Author: Glen

The Abolition of Man: Chapters One and Two

The Abo­li­tion of Man by C. S. Lewis

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through three books by C. S. Lewis, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2018. The sched­ule is online.

Wel­come to week one of the Chi Alpha sum­mer read­ing project!

Some resources that may prove use­ful to you:

On to Lewis’s argu­ment. He noticed a fea­ture in an Eng­lish text­book which great­ly both­ered him: the authors teach that val­ue judg­ments about the world are state­ments of feel­ing rather than state­ments of fact. Lewis points out that this is a very pow­er­ful form of indoc­tri­na­tion and adds that this is an enor­mous dif­fer­ence from the past.

Until quite mod­ern times all teach­ers and even all men believed the uni­verse to be such that cer­tain emo­tion­al reac­tions on our part could be either con­gru­ous or incon­gru­ous to it — believed, in fact, that objects did not mere­ly receive, but could mer­it, our approval or dis­ap­proval, our rev­er­ence or our con­tempt. (page 699 in our anthol­o­gy)

He gives sev­er­al exam­ples and lumps them togeth­er under the com­mon name of the Tao:

This con­cep­tion in all its forms, Pla­ton­ic, Aris­totelian, Sto­ic, Chris­t­ian, and Ori­en­tal alike, I shall hence­forth refer to for brevi­ty sim­ply as ‘the Tao’.… what is com­mon to them all is some­thing we can­not neglect. It is the doc­trine of objec­tive val­ue, the belief that cer­tain atti­tudes are real­ly true, and oth­ers real­ly false, to the kind of thing the uni­verse is and the kind of things we are. Those who know the Tao can hold that to call chil­dren delight­ful or old men ven­er­a­ble is not sim­ply to record a psy­cho­log­i­cal fact about our own parental or fil­ial emo­tions at the moment, but to rec­og­nize a qual­i­ty which demands a cer­tain response from us whether we make it or not. I myself do not enjoy the soci­ety of small chil­dren: because I speak from with­in the Tao I rec­og­nize this as a defect in myself — just as a man may have to rec­og­nize that he is tone deaf or colour blind. And because our approvals and dis­ap­provals are thus recog­ni­tions of objec­tive val­ue or respons­es to an objec­tive order, there­fore emo­tion­al states can be in har­mo­ny with rea­son (when we feel lik­ing for what ought to be approved) or out of har­mo­ny with rea­son (when we per­ceive that lik­ing is due but can­not feel it). (pages 701–702)

It is worth think­ing about his illus­tra­tion. I sus­pect some of you will strong­ly dis­agree with it with­out quite know­ing why. Here it is in bare form: not lik­ing chil­dren is a moral defect. It is not “just the way you are.” It is the way you have become, and you have an oblig­a­tion to try to become some­one bet­ter. And even if your dis­like of chil­dren was a mat­ter of your genet­ics of some­thing else beyond your con­trol it would not stop being a moral defect.

But our cul­ture rejects these moral oblig­a­tions along with many oth­ers; more than that, we refuse to seri­ous­ly con­sid­er that they might actu­al­ly be moral oblig­a­tions instead of per­son­al choic­es. We teach that val­ues are mat­ters of opin­ion. And this leads to the stun­ning per­ora­tion of the first lec­ture:

In a sort of ghast­ly sim­plic­i­ty we remove the organ and demand the func­tion. We make men with­out chests and expect of them virtue and enter­prise. We laugh at hon­our and are shocked to find trai­tors in our midst. We cas­trate and bid the geld­ings be fruit­ful. (page 704)

In light of Lewis’ argu­ment, reflect on this recent essay about an arti­cle in the pres­ti­gious pub­li­ca­tion For­eign Pol­i­cy: Should Ama­zon tribes be allowed to kill their young? For­eign Pol­i­cy edi­tors aren’t sure (Julia Duin, GetRe­li­gion):

“In recent years, cer­tain tribes in the Ama­zon region have been in the news because of their unpleas­ant habit of killing deformed or hand­i­capped chil­dren as well as twins, and even off­spring of sin­gle moms, soon after birth. They also may kill trans­gen­dered indi­vid­u­als. I thought the con­sen­sus was pret­ty clear that such prac­tices were evil. But along came an arti­cle (it was a month ago, but I’m only get­ting around to it now) in For­eign Pol­i­cy mag­a­zine that argued how sav­ing the lives of these chil­dren was a west­ern val­ue that didn’t fit with the cus­toms and lifestyle of these tribes.”

If he read that arti­cle, Lewis would not be sur­prised. Reject­ing the Tao opens the door to mad­ness.

In the sec­ond chap­ter, “The Way”, Lewis points out that many peo­ple attempt to hold on to objec­tive ethics with­out admit­ting that they are doing so.

A great many of those who ‘debunk’ tra­di­tion­al or (as they would say) ‘sen­ti­men­tal’ val­ues have in the back­ground val­ues of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunk­ing process. They claim to be cut­ting away the par­a­sitic growth of emo­tion, reli­gious sanc­tion, and inher­it­ed taboos, in order that ‘real’ or ‘basic’ val­ues may emerge. I will now try to find out what hap­pens if this is seri­ous­ly attempt­ed. (page 706)

The most com­mon attempt to find a source of val­ues apart from the Tao is to appeal to human nature. When I talk with skep­tics on cam­pus they most com­mon­ly try to ground moral­i­ty in evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­o­gy. But it doesn’t work. Lewis explains:

From propo­si­tions about fact alone no prac­ti­cal con­clu­sion can ever be drawn. This will pre­serve soci­ety can­not lead to do this except by the medi­a­tion of soci­ety ought to be pre­served. This will cost you your life can­not lead direct­ly to do not do this: it can lead to it only through a felt desire or an acknowl­edged duty of self-preser­va­tion. The Inno­va­tor is try­ing to get a con­clu­sion in the imper­a­tive mood out of pre­miss­es in the indica­tive mood: and though he con­tin­ues try­ing to all eter­ni­ty he can­not suc­ceed, for the thing is impos­si­ble. (page 707)

In oth­er words, the only way to derive moral­i­ty is to pre­sup­pose moral­i­ty. Just as the sum of two num­bers will itself be a num­ber, facts can only pro­duce moral oblig­a­tions if moral oblig­a­tions are them­selves facts.

Lewis says a lot more in these chap­ters, but this email is already too lengthy.

Those are the things that stood out to me. What stood out to you?

Kicking off the C. S. Lewis Summer Reading Project

The Abo­li­tion of Man by C. S. Lewis

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through three books by C. S. Lewis, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2018.

This is the first week of our sum­mer read­ing project. I’ll be send­ing out reminders to read along with some com­men­tary on the read­ings through­out the sum­mer. Remem­ber that the sched­ule is online (you can print it out and use it as a book­mark if you find that help­ful).

This week we’re read­ing the first two chap­ters of The Abo­li­tion of Man by C.S. Lewis: “Men With­out Chests” and “The Way” (pages 693–717 in the anthol­o­gy).  If you don’t have a copy of the book yet, you can hear it enter­tain­ing­ly pre­sent­ed on the C.S. Lewis Doo­dle YouTube chan­nel (not all of our read­ings are on this chan­nel, but some will be).

I believe this is one of Lewis’s most impor­tant books, and I am not alone in my opin­ion. In The Narn­ian, Alan Jacobs (him­self an excel­lent essay­ist) calls The Abo­li­tion of Man the “most pro­found of Lewis’s cul­tur­al cri­tiques” (page 174).

