½±√π

Just a thought...

2011-10-21T13:03:00.002-04:00

In a world full of people advocating their own means, historical truths about the Catholic Church are bent and assumed mythologically in such a way that many casually presume the Church is an institution corrupt and power-hungry by its nature. Again, in a world full of Catholics advocating solely any recruitment for their faith there remains no historical text of the Church's actions that is either complete or shows its members' actions in only a positive light.

Then again, this observation is true about any history; by advocating a position, however quietly, all texts will exempt certain information, providing a narrow and uninformed view of history as a whole. In 12 or 16 years it ought to be possible to obtain a reasonable knowledge of the progression the human race, yet the writers of such histories take it upon themselves to decide what belongs therein and what does not. The diversity of histories afflicts mankind with this ability to casually and frequently cynically discard certain facts or the lack of facts.

Sadly, the knowledge of this fault does not solve it; call this post what you will, I just wanted it written down.

~Samuel

I won't say it again...

2011-10-08T10:03:00.002-04:00

The most silly and obnoxious phenomenon in political history is the nature of both parties to make a "big deal" out of the opposing party not letting them pass whatever legislation they want. Derps and Derpinas, this is the nature of our two-party system that one opposes the other, whether you call that being "obstructionist" or just plain SILLY. Seriously, we're talking Camelot levels of silliness, here.

MEDIA, Y U NO SMARTEN UP AND TALK ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE?

'Kay, I'm done.

~Samuel

Dialogue 1: Marxist Estrangement

2011-09-29T19:42:00.002-04:00

A short explanation before the post... There is an established history of public conversations. In the heyday of English literary work, authors would debate through newspaper editorials. Many correspondences are published posthumously. Now, my brother and I, living well after the newspaper, and not quite dead yet, would like to publish discussions. Not necessarily because we consider ourselves intelligent enough to listen to, but more likely because it is through discussion that two or more can come to a common understanding of the truth. Further, through discussion ideas are honed and sharpened, made more poignant and brought into better light. Meanings are clearer. And so, I present the first of, perhaps, many.

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Ambrose: You
I have a question that I wanted to discuss with you
Marxism

Sam Ignes: Umm...'kay.

Ambrose: Marx states that factory labor leads to four kinds of alienation in the worker: (1) alienation from the object, because he works on physical material which he doesn't own; (2) alienation from his human nature (or species being, as Marx terms it), because it is part of man's essential being to labor and shape the earth after his own image, while factory labor places man in service to his labor, working in order to subsist; (3) alienation from himself, because to separate him from physical belongings and his own nature is to separate him from himself, so that he loses what is human and lives to satisfy his animal functions; and (4) alienates him from other men, since this economic state of being places him in adversity (competition) with his fellow man, and especially his employer.
That was what we read - that's my condensation of an essay that Marx wrote
The question is, given that factory labor alienates man in the above way, describe an economic system which does not alienate the laborer.
Any thoughts?

Sam Ignes: ...capitalistic redistribution?

Ambrose: Flesh that out.
Define "capitalistic"

Sam Ignes: I'll do it using your bullet-points above, then, I guess.

Ambrose: Probably the best way.

Sam Ignes: Capitalism is an economic system fueled by the competitive nature of man, embodied in a constant rise in GDP and quality of service.
Redistribution is a means of eliminating homelessness and extreme poverty by providing welfare only to people who have no housing or job for a period of time until they can acquire aforementioned things.
Both are severely more complex than that, but those should satisfy as base definitions.

Ambrose: Ok

Sam Ignes: Okay, I'm gonna have to go out of order of your bullet-points for this to make sense.

Ambrose: That's fine
That's the order that Marx uses for his argument, but you can go out of order for yours.

Sam Ignes: 'Kay
(2) This system allows all men to work in a creative fashion because it creates constant need in every field of labor; the applied interest of men promotes their intuitive ability, thus shaping the world.
(3) The prevention of complete poverty and constant improvement of average quality of life allows man to be "in touch" the the physical and his belongings.
...I don't think you explained (1) in very full detail, since if whatever man works on causes him to be distanced from ALL objects, he's pretty much screwed.

Ambrose: it's not the fact that he's working on an object, it's that he's giving his labor, or his life - there are only so many hours in his life, and he's pouring those hours into an object which he cannot keep, control, or use. Monetary payment doesn't compensate, since he's missing his own life.
You can't buy back life.

Sam Ignes: Marx's first three points rely entirely upon Man's inability to acquire objects.
The fourth is brought about by man's good nature in prosperity.

Ambrose: Keep in mind, Sam, that Marx is talking about mid-1800's London, where there is no general prosperity. The working class lived in slums much worse than poor America. Every member of a household worked at least 12 hours a day in the most unsafe environment for pay which was barely enough to feed them.
Labor is still like this - sweat shops in Southeast Asia come to mind.

Sam Ignes: So?
I wasn't told to make Southeast Asia into a haven in a day.
I was told to describe an economic system.
Moral standards should be applied to personal experience, not vice-versa.

Ambrose: Well, keep in mind that in a capitalistic system, where by definition (as given by Adam Smith), the motivation for increasing the general wealth of society is personal gain, the most profit is made by paying the factory workers least; it will always be, if not standard policy, at least moral temptation to pay workers just enough to keep them alive.

Sam Ignes: Ingenuity promotes automation.

Ambrose: I know, it's a moral problem, but moral problems exist. We're not talking about an ideal society that exists on paper, we're talking about an actual society.
Do you mean that automation will eventually take the place of human workers?

Sam Ignes: On paper, yes.
...oh, wait, in real life, too.

Ambrose: ah
Are you saying that we have replaced manual labor with automation?

Sam Ignes: Yup.

Ambrose: Sam.
We live in a global economy.
Sweatshops in Asia and south America, which produce a large mass of our goods, are part of our economy.
Those sweatshops consist of people working for less than 10% of American minimum wage, in extremely unsafe conditions.
Automation has not replaced manual labor.

Sam Ignes: I didn't say it has.
I said it would.
Sorry, my communication failure. :P

Ambrose: Ok

Sam Ignes: Basically, Marx makes the case in a nutshell that "labor" reduces humanity in some way.
As a solution to the problem he himself creates, one must eliminate labor.
So, on paper, I did. :D
Shit just got reeeeeeeal.

Ambrose: No, he makes the case that working for a pitiful wage in bad conditions (which scenario is created by a capitalist economy) alienates man from those four things.
It doesn't completely take them away, it just alienates them.

Sam Ignes: Okay.
I didn't say the world IS the way I described.
I was painting an economic system that would solve the problem presented.
Mind you, I didn't provide a step-by-step on how any part of our global economy could get there; for that, I'd have to get more personal.

Ambrose: Right, I don't need a step-by-step plan, I just want a description of a system.

Sam Ignes: Yyyyyup.

Ambrose: But I think you're missing a bit of what Marx is saying, which is possibly due to my bad explanation
It's not the work itself which alienates man from himself, his nature, the object, and other men
It's the conditions under which man works in a capitalist, factory society.

Ambrose: Pivotal things about that condition which lead to that separation: he labors on that which is not his, he is living in abject poverty, and he is forced to work in order to sustain his physical existence.
So, instead of creating out of his own energy under his own directive, he is forced to use his creative faculty in a non-creative manner.
No match-stick factory worker takes pride in his work. "He's lighting that cigarette with one of my company's matches! I take pride in that!" No factory worker would ever think, say, or believe that.

Sam Ignes: And the way I boiled that down in order to change it was to say that the workers had to adapt the economy, and so I made the economy in such a way that it adapted to the workers.
Man can become interested in his work by creating a need for it and the means to achieve it.

Ambrose: Just because it fills an economic need in society does not mean that it fills a need in man's core being.

Sam Ignes: But Marx demands that man's core being is downtrodden by the economy because of the position it places men in.

Ambrose: right.
that is what Marx says.
Let me illustrate it with an example.
Picture your training and bike racing. It's work - you put in your hours intending to reap a benefit in your racing. When you win a race, you have a sense of fulfillment and joy, right? (along with the adrenaline rush)

Sam Ignes: And podium girls, yeah.

Ambrose: You don't get podium girls. You're not that good.
Alright. Suppose you took those same training hours, and instead of working toward your own end in your bike racing career, you powered a generator in a factory for minimum wage. No racing, no podium girls, just $7.45 an hour. Even if that filled a societal need, and you got paid enough to support yourself, it wouldn't be that same exhilarating feeling, would it?
That's the difference between alienating and non-alienating labor, which I think Marx is trying to point out.
It may not be the best example, but it shows what I mean.

