believe noth­ing if not that if a choice is freely made, that grants it a pre­sump­tion against cri­tique. That is one rea­son it’s so hard to talk about how we are changed by the medi­ums we use. That con­ver­sa­tion, on some lev­el, demands val­ue judg­ments. This was on my mind recent­ly, when I heard Jonathan Haidt, a social psy­chol­o­gist who’s been col­lect­ing data on how social media harms teenagers, say, blunt­ly, ‘Peo­ple talk about how to tweak it — oh, let’s hide the like coun­ters. Well, Insta­gram tried — but let me say this very clear­ly: There is no way, no tweak, no archi­tec­tur­al change that will make it OK for teenage girls to post pho­tos of them­selves, while they’re going through puber­ty, for strangers or oth­ers to rate pub­licly.’ ”
   • Relat­ed: When Bots Write Your Love Sto­ry (Samuel D. James, Sub­stack): “That machines are telling us par­tic­u­lar sto­ries about our world is one of the main rea­sons I keep com­ing back time and again to dig­i­tal cul­ture, epis­te­mol­o­gy, and the­ol­o­gy. Our default pos­ture toward the Inter­net is still, to this day, a pos­ture of intu­itive belief: to gen­uine­ly accept that what we see on the screen is a piece of ‘real life,’ rep­re­sen­ta­tive of some­one who is real­ly some­where. And in many cas­es, of course, this is more or less true. But there are also very real cas­es where the inten­si­ty or the vivid­ness of what we see online is dis­pro­por­tion­ate to its weight or valid­i­ty out­side.”
   • Relat­ed: Speech With­out Account­abil­i­ty: Reck­on­ing with Anony­mous Chris­t­ian Trolls (Patrick Miller, Mere Ortho­doxy): “…there is at least one clear ana­log to anon speech in the Bible that I have not yet touched on: the speech of the ser­pent in Eden. He was the first char­ac­ter in Gen­e­sis to con­ceal his iden­ti­ty in order to cri­tique a person—God him­self. The first anon words in human his­to­ry set human his­to­ry on fire.”
     • This piece is far too long, ram­bles need­less­ly, and at one point says some­thing I think very sil­ly. Nonethe­less, I read to the end with inter­est. The best parts were the reflec­tions on anonymous/disguised speech in the Bible.
   • Relat­ed: The Seat of Mock­ers (Bri­an Matt­son, Sub­stack): “The defend­ers and prac­ti­tion­ers of smash-mouth incen­di­ary rhetoric insist that we must do this so as to ade­quate­ly com­bat the world and the infil­tra­tion of world­li­ness into the church. It seems to me that in real­i­ty, it is the world and the infil­tra­tion of world­li­ness into the church.” This is quite good, and I found it by fol­low­ing a link in the pre­ced­ing point.
5. Some links relat­ed to the ongo­ing sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion, most­ly crit­i­cal:
   • Chris­tians Vol­un­teer­ing Pro­nouns? (Andrew T. Walk­er, Amer­i­can Reformer): “We should name the pro­noun issue for what it is: A lan­guage game. Lan­guage is about nam­ing real­i­ty. Pro­nouns of any sort are instru­ments that indi­vid­u­als use to wield pow­er. Pro­nouns pos­sess pow­er only because the cul­ture we live in deems one’s cho­sen indi­vid­ual iden­ti­ty to be absolute­ly cen­tral to who one is. Pro­nouns serve the sub­jec­tive self, so if one rejects another’s cho­sen pro­nouns, it is doubtless­ly inter­pret­ed as reject­ing the person’s attempt at self-descrip­tion and self-auton­o­my. That’s what this is all fun­da­men­tal­ly about—creating a pri­vate field of real­i­ty defined by the wish­es and fan­tasies of indi­vid­u­als who know they can pro­voke sub­mis­sion for fear of can­cel­la­tion. We should be clear-eyed about this and refuse to go along with it.”
   • Zoophil­ia: The Last Taboo Will Fall (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Seri­ous­ly, how do you stop legal­iz­ing zoophil­ia, espe­cial­ly in a pop­u­lar cul­ture in which inter­nal bar­ri­ers with­in the mass­es will have been bro­ken down by wide­spread hard­core pornog­ra­phy? ‘What does my neigh­bor’s habit of being corn­holed by his Ger­man shep­herd have to do with my mar­riage?’ say the nitwit lib­er­tar­i­ans. ‘Ani­mals can’t con­sent!’ squeal the nitwit lib­er­als, though I hope they have the sense not to say so with their mouth full of ham.”
     • This is a well-doc­u­ment­ed piece and the updates at the end are very much worth read­ing, espe­cial­ly the Scalia quote.