At first you may won­der why you are read­ing about a British high school text­book from 1939, but as you progress into the chap­ter you’ll dis­cov­er that Lewis is point­ing out a pro­found error in think­ing which has become even more wide­spread today. I encour­age you to per­se­vere; the pay­off is worth it. The last four sen­tences of the first chap­ter are among the most pow­er­ful I have read, and you will find that the sec­ond chap­ter seems to be addressed to your con­tem­po­raries at Stan­ford.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 156

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.

Also, 156 is three sets of 52, which means I’ve been doing this for a lit­tle over three years now (I some­times take a week or two off). Yay!

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Mr. Rogers Had a Sim­ple Set of Rules for Talk­ing to Chil­dren (Maxwell King, The Atlantic): “1. ‘State the idea you wish to express as clear­ly as pos­si­ble, and in terms preschool­ers can under­stand.’ Exam­ple: It is dan­ger­ous to play in the street. 2. “Rephrase in a pos­i­tive man­ner,” as in It is good to play where it is safe. 3. “Rephrase the idea, bear­ing in mind that preschool­ers can­not yet make sub­tle dis­tinc­tions and need to be redi­rect­ed to author­i­ties they trust.” As in, Ask your par­ents where it is safe to play.” There are sev­er­al more rules, most equal­ly good for talk­ing to adults.
  2. The Lifes­pan of a Lie (Ben Blum, Medi­um): “The appeal of the Stan­ford prison exper­i­ment seems to go deep­er than its sci­en­tif­ic valid­i­ty, per­haps because it tells us a sto­ry about our­selves that we des­per­ate­ly want to believe: that we, as indi­vid­u­als, can­not real­ly be held account­able for the some­times rep­re­hen­si­ble things we do.” The arti­cle claims, con­vinc­ing­ly, that the Stan­ford Prison Exper­i­ment did not hap­pen at all the way we have been taught. Wow.
  3. When Diver­si­ty Means Uni­for­mi­ty (Lionel Shriv­er, The Spec­ta­tor): “Will Nor­man, London’s ‘walk­ing and cycling com­mis­sion­er’, bemoaned the fact that too many cyclists in the city are white, male and mid­dle-class. ‘The real chal­lenge for Lon­don cycling,’ he declared, ‘is diver­si­ty.’ As opposed to build­ing more cycle lanes for every­body, or fix­ing pot­holes lethal to everybody’s wheel rims, Nor­man regards his prin­ci­pal func­tion as increas­ing black and minor­i­ty eth­nic rid­er­ship.” This anec­dote is not the focus of the arti­cle.
  4. Of Boys and Toys (Leonard Sax, Insti­tute For Fam­i­ly Stud­ies): “…they found that lit­tle children—boys especially—had bare­ly a clue which gen­der they belonged to, even when the psy­chol­o­gists used the sim­plest non­ver­bal prompts. Kids under two years of age score only slight­ly above chance in assign­ing them­selves or oth­er kids to the cor­rect gen­der. Nev­er­the­less, Serbin’s group found that children’s toy pref­er­ences are firm­ly in place by this age, espe­cial­ly among boys. When the exper­i­menters offered boys a truck or a doll, most boys chose the truck. In fact, boys pre­ferred trucks over dolls more strong­ly than girls pre­ferred dolls over trucks. That ought to be sur­pris­ing if you buy into gen­der schema the­o­ry because 18-month-old girls were more like­ly than boys to be able to clas­si­fy them­selves and oth­er chil­dren by gen­der. If gen­der schema the­o­ry is cor­rect, the girls should show a stronger pref­er­ence for gen­der-typ­i­cal toys because girls this age are more like­ly to know that they are, in fact, girls. But the real­i­ty is just the oppo­site.”
  5. Har­vard Rat­ed Asian-Amer­i­can Appli­cants Low­er on Per­son­al­i­ty Traits, Law­suit Says (Hadley Green, New York Times): “They com­pare Harvard’s treat­ment of Asian-Amer­i­cans with its well-doc­u­ment­ed cam­paign to reduce the grow­ing num­ber of Jews being admit­ted to Har­vard in the 1920s. Until then, appli­cants had been admit­ted on aca­d­e­m­ic mer­it. To avoid adopt­ing a bla­tant quo­ta sys­tem, Har­vard intro­duced sub­jec­tive cri­te­ria like char­ac­ter, per­son­al­i­ty and promise. The plain­tiffs call this the ‘orig­i­nal sin of holis­tic admis­sions.’” What are the odds they are the only high­ly-selec­tive uni­ver­si­ty to do this?
  6. Con­ser­v­a­tive Reli­gious Lead­ers Are Denounc­ing Trump Immi­gra­tion Poli­cies (Lau­rie Good­stein, New York Times): “A coali­tion of evan­gel­i­cal groups, includ­ing the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Evan­gel­i­cals and the Coun­cil for Chris­t­ian Col­leges and Uni­ver­si­ties, sent a let­ter to Pres­i­dent Trump on June 1 plead­ing with him to pro­tect the uni­ty of fam­i­lies and not to close off all avenues to asy­lum for immi­grants and refugees flee­ing dan­ger.”
    • Relat­ed: World Refugee Day 2018: ‘Wel­com­ing the Stranger’ Meets ‘Zero Tol­er­ance’ (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “For Chris­tians, the issue of fam­i­ly uni­ty for immi­grants shows signs of tran­scend­ing par­ti­san lines. Franklin Gra­ham, an evan­gel­i­cal advis­er to Pres­i­dent Trump, recent­ly spoke against fam­i­ly sep­a­ra­tion on CBN News, encour­ag­ing leg­isla­tive reform to rem­e­dy the new guide­lines for migrants at the bor­der.”
    • Relat­ed: She says fed­er­al offi­cials took her daugh­ter while she breast­fed the child in a deten­tion cen­ter (Ed Lavan­dera, Jason Mor­ris and Dar­ran Simon, CNN): “The undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grant from Hon­duras sobbed as she told an attor­ney Tues­day how fed­er­al author­i­ties took her daugh­ter while she breast­fed the child in a deten­tion cen­ter, where she was await­ing pros­e­cu­tion for enter­ing the coun­try ille­gal­ly. When the woman resist­ed, she was hand­cuffed…” Bear in the mind that this is an alle­ga­tion, not a sub­stan­ti­at­ed event. I find it plau­si­ble.
  7. A com­pelling series of arti­cles on Chi­na by a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Johns Hop­kins (who also hap­pens to be a Stan­ford grad): China’s Mas­ter Plan: A Glob­al Mil­i­tary Threat, China’s Mas­ter Plan: Export­ing an Ide­ol­o­gy, China’s Mas­ter Plan: A World­wide Web of Insti­tu­tions and China’s Mas­ter Plan: How The West Can Fight Back (Hal Brand, Bloomberg). The mon­ey quote from the sec­ond arti­cle: “If the U.S. has long sought to make the world safe for democ­ra­cy, China’s lead­ers crave a world that is safe for author­i­tar­i­an­ism.”

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 On Obsti­na­cy In Belief (C.S. Lewis, The Sewa­nee Review): this is a reward­ing essay from way back in 1955. (first shared in vol­ume 6)

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.

