If you have been paying attention, you will notice that there have been two particular examples of fragmentation that have coincided with each other, a fragmentation of the conservative movement, and a fragmenting of evangelical Christianity. In the heart of conservatism, there is a disagreement between the centrists who have complex sensitivities and more radical … Continue reading Evangelicalism and Conservatism: From Doctrine Back to Disposition
"...it is physically impossible to pick oneself up by one’s own bootstraps..."
We are now living in the necessary push back and what we need most is grace. Grace is not manufactured or created by us. It is a new person, a new idea, a new consensus - which feels like it falls from heaven.
I am a fan of good writing. Good writing communicates ideas to the minds of your readers. When people read your writing, they don’t just interpret its meaning through the words you chose. They also interpret it through your writing’s tone. This tone, just like your tone of voice when you’re speaking, is largely shaped … Continue reading Writing in the Active and Passive Voice
The disappearance of the unique individual corresponds to the loss of freedom - and the avatar is its technique.
The most valid intuition of the “religionless religion” is their awareness that the vast majority of people today, i.e., those who “cannot believe”, are encountering Christ, even though they cannot adjust to the idea that life acquires meaning only when one “joins the Church”.
"...our “politically correct concerned” society fails to provide new avenues for intellectual dialogue outside traditional intellectual engagement; so where can we find such opportunities? "
A regular experience of moments of success is necessary to understand that we are in a framework for thriving.
Arendt invokes the realm of privacy, which is the realm of persons who are significant others to the individual. These significant others are the context for the emergence of an individual. In other words, the realm of privacy includes our social sphere where each of those significant others has a reciprocal relationship with each other. Not only do these significant others constitute our identity as individuals, but each individual also has some responsibility to act as a significant other to the other members. I would call this “community”.
"...with the surprising eradication of relatively unconscious structures that housed and empowered a certain inspiring model of human flourishing, we may want to reconsider how we have housed and empowered human flourishing."
The mass-market hegemony resists the moral examination of the world that could stand up to the use of arbitrary power that we have seen with our eyes and have heard with our ears.
The good news is that all three of these motivations—an aversion to uncertainty, an attachment to the appearance of perfection, and a lack of courage—are qualities most of us would rather be rid of. Facing the fear of failure is more than just dealing with a problem; it is an authentic refinement of who you are.
Natality is the condition for continued human existence, it is the miracle of birth, it is the new beginning inherent in each birth that makes action possible, it is spontaneous and it is unpredictable.
Biden and NATO’s response will be to treat Russia as a pariah while Ukraine understands very well that Russia is an enemy.
What is liberal hegemony?
Mr. Peckford and Mr. Trudeau advocate a happy individual who is ripe for manipulation...
he Malaise of Modernity also provides a deeper account of self-fulfillment: the true realization of our gifts demands that we escape the citadel of selfishness and recognize the ethical demands that give real depths to ourselves. In doing so, there is more than some reason for optimism.
Among the books of the nineteenth century that have something important to say to us now Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820) deserves a prominent place. It’s not the obvious contender for a popular read in the 21st century. He doesn’t make it easy for himself if getting readers was the aim as his … Continue reading Limitations on Rights: a Bicentennial reminder from Hegel’s “Elements of the Philosophy of Right”
Abundant and loving Creator, present in a sacred, given River Assiniboine, the Stone Sioux: a river, a rock that holds us here Born on one side of the river, on one side of history Born unaware: the River holds tragedy’s tears. Christian capitalists conserving cherished concepts Christian self-interest defecates idolatrous violence Desecrated cubicles leading to … Continue reading The Assiniboine, the Stone Sioux
In [educated Afghan women], we all see our own striving for authentic lives. We want to claim an authentic life that contributes to not only our own well-being but also to the well-being of our homes.
https://youtu.be/p6NNo3HIRrU What I would like to consider today is what COVID has taught us about human flourishing. What should we learn from the experience of COVID, and how ought we do things differently next time? I want to expand on Malcolm Gladwell’s idea in his talk for Google Zeitgeist in June of 2020. And recently … Continue reading Game Theory, COVID and the Good Life
*image credit: https://www.davidklassenfineart.com/about https://videopress.com/v/MyIgpYsq?preloadContent=metadata In 2020 and 2021, the cross-pressures on undergraduate education were phenomenal, and they raised so many fears and anxieties that it seemed that we couldn’t be anything but in a CONSTANT state of fear. Individually, we have worn masks and washed hands because we have been afraid to catch and spread … Continue reading Social Mobility and Liberal Education
The intermittent fast is a marvelous ritual. By fasting occasionally (in my case, once a month), we put our bodies into the sharp relief of hunger which is a driving force of life. Fasting urges a realization that our biological reality transcends the boundary between natural and supernatural.
In Christian languages, happiness gets a less honorable reputation than joy and well-being. But life would hardly be worth living if there weren’t moments of happiness along the way. A universal framework for well-being is far from universal. Here are four models to help clarify your own understanding of happiness and a bit of the … Continue reading Different Cultures, Different Kinds of Happiness
Cathy Whitecloud carried me when I was a baby.
Technocratic rationality, then, needs to be recognized as a feature of mass society and as a systemic threat to our freedom, and its oligarchic substitution of a human artifice for a real-world with unmarked graves; the original sin of assuming that man is the measure of all things, makes its appearance there. It makes its appearance in the controlling of society to restore the economy - an oligarchic and technocratic rationale so obvious that it is surprising there isn’t more protest.
