I remember reading about him in the seminary and hoping I did not wind up like that when I got older.
Hah!
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Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Pio No No
I remember reading about him in the seminary and hoping I did not wind up like that when I got older.
Hah!
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Perhaps for mood elevation Ex Cathedra should read "Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution” by Linda Hirshman. Rich Benjamin review'd this book in 23 June 2012 New York Times magazine.
Mr Benjamin even presents the transition from Harry Hay's Mattachine foundational demand that homosexuaols "be respected [by mainstream America, the bourgeoisie, the middle-class etc] for our differences, not for our sameness to homosexuals" (p. 12) to marriage equality, LGBT careers in the military-industrial complex etc normalization of homosexuality (p. 13).
What's not to like? The demand for affirmation of LGBT alternativeness from the middle-class: never before had so much been expected by so few from Mr and Mrs Methodist Hardware Store Owner in Iowa. Recalls Michel Foucault's demand that transgressiveness be institutionalized as the only permissible conventionalness -- which recalls Jean-Paul Sartori's demand that authentic existence be essenceless, that is, existence be a kind of buddhistic emptiness -- enlightenment is emptying for nirvana, and samsara is a prelude to emptying. ... Marx: 'in communist society, each spirit Self can become accomlish'd in any branch of samsaram activity that he wishes because the ensemble of social relations regulates the general production from matter drawn from Nature and thus makes it possible for me to do one empty karmic activity today and an other tomorrow, to emptyingly hunt in the morning, emptyingly fish in the afternoon, emptyingly rear cattle in the evening, do empty critiques after dinner, just as the purely compliant Ego has a mind, without ever becoming an ego that stands here as hunter, fisherperson, shepherd or critic. The world is changed, this world isn't.
This Rich Benjamin wrote a book "Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America" on the growing system of 90% white enclaves in America. According to an interview in Time magazine 12 October 2009 this development dismays Mr Benjamin because "democracy can't function at its optimum unless all members are integrated as full members." He dreams big, eh? Lots of liberals seem to hope only that democracy can continue to function with minimally sufficient competence, and evidently various population groups can 'keep to themselves' more or less within a well-functioning democracy. Thomas Sowell has some interesting observations along this line. But minimal or even ordinary competence isn't enough for Time magazine and Mr Benjamin.
For once a point of pride for whites occurs vis-a-vis 'white nationalism': in the course of his research, the very dark Mr Benjamin attended a three-day white-separatist retreat: the whites were "curious and shocked" but not violent -- e.g. didn't do a lynching, an institution which was a shame to white American law or Recht, and yet was done as a practice supposedly enforcing white pride. A lot of 'racist' behaviour by whites would end if only someone drew the conclusion for them that if they really feel they are superior racially then they should at least practice ordinary politeness rather than use offensive epithets. (The apologia that the N-word is valid because some blacks use the term honky [not that that term it is equal in odiousness] is as irrational as saying that if someone belches at the dinner table then I am validated in or even obligated to do rude behaviour too.)
Has Ex Cathedra heard of the research of Scott E. Page which according to Time magazine 6 March 2012 apparently proves that 'diversity' improves the performance of all groups in all sorts of tasks especially university education?
The Chinese American author dismisses the reality that e.g. at Duke University, "Asians" enter'd with an "averaged 1457 out of 1600 on the math and reading portions of the SAT, compared to 1416 for whites, 1347 for Hispanics and 1275 for blacks."
I would like to be the first to question the reliance on SAT IQ etc tests, but my first thought here is that the author is ultimately sarcastic. The difference in test score abilities maybe isn't a sound predictor of 'academic success" (sc of graduating), and certainly isn't re having a good life. etc
Presumably intelligence even as measured by these tests will have some bearing on intellectual tasks of some sort -- study and comprehension, mastering calculus and engineering etc, if not biblical exegesis and the "humanities" which the desublimational era is eager to erode by any means necessary. (for instance, the crescendoing journalistic query-insistence that a liberal arts degree isn't worth the tens of thousands of dollars spent on it: without vigorous counter-revolution, this insistence will intensify increased contempt for Shakespeare, Plato, Hobbes, the Bible, and other documents of sublimation which thwart Herbert Marcuse's pleasure principle via letting it all hang out; there won't be the rise of tight, low-cost humanities programmes.