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 155

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. The Prob­lem with Dull Knives: What’s the Defense Depart­ment got to do with Code for Amer­i­ca? (Jen­nifer Pahlka, Medi­um): “I have a dis­tinct mem­o­ry of being a kid in the kitchen with my mom, awk­ward­ly and prob­a­bly dan­ger­ous­ly wield­ing a knife, try­ing to cut some tough veg­etable, and defend­ing my actions by say­ing the knife was dull any­way. My mom stopped me and said firm­ly, ‘Jen­ny, a dull knife is much more dan­ger­ous than a sharp knife. You’re strug­gling and using much more force than you should, and that knife is going to end up God Knows Where.’ She was right, of course…. But hav­ing poor tools [for the mil­i­tary] doesn’t make us fight less; it makes us fight bad­ly.” (some empha­sis in the orig­i­nal removed). High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  2. Num­ber One in Pover­ty, Cal­i­for­nia Isn’t Our Most Pro­gres­sive State — It’s Our Most Racist One (Michael Shel­len­berg­er, Forbes): “If racism is more than just say­ing nasty things — if it is, as schol­ars like James Bald­win, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Michelle Alexan­der and count­less oth­ers have described, embed­ded into socioe­co­nom­ic struc­tures — then Cal­i­for­nia isn’t just the least pro­gres­sive state. It’s also the most racist.” Annoy­ing­ly split into sev­en sec­tions, but worth­while. The author was a guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date, but he did not make the gen­er­al elec­tion.
  3. This week the Supreme Court, in a 7–2 deci­sion, vin­di­cat­ed the Col­orado bak­er who refused to bake a cake for a gay wed­ding. A lot of ink was spilled in response:
    • Col­orado Made the Mas­ter­piece Case Easy for the Court (Robert P. George, New York Times): “This much, how­ev­er, is clear: Busi­ness own­ers and oth­ers have no oblig­a­tion under the Con­sti­tu­tion, nor can one be imposed by statute, to con­fine their reli­gion to the pri­vate domain. On the con­trary, they have the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to pro­claim and act on their reli­gious beliefs in the pub­lic domain, includ­ing in the domain of com­merce.” The author is a law pro­fes­sor at Prince­ton.
    • Sym­po­sium: Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop — not as nar­row as may first appear (Dou­glas Lay­cock and Thomas Berg, SCO­TUS­blog): “The Supreme Court has announced a pow­er­ful ide­al. Even when a law has no explic­it excep­tions, hos­tile enforce­ment is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Sin­gle-issue agen­cies that enforce state civ­il-rights laws must approach claims to reli­gious exemp­tions with tol­er­ance and respect. And this is appar­ent­ly an absolute rule; the court does not con­sid­er whether hos­til­i­ty might be jus­ti­fied by some state inter­est, com­pelling or oth­er­wise.”
    • Social Con­ser­vatism After Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop (Sohrab Ahmari, Com­men­tary Mag­a­zine): “Reduc­ing tra­di­tion­al beliefs to a mat­ter of reli­gious free­dom car­ries oth­er risks. It allows pro­gres­sives to frame tra­di­tion­al posi­tions, which are root­ed in rea­son and nat­ur­al law, as a kind of idio­syn­crasy or super­sti­tion…. Defend­ing tra­di­tion­al moral­i­ty on the basis of reli­gious lib­er­ty alone, in oth­er words, risks cor­ner­ing reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives in the long-term. The alter­na­tive, of course, isn’t to give up on reli­gious free­dom. That defen­sive bat­tle must con­tin­ue to be fought. But reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives should also go on the offen­sive and once more for­mu­late a sub­stan­tive pol­i­tics of the com­mon good.”
    • In Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop, Jus­tice Kennedy Strikes a Blow for the Dig­ni­ty of the Faith­ful (David French, Nation­al Review): “the Court did not issue the sweep­ing free-speech rul­ing that many advo­cates hoped for and oth­ers feared. Instead it issued a rul­ing that remind­ed state author­i­ties that peo­ple of faith have the exact same rights — and are enti­tled to the exact same treat­ment — as peo­ple of dif­fer­ent faith or no faith at all. And it did so in an opin­ion that deci­sive­ly reject­ed the exact talk­ing points so favored by the anti-reli­gious left.”
    • No Vic­to­ry For Reli­gious Lib­er­ty (Darel E. Paul, First Things): “Only pro­found naïveté can spin the major­i­ty deci­sion as a vic­to­ry for reli­gious lib­er­ty.”
    • Against The Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop Killjoys (David French, Nation­al Review): a strong response to the above piece and a few oth­ers.
    • Why The Mas­ter­piece Rul­ing Is Tru­ly A Major Win For Reli­gious Lib­er­ty (John East­man, The Fed­er­al­ist): “In short, Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop is the first post-Smith Free Exer­cise deci­sion where the Supreme Court applied strict scruti­ny to a neu­tral, gen­er­al­ly applic­a­ble law that was not designed to tar­get reli­gion. Rather, strict scruti­ny was trig­gered because of how the law was applied against reli­gious objec­tors.” The author is a law pro­fes­sor at Chap­man Col­lege and a senior fel­low at the Clare­mont Insti­tute.
    • This has not set­tled the issue, though. Reli­gious Lib­er­ty: Not A Piece of Cake (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “we have our first court rul­ing on reli­gious lib­er­ty since Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop. An Ari­zona appeals court even cit­ed the rul­ing in its own rul­ing against two Phoenix cal­lig­ra­phers who said that doing same-sex wed­ding invi­ta­tions was a vio­la­tion of their con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed reli­gious beliefs.” This will no doubt be appealed, but is inter­est­ing nonethe­less. There is mas­sive hos­til­i­ty in some cir­cles against reli­gious free­dom in gen­er­al and specif­i­cal­ly against the free­dom of evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians and tra­di­tion­al Catholics to pub­licly live as though their faith is true.
  4. In relat­ed news: Cross­Fit Just Fired Its Spokesper­son Who Said LGBT Pride Is A “Sin” (Stephanie M. Lee, Buz­zfeed): “Berg­er had also said, ‘The tac­tics of some in the LGBTQ move­ment toward dis­sent is an exis­ten­tial threat to free­dom of expres­sion.’ In response to a Twit­ter user who pushed back, he wrote, ‘Thank­ful­ly I work for a com­pa­ny that tol­er­ates dis­agree­ment. I have homo­sex­u­al cowork­ers who I love and respect, and as far as I am aware, they aren’t demand­ing I be pun­ished for my views.’”
    • In response, The Green­gro­cers Of Cross­Fit Gyms (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Gay activists and their sup­port­ers among the gym’s employ­ees destroyed this Christian’s busi­ness, not because he wouldn’t allow gays to work out at the gym, but because he would not per­mit them to cel­e­brate gay Pride there. They shat­tered his busi­ness overnight with­out fil­ing a charge or a law­suit, but sole­ly by using the pow­er of stig­ma and col­lec­tive action.”
  5. Read­ing Dan­ger­ous­ly (Ian Mar­cus Corbin, Week­ly Stan­dard): “I cur­rent­ly split my pro­fes­sion­al life between acad­e­mia and the Boston art world, the most lib­er­al cor­ners of the most lib­er­al state of the union. I can’t speak strong­ly enough about the beau­ty and kind­ness of the black, Jew­ish, His­pan­ic, gay, trans­gen­der, fem­i­nist, social­ist peo­ple whom I count as col­leagues and friends here. They are deep, sen­si­tive, search­ing souls. As a straight, white, able-bod­ied male, though—one who has even occa­sion­al­ly vot­ed for Republicans—I am, on paper, a per­fect storm of priv­i­lege and prej­u­dice. Per­haps shock­ing­ly, my col­leagues and I have man­aged to treat each oth­er with respect and at times even deep friend­ship and care.”
  6. Iden­ti­ty Ques­tions (Ron Bel­gau, Spir­i­tu­al Friend­ship): “ ‘Iden­ti­ty’ is bor­rowed from the sur­round­ing sec­u­lar cul­ture. It has dis­placed terms, like ‘nature’ and ‘call­ing,’ which have deep roots in the Bible and in the his­to­ry of Chris­t­ian thought. This dis­place­ment has made it more dif­fi­cult for Chris­tians to think clear­ly about what it means to be trans­formed in Christ.” This is from sev­er­al years ago and was brought to my atten­tion via a Twit­ter thread. Bel­gau is a fas­ci­nat­ing guy — a for­mer soft­ware engi­neer turned philoso­pher who is attract­ed to oth­er men and is con­vinced those temp­ta­tions are sin­ful.
  7. When The Pun­ish­ment Feels Like A Crime (Julia Ioffe, Huff­in­g­ton Post): “Dauber may be a hero to many Stan­ford stu­dents, but when I vis­it­ed the cam­pus in April, I dis­cov­ered that much of the fac­ul­ty does not feel the same way. Twen­ty-nine Stan­ford Law pro­fes­sors have signed a let­ter against the recall.” This is a long and amaz­ing arti­cle about the Per­sky recall cam­paign writ­ten before the vote.
    • Relat­ed: The recall of the judge who sen­tenced Brock Turn­er will end up hurt­ing poor, minor­i­ty defen­dants (Rachel Mar­shall, Vox): “…in this coun­try, we have an epi­dem­ic of wrong­ful con­vic­tions, yet nev­er have I heard of a pub­lic out­cry to recall or vote against a judge who presided over a case in which an inno­cent client was con­vict­ed or sen­tenced. In con­trast, as we have just seen, a sen­tence per­ceived as too light not only will make head­lines but could cost a judge his job.” The author is a Stan­ford Law School grad.
    • In case you missed it, Per­sky was recalled in the elec­tions this week.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • This guy is a chef in the White House (twit­ter). This is real. Google for “jacked White House chef.” Wow. Every out­landish action-adven­ture movie premise just became more plau­si­ble.
  • Great Chuck Nor­ris Facts (imgur): I know these jokes have been around for years… but some here are new to me. My favorite: “Chuck Nor­ris and Super­man once fought each oth­er on a bet. The los­er had to start wear­ing their under­wear on the out­side of their pants.”
  • Moron or Genius? (Pearls Before Swine)