Sam Ignes: So, man must be fulfilled by his work in order to not be alienated?

Ambrose: Basically.
That's what I posit, anyway.
It's kind of a mash between the Platonic idea that every man naturally wants to do a certain kind of work (the sword smith is born to be a sword smith, the farmer born to be a farmer, etc.) and a Chestertonian distributist idea, where each man is financially independent, and large corporations don't exist.

Sam Ignes: There's nothing wrong with large corporations.
There is something wrong with oppressive corporations.

Ambrose: Well, let me explain a bit here.

Sam Ignes: Please do! <3

Ambrose: Large corporations originate in the division of labor (division of labor = instead of one man making one thing, 10 men each make one part of that one thing in an assembly line). Dividing labor allows them to produce more quickly, and thus gain an excess - more than what society around them needs. They can thus sell for profit.
That's how capitalism originated back in the 1700s.
In order to have those 10 people (or 1000s of people, depending on the company), you need a large workforce of people whose only job is to do that one tiny piece of making the whole product.
This is only possible in a large corporation - a single-employee small business _by definition_ cannot divide labor, because he simply doesn't have enough men.

Sam Ignes: However, a single-person business cannot apply a service to a large population.
e.g. phone service.

Ambrose: Interesting argument.

Sam Ignes: Hold up a sec

Ambrose: But phone service is something that a government could - and possibly should - handle very well.

Sam Ignes: What I mean to put forth is that dividing labor (government is labor, too) is not necessarily bad; if research and development is labor, and labor shouldn't be divided, then there wouldn't be much R&D getting done.

Ambrose: Research (actually scientific work being done by scientists) is not necessarily unfulfilling, like Marx would posit that factory work is.
Sam Ignes: But you're using "labor" synonymously with "factory work."

Ambrose: Yeah. Research isn't "labor," it's qualitatively different than tightening the same screw on each product that rolls past on a conveyor belt for 12 hours.

Sam Ignes: Then how do you eliminate the need for jobs such as tightening the same nut and bolt 8 hours a day?

Ambrose: By denying that it's a need.
It's only a "need" in a society where the final end is material gain - you have to make a surplus, in order to sell enough to make a profit.

Sam Ignes: So, how do you change the "end" of society from material gain?

Ambrose: Remember, this isn't a step-by-step plan, it's a description of a society.
Suppose you had a society where people lived in groups or villages, not gigantic super-urban cities with millions of people.
Those people could support themselves materially - they could grown their own food, built their own tools, organize themselves in their own affairs...
Granted, they would not have material excess.
But you don't need to have material excess - that's why it's called excess or surplus.
The important thing is that each person could build and work on his own things, selling them or keeping them as he saw fit.

Poetry - A Question of Essence

2011-05-16T10:35:00.001-04:00

Poetry is something which should be taken seriously, but not too seriously at the same time. Obviously, one cannot slap words into a meter and call it a poem. A lawyer cannot write his case in dactyls and outdo Homer; no, a poem is a conscious effort to describe beauty through language - to wed formal beauty (in the Platonic sense) with material form (in the linguistic sense). It combines left-brain meter, rhyme schemes, and vocabulary with right-brain wit, ingenuity, and wonder. The poet takes the subjective experience he has of beauty, and crafts it into an object, making the subjective objective. For a poem to be good, then, its form must accurately incarnate its content - the indescribable beauty of the subject must be realized within the definite confines of the object. This is not possible without a certain gravity - the poet must seriously apply himself to the rhythm of his words, and unite himself to their flow. However, he cannot even begin to describe the beauty he sees if he is incapable of seeing beauty, which requires enough levity and self-detachment to actually see something worth writing a poem about.

The subject in view is always beauty (or potentially the lack thereof). If a poem sought to describe truth, it would be philosophy; if it sought to convince, it would be rhetoric; and if it sought to simply describe, it would be physics. The point of a poem about a flower is not the flower itself, although the flower is a necessary component. The point of a floral poem is the irreplaceable beauty which the flower brings into material existence. The poem points to a glory and wonder which, without such flowers to incarnate it, would remain eternally unreachable in metaphysical reality, without reaching those of us bound to a physical plane. A poem which simply lists the material aspects of the flower, counting pollen and petals and seeds, would miss the point of both the flower and the poetry. At the same time, however, the poem is not a place to preach about essence, nature, God, or beauty. Words which talked about how beautiful a flower was, how important that beauty was for us humans, and how wonderful it is that we have flowers, would be more suitable to a pulpit than a poem. The poet conveys his experience of beauty to his reading audience dynamically by allowing them a glimpse of what he sees, physically and metaphysically.

Poetry, then, is less of a lump of words, a description, or a linguistic form for displaying emotion, but a delicate balance between the physical medium used and the metaphysical reality expressed. The poet has encountered a metaphysical reality through something physical, and, in order to communicate this experience, he sets it to words. The poem follows the same form as the experience - just as the poet encountered beauty through matter, he expresses beauty through words. The great poet is the one who most successfully allows his reader to see the wonder he himself witnessed; the one who can see the glory of the face of God, and share that vision, allowing others to see just as he sees. The great poet is the one who selflessly points beyond himself toward a radical encounter with beauty itself. The great poet is the one who, when asked why he writes poetry, can simply say, "look and see for yourself."

A Fundamental Flaw in Adam Smith's Conception of an Industrialized Capitalism

2011-04-18T14:15:00.003-04:00

I wrote this as a school paper, but thought that the topic was relevant enough to post here.

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There is a fundamental flaw behind Adam Smith's great, wealthy, stable capitalist economy. Perhaps Smith, who wrote during the innocent beginnings of the Industrial Revolution in Britain,1 could not foresee the consequences his theory would inevitably bring about, as industrialization progressed. Perhaps, as an academic, he simply could not sympathize with the plight of the worker. At any rate, the ungoverned capitalistic manufactories, which The Wealth of Nations describes, while enriching the whole nation, forces the individual worker into a position of dependence upon a large, impersonal corporation. Such a position is detrimental to the well being of the individual worker. This flaw, however, is not apparent. In this paper, I will attempt to demonstrate that this flaw is present in any capitalistic industrial economy.

Before showing the flaws inherent in the capitalist utopia which Adam Smith describes, it must first be examined. I will do this by looking to Smith's Wealth of Nations itself. Smith begins by pointing out that the wealth of a nation consists in its material goods and its monetary holdings.2 A country can increase its wealth substantially by means of the division of labor. As Smith states, “The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labor, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity and judgment with which it is anywhere directed or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labor.”3 The division of labor consists in breaking down the process of manufacturing some item into its component tasks, and then assigning each of these individual tasks to a single person. This allows a group of people together to make significantly more of the product than the same amount of people could individually. Smith demonstrates this with the example of the pin-making industry,
One man draws out the wire, another straightens it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a peculiar business, to whiten the pin is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations which, in some manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands...[they] could therefore make among them upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day.4

Because the wealthiest nation is the one which has the most money and goods, and the division of labor thus produces the most goods for the least amount of money, the country which has most subjected its industry to the division of labor and industrialization is the richest. The factory, then, where workers perform one out of the multitude of tasks required to make a pin, is the centerpiece and cornerstone of Adam Smith's capitalist economy. This glorious factory will make the whole nation rich.

This economic theory which Smith proposes seems to make sense. The whole nation is enriched by factories. However, Smith does not take the individual's well being into account when he discusses the wealth of the whole nation. In fact, his factories are detrimental to the well being of the individual worker. To attempt to prove this, I will first point out that not every citizen of a rich nation is himself wealthy. Second I will show the worker is entirely dependent upon the large company who owns the factory for his livelihood. And third, I will show that the same company does not need to support the worker.

First, whether every citizen of a wealthy nation is wealthy. After all, if the whole nation becomes wealthier because of factories and the division of labor, and if the nation is made up of individuals, then the individuals should be made wealthy by industrialization. However, that hypothetical syllogism does not completely take into account how the wealth of a nation functions. Even if the total wealth of a nation is great, the wealth of individual people is not necessarily so. If the average national wealth is ten thousand dollars, then both individual A and B might have ten thousand dollars. However, it could also be the case that individual A has twenty thousand dollars, while individual B has none whatsoever. In that second case, the national average remains the same as the first, but individual B is living in poverty. Thus, I cannot conclude from the premise “the nation is wealthy” that “the individual citizens are wealthy.”

