Monday, September 28, 2015
Sunday, September 27, 2015
Almost forgot
Today was the Folsom Street Fair.
Haven't been in twenty years. But it reminds me of the some of the adventures of my old leather jacket...
Religious basics
For humans to engage in a religion, they have to believe that it is more than the creation of their own ego. That it reveals Reality in a way that they could not otherwise know.
Rudolf Otto's description of the divine as mysterium tremendum et fascinans is apt. It is mysterious by nature and cannot in principle be comprehended by us. It is overwhelming in its power and scope. And it captures our attention, imagination and awe. Without these elements, it is not really sacred.
Thinking of the liberal rationalism which lies at the heart of post-Enlightenment faiths, such as Unitarian Universalism, I cannot see them as engaging the divine. They are just religious ideologies, having reduced their scope to what they can understand.
On the other hand, when history and culture change and a given religion can no longer make "good-enough" sense of things or provide a way of life that people can actually live --or are any longer willing to live-- its scope is likely to shrink.
I do not think it accidental that a European (and rapidly and increasing an American) civilization which has "emancipated" itself from the religion of its ancestors --Christianity, for the last many centuries-- now finds itself incapable of resisting the savages invading its borders. I think they are linked.
As I have said, the young reactionaries who have awakened to the imminent collapse of their people and blame Christianity's universalism for that fail to note that it was only after Christianity ceased to be the spiritus rector of their people that the sturdily evangelized cells of the Western body metastasized into the cancer of global liberal secular humanism, leaving us defenseless against the New Huns.
It is the emptied churches of the West that the Muslims are turning into mosques.
----
Rudolf Otto's description of the divine as mysterium tremendum et fascinans is apt. It is mysterious by nature and cannot in principle be comprehended by us. It is overwhelming in its power and scope. And it captures our attention, imagination and awe. Without these elements, it is not really sacred.
Thinking of the liberal rationalism which lies at the heart of post-Enlightenment faiths, such as Unitarian Universalism, I cannot see them as engaging the divine. They are just religious ideologies, having reduced their scope to what they can understand.
On the other hand, when history and culture change and a given religion can no longer make "good-enough" sense of things or provide a way of life that people can actually live --or are any longer willing to live-- its scope is likely to shrink.
I do not think it accidental that a European (and rapidly and increasing an American) civilization which has "emancipated" itself from the religion of its ancestors --Christianity, for the last many centuries-- now finds itself incapable of resisting the savages invading its borders. I think they are linked.
As I have said, the young reactionaries who have awakened to the imminent collapse of their people and blame Christianity's universalism for that fail to note that it was only after Christianity ceased to be the spiritus rector of their people that the sturdily evangelized cells of the Western body metastasized into the cancer of global liberal secular humanism, leaving us defenseless against the New Huns.
It is the emptied churches of the West that the Muslims are turning into mosques.
----
Saturday, September 26, 2015
Transitions
Chad Allen. Actually Chad Lazzari. Like Mr B, one of those blondish Italians.
And an out gay man and actor. Although he holds all the standard Borg positions of the LGBT thing, I've always liked him in movies. Especially the Donald Strachey series. His character saves the otherwise predictable LGBT attitudes in those stories. He plays a guy.
Now, alas, he has retired from acting. And has decided to become a psychologist.
I'll miss ya, Chad.
Oh, and by the way, when are your office hours?
--
Breaking the Sabbath
with my heretical musings.
Bought a Macbook Air yesterday. I have finally had it with Microsoft and the PC. Been a user since day one and remained so because of the ease of getting software, the lower cost and the fact that I had learned so many tricks under the hood to fix things when they went south. As they did, all too often.
So far the thing is good, although the smaller screen takes getting used to. Fast, light, and since it has a solid state drive, no heat while it sits on my lap. Still a learning curve, --I will keep both systems in place for a while--but especially since I got a hardly-used "pre-owned" machine at half the retail price, I'm hopeful.
#Cuckservative Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer, who used to impress me a lot in my merely conservative days, is attacking Ben Carson's sane rejection of a Muslim for president. Do the Liberals go after each other in public as much as the Right does? I don't think so. Pas d'ennemis a gauche.
Calling Carson's idea "poisonous" and out of sync with the Constitution's "ethos," he commits the very common mistake of thinking the this document is a kind of Bible. It ain't. See my 2007 post. Extraordinary thought it be, the men who wrote it never intended it to be anything of that kind. Krauthammer even goes so far as to say that "it doesn’t just set limits to power; it expresses a national ethos. It doesn’t just tell you what you’re not allowed to do; it also suggests what you shouldn’t want to do.”