...quietly observing what the conflict is doing to you before you can ponder the opposite, what you might do to it. Rather than be active, you have to slow down and see what moves in and around you. ‘A lot of it is about listening,’ says Herbert, ‘listening to people, but also listening to yourself to find your balance.’
"The self exists in the same way as a border between countries, i.e. as a social institution. Both are imaginary boundaries that have a certain pragmatic convenience to them."
"...experiences of inequality are built-in to the human artifice and are not merely happenings of our experience, but constitutive features of it - a mechanics very similar to corruption."
An hour into the experience, about 10 minutes before we began to eat, I thought to myself, “how could a dozen or so educated women talk about food for an hour without getting bored and switching topics?”
The demand to be authentic is so commonplace that it has lost its meaning. ‘Today, there is little premium placed on being authentic,’ writes the American philosopher Gordon Marino in his moving meditation The Existentialist’s Survival Guide: How to Live Authentically in an Inauthentic Age (2018). The increasing prevalence of social media constructions of ourselves, … Continue reading Performative Authenticity: Mass Society in Real Time
"...overcoming otherness is bringing our uniqueness to a situation not originally intended to accept it, and then translating and transforming the situation so the uniqueness can feel at home. "
To be saved by grace sounds simple enough, grammatically at least. We are born into sin, and redeemed by a sacrificial love which we do not deserve. Baptized at 11, I seemed to have passed the test. Sunday school stuff, really. Let’s go to the all you can eat buffet together, laugh a little, and … Continue reading The Ways of Grace
When the detained people who stormed the Capitol are prosecuted, my guess is the charges will have something to do with sedition, destroying property, or threatening lives. Democracy will be defended, but it is this terrorism that needs to be tried.
What has been expressed as widespread mistrust is not of what is around us, such as churches, universities, stock markets, and governments; the distrust is of ourselves. We distrust who we are. And I don’t believe it.
“What about this? And what about that?” Don’t talk of nourishment; let’s eat till we’re fat. We look to a promise and give up the now, We exchange our Being for furrowed brow.
"...tending to our own resilience is a vital task for living well. But that requires not only that we don’t overlook the severity of loss or the suffering that we regularly experience, but also that we experience and embrace the suffering.”
There is a persistent feeling that self-isolating at home is like being herded into a ghetto; [We] had to be prepared for domination before efficient domination could occur.
"...depression and addiction are related phenomena, and ... they are symptoms of a more general malaise of which the world-ending consequences may be of our own doing."
I thought social media loved me for who I was, with its catered advertising and photo- and video-sharing capabilities; but really, it only loved me for the attention I gave to it.
Trumpism, Prophets of Deceit suggests, is the inevitable outcome of a social, economic, and political order that generates human needs that it cannot satisfy.
"...if mass society is experienced as a force that wears us down as individuals, then our belonging to community should build us up..."
"the seeming destruction of context is the modus operandi of a more inclusive background which could provide both meaning and beauty to our lives."
"If we stand with others in their reality, rather than focusing on issues, then we are doing much more of what Jesus would do."
"An experience of "resonance" is an indicator what a person ought to be doing."
A Little Bit More Some people want just a little bit more,Not just three bedrooms, but maybe four.A view from above, from the second floor,One has a spouse, but wants a whore. A minimalist will say that they want less,To give up want, to need - acquiesce.To unclutter all the untidy excess,And most of all, … Continue reading A Little Bit More
The seeming inability of recent generations to purchase either home or land is known to be a first-order symptom of this historical system of wealth acquisition, like having shortness of breath and a fever are first-order symptoms of having acquired the corona virus. At least two full generations of people who do not know how to grow food is another first-order symptom of the failure of a system of wealth acquisition.
Part 3 This is a continuation of Part 1: https://idealsandidentities.com/2020/03/28/the-sickness-before-the-infection/ and Part 2 https://idealsandidentities.com/2020/04/10/the-sickness-before-the-infection-part-2-preservation-or-carrying-on/ I am continuing to write it, and will publish the entire “The Sickness Before the Infection” upon completion. This is the up-to-date edit of Part 3. What amazes, and sometimes perplexes, me is what will be carried on after the coronavirus … Continue reading The Sickness Before the Infection: Why we Want Social Distancing
In other words, there is no identifiable locus of the virus. It doesn’t matter whether the virus is transmitted among the community, or brought in on a plane or train. It doesn’t matter whether we have been globally exposed or locally situated, the virus is all around, and it could be transmitted by any of us. And even though I might feel well, I have been infected and have transmitted it to others before I even knew I was sick. How terrifying is that?
" by attending to the needs of himself and others, Wayne practiced eternal life here on Earth"
Prefatory remark - This message, and the one that follows it, were preached at Fellowship Christian Reformed Church in Edmonton, on February 11th and 18th respectively. This first installment of the two messages came as the closing message on Faith-based on the characters mentioned in Hebrews 11. The second installment introduces an agreed Lenten focus … Continue reading Heroes of Faith: The Story of Jephthah
Personally, I am informed by both a Continental-Philosophical tradition and a communitarian Christian religious background that criticized Adam Smith as hostile to charity and a theoretical bastion of “self-interest”; it would not be a stretch to say that both modern economics and its critics have failed to connect Smith’s moral anthropology to his more famous economic theory.
I am grateful to be a part of this project and am looking forward to thinking about these issues in 2022/23. We are pleased to announce that the theme for the Interdisciplinary Studies Conferences for 2022-23 is “Collective Moral Conversations”. This will be broken up into two conferences; the title of the fall conference is … Continue reading Our Goods vs. My Interests – Call for Papers
Raymond Klassen - Ideals and Identities 