Second, the hired factory laborer is under the unfortunate circumstance of being unable to provide for himself without wages from the factory. The workman is unable to produce food except through wages in the living conditions demanded by factories. Because the factory needs quite a few workmen, the owners of the business construct large housing developments near the factories so that their workers can live close by. Dramatic numbers of people moved into these factory slums during the industrial revolution. In 1801, the population in British cities comprised twenty percent of the total population of Great Britain. This increased to forty percent by 1851, and to 75% by 1901.5 I have seen such slums myself in Middletown, Ohio. Near the old factories are rows and rows of small, identical houses on quarter-acre lots. Any laborer living in such housing developments cannot grow his own food on such small property or under such conditions. Hunting or raising livestock is completely out of the question, since there simply is not enough room, and wild animals are scared away by so many people. As a result, the only option a laborer has to acquire food is buying it. Since all of the money which he has comes from the factory wages, he is completely dependent upon those wages for his food.

Further, Adam Smith himself admits that the factory worker does not become a skilled worker,6 thus preventing him from using his “trade,” if it can be called that, independent of the factory. If the process of making a pin is split up into eighteen different parts, each individual worker only knows one of these. The worker, if fired, cannot go elsewhere, relying on his pin-making to support him. He only knows how to “draw out the wire,” “cut it,” or “grind it at the top to receive the head.”7 He could not make a single pin on his own, as Smith admits.8 Even another pin-making factory, if there is one, might have different machinery, which the laborer would have to learn to operate from scratch. The workman who depends upon his wage for food, then, is not a skilled workers, with a definite trade by which to make a living. He therefore depends entirely upon the factory for any money they might receive, and thus for his very livelihood.

Third, then, consider the factory. The factory would seem to depend upon its workers. After all, the factory's source of income is selling the goods which it produces. The workers are necessary to make those goods, and they also serve as possible consumers for those goods. However, the above argument, again, considers the workers as a group, and not individually. When examining the effect on the single workmen out of the many, the facts do not apply in the same way. The companies have great power over the individual. G. K. Chesterton, a political theorist who offers an opinion from the end of the Industrial Revolution, states that the big companies have “...the money, the machinery, the rather mechanical majority...”9 In the game of life and death between the individual worker and the factory, the factory holds all the cards.

Although the factory may depend on the workers as a group, it does not depend upon the individual worker. If one worker quits, is fired, falls sick, or requests better wages, there are plenty of other potential workers to replace him. The factory owner knows that there are plenty of people who are willing to work for whatever wage, under whatever conditions, if one man is unable or is not willing.

Further, the factory does not depend on any individual worker to consume the goods it produces. Again, there are plenty of other people who will purchase the goods to support the company, and perhaps even to make the company owner fairly wealthy. The individual worker's participation in the capitalist, manufactory system does not determine its success. There are enough members of the working class that one individual worker does not matter to the factory.

If the factory does not need any individual worker, then what guarantees his safety and well being? The factory wage he receives could easily be given to someone else. And yet the workman has dire need of that wage – without it he cannot feed himself. What assurance can the laborer have of receiving this money? Only the agreement he makes with the factory owner. This is no great comfort. If the only thing between the workman and starvation is his employment, and the factory has no real obligation to employ him, then the industrial manufactory system is certainly not sufficient to provide for the well being of its laborer. The factory owners may call the farmers and country folk to the factory slums with the lure of a wage, but the big businesses cannot support each and every man who answers the call. The factory system envisioned by Adam Smith, while it might enrich the nation, does not adequately protect the well being of the individual worker.

A Thought on this Generation

2011-04-11T20:53:00.000-04:00

We are the video game, Harry Potter, manga, action blockbuster generation: pining after a sense of epic adventure we can never experience, desiring the nation-breaking power we can never wield, seeing the evil that besets our world, but only being able to sit back in a movie theater and watch. When we see a problem, we raise awareness of it by wearing little ribbons or by walking a couple of kilometers, hoping that someone else will come and solve it. We are used to instant gratification from microwaves, medical technology, ATMs, credit cards, and the internet, and, as a result, we lack the drive to accomplish the goals set by our gigantic ideals. In short, we are the people who talk the talk, but can't walk the walk. Obviously, we see the problems. We "rebel" against everything from organized religion to our parents, because we see the problems that have been caused by the people before us. We're growing up now, and it's time to try to grasp reality as well as the ideals we need to order it. But all we know how to grasp are xbox controllers.

Spring cleaning and a short thought

2011-04-07T14:58:00.005-04:00

At some point it occurred to me that the link I had on the side, to a blog by an old friend of mine, was no longer accurate. Somewhere along the flowing stream of time, Garden Variety Rainbows became Clearing the Sill. This change is now reflected in the hyperlink, and is also reflected in the blog's sidebar text. The quality of content, however, has not changed for the worse, and I still recommend you read.

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Recently, I read an article in the New York Post by a certain Michio Kaku describing what life would be like after 89 years of technological advancement. These articles are, often enough, not very scientifically accurate. Journalists seeking a story have an odd tendency to stretch the limits of science, and they expect to suspend the disbelief of their audience enough to sell a magazine. Nature and her laws are somewhat less forgiving. As a result, I am not entirely sure whether we will be able to "cruise at the age of 30 almost indefinitely...," even a century or two down the line.

Why not, though? The only apparent physical obstacle is the body's natural rate of decay. We can replace limbs, hearts, stomachs, livers, and possibly even brains without changing intrinsically who the person is - a person is still the same person after a kidney donor. Therefore, we should be able to indefinitely extend the physical life of a person, even if after 200 years they are on their third entirely new body. What is left unaccounted for?

Unfortunately, the answer is contained in the question above. If the same "person" is still in existence, even without any of the same physical substance, then that person must have a non-physical component. This concept will perhaps be more easily seen if we make a comparison to the computer. If you took a computer, retrieved the data, and then copied the data into an identical computer, the second computer would not be the same as the first one. It might act, look, and contain the same things, but it would not be the same essential being. Human beings are different. Our cells die and get recycled during the course of our lifetimes, even without artificial replacements. Dead skin, dead hair, and waste all fall aside as we age, replaced automatically by new cell growth. Thus, after x amount of time, our bodies are composed of entirely new material, even without replacements. And yet, that body is part of the same person it was beforehand. Similarly, even if our grandfather loses an arm and it is replaced by a prosthetic limb, even if he develops Alzheimer's and loses his memory, and even if every individual, physical part of his body is replaced, we still know Grandpa as Grandpa. As a result of this observation, we must conclude that something outside of the physical, or, to use an Aristotelian term, something metaphysical exists, which contributes something essential to our concept of, and nature as, a person.

This metaphysical part is the part of the person which grows world-weary, and desires to commit suicide after a tragedy. This is the part of the person which refuses human contact for a week after his fiancée dies. Neither of these two events can be explained through physical means, and thus a physical solution (or even genetic engineering) cannot solve a metaphysical problem. Suppose for a moment that, shaky science aside, we could live for hundreds of years on earth. The real question is this: who would want to? The inarguable numbers of divorces, alcoholics, suicides, homicides, and other indicators of human discontent with our current condition show that, perhaps, not very many people would.

This metaphysical understanding of man also extends to our use of the physical world around us. Because our being is metaphysical, we interpret other things metaphysically. Dolls and blankets treasured since childhood acquire a metaphysical significance: who can throw those old soccer trophies away, even though they clutter the shelves?

Further, we experience things metaphysically. Although Kaku states that "cars will be driver-less, using GPS to navigate...," I doubt that this will actually be the case. This scenario can be compared to simply using a bus system now. What's the difference between driving a car and being driven? Or, suppose a robot drove your car while you sat in the passenger seat. What's the difference between a human and a robot driver? The human can enjoy the driving experience. The exhilaration, the freedom, the speed, the power cannot be attributed merely to adrenaline. If it could be, the passenger would feel the same thrill. As any backseat driver can tell you, that is not always the case. Therefore, we must conclude that the reason we drive cars, like the reason we ride bikes, cook meals, play music, or take a walk through the woods, is not from some sort of mere physical necessity - not just because we have to, but would rather not. These actions have a metaphysical significance which is irreplaceable - we want to, whether we have to or not.