Are you kidding, Rabbi?
Ultra PC Salon magazine is thrilled, of course. Republicans are great at giving aid and comfort to th e enemy. Salon is shocked that anyone should think about "religious litmus tests." Sure, when there's a Muslim involved. But what about Mormon Romney? Well, that's different...
On FB, pics of my ex and his current BF having dinner with a couple that my ex and I had dinner with years ago. One of them is a Swiss faggot --yes, I know-- who thought it was both chic and ok to do his European contempt of America thing right at the table, in my country, in my face, sibilants and all. That was the last dinner.
And another FB friend is "liking" some sanctimoniously whiny article about how "the Black man in America" is doomed to death or prison. And of course that is "America's" fault. Nothing that ever happens to them is ever their fault, of course. Where she sees a Passion Play, I see parasites.
Finished Thomas Sowell's Conflict of Visions. I am sure that he has his reasons, but he sticks to the lingo of "those who hold the unconstrained vision" and "those who hold the constrained vision" throughout the book. Makes for clunky reading. He does not simply use shorthand such as "the dreamers" and "the realists." Which is how I look at the two visions. An outline here.
Francis The Talking Pope clearly holds the unconstrained vision, which 2000 years of Christian theology says is a lie. And since Vatican II and the Church's sudden creation of this novel fulcrum for all Catholic thinking and acting --"the dignity of the human person"-- that poisonous vision has infected it at all levels. Original Sin anyone? The first of the seven principles which the ultraliberal Unitarian Universalists hold, by the way, is "the inherent worth and dignity of every human person."
Still marching through The Passion of the Western Mind. The tensions, which have sometimes become a dance, now seem quite split. And no one has come up with a way to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. I grit my teeth while he described the post-moderns as having given up belief in grand narratives. Bullshit. Their grand narrative is progressive socialism. Hicks' Explaining Post-Modernism makes that quite clear. Masquerading as "critical theory" open-minded non-dogmatists, they have greated the intellectual gulag of the modern university, where failure to be sufficiently enthusiastic about the naked Emperor gets your goose cooked.
The book does reveal to me, by my reactions along the way, my divided loyalties, making me, too, a modern Westerner.
As I continue to muse about a post-Christian religion for the Whites, I had the thought the other day that the figure of the Devil should be modeled on Saul Alinksy and the anti-Christ on Martin Luther King.
The basic mythic structure would, I think, be the Grail.
On theological basics, I think I come down on the side of pluralism, but not the "all religions are equally true" version. That makes little sense to me. Something more like Knitter's mutuality model, which sees both truth and falsehood in all religions. This make the claim to universal truth less important. In my current musings, under the metaphor of the light refracted through a spectrum, all religions --well, many-- have their necessary bias in the rainbow. Somewhat like language. We all speak our native tongues, our particular language, but no one speaks Language.
The truth claims of a religion should focus on internal consistency and on avoiding contradictions --not alternative views but contradictions-- to reason or, with caveats, science. After all, with centuries and centuries of debate between theologians and scholars, people's religious allegiances remain.
What makes for change is not correct argument but passionate conviction, cultural shifts, and the contigencies of history. At this point, a religion which tries to present itself as true in the same terms as science is barking up the wrong tree, I think. But how do you avoid that tree without simple consigning yourself to the prison of the subject?
Unless you and everyone else is already there.
Mr B just called from Genoa. I am very lucky to be in love with a happy man.
----
Bought a Macbook Air yesterday. I have finally had it with Microsoft and the PC. Been a user since day one and remained so because of the ease of getting software, the lower cost and the fact that I had learned so many tricks under the hood to fix things when they went south. As they did, all too often.
So far the thing is good, although the smaller screen takes getting used to. Fast, light, and since it has a solid state drive, no heat while it sits on my lap. Still a learning curve, --I will keep both systems in place for a while--but especially since I got a hardly-used "pre-owned" machine at half the retail price, I'm hopeful.
#Cuckservative Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer, who used to impress me a lot in my merely conservative days, is attacking Ben Carson's sane rejection of a Muslim for president. Do the Liberals go after each other in public as much as the Right does? I don't think so. Pas d'ennemis a gauche.