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Land of We All (Richard Mitchell, The Gift of Fire), an essay  built on this insight: “Think­ing can not be done cor­po­rate­ly. Nations and com­mit­tees can’t think. That is not only because they have no brains, but because they have no selves, no cen­ters, no souls, if you like. Mil­lions and mil­lions of per­sons may hold the same thought, or con­vic­tion or sus­pi­cion, but each and every per­son of those mil­lions must hold it all alone.” (first shared in vol­ume 2) This is one of the more impor­tant things I’ve shared. 

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.

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 154

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. The Bap­tist Apoc­a­lypse (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “We’re a long way from any final judg­ment on God’s pur­pos­es in the Trump era. But so far the Trump pres­i­den­cy has clear­ly been a kind of apoc­a­lypse — not (yet) in the ‘world-his­tor­i­cal calami­ty’ sense of the word, but in the orig­i­nal Greek mean­ing: an unveil­ing, an uncov­er­ing, an expo­sure of truths that had hereto­fore been hid­den.”
    • Relat­ed: On Gen­der, Pow­er, and Sin: The Evan­gel­i­cal #MeToo Moment (Richard Beck, per­son­al blog): “A the­o­log­i­cal and bib­li­cal way to say all this is that men’s dom­i­nance over women is a part of the Fal­l’s curse upon human­i­ty. The wound of sin upon gen­der rela­tions is clear in Gen­e­sis 3: ‘He will rule over you.’ So if that’s a part of the curse, why do evan­gel­i­cals think that build­ing the curse into the system–gender subordination–is going to pro­duce any­thing oth­er than cursed out­comes?” I wish the author spent more time build­ing the Bib­li­cal case for his per­spec­tive.
  2. A One Para­me­ter Equa­tion That Can Exact­ly Fit Any Scat­ter Plot (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Over­fit­ting is pos­si­ble with just one para­me­ter and so mod­els with few­er para­me­ters are not nec­es­sar­i­ly prefer­able even if they fit the data as well or bet­ter than mod­els with more para­me­ters.” Researchers take note.
    • The under­ly­ing math­e­mat­ics paper is well-writ­ten and inter­est­ing: One Para­me­ter Is Always Enough (Steven T. Pianta­dosi) — among oth­er things, it points out that you can smug­gle in arbi­trar­i­ly large amounts of data into an equa­tion through a sin­gle para­me­ter because a num­ber can have infi­nite dig­its.
  3. What I’ve Learned in Twen­ty Years of Mar­riage (Rus­sell Moore, per­son­al blog): “My grand­moth­er wise­ly asked one night when I was final­ly going to ask ‘that girl from Ocean Springs’ to mar­ry me. I answered, ‘When I can afford it.’ She laughed. ‘Hon­ey, I mar­ried your grand­pa in the mid­dle of a Great Depres­sion,’ she said. ‘We made it work. Nobody can afford to get mar­ried. You just mar­ry, and make it work.’ Apart from the gospel, those were, and remain, the most lib­er­at­ing words I ever heard. I bought a ring that wouldn’t impress any­one, then or now, but we were head­ed for the altar. My only regret is that we aren’t today cel­e­brat­ing our twen­ty-first anniver­sary instead of our twen­ti­eth.” This is from a few years back and is full of wis­dom.
  4. Title IX Is Too Easy To Abuse (Cait­lyn Flana­gan, The Atlantic): “Is it pos­si­ble for two peo­ple to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly sex­u­al­ly assault each oth­er? This is the question—rife with legal, anatom­i­cal, and emo­tion­al improbabilities—to which the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cincin­nati now address­es itself, and with some urgency, as the insti­tu­tion and three of its employ­ees are cur­rent­ly being sued over an encounter that was sex­u­al for a brief moment, but that just as quick­ly entered the realm of eter­nal return. ”
  5. What­ev­er Hap­pened to Gifts of Lan­guage, Prophe­cy, and Heal­ing? (Andrew Wil­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “tak­ing a longer view by trac­ing our roots back to the ear­ly church fathers leads to some sur­pris­es. We dis­cov­er that some things, though rel­a­tive­ly unusu­al in recent times, are actu­al­ly very nor­mal across the broad­er sweep of human his­to­ry. Angels and demons would be an obvi­ous exam­ple. Or, more sur­pris­ing­ly, mirac­u­lous gifts.”
  6. I was Jor­dan Peterson’s strongest sup­port­er. Now I think he’s dan­ger­ous (Bernard Schiff, The Star): “When he was ren­o­vat­ing his house I invit­ed his fam­i­ly to live with mine. For five months, they occu­pied the third floor of our large house. We had meals togeth­er in the evening and long, colour­ful con­ver­sa­tions. There, away from cam­pus, I saw a man who was devot­ed to his wife and his chil­dren, who were love­ly and gen­tle and for whom I still feel affec­tion. He was atten­tive and thought­ful, stern and kind, play­ful and warm. His wife, Tam­my, appeared to be the keel, the bal­last and the rud­der, and Jor­dan ran the ship.” This is a long pro­file, by turns infor­ma­tive and puz­zling.
  7. The Evan­gel­i­cal Fight to Win Back Cal­i­for­nia (Eliz­a­beth Dias, New York Times): “Though the state has one of the high­est per­cent­ages of reli­gious­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed adults, the fast grow­ing reli­gious group in the coun­try, that large­ly blue sea is dot­ted with evan­gel­i­cal islands that are large­ly red. One in five adults in the state are evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians, accord­ing to the Pew Research Cen­ter, and there are more megachurch­es in Cal­i­for­nia than in any oth­er state.” This arti­cle is most­ly about pol­i­tics, but is inter­est­ing nonethe­less.