In short, where Michio Kaku fails in his study of future technology is here: it examines technological capacity, but not human volition and nature. Human beings want more than long life - they want a happy life, short or long. Human beings do not want to be driven around, human beings want to act and make their own decisions. We do not want life lived for us by scientists, we want to live, love, and laugh on our own. The scientific pseudo-life without a metaphysic, which Kaku offers us as a technological possibility, is worse than death. It would be like living in a prison all of our life, with no freedom to engage in the higher metaphysical realm of joy and pain. As a human being, I reject this future. Give me a car to drive myself - I will risk the crash to gain the freedom. Give me a 70-year life span - I will welcome death as a relief from the misery inherent in this world. Give me the liberty to freely choose those things which I enjoy - even if that means true death as a release from an ultimately unsatisfying world. But, for God's sake, do not chain me to a world I can no longer enjoy for an unbearable eternity.

God's Reflection In Humanity

2011-04-04T22:18:00.003-04:00

In studying the Theology of the Body this year, I was asked to enlarge upon the "spousal meaning of the body." So, here I am...doing Theology.

Turning to Webster:

–adjective

nuptial; matrimonial.

So, I can say I am also enlarging upon the "matrimonial meaning of the body," etc.

The Body was made in God's image (Gen. 1: 26) and likeness, etc. However specific language is used by God when he says "Let us make men in our image..." This is immediate reference to God's status as three Persons in one God.

The Hypostatic Union is the name of the unique relationship shared between God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit: the Father's love is manifest in His Son, and the result of Their love is the Holy Spirit. I'd like to note, "love" is a very worldly and imperfect word that cannot come close to resembling the actual relationship shared between the three persons in the Trinity.

Bearing in mind we are made in God's image, examine the human marital figure. A man's love directed at a woman manifests a child at the peak of mutual love. If you were expecting me to say the same thing about mankind as I did about God, your preconceptions are far too hopeful.

Not only is mankind fallen, but its expression of love is naturally less perfect because of its physical medium. Love's perfection manifests in a mystery, and we are incapable of reproducing this feat. Regardless, the similarities are still significant. Each figure, the Trinity and the human, involves three participants; two which "perform" the "act" of love (for lack of a better way to put it) and the resulting being (sadly, men are incapable of producing a divine result...).

When Christopher West exclaims so forcefully that the intent of our marriage is "engraved on our bodies," he refers to our physical *coughcough* gonads. However, I feel his attempt to impose an epiphany is lacking in that it does not imply divine rule. Our duty as humans to strive for perfection leads us to reflect the Trinity's model of perfect love; accepting the obvious ought to be accepted as being obviously insufficient.

In retrospect, a lot of what I wanted to say was based entirely in the worldly application of the spousal meaning rather than the spousal meaning itself, which I may have explained better then than I had planned. Either I'm getting better at blogging, getting better at getting sidetracked, or am blissfully unaware of the nonsensical nature of the above text.

~Samuel

Reflections on a Novelist

2011-02-13T15:39:00.004-05:00

I don't have anything else to post, and I feel like posting something. I wrote this for English class.

Many negative book reviews in publications such as The National Catholic Register share the same error. The reviewers assume that a novelist cannot be Catholic because the morals he presents are too loose, the lives he portrays too pagan, or the universe he describes too full of despair. These reviewers mistake a novel for something else. Those who require a picture of perfection, ideals, or moral uprightness should not look to a writer, but to a preacher; to a homily, not to a novel. “The writer uses his eyes on what he happens to be facing,” states Flannery O'Conner in a discussion of the Catholic novelist, “... He does not decide what would be good for the Christian body and proceed to deliver it.” It is the preacher's job to deliver a wholesome meal to the faithful, whereas the writer merely attempts to portray human existence. An in-depth comparison of these two roles, preacher and writer, perhaps will help determine what a Catholic writer really is.

The confusion between preacher and novelist is understandable. After all, both men seek to put the truth into words. They must follow the limitations of their linguistic art form. Further, both the Catholic novelist and the priest are, in fact, Catholic. Their world views should be very similar, if not the same. To be truly Catholic means to start every action, especially writing and teaching, from Christ and His will. So the Catholic novelist and the Catholic homilist both start from the same place, and use the same tool – language – to accomplish their task.

However, the things they make are very different. A homily and a novel are two separate literary forms, with different purposes and rulebooks. The priest, before he pens his sermon, must first focus on what his flock needs to hear – the homily's basic purpose is to nourish. He then begins his role as an exegete, expanding upon and explaining Scripture to improve the spiritual health of his parishoners. He does not create, and he does not explore uncharted territory – he merely helps those who listen to understand what is already there. The priest is also responsible for the moral edification of the faithful. He needs to tell them what they should do. He deals with the ought – the moral right – not necessarily with the is.

The novelist, on the other hand, is supremely and fundamentally focused on what is in front of him. In his writing, he attempts to show nature accurately to those who read. The moral question of what ought to be done is not quite so relevant to him as to the pastor; what a specific character would do in a given situation is the novelist's focus, not what that character should do. The right and the wrong, as well as the good and the bad are laid open for observation, exploration, and internalization without any forced message. In a truly unique role, the novelist can almost create life for his readers to watch, marveling along with the author at its intricacy. In a novel, the utilitarian function of a homily – the need to nourish the faithful ear – fades as human experience, perhaps even life itself, becomes the focus. As proof, the novel is appreciable by any reader, independent of his circumstances, but the homily must be tailored to its audience.

A novelist, then, serves as a prophet of sorts. He stands in front of all of mankind, not with a convincing, heartbreaking moral, nor with a fabulous picture of eternity, but with a mirror. He shows humanity to itself in all of its sin, in all of its despair, in all of its pagan hedonism, and in all of its hidden jewels. The novelist who is truly Catholic, then, is not the one who produces a good, nourishing feeling, but the one who makes us think, for one moment, about who we really are.

Simple Reflection

2010-12-21T16:11:00.003-05:00

Highschoolers: something you can't sum up or generalize without making someone mad.

I go to a vocational highschool. It's connected to a number of local school districts, so that students from a wide area can attend it and learn a career while finishing highschool so they can get started with life earlier. It's a great idea. But, there's one problem.

A lot of people go there because they want to get away from their local school. The reasons vary widely, so I can't really give a good nutshell account, but the vast majority are for emotional reasons and not practical reasons.

This poses a number of problems. For one, most of the students are emotionally unstable and somehow selfish because of it. I'm sure all their causes are unique and personally excusable -- everyone goes through BS that unknowingly effects them. But there's one huge issue.

All the people there want someone who shares their problems. Somehow, knowing someone else knows exactly how you feel makes it seem better. A lot of them do have a problem in common: abusive parents. These parents do drugs, recklessly have sex, and otherwise just get rid of their child for most of the day with school. I've seen how awkward "Bring Your Parent to Lab" day is for a number of them, parents and children alike. I see some of these problems outside of school, too, when a parent says "no" to a leisurely outing and I'm there to see it.

What's my problem? Because of all these factors, some of the people there are very emotionally unstable. I can bet this is because of cases of selfishness on the parts of these highschoolers' parents, past teachers, past friends, etc. Present ones, too. These decisions throughout their life effected them to bring them to where they are today. It horrifies me to hear the things they talk about when teachers aren't around (it's 98% sexual...the rest somehow involves legitimately cute stuff). These people will now go off and live the lives their parents did, I bet, since that's the behavior they've learned: drugs, reckless sex, laziness, selfishness, etc.

What's my point? What you do today will effect someone. Everything will. Every pleasure you indulge in, every grudge you hold, every smile and frown someone will see or you will feel. All these things will mean different things to different people.

I understand the syllogistical nature of proving a point, and there's a sound argument in here someone, but I'd rather grope at the emotional nature of our world for moment. There are many solid points that come to mind when I try to think of scientific (that is, sociological, since this isn't fully observable) evidence of this psychological phenomenon, but I don't care for it unless someone chances to make a stand versus.

Whenever you think of someone in a negative fashion, even if it's just casually or with another person who shares your opinion, you're further degrading your personal view of that individual on topic. When you see them again, that will effect how you act toward them. Maybe you'll just not smile when you see them. Maybe you'll be too busy thinking about your last conversation concerning them, you'll forget to greet them if you talk again. Maybe if it's bad enough, you'll shrug them off entirely. We've all done it about someone, I can almost guarantee.

Other people will do this with you, too. And all this is because they're talking/thinking about you behind their back, and this effects them and you. It's incredibly socially undermining.