Calling Carson's idea "poisonous" and out of sync with the Constitution's "ethos," he commits the very common mistake of thinking the this document is a kind of Bible. It ain't. See my 2007 post. Extraordinary thought it be, the men who wrote it never intended it to be anything of that kind. Krauthammer even goes so far as to say that "it doesn’t just set limits to power; it expresses a national ethos. It doesn’t just tell you what you’re not allowed to do; it also suggests what you shouldn’t want to do.”
Are you kidding, Rabbi?
Ultra PC Salon magazine is thrilled, of course. Republicans are great at giving aid and comfort to th e enemy. Salon is shocked that anyone should think about "religious litmus tests." Sure, when there's a Muslim involved. But what about Mormon Romney? Well, that's different...
On FB, pics of my ex and his current BF having dinner with a couple that my ex and I had dinner with years ago. One of them is a Swiss faggot --yes, I know-- who thought it was both chic and ok to do his European contempt of America thing right at the table, in my country, in my face, sibilants and all. That was the last dinner.
And another FB friend is "liking" some sanctimoniously whiny article about how "the Black man in America" is doomed to death or prison. And of course that is "America's" fault. Nothing that ever happens to them is ever their fault, of course. Where she sees a Passion Play, I see parasites.
Finished Thomas Sowell's Conflict of Visions. I am sure that he has his reasons, but he sticks to the lingo of "those who hold the unconstrained vision" and "those who hold the constrained vision" throughout the book. Makes for clunky reading. He does not simply use shorthand such as "the dreamers" and "the realists." Which is how I look at the two visions. An outline here.
Francis The Talking Pope clearly holds the unconstrained vision, which 2000 years of Christian theology says is a lie. And since Vatican II and the Church's sudden creation of this novel fulcrum for all Catholic thinking and acting --"the dignity of the human person"-- that poisonous vision has infected it at all levels. Original Sin anyone? The first of the seven principles which the ultraliberal Unitarian Universalists hold, by the way, is "the inherent worth and dignity of every human person."
Still marching through The Passion of the Western Mind. The tensions, which have sometimes become a dance, now seem quite split. And no one has come up with a way to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. I grit my teeth while he described the post-moderns as having given up belief in grand narratives. Bullshit. Their grand narrative is progressive socialism. Hicks' Explaining Post-Modernism makes that quite clear. Masquerading as "critical theory" open-minded non-dogmatists, they have greated the intellectual gulag of the modern university, where failure to be sufficiently enthusiastic about the naked Emperor gets your goose cooked.
The book does reveal to me, by my reactions along the way, my divided loyalties, making me, too, a modern Westerner.
As I continue to muse about a post-Christian religion for the Whites, I had the thought the other day that the figure of the Devil should be modeled on Saul Alinksy and the anti-Christ on Martin Luther King.
The basic mythic structure would, I think, be the Grail.
On theological basics, I think I come down on the side of pluralism, but not the "all religions are equally true" version. That makes little sense to me. Something more like Knitter's mutuality model, which sees both truth and falsehood in all religions. This make the claim to universal truth less important. In my current musings, under the metaphor of the light refracted through a spectrum, all religions --well, many-- have their necessary bias in the rainbow. Somewhat like language. We all speak our native tongues, our particular language, but no one speaks Language.
The truth claims of a religion should focus on internal consistency and on avoiding contradictions --not alternative views but contradictions-- to reason or, with caveats, science. After all, with centuries and centuries of debate between theologians and scholars, people's religious allegiances remain.
What makes for change is not correct argument but passionate conviction, cultural shifts, and the contigencies of history. At this point, a religion which tries to present itself as true in the same terms as science is barking up the wrong tree, I think. But how do you avoid that tree without simple consigning yourself to the prison of the subject?
Unless you and everyone else is already there.
Mr B just called from Genoa. I am very lucky to be in love with a happy man.
----
Thursday, September 24, 2015
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
Trannies to the rescue
Mr B is in Italy and so he is not able to fulfill his regular duty of making me laugh out loud each morning. I miss that. I laugh a lot less when he is away.
But today, via a FB link from a dear friend who is as liberal as they come --a Unitarian lesbian minister, no less-- comes this hilarity, which produced the usual Mr B effect of out loud laughing.
The prologue: Being trans is an identity that comes with a bill.
The new frontier in LGBT Civil Rights...
The predictable rest of it, in all its glory, is here. Keep laffin, boys and girls and er...
---
But today, via a FB link from a dear friend who is as liberal as they come --a Unitarian lesbian minister, no less-- comes this hilarity, which produced the usual Mr B effect of out loud laughing.