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 The Spir­i­tu­al Shape of Polit­i­cal Ideas (Joseph Bot­tum, The Week­ly Stan­dard): many mod­ern polit­i­cal ideas are derived from Chris­t­ian the­o­log­i­cal con­cepts. (first shared in vol­ume 1)

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.

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 153

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. Fed­er­al Agen­cies Lost Track of Near­ly 1,500 Migrant Chil­dren Placed With Spon­sors (Ron Nixon, New York Times): “…the agency had lost track of near­ly 1,500 migrant chil­dren it placed with spon­sors in the Unit­ed States, rais­ing con­cerns they could end up in the hands of human traf­fick­ers or be used as labor­ers by peo­ple pos­ing as rel­a­tives.” This is an arti­cle from April about kids who arrive alone at the bor­der, but I can’t help but think of it when I hear sto­ries about new poli­cies sep­a­rat­ing kids from their fam­i­lies at the bor­der. If I am read­ing this cor­rect­ly, they lost track of 20% of the minors they placed. Out­ra­geous­ly unac­cept­able. 
  2. The Wrath of God Poured Out — The Humil­i­a­tion of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion (Albert Mohler, per­son­al blog): this is pure fire. I pray lead­ers in the Assem­blies of God will act with sim­i­lar courage should it become nec­es­sary.  
  3. What Our Iden­ti­ty Search­es Real­ly Reveal (Eric Park­er, Gospel Coali­tion): “the most sig­nif­i­cant ques­tion in under­stand­ing per­son­al iden­ti­ty is not ‘Who am I?’ but ‘Whose am I?’… This one turn of phrase might be the most sig­nif­i­cant turn of thought we could ever make. But since many of us haven’t made that turn of thought, we inhab­it con­struct­ed iden­ti­ties rather than received iden­ti­ties.”
  4. Chi­na’s social cred­it sys­tem has blocked peo­ple from tak­ing 11 mil­lion flights and 4 mil­lion train trips (Tara Fran­cis Chan, Busi­ness Insid­er): “a for­mer offi­cial, Hou Yunchun, is quot­ed as say­ing the sys­tem needs to be improved so ‘dis­cred­it­ed peo­ple become bank­rupt.’”
  5. Why Being a Fos­ter Child Made Me a Con­ser­v­a­tive (Rob Hen­der­son, New York Times): “Indi­vid­u­als have rights. But they also have respon­si­bil­i­ties. For instance, when I say par­ents should pri­or­i­tize their chil­dren over their careers, there is a sense of unease among my peers. They think I want to blame indi­vid­u­als rather than a neb­u­lous foe like pover­ty. They are most­ly right.” The author just grad­u­at­ed from Yale. Worth read­ing regard­less of your polit­i­cal alle­giances.
  6. Mar­riage name game: What kind of guy would take his wife’s last name? (Phys.org): “[The study] found that among men with less than a high school degree, 10.3 per­cent report­ed chang­ing their sur­name. Among men with a high school degree but no col­lege, it was 3.6 per­cent, and among men with any col­lege, only 2 per­cent. None of the men sur­veyed who had an advanced degree changed their name.”
  7. The Racism Tread­mill (Cole­man Hugh­es, Quil­lette): “In an econ­o­my increas­ing­ly based on cog­ni­tive labor, it’s hard to imag­ine a cul­tur­al fea­ture more harm­ful than a social­ly-enforced taboo on aca­d­e­m­ic striv­ing. But wor­ries about the harm caused by the ‘act­ing white’ epi­thet have been met with skep­ti­cism by pro­gres­sives.” The author is an under­grad at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty. 

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 a provoca­tive read, In Defense of Flog­ging (Peter Moskos, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion) — the author is a for­mer police offi­cer and now a crim­i­nol­o­gist at the City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York. This one was shared back before I start­ed send­ing these emails in a blog post called Pun­ish­ment.

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.