So, the next time you see someone who looks like a "bad" person, or someone who looks severely discontent, be aware that their life has been effected by virtually infinite stimuli, and even if you think you've known them for a while, you still don't know about their life, and judging them might cause you to think less of them.

No, I don't want anyone to take this and go play therapist with people. I just want everyone to be more considerate of those around them, whether they know them or not, and think nicely about everyone you meet.

Yeah, something like that. This is pretty far off from what I was originally thinking of, but it touches the idea I had well enough.

~Samuel

Great Lie

2010-12-13T14:25:00.002-05:00

"Religion is the opiate of the masses," quoth Karl Marx. Most Christians find this statement for all the wrong reasons. "Religion isn't an opiate," they retort, "It's true, and I believe it." Although this might be the case, it does not address Marx's statement in all of its insidiousness. Marx makes a statement about reality as lived by a human being, which mere belief cannot counter.

By calling religion an "opiate," Marx implies two basic premises - first, that the world we live in is so gray, mundane, tiresome, sorrowful, and awful that we need something to take our mind off of it, and, second, that religion fills that need. Of these two premises, the first is the one I wish to examine - within it lies one of the largest problems that plagues the modern age.

"Life sucks, and then you die." Who hasn't heard this truism before? And, honestly, who can argue with it? Our life is occupied, almost primarily, by suffering and the deaths of others, especially those close to us, until we ourselves succumb to the oppressive material universe and kick the bucket. Life is filled with rejection: although human beings are supposed to be the most rational and compassionate of animals, we find ourselves constantly attacked by our fellow man. Life is filled with suffering: aches, pains, illnesses, and calamities of the soul are our constant companions. Earthquakes and tsunamis destroy entire inhabited islands, tornadoes rip apart preschools, and volcanoes engulf entire cities in flames. No man can arrogate himself above this material plight. Sin is undeniable. The true, the good, and the beautiful are fleeting moments of reprieve that are not lasting. All good things come to an end, because suffering and death win in the end.

This is the basic assumption that Marx makes about human existence. Religion exists to pull the wool over the eyes of troubled sheep, tricking them into ignoring the calamities around them to shield them from the pain. Doctors, nurses, priests, and poor-boxes fight a losing battle against the tide of overwhelming suffering.

If we accept this view of the universe, Christianity does not exist. First, let's look at this scripturally: God created the earth, or all of our earthly existence, and "saw that it was good." God, as all good, can create nothing evil or painful. Pain only exists because we are fallen away from the good God intended for us. But this is not the end of Christianity. Our Christian beliefs do not end with Christ in the tomb, but with Christ risen. Through Christ's suffering and death, we are brought to new life, and the entirety of creation rejoices as a new earth. When Christ rolled away the stone, he changed the nature of everything. Suffering is no longer the end - suffering itself leads to eternal life and happiness. Love is so powerful that it does not just conquer death and leave it as a ghost, but changes even death into life. Death and suffering are no more what they were - they are the very means of our salvation. God can turn even evil into good.

Thus the Church stands diametrically opposed to the modern, gray view of existence. She stands before the towering waves and battering winds, firm on her foundation of rock, to proclaim that even to drink the cup of death is to imbibe joy. The Christian sees in the suffering gold purified by flame - a gold even more precious and more beautiful than before. Existence can squall and rage, but the Christian laughs in wonder at a God who can not only calm a storm, but bring calm about by means of a storm.

Because this world is, in fact, so good, the entirety of Christianity exists in order to give thanks. The extreme opposite of the "opiate of the masses," the Christian religion states that no opiate is necessary - our life is so good that no amount of praising can thank God enough. This spirit of thanksgiving is the crucial foundation of a Christian world view. To thank God is to be a Christian, and all Christianity flows from this thanksgiving. That is why the Eucharist (Greek, thanksgiving) is the "source and summit" of our faith. This spirit of thanksgiving is the air that we Christians breathe, this ethos of Eucharist is the only response worthy of so great a God, who does not bring about life in spite of death, but because of and through it.

Why is it that...

2010-12-09T17:22:00.004-05:00

Why do we Americans demand money, cars, food, bonuses, health care, jobs, or whatever from our government? Why is it that a vast portion (41.71% source) of our national expenditure is devoted to taking money from some people and giving it to others, for whatever purpose (social security, medicare, medicaid...). The government has taken upon itself to take our money from us and distribute it wherever it sees fit - to national parks, to health care, to job security and promotion, to all of the things it spends on. Why exactly is that the government's job? Who decided that, if someone was going to give, it had to be the government? Why should the government be the solution? Besides violating the principle of subsidiarity (under which the smallest, most local authority possible handles the problem), it takes away from our free will. How? Let me show you.

First, I would like to make it clear that whatever money the government spends comes from one of two places. Either it is tax money, or it is interest on foreign loans (trade tariffs, for the sake of this argument, can be regarded as taxes, since the price of the tariff is tacked on top of the price we pay for the goods...). Now, since our nation is so far in debt, I don't think interest on foreign loans is going to get us much revenue. Therefore, any money that the government spends (really) comes out of our own pockets. Thus, any money that the government spends to benefit our lives is our own money! In other words, all of the social security, medicare, and projects that Uncle Sam funds is, by its nature, someone else deciding what is best to do with the profit you worked hard to earn. This clearly showcases one of the core principles of small-government philosophy: whenever a government acts, it necessarily performs this action instead of and at the expense of the people.

Let's elaborate on this idea. First, consider that first part - the government acts instead of the individual. Suppose, for the hypothetical sake of argument, that the government pays for medical care for the elderly (What's that? They already do?). If the government pays for their health care, then no one else can supply that portion of helping their elderly parents. If Grandma is in the hospital at the government's expense, you don't personally have the capacity to give her the gift of paying for it yourself. Health care, living expenses, and public property restoration are all a finite pie. If the government takes all the slices, the individual's opportunity for charity and generosity gets eaten up. And, if we can believe Plato and his Republic, and the purpose of a government is to help foster a virtuous public, then the less opportunity a citizen has to act charity the less the government fulfills its purpose. In terms of true, habituated virtue, "Let me do it for you" is completely opposed to personal growth.

Second, consider the fact that the government acts at the expense of the individual. The government is not some magical sorcerer who gives from an inexhaustible store of enchanted goodies. The government consists of the ruling body, in its laws, elected officials, and available capital. The government is only so rich as its people, and can give nothing of its own. Like I posited above, the government's only income is our tax. Whatever the government gives to the community, it first takes from the community. The government doesn't give, it necessarily, by its nature redistributes. Any government plan that puts money into development or care takes whatever funds it needs from the people. Why would you elect someone who would promise to pay for your education with government money? Government money is a contradiction in terms - that money is and always has been owned by the people. Why would you elect a candidate who promises to give more money to the schools? That money is coming from your pocket, anyway. And, since you know your own, personal needs better than the government does, why do you let them do it for you?

Having established this principle, lets return to our discussion. How does government spending take away from our free will? Let us, for the sake of this argument, assume that "free will" means the ability to say yes or no internally (as differentiated from "freedom," which, according to this discussion might have some qualifications). Now, as stated above, more government spending means less American citizen spending on two counts - one, the government already pays for stuff so we can't, and two, it uses our money to do it so we have less. One of those options clearly takes away from our freedom - if the government spends, then we can't do that spending. That option is no longer there. The way is shut. However, the second, taking our money, removes freedom in a subtler way. Whether for good or ill, we live in a capitalist society, where your abilities as an individual depend upon your affluence and wealth. I am not free to take my children to Disney World if I can't pay for it. This is just a fact. So, if the government takes a good chunk of my paycheck, it is not at my disposal, and my kids will have to hope I can come up with a low-budget vacation plan.

Most importantly, as the government takes our money, they also take the decisions we make with that money. If I decided to spend my money on the health care of my children, then I am virtuous. But if Big Brother decides that I, in my ignorance and lack of virtue, am not capable of making those decisions, and makes them himself, then we have a problem. The fact that the American who earns a modest $40,000 a year pays 15% of that to the government means that the government deigns to revoke that American's right to decide where his hard-earned $6,000 goes. What if he wants to support a local business and stimulate the economy by eating out? He can't with that $6,000. What if he wants to make a charitable donation to a soup kitchen or Boy Scout troop? He can't with that $6,000. What if he wants to pay for his mother's quadruple bypass in gratitude for his upbringing? He can't with that $6,000. And if a man can't do with his own work what he pleases, what can he do? Well, I guess he can scrape by on a tight budget and scrap the charity he would have done otherwise.

