TGFI, Volume 535: marrying young and the depths of Tolkien

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Inter­est­ing

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues like­ly to be of inter­est to Chris­tians in col­lege. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. The Broth­er I Lost (Megan McAr­dle, The Dis­patch): “For as long as I can remem­ber, I have believed that a woman should be able to decide whether to become a moth­er, and also believed that the life grow­ing inside her should get the same shot as the rest of us at life, lib­er­ty, and the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness. Since these two beliefs are fun­da­men­tal­ly incom­pat­i­ble, I usu­al­ly man­aged the con­tra­dic­tion by avoid­ing the sub­ject.”
2. Tough Love: I Don’t Want My 22-Year-Old to Get Mar­ried (Abi­gail Shri­er, The Free Press): “In case you don’t know how most young women your daughter’s age are spend­ing their twen­ties, allow me to fill you in: surf­ing dat­ing apps, grow­ing more cyn­i­cal and jad­ed by the year, main­tain­ing ‘sit­u­a­tion­ships’ with hot guys who sleep with them when­ev­er it suits them and van­ish when it doesn’t. An entire gen­er­a­tion of young women are let­ting their most for­ma­tive, eli­gi­ble decade slip through their fin­gers like olive oil. A hun­dred first dates. Dozens of booty calls. Learn­ing little—because you can­not learn much from a non-relationship—calling it ‘self-knowl­edge’ while gain­ing noth­ing but UTIs and a draw­er­ful of Plan B.… the truth is: No one’s ever mature enough for mar­riage. No one’s ever entire­ly ready. Nor for the labors and joys of moth­er­hood. We splash through these stages a lit­tle bat­ty and half-blind. If we meet the demands, they change us. That much is inevitable. But until we start to swim, we nev­er real­ly know we can.”
   • Mag­nif­i­cent, rec­om­mend­ed to me by an alum­nus.
3. The Lost Gen­er­a­tion (Jacob Sav­age, Com­pact Mag­a­zine): “Over the course of the 2010s, near­ly every mech­a­nism lib­er­al Amer­i­ca used to con­fer pres­tige was reweight­ed along iden­ti­tar­i­an lines.… Most of the men I inter­viewed start­ed out as lib­er­als. Some still are. But to feel the weight of society’s dis­fa­vor can be dis­ori­ent­ing. We mil­len­ni­als were true believ­ers in race and gen­der-blind mer­i­toc­ra­cy, which for all its faults—its naïveté about human nature, its opti­mism in the Amer­i­can Dream—was far supe­ri­or to what replaced it. And to see that vision so spec­tac­u­lar­ly betrayed has engen­dered a skep­ti­cism toward the entire lib­er­al project that won’t soon dis­ap­pear.”
   • The viral­i­ty of this arti­cle (and the host of respons­es it has engen­dered) sug­gests that it has hit a nerve.
4. AI romance blooms as Japan­ese woman weds vir­tu­al part­ner of her dreams (Kim Kyung-Hoon & Satoshi Sugiya­ma, Reuters): “A year ago, Noguchi took ChatGPT’s advice about what she said was a fraught rela­tion­ship with her human fiance and resolved to break off their engage­ment.… Yasuyu­ki Saku­rai, a wed­ding plan­ner for more than 20 years, said he now almost exclu­sive­ly han­dles mar­riages of clients with vir­tu­al char­ac­ters, aver­ag­ing about one a month.”
   • Shared with me by a hor­ri­fied stu­dent.
5. What Courage Does for Us (David French, New York Times): “An empha­sis on accom­plish­ment can actu­al­ly breed cow­ardice. Courage can cost you your career. Courage can cost you your life. And so the careerist learns to adapt, to hide when the bul­lets (real or fig­u­ra­tive) start to fly. Sure, the hero can rise to the top, but he or she can also end up dead, and you can’t be a pres­i­dent or a chief exec­u­tive or a mem­ber of Con­gress from the grave.”
   • Unlocked.