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 152

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. Love, Again: on a celi­bate breakup and what hap­pened after. (Wes­ley Hill, Com­ment Mag­a­zine): “For a long time, I found absti­nence rel­a­tive­ly easy. It’s not trendy to admit this, but I didn’t expe­ri­ence a sex­less adult­hood to be a fate worse than death, in part, per­haps, because I tried not to rev up my libido by see­ing how close I could get to the line of inter­course with­out step­ping over it…. What I didn’t real­ize, though, is that, for the inten­tion­al­ly absti­nent, giv­ing up sex is only part of the deal, and there’s more than one line you can step across.”
  2. Let’s Not For­get How Wrong Our Crime Data Are (Cathy O’Neil, Bloomberg): “A year after Trump was elect­ed, the num­ber of report­ed rapes among the Lati­no pop­u­la­tion of Hous­ton declined by 40 per­cent, a strong indi­ca­tion that peo­ple became afraid to report the crimes. Police often don’t take rape vic­tims’ reports seri­ous­ly, a prob­lem that is prob­a­bly even worse for male vic­tims. So how can we get a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the under­ly­ing rate of crime? Sur­veys typ­i­cal­ly don’t help: Peo­ple who get away with com­mit­ting seri­ous offens­es aren’t like­ly to admit it, even if they’re guar­an­teed anonymi­ty. The one notable excep­tion is mar­i­jua­na use, which — though still ille­gal in most places — is mild and social­ly accept­able enough that peo­ple are will­ing to tell the truth. Hence, if we com­pare the report­ed rate of mar­i­jua­na use to the arrest data, we can gain some insight into how use­ful the lat­ter real­ly is. The pic­ture isn’t pret­ty. The lat­est gov­ern­ment sur­veys, for exam­ple, sug­gest that black and white Amer­i­cans use mar­i­jua­na at about the same rate. Yet blacks get arrest­ed about four times more often than whites — and 15 times more often in Man­hat­tan, accord­ing to a recent New York Times analy­sis.” The author has her Ph.D. in math­e­mat­ics from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty.
  3. This week the US moved our embassy in Israel to Jerusalem on the 70th anniver­sary of Israel’s mod­ern instan­ti­a­tion. Vio­lence ensued.
    • Israel faces out­cry over Gaza killings dur­ing Jerusalem embassy protests (Oliv­er Holmes and Hazem Balousha, The Guardian): “Gaza has had its blood­i­est day in years on Mon­day after Israeli forces shot and killed 58 Pales­tini­ans and wound­ed at least 1,200 as tens of thou­sands protest­ed along the fron­tier against the open­ing of the US embassy in Jerusalem.”
    • The Real Dis­pute Dri­ving the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian Con­flict (Yos­si Klein Hale­vi, The Atlantic): “Abbas’s speech only con­firmed for many Israelis that this con­flict isn’t pri­mar­i­ly about redress­ing the Pales­tin­ian griev­ances over the con­se­quences of the events of 1967—the occu­pa­tion of the West Bank and Gaza—but of 1948: the cre­ation of Israel. Even if we were to uproot every last set­tle­ment and with­draw to the 1967 lines, some Israelis say, it won’t bring us any clos­er to peace, because the real Pales­tin­ian griev­ance is Israel’s exis­tence…. Israelis and Pales­tini­ans are caught in what could be called a “cycle of denial.” The Pales­tin­ian nation­al move­ment denies Israel’s legit­i­ma­cy, and Israel in turn denies the Pales­tini­ans’ nation­al sov­er­eign­ty. The cycle of denial has defined this shared exis­tence since the cre­ation of Israel 70 years ago.”
    • Pulling an arti­cle I first shared back in vol­ume 5: What The Media Gets Wrong About Israel (Mat­ti Fried­man, The Atlantic): “…one of the most impor­tant aspects of the media-sat­u­rat­ed con­flict between Jews and Arabs is also the least cov­ered: the press itself. The West­ern press has become less an observ­er of this con­flict than an actor in it, a role with con­se­quences for the mil­lions of peo­ple try­ing to com­pre­hend cur­rent events, includ­ing pol­i­cy­mak­ers who depend on jour­nal­is­tic accounts to under­stand a region where they con­sis­tent­ly seek, and fail, to pro­duc­tive­ly inter­vene.”
    • Israel’s Mas­sacre of Pales­tin­ian Civil­ians Should Spark Horror—and Action (Ian S. Lustick, The Nation): “As doc­u­ment­ed by the Israeli mil­i­tary, there are now more Pales­tini­ans under the con­trol of the Israeli state than there are Jews. Indeed, for all intents and pur­pos­es the Pales­tini­ans of Gaza and of the West Bank are already with­in the Jew­ish state. They are cit­i­zens of no oth­er coun­try, no oth­er rec­og­nized state. As mea­sured by how much impact the State of Israel has over the inti­mate details of their lives, and indeed over whether they will live at all, they are as much inhab­i­tants of the State of Israel as black slaves were inhab­i­tants of the Unit­ed States or as Africans in the Ban­tus­tans were inhab­i­tants of apartheid South Africa.” The author is a poli sci pro­fes­sor at Penn.
    • Israel Has the Right and Oblig­a­tion to Defend Its Bor­der with Dead­ly Force (David French, Nation­al Review): “What would you have Israel do when thou­sands of peo­ple march on the bor­der, some armed, some not? What would you have Israel do when you know that ter­ror­ists are cer­tain­ly mixed in that crowd, peo­ple who’d glad­ly shoot or stab Israeli civil­ians if they were ever to gain access to Israeli towns?”
  4. Basic Income, Not Basic Jobs: Against Hijack­ing Utopia (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex):  “I grudg­ing­ly for­give cap­i­tal­ism the mis­ery it caus­es, because it’s the engine that lifts coun­tries out of pover­ty. It’s a pre­con­di­tion for a free and pros­per­ous soci­ety; attempts to over­throw it have so con­sis­tent­ly led to pover­ty, tyran­ny, or geno­cide that we no longer believe its pro­po­nents’ earnest oaths that this time they’ve got it right. For right now, there’s no good alter­na­tive. But if we have a basic jobs guar­an­tee, it will cause all the same mis­ery, and I won’t for­give it.“ This is a long arti­cle — skim it. Over­all a very strong argu­ment.
  5. An athe­ist Mus­lim on what the left and right get wrong about Islam (Sean Illing, Vox): “I think the left has a blind spot when it comes to Islam and the right has a blind spot when it comes to Mus­lims.” This arti­cle is an inter­est­ing mix of insight and fol­ly.
  6. Inter­est­ing obser­va­tions from a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist (Cor­rinne McConaughy, Twit­ter): “How hard is it to reach into pol­i­tics and say simul­ta­ne­ous­ly that you are owed more and less than you have been giv­en? Like, that’s a hard argu­ment to make—so hard that the elites try­ing to explain this sort of ten­sion keep whiff­ing past it.” She is a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty. I don’t know if she is a Chris­t­ian, but the way she word­ed that bit was very gospel­ish.
  7. The Fall of The Ger­man Empire (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “And think­ing about the Euro­pean Union this way, as a Ger­man­ic empire as well as a lib­er­al-cos­mopoli­tan project, is a help­ful way of under­stand­ing how it might ulti­mate­ly fall…. if the test of Europe’s uni­ty feels like a test for lib­er­al democ­ra­cy, it’s a mis­take to see it only in those terms. It is also a strug­gle of nations against empire, of the Continent’s small­er coun­tries against Ger­man mas­tery and North­ern Euro­pean inter­ests, in which pop­ulist par­ties are being elect­ed to resist poli­cies the cen­ter sought to impose upon the periph­ery with­out a vote.”

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 20 Argu­ments For God’s Exis­tence (Peter Kreeft, per­son­al web­site): “You may be blessed with a vivid sense of God’s pres­ence; and that is some­thing for which to be pro­found­ly grate­ful. But that does not mean you have no oblig­a­tion to pon­der these argu­ments. For many have not been blessed in that way. And the proofs are designed for them—or some of them at least—to give a kind of help they real­ly need. You may even be asked to pro­vide help.” I was remind­ed of this by a con­ver­sa­tion with an alum­nus. The author is a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at Boston Col­lege. (first shared in vol­ume 116)

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.

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 151

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. These Bombs Led Me To Christ (Kim Phuc Phan Thi, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “You have seen my pic­ture a thou­sand times. It’s a pic­ture that made the world gasp—a pic­ture that defined my life. I am nine years old, run­ning along a pud­dled road­way in front of an expres­sion­less sol­dier, arms out­stretched, naked, shriek­ing in pain and fear, the dark con­tour of a napalm cloud bil­low­ing in the dis­tance.” WHOA.
  2. If I Were 22 Again (John Piper, Desir­ing God): “There have been about 18,340 days since I turned 22, and I think I have read my Bible on more of those days than I have eat­en. I have cer­tain­ly read my Bible on more of those days that I have watched tele­vi­sion or videos.… Read your Bible every day of your life. If you have time for break­fast, nev­er say that you don’t have time for God’s word.” This whole thing is real­ly good. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  3. What Hap­pened To Alan Der­showitz? (Evan Man­dery, Politi­co Mag­a­zine): “Talk­ing to him, it’s not hard to get the impres­sion that expos­ing that truth—the hypocrisy of both sides—may be his ulti­mate project. As he sees it, the best way to achieve his goal—and to get it the atten­tion it deserves—is by defend­ing the most odi­ous clients in the most provoca­tive pos­si­ble way on the very prin­ci­ples lib­er­als claim to love.” I real­ly liked this arti­cle.
  4. A Mus­lim Among Israeli Set­tlers (Waja­hat Ali, The Atlantic): “Ever since the cre­ation of the mod­ern state of Israel—a mir­a­cle for the Jews, the Nak­ba (‘cat­a­stro­phe’) for the Palestinians—Jerusalem’s dai­ly weath­er fore­cast could be described as sun­ny with a slight chance of apoc­a­lypse.”
  5. Give Amnesty for Col­lege Writ­ings (David Lat, Wall Street Jour­nal): “Col­le­giate scrib­blings from decades ago should have no bear­ing on one’s fit­ness for pub­lic office, and mak­ing an issue of them is bad for the coun­try. Col­lege is tra­di­tion­al­ly a time of exper­i­men­ta­tion and explo­ration. We adopt and dis­card ideas and try out dif­fer­ent iden­ti­ties, some­times in rapid suc­ces­sion. These iden­ti­ties often bear lit­tle resem­blance to our mature selves— Hillary Clin­ton was once a ‘Gold­wa­ter girl,’ while Clarence Thomas was a Black Pan­ther sympathizer—but explor­ing them is how we learn about our­selves and acquire wisdom—how we grow up.”
    • Speak­ing of col­lege writ­ings, here are two pieces by Stan­ford stu­dents. They are pre­sent­ed with­out any impli­ca­tion that these are views the authors will lat­er recant; rather, by putting them here as sub-bul­let points I can tell myself I lim­it­ed myself to sev­en top­ics this week.
    • Think the Right Cares About Free Speech? Not Always. (Anni­ka Nordquist, Stan­ford Review): “With­in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, free­dom of speech is a top­ic of great self-right­eous­ness on both fronts. As the Left adopts an increas­ing­ly politi­cized def­i­n­i­tion of ‘hate speech,’ includ­ing even the most mun­dane top­ics like ‘microag­gres­sions,’ the Right pats itself on the back for defend­ing nat­ur­al lib­er­ties. Yet in Poland, where pro­gres­sives have been vot­ed almost entire­ly out of gov­ern­ment, the Right instead restricts the speech of the Left.” That’s our very own Anni­ka.
    • The Orig­i­nal Sin of Stan­ford Din­ing (Andrew Fried­man, Stan­ford Review): “Cur­rent­ly 12 admin­is­tra­tors run R&DE, along with numer­ous assis­tants. If admin­is­tra­tors object to turn­ing the school’s food ser­vice into a land­lord, it is like­ly because they know leas­ing space to third par­ty ven­dors, besides being bet­ter for every­one else, could be done by a sin­gle per­son, with­out the bureau­crat­ic bloat of the cur­rent sys­tem.”
  6. A real-life Lord of the Flies: the trou­bling lega­cy of the Rob­bers Cave exper­i­ment (David Shari­at­madari, The Guardian): “The ‘Rob­bers Cave exper­i­ment’ is con­sid­ered sem­i­nal by social psy­chol­o­gists, still one of the best-known exam­ples of ‘real­is­tic con­flict the­o­ry’. It is often cit­ed in mod­ern research. But was it sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly rig­or­ous? And why were the results of the Mid­dle Grove exper­i­ment – where the researchers couldn’t get the boys to fight – sup­pressed? … [The researcher’s method was] think of the the­o­ry first and then find a way to get the results that match it. If the results say some­thing else? Bury them.”
  7. A Design Lab Is Mak­ing Rit­u­als for Sec­u­lar Peo­ple (Sigal Samuel, The Atlantic): “Rit­u­al Design Lab has its roots in Stanford’s Insti­tute of Design, where Ozenc and Hagan both teach. In 2015, they pro­posed a new course on rit­u­al design. To their sur­prise, more than 100 stu­dents signed up. Most were sec­u­lar.” I large­ly agree with Rod Dreher’s take: New Rit­u­als For Self-Wor­ship