This is the crux of the matter: if the government steals from me my ability to do good, and to fail to do good is to lose part of my humanity, then the government is taking from me my humanity. Plain and simple. In days of old, man was constantly in danger of becoming bestial and giving in to his base desires. That is no longer the case. Under the government nanny-state, where no good OR ill action is possible, we become machines working for the cause of whichever president stands behind the control panel. If we are lucky, he will be benevolent in his rule, and seek to at least help us lead contented lives of drudgery. But why should he? He doesn't owe any responsibility to robots deprived of their free will and human dignity.

Guilty 'til proven innocent!

2010-11-19T09:29:00.002-05:00

I come across a very common and rather instantaneous fallacy whenever someone asks me why I am concerned over one thing or another. Of course, some instances like homosexuality and abortion occur the most often (thank you, public school system!), but it's a common mistake in moral thinking.

Assumption: What I do/want/think/etc. is morally acceptable until proven otherwise.

I can hear the alarm bells going off in your head, already! But go ahead and think for a bit how you may have done this at any time in the recent past. At any given time you ever said, "can you prove me wrong?" or anything similar to that inquiry, you were likely committing this very logical flaw!

Going back to my original example, whenever someone asks me what my issue is with something, I'll normally give some broad, generality, such as, "throwing rotten tomatoes at prisoners is wrong because it wastes perfectly good rotten tomatoes." Irony far, far aside, in virtually any given case I will be immediately met with the response, "so? You still can't prove it wrong!" Now, understand, this is a rather weak example. There is no prerequisite such as presenting an original example on my part or even the institution of a valid topic. For total srs, someone could just approach me and say out of the blue, "what's wrong with giving food to old, starving men?"

So, I'll start at the bare basics of my rebuttal. For starters, moral acceptance can be rated on a scale of good vs. bad. I'll use the assumption that good is a positive existence and bad is the lack thereof. This means that in the original assumption, there is inherently good in whatever action/thought/etc. Now, even though this is not physics, it is quite fair for me to employ the law of conservation of energy: matter cannot be created or destroyed. No, I am not speaking on the constancy of the amount of matter in the observable universe, I am speaking in terms of the assumption of the existence of good in any given action/thought/etc.

What I mean to embellish is that you cannot assume the existence of good because it is not necessarily there. It is an unknown factor in the case of the assumption. Bring about the fact that a scale has "markers" on it. Just as your average metric ruler has centimeter notches in it, so does a moral "ruler" (giving me candy is on the top, fyi). When I introduce the moral acceptance of giving food to old, hungry men I am placing this act somewhere on that ruler when I truly have no knowledge of the scale itself.

Ultimately, my point is that you cannot assume the positive existence of good in an act/thought/etc. because we cannot immediately measure it. Allow me to assume that acts must be compared to one another based upon the known moral value of one.

Also, I have decided the unit of moral value shall be 2/3" washers.

Conclusion: actions/thoughts/etc. are not inherently morally acceptable and their moral acceptance must be proven.

Yes, my roundabout approach is rather sloppy, but I'm not here to connect syllogisms.

~Samuel

A Proposal

2010-10-21T15:02:00.004-04:00

Purple Pride Whatever day. When it was explained to me last night by one of my fellow, extreme-right-wing, Catholic-card-carrying friends, I thought it was, well, a little gay. On second thought this morning, I decided to think about it a little more logically.

Theoretically, this day is about homosexual teenagers losing their lives as a result of the bullying they receive. This gives two possibilities for their deaths - either they were bullied (or beat) to death, or they couldn't handle the social pressure of the bullying and committed suicide. Either of these two possibilities are tragic - no human life should be lost.

However, both the radical right and the radical left will misrepresent this holiday. The left will use it as an example to champion the poor, helpless homosexuals who are taunted for no reason. The right wing will say that the gay f***s shouldn't be such limp, emasculated weaklings to commit suicide because a couple people poked fun of them. Both of these views are misguided, and I will answer them both individually.

First, the left's idea that the homosexuals are brutally tortured for their dignified beliefs, and they are completely wronged and all homophobic assholes who try to say anything about gay people at all are bigoted, religious crusaders. First, I would like to point at the nature of "poking fun," or "teasing." A certain amount of teasing is good - to be made fun of, to a point, allows us to realize potentially legitimate faults in our behavior, and, if we are mature enough, the ability to laugh at ourselves. If I'm a big enough boy about it, I can realize that, yes, I'm a bit egotistical, and these people making fun of me are right, and I should try to correct my behavior. Now, immediately, the left responds that there is nothing wrong with the homosexual lifestyle, and that to even suggest that it is in the slightest way humorous is to offend every single homosexual on the face of the planet. I would argue in response that the heterosexual lifestyle is at least equally legitimate, and that no straight guy would have reasonable claim to offense if he was made fun of for being straight. Think about it - the sexual act is just a bit odd and humorous. "You stick what where?" Honestly, to think of ourselves as ridiculous is healthy; pride is the greatest of the seven deadly sins - even worse than the wrath involved with bullying. Therefore, I think that the homosexual committing suicide because he was made fun of could be said to be a tad too sensitive.

Now, to argue against the right's point of view. The homosexual individual is still intrinsically a person, and has all of the same personal dignity and rights that any other person does. I am not condoning any homosexual actions - I still firmly believe, as a Catholic, that any sexual interaction outside of the natural love of husband and wife is offensive to God and the people involved (I have posted about this before, and probably will again later - I don't particularly want to argue this point now). However, even if their actions are wrong, their personal dignity and worth are not merit based - humanity is not something you earn, but something that is intrinsic to your essence. Therefore, as the Church says in Catechism paragraph 2358 "[Homosexuals] must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided." The homosexuals should not simply "man up" and "take" abuse which is unjust, uncalled for, or excessive. Christ commands us to love all of mankind as He loved us - not just to love those who we like, who agree with us, or who are similar to us.

Now, in terms of this holiday. There are people who have legitimately been abused because of their homosexuality. This abuse is completely wrong and inexcusable. I suppose that commemoration of these people might lead to an end of the abuse, and therefore "Purple Day" is not an altogether bad idea. I would, however, like to see at least parity in commemoration days - the heterosexuals who have been abused by homosexuals also ought to receive a commemorative day. I therefore propose that we all wear red tomorrow to remember straights beat up by gay people.

The Philosophy of Love: An Introduction

2010-10-19T14:01:00.004-04:00

Observe every human being you have ever come into contact with. Think of how many you have heard say, "I love you," or. "I love him/her," etc. How many times have you said these things? It has been a plague of the knowable universe (just Earth, actually) to know whether or not any given person has truly "meant" the words, "I love you." I am, therefore I think. That which can think can know, I can think, therefore I can know. Man can know, and therefore man can know when they mean the words, "I love you." So, I will take some time out of my day and apply myself to defining what these words really mean, collectively.

"And God so loved the earth that He gave His only Son..."

The Hypostatic Union is comprised of three separate entities that are defined as one and only one God. These three "persons" are the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. How do they simultaneously exist? The Father's love is manifest in the Son, and the love between the Father and Son is manifest in the Holy Spirit.

"Wait a second!" you say, "You just said 'love' two times and you still haven't defined it!"

Well, senior impatient, I'm doing that right now.

God is all powerful. God is, therefore, all good because anything besides would not be creative. Because God is all good, he is the model of "goodness." "Goodness" is substituted with "virtue," because virtue is a "good" quality (ohey, does that mean virtues are by nature creative? I mean, in a perfect form, I guess they are...).

Because God can love, this means that Creative Love (in the case of God's perfect love, I will call it "Creative Love," because it must be differentiated from what we know as "love" in our everyday use of the word) is a virtue, and that Creative Love is the perfect form of that virtue (which I will name later).

Organize material:
Love is a virtue.
Creative Love is the perfect form of Love.

Let's take a look at the opposite end of the spectrum:
Aristotle established a system of virtue, giving the two extremes of those virtues. If Creative Love is the positive extreme, then there must be a negative extreme. Creative Love is creative, therefore the opposite must be destructive (henceforth called, "Destructive Love").

Note that here is a slight disjunction. Did God's Creative Love have an object? There was no object such as a universe for him to center his Creative Love and create. Does this mean that Love in a perfect form does not have a material object? Or, would the created thing be the object of God's Creative Love? The latter statement seems the most reasonable (if worded not as an inquiry, of course).