   • I Regret Being A Slut (Brid­get Pheta­sy, Sub­stack): “I know regret­ting most of my sex­u­al encoun­ters is not some­thing a sex-pos­i­tive fem­i­nist who used to write a col­umn for Play­boy is sup­posed to admit. And for years, I didn’t. Let me be clear, being a ‘slut’ and sleep­ing with a lot of men is not the only behav­ior I regret. Even more dam­ag­ing was what I told myself in order to jus­ti­fy the fact that I was dis­pos­able to these men: I told myself I didn’t care. I didn’t care when a man ghost­ed me. I didn’t care when he left in the mid­dle of the night or hint­ed that he want­ed me to leave. The walks of shame. The black­outs. The anx­i­ety. The lie I told myself for decades was: I’m not in pain—I’m empow­ered. Look­ing back, it isn’t a sur­prise that I lied to myself. Because from a young age, sex was some­thing I was lied to about.” This is in no way a Chris­t­ian arti­cle — but it is inter­est­ing.
   • Mon­key­pox And The Face Of Gay Promis­cu­ity (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “I remem­ber being told by the media that gay men were vast­ly more promis­cu­ous than straight men because soci­ety com­pelled them to be. Nor­mal­ize homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and grant same-sex mar­riage, and that would change. I nev­er believed it because I knew per­fect­ly well that gay men were insane­ly promis­cu­ous not because they were gay, but because they were men. An ordi­nary male unre­strained by reli­gious or moral scru­ple, and faced with a wide vari­ety of will­ing part­ners who demand no emo­tion­al com­mit­ment, or even to know one’s name, before hav­ing sex — that man will like­ly behave exact­ly as most gay men do.”
     • WARNING — the pic­ture in the link is jar­ring. The com­ments at the end are quite inter­est­ing and not at all what most observers would expect — Dreher real­ly does appre­ci­ate his audi­ence even when they dis­agree with him.
6. ‘Dis­turb­ing’: Experts trou­bled by Canada’s euthana­sia laws (Maria Cheng, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Cana­da prides itself on being lib­er­al and accept­ing, said David Jones, direc­tor of the Anscombe Bioethics Cen­tre in Britain, ‘but what’s hap­pen­ing with euthana­sia sug­gests there may be a dark­er side.’”
7. As India marks its first 75 years, Gand­hi is down­played, even derid­ed (Ger­ry Shih, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Today, at ral­lies of Hin­du nation­al­ist hard-lin­ers, Gand­hi is rou­tine­ly vil­i­fied as fee­ble in his tac­tics against the British and over­ly con­cil­ia­to­ry to India’s Mus­lims, who broke off and formed their own state, Pak­istan, on Aug. 14, 1947. On social media and online forums, exag­ger­a­tions and false­hoods abound about Gandhi’s alleged betray­al of Hin­dus. And in pop­u­lar films and the polit­i­cal main­stream, Gand­hi and Jawa­har­lal Nehru — the first prime min­is­ter — are side­lined, while nation­al­ists who advo­cat­ed the force of arms have been ele­vat­ed.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Things At Church Can Get Pret­ty Wild. (YouTube): four amus­ing min­utes
• Chip To Con­trol Brains (Dil­bert)
• Weak Chris­t­ian Needs Bible Tabs To Find Habakkuk (Baby­lon Bee)
• giv­ing snakes there legs back  (Allen Pan, YouTube): ten min­utes of some guy try­ing to undo the curse in Gen­e­sis. Enter­tain­ing and absurd, mild lan­guage warn­ing. Warn­ing: if he gives it a voice as well, don’t lis­ten to what it says. Typo in orig­i­nal.
• Heav­en (Pearls Before Swine) — bad but amus­ing the­ol­o­gy
• Church Puz­zled By Low Atten­dance At Its ‘Sit Around and Talk About Your Feel­ings’ Men’s Con­fer­ence (Baby­lon Bee)
• The Over­think­ing Song — “If You’re Hap­py And You Know It” Par­o­dy (Hold­er­ness Fam­i­ly, YouTube): three min­utes of song plus some ran­dom talk­ing at the end

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have  Hav­ing Kids (Paul Gra­ham, per­son­al blog): “I remem­ber per­fect­ly well what life was like before. Well enough to miss some things a lot, like the abil­i­ty to take off for some oth­er coun­try at a moment’s notice. That was so great. Why did I nev­er do that? See what I did there? The fact is, most of the free­dom I had before kids, I nev­er used. I paid for it in lone­li­ness, but I nev­er used it.” First shared in vol­ume 233.

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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). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. 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. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.