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 Let­ter To My Younger Self (Ryan Leaf, The Player’s Tri­bune): “Con­grat­u­la­tions. You offi­cial­ly have it all — mon­ey, pow­er and pres­tige. All the things that are impor­tant, right?… That’s you, young Ryan Leaf, at his absolute finest: arro­gant, boor­ish and nar­cis­sis­tic. You think you’re on top of the world and that you’ve got all the answers. Well I’m sor­ry to have to tell you this, but the truth is….” Such a grip­ping let­ter. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. (first shared in vol­ume 99)

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.

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 150

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. A Crim­i­nal Gang Used a Drone Swarm To Obstruct an FBI Hostage Raid (Patrick Tuck­er, Defense One): “Nefar­i­ous use of drones is like­ly to get worse before it gets bet­ter, accord­ing to sev­er­al gov­ern­ment offi­cials who spoke on the pan­el. There is no easy or quick tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tion.” Fas­ci­nat­ing stuff.
  2. The Sharp Sting of the Baby­lon Bee (Mark Hem­ing­way, The Week­ly Stan­dard): “It’s safe to say that thus far, to the extent it has noticed, sec­u­lar Amer­i­ca is con­found­ed by the suc­cess of the Baby­lon Bee.”
  3. The Sex­u­al Revolution’s Angry Chil­dren (Kay Hymowitz, City Jour­nal): “What [old­er fem­i­nists] don’t fac­tor into their judg­ment is that they ben­e­fit­ed from the lin­ger­ing cul­tur­al cap­i­tal of ear­li­er, more man­ner­ly gen­er­a­tions. Long-estab­lished courtship norms don’t dis­ap­pear overnight, after all…. The sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion stripped young women of the social sup­port they need to play gate­keep­er, just as it deprived men of a pos­i­tive vision, or even a rea­son, for self-restraint. Rec­og­niz­ing those loss­es is where any ref­or­ma­tion has to start.”
  4. Addi­tion­al thoughts on the tragedy of Alfie Evans:
    • King Solomon, The False Moth­er, and Alfie Evans (Devo­rah Gold­man, The Pub­lic Dis­course): “Like King Solomon, the courts in Eng­land were pre­sent­ed with a straight­for­ward ques­tion: To whom does this child belong? To Solomon, the true par­ent was unques­tion­ably the one will­ing to sac­ri­fice for the child, to safe­guard his life even at the expense of nev­er see­ing him again.” 🔥 🔥 🔥
    • A more tem­per­ate, insight­ful argu­ment: The Alfie Evans case shows lib­er­al indi­vid­u­al­ism has gone too far (Megan McAr­dle, Wash­ing­ton Post): “[This case illus­trates] the dan­ger of let­ting the cen­turies-long progress of lib­er­al indi­vid­u­al­ism go too far in break­ing open the fam­i­ly and assign­ing its func­tions to the state… After all, the irra­tional, over­pow­er­ing love of par­ent for child is the only rea­son most of us are alive, despite hav­ing spent the first years of our life vom­it­ing, soil­ing our­selves and destroy­ing every­thing we could reach. If that love can see us to a healthy adult­hood, it can prob­a­bly see us to a decent death.”
    • Alfie Evans and the Experts (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…a decent soci­ety allows fam­i­lies lee­way to defy med­ical con­sen­sus: not only for the sake of parental rights and reli­gious beliefs, not only because bias­es around race and class and faith creep into med­ical deci­sion-mak­ing, but also because in hard cas­es the offi­cial med­ical con­sen­sus often doesn’t come close to grasp­ing all the pos­si­bil­i­ties, and let­ting peo­ple go their own way is often the only way to dis­cov­er where it’s wrong.”
  5. The Redis­tri­b­u­tion of Sex (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…our wide­spread iso­la­tion and unhap­pi­ness and steril­i­ty might be dealt with by reviv­ing or adapt­ing old­er ideas about the virtues of monogamy and chasti­ty and per­ma­nence and the spe­cial respect owed to the celi­bate. But this is not the nat­ur­al response for a soci­ety like ours. Instead we tend to look for fix­es that seem to build on pre­vi­ous rev­o­lu­tions, rather than reverse them.” An excel­lent fol­low-up to last week’s bul­let point 7.
  6. Three arti­cles about evan­gel­i­cals and pol­i­tics:
    • The Preach­er And Pol­i­tics: Sev­en Thoughts (Kevin DeY­oung, Gospel Coali­tion): “I have plen­ty of opin­ions and con­vic­tions. But that’s not what I want my min­istry to be about. That’s not to say I don’t com­ment on abor­tion or gay mar­riage or racism or oth­er issues about the which the Bible speaks clear­ly. And yet, I’m always mind­ful that I can’t sep­a­rate Blog­ger Kevin or Twit­ter Kevin or Pro­fes­sor Kevin from Pas­tor Kevin. As such, my com­ments reflect on my church, whether I intend them to or not. That means I keep more polit­i­cal con­vic­tions to myself than I oth­er­wise would.” I agree with Kevin’s sev­en points to an almost shock­ing extent. We’ve nev­er met but it’s like we had a long, ram­bling con­ver­sa­tion and both came to the same con­clu­sions.
    • Trump’s lat­est appeal to evan­gel­i­cals: a new office to pro­tect reli­gious lib­er­ty (Tara Isabel­la Bur­ton, Vox): “Trump’s ini­tia­tive seems to expand pre­vi­ous offices’ remit in a num­ber of ways. For starters, the office isn’t just focus­ing on com­mu­ni­ty-based or char­i­ta­ble ini­tia­tives. Accord­ing to the Reli­gion News Ser­vice, it’s also charged with inform­ing the admin­is­tra­tion of ‘any fail­ures of the exec­u­tive branch to com­ply with reli­gious lib­er­ty pro­tec­tions under law.’ The Trump admin­is­tra­tion has con­sis­tent­ly been a cham­pi­on of reli­gious lib­er­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly inso­far as it per­tains to evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian caus­es…. The reach of this office also seems broad­er than its pre­de­ces­sors. Unlike in oth­er admin­is­tra­tions, the office will work with all gov­ern­ment agen­cies, even those with­out depart­ment-spe­cif­ic faith-based ini­tia­tives.”
    • An Open Let­ter to Trump’s Evan­gel­i­cal Defend­ers (David French, Nation­al Review): “We are not told that the ends of good poli­cies jus­ti­fy silence in the face of sin. Indeed — and this mes­sage goes out specif­i­cal­ly to the politi­cians and pun­dits who go on tele­vi­sion and say things they do not believe (you know who you are) to pro­tect this admin­is­tra­tion and to pre­serve their pres­ence in the halls of the pow­er — there is spe­cif­ic scrip­ture that applies to you: ‘Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put dark­ness for light and light for dark­ness, who put bit­ter for sweet and sweet for bit­ter!’”
  7. What Democ­rats Don’t Under­stand About Con­sumers (Mor­gan Orta­gus & Chris­tos Makridis, Fox Busi­ness): yup. That’s our own Chris­tos. Here’s the part that stood out the most to me: “Chris­tos Makridis is a PhD can­di­date at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, a Dig­i­tal Fel­low at the MIT Sloan Ini­tia­tive on the Dig­i­tal Econ­o­my, and a non-res­i­dent fel­low at the Har­vard Kennedy School of Gov­ern­ment Cyber Secu­ri­ty Ini­tia­tive.” WHAAAT? If you didn’t catch that, he’s con­cur­rent­ly con­nect­ed to Stan­ford, Har­vard, and MIT.