I digressed, didn't I? If the object is the created, and that is Creative Love, then Destructive Love must be without the created object. Furthermore, Destructive Love must oppose the object of creation.

Now I shall introduce our concept of human love. Given my theoretical discussion, upon application perfect human love is centered upon creation and the opposite the destruction or opposition of creation. Humans can only take part in creation in the making of a new human (because God is the only entity that can create out of nothing). God exhibited Perfect Creative Love and that is our ultimate goal, and the vice associated is Destructive Love and anything that opposes that creation. Anything that opposes a new life, therefore, opposes God's Perfect Creative Love and because God is all good and only good comes out of him, Destructive Love (I think it is my duty to mention that the opposite of a perfect virtue is a "perfectly evil" vice, which comes from the devil, if you'd believe it) must come from a lack of Creative Love. That somehow seems irrelevant, though...

Our purpose, our goal, our destiny, etc. is to mirror God, to know, love and serve God, etc. We must mirror, strive toward, etc. God's model of Creative Love. Our nature is to strive toward Creative Love, if you'll pardon my jump in language. To not strive toward Creative Love is, therefore, against our nature (if you'll recall my other posts, anything that goes against our nature is a sin against God, because he created us with a nature/purpose/design).

Destructive Love, practically speaking, is the purest form of lust, which shall be sufficiently defined as a desire for sexual pleasure. This is because the object changes from the opposition of creation to sexual pleasure.

Lust objectifies the person of the opposite sex, which is a sin against God because it changes that person's object from knowing, loving and serving God to an object of pleasure. This is, on a moral scale, a very grave sin, because it is a direct denial against the will of God and twists the purpose of Creative Love embodied in the sexual organs.

Understand that, through all this, I have given what love does, where it comes from, its extremes and an example of one of its median vices, but I have not defined it. Why?

We cannot replicate God's Creative Love because it is perfect and we are fallen. The same goes for Satan's Destructive Love.

Lust is definable because it is a human emotion.

But is Love an emotion? Its perfection in either direction is not an emotion because it does not express feeling, but an object. It is not cognitive because it does not enact reason.

I know that Love provokes emotions; lust, desire, beautiful perception, joy, serenity, contentment...the list goes on. However, love is differentiated from these, as God's perfect example shows.

Personally, I do not believe I can effectively put "love" into words. Language is the conveyance of human thoughts, and because language derives from human thoughts, it is imperfect. To attempt to put Creative Love or any form thereof into my imperfect language would be a sin against their natures as objects of God's design. Ultimately, I know what Love is not. Love is not an emotion itself because there is always a definable, objective emotion such as "desire" or "lust" in place that we substitute with "love," which is a sin against its nature. I know that love, in order to strive for God's plan, must be creative.

This means that deduction is impossible, because I cannot form a positive statement out of anything other than two positive statements. I could produce any number of the two aforementioned, and never produce a solid definition.

Induction applicable.

Love is an explicable nonentity that occurs between two human beings that benefits the continuation of the human race.

This leads me to my ultimate point. We cannot express God, His perfect intentions and motives, with our language. To do so is a horrible sin because it lowers God to a flawed, human level. With the exception of Jesus Christ, it is illicit to do so. To express His works and measures is flawed because our language does not express Him, but our thoughts. God is outside thoughts and therefore outside language. All words, phrases, functions and mechanics we could ever conjure through any means could never depict with accuracy the glory, majesty, honor, or any of infinite virtues in perfect form that embody themselves in God. He is a mystery in every sense of the word. But that's still imperfect, isn't it?

~Samuel

Died in obscurities...

2010-07-12T17:37:00.002-04:00

Continuing an idea, here are some thoroughly obscure ways that people have died based upon google results.

"died in a _____ accient":

Kitten: 1
Raptor: 10 (if you haven't guessed the reference by now, you aren't going to)
Roller Skating: 5
Puppy: 1
Banana: 1
Haberdashery: 465 (wow...)
Blogging: 3240
Blagging: 4
Laughing: 6
Kiting: 57
Snake Charming: 363

At least anyone who will ever read this can take some form of solace knowing that he has not died in any of these or other obscure fashions.

~Samuel

The Modern Pharisee

2010-07-06T00:12:00.003-04:00

Satan is a tactical genius. He found that a media system which stretches from sea to shining sea, across borders, and to all four corners of the globe could be used to broadcast immorality. And because of our inheritance, concupiscence, this exposure to blatant immorality would lead us naturally to imitate. Although it is true that what comes from within does not taint, but that which comes from without, our moral consciences, the level that sets our decision-making straight, must be formed by external material. And if all the movies, songs, and magazines we imbibe contain only filth, we will vomit the same filth back out into the world.

This move the devil has made is not at all his genius strike. With this spear he thrusts not at those dredged in sin - if we can believe Lewis, neither God nor Satan wants the tepid man who sins because he does not know better. No, Satan wields the modern, corrupted media as a weapon against those who would otherwise be holy and well educated. Even those who avoid the sting of the vicious television set are wounded by its filth.

How? If those poor souls secreting themselves away from the vile onslaught do not intake the filth, how can they be hurt? Would not someone who avoids the blow avoid also the damage? However, we cannot assume that because our minds are safe from the numbing sexual images, because our consciences are safe from the ceaseless blows, or because we see no evil and hear no evil, that we will think no evil. One cannot hide from temptation completely.

The fatal second strike of Satan comes at those who hide from him most in their pride. The moment the sheltered Catholic child begins to think in terms of "us" and "them," in terms of good people who watch good movies and bad people who watch bad movies, he falls victim to the sin that Christ condemned most vehemently. "Thank God that I can keep my children from watching these movies," is what any parent would say, but the afterthought lurks in the shadows, unannounced, but deadly, "unlike those other children."

All human beings share the same nature. As a result, any kind of "us vs. them," "Catholic vs. Protestant," "saved vs. sinner," is of necessity a flawed argument. I am not saying, of course, that the all media is good - verily, some of it stinketh. But we can never say that those who produce or consume bad media are bad. We must completely and permanently dissociate the sin and the sinner. This leads us to a strong statement - I and that sinner over there are brothers. Our positions are interchangeable - a human "I" for a human "I."

We cannot assume that simply because we were brought up Catholic, because we went to Catholic schools, because we were altar boys, or even because we go to Mass and pray the rosary daily, that we are better than anyone else. Each and every one of these very good things are gifts from God, and yet none of them make us good people. To use the word "good" in the moral sense to describe a person cannot follow - how can we use an adjective which qualifies a moral act as right or wrong be applied to a human being - a moral actor? We cannot argue that a person who tends to do good things is good or that a person who does bad things is bad. Either of these people is capable of turning towards or away from God in each individual moment. Granted, a person may be virtuous, which would mean only that he tends to do the good, not that he himself is good. We are what God has given us, no more no less. And He called us all "good" after our creation - good in the sense that each of us has the capacity to become what He intended us to be, good in the sense that we each have the blessing of existence, and good in the sense that we can strive to worship Him in every moment, with every choice, and with every breath.

Therefore, any person who calls himself "good," calls another "bad," or makes a distinction between the "Catholic, conservative, homeschooling group" and the "filth-watching, immoral, publicschooling group" is a pharisee. Christ condemned all such people, so how can we avoid the fate of pride? The only means to salvation is through personal contact - with those around us, even those with tattoos, nose rings, and foul language; and with Christ.

More on "Freedom."

2010-06-24T17:30:00.003-04:00

I obviously have this problem with excess verbiage.

"Freedom" is a word, ladies and gentlemen. Each and every word conveys a specific and unadulterated meaning before it is rent asunder by our "uncontrollable emotionality" as Ambrose has so aptly put it. So, here's a definition of "freedom" that I've come up with that I hope embodies the polar opposite of our insatiable lust:

"Freedom in man is the ability to perform any action whatsoever that does not prohibit the action of another."

Allow me to advertise that I want to perfect this definition in one way or another and would like to hear criticism of it.

Hear me out, though: assume that I am free to do whatever I want. No, a step further: everyone is free to do I whatever they want. So, since I'm free to do whatever I want and that is my assumed definition of freedom, I shall hypothetically rob a bank at gunpoint, produce seven casualties and run off with $13 million dollars. Enjoying freedom, yet? Now, by my assumed definition of "freedom," everyone can do whatever they want. However, I prevented anyone from making any move by holding them at gunpoint while in the bank, restricted and depleted the funds of a number of people, and ended the mortal lives of seven others, all while enjoying my own good freedom.