Even the St John's College programme at Annapolis and Santa Fe is enormously expensive in tuition, although the faculty are not well pay'd by usual standards. This even though all that's needed for instruction in the liberal arts is a knowledgeable lecturer and a room for the lectures, plus and board for the students -- and not even that if they commute from home.
With greatly diminish'd tuition costs, even with a greatly increased salary for the lecturers, the students can easily buy their own copies of the books lectured on, e.g. in a year, the Iliad, the Republic, the Aeneid, the Bible, the Confessions, On the Bondage of the Will, Leviathan, Hamlet, Meditations, Provincial Letters, Gulliver's Travels, Rousseau's Discourses, Genealogy of Morals, Fear and Trembling, Tao Te Ching and the Quran (Well, hey, the most terrifying reality for diversity promoters would be real instruction of western students in real non-Western texts! rather than browbeatings by journalistic books and lecturers on how bad the non-agency experience of western rationalism has been for the POCs indigenous military-priesthood complexes).
And then the same books the next year, lectured on more thoroughly.
Anyway, according to Time magazine, since American education is now much more "diverse," American education must be far better than it used to be. And the best performing parts of it must be the most diverse parts.
Some propose that the "politically correct" reading of Scott E. page is misleading, but obviously his book's subtitle encourages this reading: »The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies.« That is, the institutions (including families which are groups, eh?) of diversity America must be better than the institutions of pre-diversity America.
The worst result for educational institutions will be that this book proves that a continued focus on increasing diversity at universities works to improve education at universities. Whereas only working to improve education at universities will improve education at universities.
An exception maybe is in politics and empire, which requires 'diversity.' For instance, the english and american empires have been more successful than those of Germany and Russia and Japan and, so far, China -- to a great extent because Anglo-Saxony has required its personnel within Europe and North America as well as elsewhere to gain some sort of cultural competence in the cultures of the ruled.
But interpreting imperial rule as a nightmare for the ruled is not part of a competent diversity strategy for empire. As is proved by the famous rejoinders to the speech of Reg, if I recall aright, the Romans didn't invite the ruled to find fault with them. The Romans didn't go around declaring that the pax romana ruin'd the lives of the conquer'd, the subaltern. ...
And now that you have, do you regret it?
Maybe Ex Cathedra means he has wound up pour mieux se jeter (cf 'reculer pour mieux sauter). ... Pio Nono wound up the RCC into a conservative project [throwing] that dismiss'd Tocqueville's advice and founded a social basis for the glory of the Church in Democratic Party machine "politics," social spending, etc. ... M*A*S*H II (js4639 karma) will feature Mullah Mucahey as a jihadi spiritual adviser. Major Houlihan will be in a burka and haram'd from assisting in surgery on male military personnel.
P.S. I worry that the Zionist Entity's recent decision not to give citizenship to all arriving economic migrants will make the United Church of Canada leadership and the University of Regina's student union feel validated in their decision to support divestment, sanctions and boycotts vis-a-vis israel. Canadian turf was evidently taken fair and square by conquest, whereas the Zionist Entity employ'd "Apartheid." ... I marvel that the economic migrants don't head for Arab Springtime lands where they would be welcomed by the religionists of peace and universal racism-freeness.
Yours in bread and divercuses,
P.S. When's the individual mandate boot going to drop from the SCOTUS? ... I'd guess that they're waiting for Canada Day, 1 July, but that's a Sunday. Does the Court work on Sundays?