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 Every­thing That’s Wrong Of Rac­coons (Mal­lo­ry Ort­berg, The Toast): “Once when my dog died a pas­sel of rac­coons showed up in the back­yard as if to say ‘Now that he’s gone, we own the night,’ and they didn’t flinch when I yelled at them, and I found it dis­re­spect­ful to 1) me per­son­al­ly and 2) the entire flow of the food chain. Don’t dis­re­spect me if you can’t eat me, you false-night-dogs.” (first shared in vol­ume 97)

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.

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 149

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. The Ugly Cod­ed Cri­tique of Chick-Fil-A’s Chris­tian­i­ty (Stephen Carter, Bloomberg View): “A few years ago, a well-known pro­gres­sive com­men­ta­tor mused to his large Twit­ter fol­low­ing that some­times he wish­es all the Chris­tians would just dis­ap­pear. I would like to believe he was sim­ply too unin­formed to real­ize that he was wish­ing for a whiter world.” This arti­cle makes an impor­tant point that you may find use­ful in cam­pus dis­cus­sions. It is in response to the very odd Chick-Fil‑A’s Creepy Infil­tra­tion Of New York City (Dan Piepen­bring, New York­er). Rec­om­mend­ed to me by an alum­nus.
  2. Church Of The Don­ald (Ruth Gra­ham, Politi­co): “Trump per­son­al­ly has appeared 11 times on CBN since his cam­paign began; in 2017 alone, he gave more inter­views to CBN than to CNN, ABC or CBS…. Chris­t­ian broad­cast­ers offer an unmedi­at­ed chan­nel to the liv­ing rooms of a remark­ably wide swath of Amer­i­can believ­ers, an audi­ence more polit­i­cal­ly and racial­ly diverse than you might expect. TBN alone has more local sta­tions to its name than Fox or the three major net­works.” Insight­ful and rec­om­mend­ed.
  3. When the Rohingya Came, This Chris­t­ian Hos­pi­tal Was Ready (Sarah Eekhof Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): this is a grip­ping sto­ry and dif­fi­cult to excerpt. Wow.
  4. Alfie Evans and Our Moral Cross­roads (Charles Camosy, First Things): “Alfie Evans’s death is being aimed by the very peo­ple whose voca­tion it is to help and pro­tect him. The dif­fer­ence in Alfie’s case is that, because he has con­tin­ued to breathe, the pre­tense of ‘removal of bur­den­some treat­ment’ is patent­ly absurd. In a sit­u­a­tion that was no doubt dis­tress­ing to those who hoped he would die, Alfie’s con­tin­u­ing to breathe has clar­i­fied the true object of the act of remov­ing his ven­ti­la­tor.” The more I read about this case the angri­er I become.
  5. Alan Jacobs: a Chris­t­ian intel­lec­tu­al for the inter­net age (David J. Michael, Amer­i­ca): “…he was pub­lish­ing schol­ar­ly work with­in his field but was increas­ing­ly devot­ing time to writ­ing essays and the­o­log­i­cal pieces for Chris­t­ian mag­a­zines and jour­nals. Switch­ing back and forth could be dis­ori­ent­ing, and he spent sev­er­al years debat­ing and pray­ing about which audi­ence he should focus on. ‘At one point, I just had an epiphany: You don’t get to choose.You’re gonna have to write for your schol­ar­ly peers, and you’re gonna have to write for your fel­low Chris­tians because you have things to say to both audi­ences. So, that means, you got­ta learn to code switch.’” I am a big fan of Alan Jacobs’ writ­ing.
  6. Dear Human­i­ties Profs: We Are The Prob­lem (Eric Ben­nett, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “Three gen­er­a­tions ago, lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sors exchanged a rig­or­ous­ly defined sphere of exper­tise, to which they could speak with author­i­ty, for a much wider field to which they could speak with vir­tu­al­ly no pow­er at all…. Lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sors have affect­ed Amer­i­ca more by sleep­ing in its down­town hotels and eat­ing in its fast-food restau­rants than by telling one anoth­er where real prospects for free­dom lay. ” Oof. That’s a sol­id blow, right there. The author is an Eng­lish pro­fes­sor at Prov­i­dence Col­lege.
  7. Uncan­ny Vul­vas (Diana Fleis­chman, Jaco­bite Mag­a­zine): “Video games and social media already under­mine the native psy­cho­log­i­cal mech­a­nisms that make us work towards sta­tus — they sup­ply more imme­di­ate rewards and take far less effort than any­thing we work towards out in the real world. Sex robots are only going to make that worse, espe­cial­ly for young men.” Def­i­nite­ly not a Chris­t­ian arti­cle. From a some­what relat­ed Chris­t­ian stand­point: The Eco­nom­ics of Sex­u­al Puri­ty (Dou­glas Wil­son, per­son­al blog).

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 Book Review: See­ing Like A State (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “Peas­ants didn’t like per­ma­nent sur­names. Their own sys­tem was quite rea­son­able for them: John the bak­er was John Bak­er, John the black­smith was John Smith, John who lived under the hill was John Under­hill, John who was real­ly short was John Short. The same per­son might be John Smith and John Under­hill in dif­fer­ent con­texts, where his sta­tus as a black­smith or place of ori­gin was more impor­tant. But the gov­ern­ment insist­ed on giv­ing every­one a sin­gle per­ma­nent name, unique for the vil­lage, and track­ing who was in the same fam­i­ly as whom. Resis­tance was intense.” This is long and amaz­ing. (first shared in vol­ume 95)

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.

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