Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 441

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 is vol­ume 441, which is 21² and also the small­est square which is the sum of six con­sec­u­tive cubes: 1³ + 2³ + 3³ + 4³ + 5³ + 6³

No amus­ing stuff at the end this week. I’ve been busy trav­el­ing and am vast­ly underamused.😅

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. Blessed Are Those Who Mourn (T. M. Suffield, Mere Ortho­doxy): “Pen­ning­ton describes the beat­i­tudes as ‘divine gold of price­less worth’ that ‘appears to be only dark­ness.’ Like wis­dom say­ings they don’t give up their gold imme­di­ate­ly. They are sup­posed to shock us and I fear we have become over­ly famil­iar with them. Jesus is argu­ing that flour­ish­ing, the good life, requires mourn­ing. The thing the mod­ern world wants to avoid most, sad­ness, is some­how a key to a good life. To us this appears to be pro­found­ly non-flour­ish­ing. The shock we should feel is part of how the beat­i­tudes are meant to work.”
   • This is a wise and per­cep­tive essay. 10/10 rec­om­mend.
2. How Fem­i­nism Ends (Ginevra Davis, Amer­i­can Affairs Jour­nal): “If the goal of fem­i­nism is to improve the lot of females, then there are dozens of changes, social and sci­en­tif­ic, that could help alle­vi­ate their con­di­tion. But if the goal of fem­i­nism is per­fect sex­u­al equality—that no mind should ever have to make sac­ri­fices, in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty or love, because of its body—then the end of fem­i­nism must, nec­es­sar­i­ly, mean the end of females. There is no oth­er way.”
   • A long but fab­u­lous essay. It’s by a Stan­ford grad, inci­den­tal­ly — this is the same author who wrote about Stan­ford’s war on fun a while back. I don’t think we ever crossed paths when she was a stu­dent.
   • Vague­ly relat­ed (but inter­est­ing enough in its own right that I would have includ­ed it regard­less): Stan­ford Med­i­cine study iden­ti­fies dis­tinct brain orga­ni­za­tion pat­terns in women and men (Stan­ford Med­i­cine): “A new study by Stan­ford Med­i­cine inves­ti­ga­tors unveils a new arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence mod­el that was more than 90% suc­cess­ful at deter­min­ing whether scans of brain activ­i­ty came from a woman or a man. The find­ings, pub­lished Feb. 20 in the Pro­ceed­ings of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences, help resolve a long-term con­tro­ver­sy about whether reli­able sex dif­fer­ences exist in the human brain and sug­gest that under­stand­ing these dif­fer­ences may be crit­i­cal to address­ing neu­ropsy­chi­atric con­di­tions that affect women and men dif­fer­ent­ly.”
3. I’m a fos­ter kid who went to Yale —and I think two-par­ent fam­i­lies are more impor­tant than col­lege (Rik­ki Schlott, New York Post): “Even though I was always aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly inclined, the lev­el of dis­or­der in my life was weigh­ing me down so much that I wasn’t in a posi­tion to ful­ly exploit my own capa­bil­i­ties.… I had a class where a pro­fes­sor admin­is­tered an anony­mous poll. Out of the 20 stu­dents, 18 of them had been raised by both of their birth par­ents. That just floored me because where I grew up it was zero.”
4. Kin­da Nice (Damo­la Morenike­ji, Sub­stack): “A kind per­son will help you under­stand real­i­ty as it is, prompt you to reflect, and nudge you to fine-tune your posi­tion till you get to a place where your res­o­lu­tion is help­ful for you. A nice per­son will tell you what feels good — and often what you think you want to hear at that time — even if it doesn’t help you move past that sit­u­a­tion.”
5. Our Unhap­py Youth (Antho­ny Esolen, Cri­sis Mag­a­zine): “Instead of ask­ing why they are unhap­py, we might ask why they aren’t hap­py,which might in turn lead us to ask what they have to be hap­py about. That might reveal to us in all its drab­ness what appears to be the most anti­hu­man way of life that any civ­i­liza­tion has ever set­tled into: becalmed with­out rest, somber with­out sobri­ety, abstract­ed with­out thought, licen­tious with­out even the ani­mal vig­or of license; ever shout­ing, but with­out good cheer.”
6. Are ‘Islamists in Charge of Britain’? (Kon­stan­tin Kisin, The Free Press): “In one sense, the Speaker’s deci­sion was not unfound­ed. MPs real­ly are at risk. Only weeks pri­or, Mike Freer, a Con­ser­v­a­tive MP who rep­re­sents a con­stituen­cy with a sig­nif­i­cant Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion, announced that he would not be seek­ing reelec­tion because of threats to him and his fam­i­ly over his sup­port for Israel. Explain­ing his deci­sion, he revealed that he had start­ed wear­ing stab-proof vests when meet­ing con­stituents. In 2021 anoth­er Con­ser­v­a­tive MP, Sir David Amess, was stabbed to death by an Islamist at such a meet­ing. In 2017, an Islamist ter­ror­ist mowed down pedes­tri­ans before stab­bing an unarmed police offi­cer to death out­side the gates of Par­lia­ment.”
   • Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
7. Gaza’s Past Is Call­ing (Sarah Aziza, Lux Mag­a­zine): “Com­ing up in the 1990s and 2000s, the word ‘Gaza’ was already syn­ony­mous with ‘Hamas’ — a term which, I quick­ly learned, ren­dered an entire pop­u­la­tion mon­strous. I am ashamed I often mum­bled the name — Gaza — when white Amer­i­cans asked about my fam­i­ly ori­gins. It hurt to watch them flinch, to see in their cold stares the impos­si­bil­i­ty that Gaza could ever mean moth­ers, banana, joy. The world they erased — and erase — my father’s fin­gers, draw­ing in the sand. My grandmother’s pigeons, her par­tic­u­lar way of brew­ing tea. The thou­sand, thou­sand feet that have run into the Mediter­ranean, each laugh­ter a dif­fer­ent splash. Gaza, for me, means teem­ing — a cru­el over-con­cen­tra­tion of bod­ies, yes, but at the same time, one of the world’s dens­est points of human love.”

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). 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.