... The Prot hierophants seem to have been wiser than the RCC's. The basic liberal prot deal has been that being committed to social reform, voting social democrat, etc is more important than belief in doctrine, attending church etc. In fact, beliefs may get in the way of agitprop for social reform, environmentalism, etc. Look how inconvenient belief in Genesis 1 is for pop Darwinism.
In this the Prots have Jesus' example, although where Jesus proposes the Beatitudes, living without thought for the morrow, the Prots put voting leftwing etc for a better tomorrow of equalness. And without any pickwickian stuff in view, this 'makes sense' -- a good person atheist is preferable than a church-attending, Creed-reciting jerk. ... Very possibly Jesus intended his kerygma to empty out Judaism, so that it would vanish for lack of serious adherents.
Admittedly, with Pickwickian stuff in view -- for instance, if Anglican Christianity means no Calvin, no Aquinas, no pope, but still a curious link to the countryside corn doll rite -- then obviously somehow better rule by Oliver Cromwell than George McGovern.
The basic lib Prot procedure seems still in place, for instance, in overturning bible-connected non-affirmations of LGBT relationships and ordination. Social progress is achieved by 'inclusivizing' Christianity denomination by denomination, even though once a denomination is inclusivized there's no importance in building up any attendance by gay and lesbian couples. The desideratum is No Homophobic Christianity, not building up a real inclusived Christianity.
All this is totally obvious, no doubt. But what does seem curious is the RCC's apparent conviction that democratic social reform needs the blessing of the RCC, so that the best way for the RCC to ensure her future is to blesses, leads, guides etc democratic social reform.
But democratic social reform really doesn't need the RCC. Lib Prots say that the important thing is social reform: if "religion" in any way impedes social reform it is bad. The UCC says "Better an atheist who endorses inclusion than a church-goer who is homophobic à la Romans 1:18ff. If this means progress erodes church membership and Christian influence, then so be it."
Maybe Catholic leaders in Anglo-Saxony were correct that the Church must not seem associated with the forces of 'reaction.' The excommunication of members of l'Action française accords perfectly with Tocqueville's advice. A measured approval of unionism, pensions, medical insurance etc was necessary in democratic times, but never any heroic image of the priest in "On the Waterfront."
"Life" will always be tough and harsh enough that some sort of spiritual transcendence institution will have a cultural opening, I guess. The Church maintain'd this up to the death of Pius 12. Commie ideology and agitation in Europe after WW2 maybe made the position of the Church seem weak, but never in Anglo-Saxony, where politics seems inoculated against ideological fevers.
But as Pius 12 presumably understood well, a serious transcendence institution has to work hard to maintain its substantiveness: supporting 'social change' won't deliver worshippers and sons and daughters with religious vocations. (That side of Catholicism seems futureless in the Third World, the land of Christianity's [anonymous?] future, we are told.)
The Catholicism of social change and liberation theology seems only a long detour to the intentional irrelevance of the UCC or American Episcopalianism. The important thing is to vote for social change, not to attend mass, receive the sacraments, etc. One's need for spiritual filler can be met by watching a PBS interview with [anti-semite] Joseph Campbell. No need to get out of bed Sunday morning and attend church if the important thing is calling for social change etc.
P.S. I reckon the president can't lose no matter what the SCOTUS says tomorrow about the individual mandate.
If the mandate is deem'd constitutional, he is the provider of free health care to the uninsured. The long delay in implementation caused by the petition to the supreme court by the president's opponents means that any problems in implementation won't be apparent until after the election. And who knows but that the new system will work okay?
if the mandate is deem'd unconstitutional, the president is the heroic would-be provider of health care to the uninsured. An excellent campaign platform. And the president is even more protected against any problems that might have appear'd in the implementation of the new system, since the new system won't be implemented.
For we must also admit that very possibly great problems in the new system, since even its supporters state that quite properly what the super-complex new system will mean in real reality cannot be predicted from the mere text of the law itself; only when we see the new system implemented will we know what exactly the new system is.
Good news for Democrats either way tomorrow. A win-win for Democrats, and a lose-lose for Republicans.
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