   • Relat­ed, also unlocked: The Secret Tri­al of the Gen­er­al Who Refused to Attack Tianan­men Square (Chris Buck­ley, New York Times): “ ‘I said to them that my supe­ri­ors can appoint me, and they can also dis­miss me,’ he recount­ed in court, seem­ing to indi­cate that he was will­ing to lose his job over his deci­sion. One of the gen­er­als at the meet­ing, Dai Jing­sheng, told inves­ti­ga­tors that he and his col­leagues went silent for about a minute while they absorbed Gen­er­al Xu’s defi­ance. ‘Nobody expect­ed words like this from Xu,”‘said Gen­er­al Dai, accord­ing to the tes­ti­mo­ny. Under ques­tion­ing, Gen­er­al Xu acknowl­edged that the mil­i­tary answered to China’s Com­mu­nist Par­ty lead­ers. But he sug­gest­ed that it should also be sub­ject to a broad­er author­i­ty.”
   • Also relat­ed: Man who filmed Uyghur con­cen­tra­tion camps now fights for his own free­dom in the Unit­ed States (Atlas Luk, Sub­stack): “His asy­lum appli­ca­tion, which had an inter­view pend­ing, his valid work per­mit, his New York State driver’s license… in the eyes of ICE, all of these were worth­less because he had ‘entered with­out inspec­tion’ by cus­toms. With the Trump admin­is­tra­tion crack­ing down on ille­gal immi­gra­tion, Broome Coun­ty Jail was over­crowd­ed. Months passed, and Guan Heng wait­ed anx­ious­ly and deject­ed­ly for the out­come of his case. No one knew what this young man from Chi­na had gone through in the past few years; nor did any­one know that the images he had filmed of the Xin­jiang deten­tion camps, at great per­son­al risk, pro­vid­ed cru­cial evi­dence of the Chi­nese author­i­ties’ actions against the Uyghur peo­ple in Xin­jiang. Or that if he were to be deport­ed, he would be fac­ing immense dan­ger.”
6. Why I Keep Return­ing to Mid­dle-Earth (Michael D.C. Drout, New York Times): “Sub­tle vari­a­tions in Tolkien’s writ­ing style across its 62 chap­ters gen­er­ate the impres­sion that ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is a com­pi­la­tion of oth­er texts. This pat­tern is large­ly invis­i­ble even to care­ful read­ers, but new meth­ods of com­put­er-assist­ed analy­sis throw it into sharp relief. An algo­rithm can com­pare the vocab­u­lar­ies of the chap­ters and clus­ter those that are sim­i­lar.… Its chap­ters group in a com­plex hier­ar­chy with three large group­ings and sev­er­al out­liers, a pat­tern of clus­ter­ing not typ­i­cal for a mod­ern nov­el. It is clos­er in form to mul­ti­au­thor com­pos­ite texts from the Mid­dle Ages. Not only do the clus­ters not match the point-of-view char­ac­ters; they don’t seem to be relat­ed to vol­ume, book, set­ting, type of action or pac­ing.… This styl­is­tic vari­a­tion was, at least ini­tial­ly, com­plete­ly unin­ten­tion­al, a byprod­uct of Tolkien’s labo­ri­ous and ago­niz­ing 17-year effort to com­plete the book. Tolkien had aimed to make ‘The Lord of the Rings’ feel as if it had been dis­cov­ered and assem­bled; the frame nar­ra­tive of the book is that it’s a trans­la­tion of a diary that was expand­ed into a his­to­ry and aug­ment­ed by lat­er schol­ars. His strug­gles, prov­i­den­tial­ly, helped him achieve that effect.”
   • Fas­ci­nat­ing stuff. The whole essay is deeply per­son­al and quite mov­ing. The author is an Eng­lish pro­fes­sor at Wheaton. Unlocked.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• The 52 Best Breakup Lines (Said in Real Life) (Miya Lee and Daniel Jones, New York Times): “It wasn’t any­thing you did,” my first real girl­friend said. “You were a great boyfriend. I mean, I’d even write you a let­ter of rec­om­men­da­tion.”
• In-N-Out removes num­ber 67 from order sys­tem due to viral 6–7 trend (YouTube): less than a minute, shared with me by an amused stu­dent
• Hol­ly­wood Announces Bold New Film Where An Evil Vil­lain Is Just Evil And Not Mis­un­der­stood (Baby­lon Bee): “At pub­lish­ing time, the film­mak­ers were report­ed­ly con­sid­er­ing tak­ing anoth­er bold step with their next project by depict­ing a female hero who isn’t good at every­thing and is unable to defeat men in hand-to-hand com­bat.”

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.