The prologue: Being trans is an identity that comes with a bill.
The new frontier in LGBT Civil Rights...
The predictable rest of it, in all its glory, is here. Keep laffin, boys and girls and er...
---
Sunday, September 20, 2015
Saturday, September 19, 2015
Not bad at all
The interweaving of myth, community and ritual (and although he did not mention it, a code of behavior) is nicely condensed here by a practitioner of Nordic neo-paganism. The 4 C's of religion: creed, community, cult and code.
Christian autopsy
When did western Christendom end?
It was intact in 1500, Europe all Catholic.
The awful Wars of Religion that followed the Reformation did not destroy it wholly, since they were carried out precisely by competing visions of Christendom. Even the execution of Charles I in the mid 1600's was significantly about religion.
One shocking precursor of its demise is the Franco-Ottoman alliance in the 1530's, where a Catholic kingdom allied with the Muslim Turks to fight against the Holy Roman Empire. Talk about "perfidious Albion"...the French who created that phrase certainly got a head start on it.
Church, State and culture --both popular and elite--remained heavily interlaced, even indistinguishable, until the 1700's, although Descartes and Newton published in the 1600's.
A watershed is 1789, I think, the French Revolution and its Napoleonic aftermath. There were revivals after that, but the trajectory ever since was downward. They were loading the gun in the century prior, shot the fatal bullet in 1789 and then the patient finally died several decades later.
I think it was pretty much dead by the mid-19th century, although people could still speak sentimentally of Christendom when they meant Whites (or in Churchill's case, non-Nazi Whites).
The majority of western Europeans --in the home continent and elsewhere-- remained Christian in some sense long after that, but both the intelligentia and the States were operating on a quite different set of assumptions. While Christendom existed, the Church --in its various forms-- was a power that was in some sense required to legitimate the State, even if its actual role was as chaplain, as in Anglican England or Orthodox Russia. But its power has been merely sentimental since the 19th century.
The Liberalism which is now completely hegemonic in the West is the toxic grandchild of Christendom, more proximately the evil love/hate-spawn of the Enlightenment and the Romanticism which reacted against it.
Christendom was destroyed partly by its own internal conflicts but partly by the inherentinstability dynamism of a Western world created on the antagonistic energies of, to put it oversimply, Athens and Jerusalem.
Interesting to read the relationship of faith and reason, visionaries and skeptics, throughout Western history using Samuel Huntington's typology:
It was intact in 1500, Europe all Catholic.
The awful Wars of Religion that followed the Reformation did not destroy it wholly, since they were carried out precisely by competing visions of Christendom. Even the execution of Charles I in the mid 1600's was significantly about religion.
One shocking precursor of its demise is the Franco-Ottoman alliance in the 1530's, where a Catholic kingdom allied with the Muslim Turks to fight against the Holy Roman Empire. Talk about "perfidious Albion"...the French who created that phrase certainly got a head start on it.
Church, State and culture --both popular and elite--remained heavily interlaced, even indistinguishable, until the 1700's, although Descartes and Newton published in the 1600's.
A watershed is 1789, I think, the French Revolution and its Napoleonic aftermath. There were revivals after that, but the trajectory ever since was downward. They were loading the gun in the century prior, shot the fatal bullet in 1789 and then the patient finally died several decades later.
I think it was pretty much dead by the mid-19th century, although people could still speak sentimentally of Christendom when they meant Whites (or in Churchill's case, non-Nazi Whites).
The majority of western Europeans --in the home continent and elsewhere-- remained Christian in some sense long after that, but both the intelligentia and the States were operating on a quite different set of assumptions. While Christendom existed, the Church --in its various forms-- was a power that was in some sense required to legitimate the State, even if its actual role was as chaplain, as in Anglican England or Orthodox Russia. But its power has been merely sentimental since the 19th century.
The Liberalism which is now completely hegemonic in the West is the toxic grandchild of Christendom, more proximately the evil love/hate-spawn of the Enlightenment and the Romanticism which reacted against it.
Christendom was destroyed partly by its own internal conflicts but partly by the inherent
Interesting to read the relationship of faith and reason, visionaries and skeptics, throughout Western history using Samuel Huntington's typology:
"must learn to distinguish among our true friends who will be with us and we with them through thick and thin; opportunistic allies with whom we have some but not all interests in common; strategic partner-competitors with whom we have a mixed relationship; antagonists who are rivals but with whom negotiation is possible; and unrelenting enemies who will try to destroy us unless we destroy them first."----
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