As extreme as this example is, it illustrates a point. If everyone has a right (yes, "right" is new, just assume it from the beginning!) to their freedom, have I not just thoroughly restricted those rights? Isn't freedom self-defeating if, in doing what I want, others do not do what they want?

American freedom: the type of freedom exhibited in the United States of America where some people with a lot of money and power get to do whatever they want, and everyone else does what they say.

Joke...that's a joke. The sarcastic inspecificity will break the sides and abdominals off any and all readers. [end disclaimer]

So, I have established what freedom isn't. That being, "everyone does whatever they want" because this definition is self-contradictory. Note the extremes in that sentence, though. So, there are some alternate versions that must be true (all following true syllogistical form, for those paying attention):

Some people do whatever they want.
Everyone does some of what they want.
No people do nothing they want.

Brain dump completely. Possibly more later.

~Samuel

Freedom from religion

2010-06-10T05:47:00.004-04:00

In America, we claim to have "freedom of religion." This term was inserted into the bill of rights so that the government could not force us to go to a specific religious ceremony, granting man the "freedom" to choose his own "religion." The term, however, is detrimental. Freedom of religion implies freedom from religion, or, in other words, the ability ot choose not to go to church at all, if we do not want to. If we are truly free to choose whatever religion we think right, then why do we so seldom wish to go to church whatsoever? We should be free to want to attend any parish we should choose. And yet, we find ourselves more and more desiring to attend any sort of religious ceremony less and less. This is the result of an abusive definition of the word freedom.

Freedom cannot mean "doing whatever I want whenever I want." This concept of free will denies any sort of purpose to our existence, and, furthermore, fails to reflect reality. If the ability to choose as we see fit based on our passions is free will, then why do we form habits, especially harmful habits? For example - I can begin an activity such as pornography, tobacco, alcohol, or any other addictive substance freely. And yet, as this activity continues, my desire for it increases, and the strength of my will to oppose it decreases. Therefore, this "free choice of will" necessarily leads to the inability to make such a "free choice of will." Our free choices become less and less free, and any attempts to justify our actions become merely psuedo-rational statements slavishly serving the passions in their lust.

This haunting realization about freedom applies similarly to religion. If "freedom of religion" means that I can choose whatever religion I want, without any recourse to something objective outside of myself, then my religion will be based upon my internal passions. If religion means that I pick a religion to suit myself, then, ever increasingly, religion will be the outward expression of my incontrolable desires, and my religious nature will be degraded into an apathetic sludge of emotion. I will want God when I feel like I need God, causing true contact with the divine, for which human beings exist in the first place, to be impossible. I become incapable of any transcendence, locking myself securely into a world doomed for destruction, gradually losing all hope or sense of purpose. I lose my soul.

Does this sound alarmist? Extremist? A biased attack upon your freedoms from a religious bigot? If you have an intrinsic right to religious freedom, then I am not capable of harming your inalienable ability to disbelieve. But can you believe at all? If you truly are free to believe whatever you want - prove it. Believe in God. You will find that no amount of intellectual effort, no manufactured temperament of soul, and no extremes of grovelling before an altar only to prove your point will produce true faith. Unless something moves you from outside, you are completely unable to help yourself. May God bring us all to faith and salvation.

Ambrose

Slight Speculation...

2010-05-11T14:45:00.004-04:00

A small poke at evolution.

I am informed that a large portion of Punctuated Equilibrium is filling niches. Evolutionary "niches" is something I am unsure as to the definition of, and in this I wonder if it is "something that is evolutionary necessary" or "possible by evolution" or even "just not there yet," albeit the latter two are the same if not for the final being funny.

Using all those neo-darwinist terms we all love so much, assuming "man" fills a niche, the purpose of filling a niche is parallel or equal with the purpose/nature of nature (rofl), would it not man defy his evolutionary "niche" by destroying nature with all our harmful greenhouse gases?

This argument is horribly incomplete, but I did want to jot down the gist in a public section before I forget. My number of post drafts doth increase by the week.

Yet it would be furthered to include "rationality" in this argument, in that our rationality furthers our destruction and by extension furthering our destruction of nature, which itself defies the nature of our evolutionary "niche," which defies our parallelism with nature.

However, Neo-Darwinists would have us believe we lack any form of "rationality" or synonymously "free will" (not as the Catholic definition being meant by "synonymous), so that doesn't work so well, what with me trying to follow their euphemisms.

Heh, not quite as preposterous on paper as it was in throught, but still funny to look at.

~Samuel

The Angelus - An Exegesis

2010-03-25T06:00:00.000-04:00

I love that word. Exegesis. Makes me think of a superhero with a beard and a big "J" on his muscley chest. "ExeJESUS! AWAY!"

ANYWAY.

I figured today would be a good day to post this, considering it is the feast of the Anunciation.

The Angelus is a traditional prayer which focuses on a set of three responses, each followed by a Hail Mary. It reenacts the Annunciation, in which the archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary, revealing to her God's plan (or economy) of salvation for the whole world - that she, Mary, daughter of Joachim and Anne, a virgin, would conceive in her womb, and give birth to, the divine Son of God. The responses are as follows: Latin (English Translation commonly recited at six, noon, and six)

V. Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariæ. (The angel of the Lord declared unto Mary)
R. Et concepit de Spiritu Sancto. (And she conceived by the Holy Spirit)

V. Ecce Ancilla Domini. (Behold the handmaid of the Lord)
R. Fiat mihi secundum Verbum tuum. (Let it be done to me according to thy word)

V. Et Verbum caro factum est. (And the Word was made flesh)
R. Et habitavit in nobis (And dwelt among us)

Now. To exegete.

This prayer is a Scripture passage, and all of Scripture can be understood four ways: literally(what is actually written), analogically (how it relates to the rest of Scripture), morally (how it relates to our lives), and anagogically (how it relates to the end times). Now, I like to focus on the moral, because it is most pertinent to my existence. So what can I, a male college student, who was never immaculately conceived, have not received any glorious messages from archangels, will never conceive a child within me, and will never be related by blood to the Son of God, learn from this?

Another translation of the first line is "The angel spoke God's message to Mary." All of us, through catechesis, through reading on our own, through prayer, and even through contact with nature around us, receive God's revelation. All of revelation is one Word - Christ, the divine Word (CCC p. 65). Therefore, all of us have received Christ. Furthermore, as baptized Christians, we "have put on Christ." In our relationship with God, we are receptive (or, in a sense, female). We have two options: we can receive this Word willingly and "bear fruit" (Jn 15:4), or we can reject this Word, rejecting also the divine life that Christ gives to all.

We then, with Mary, say "Behold the handmaid (= servant) of the Lord, let it be done unto me according to thy Word." To live in Christ is to serve Him - having created us, he knows what is good for us, and to follow his laws is our delight (Psalm 118:35). In serving God, Mary conceives. This is important - in the act of service God is made manifest in her. "The Word became flesh" in Mary's act of service. Similarly, "the Word becomes flesh" in us as He is manifested to others through our service. "They will know we are Christians by our love," right? To show Christianity to others (to catechize) is to reveal the person of Jesus Christ to others. We are His body - because He lives in us, and we make Him manifest to others through our service, can we say that we are the Word made flesh in our present day? It sounds almost heretical to equate ourselves with the Son of God, but let us not forget his mission - to make us partakers in His divine nature (CCC p. 460). When Christ came down from heaven to take on our humanity, He raised humanity up into His divinity. This is not something that happens only in heaven after we die - Christ redeems us now. We are Christ's body now, on earth, with the divine mission to bring Him to all people. The Word is made flesh, every day, in our efforts to bring the world to Him.

So, on the solemnity of the Annunciation, let us pray that the Word of God may be spoken to all by our actions and tongues, that we may truly be the body of Christ.

~Ambrose

Best part of running a blog:

2010-03-22T19:43:00.004-04:00

Recanting. Guess what: I take it all back. Well, not all of it. Just THIS post. Aristotle has a way of convincing people, I guess... I suggest all of you read the Politics. Very worth while.

A man naturally finds a woman, and "the two become one flesh" (coughhackspluttercough) and kids come out. A family. Naturally. Therefore, it is at least natural to man that he exist in a family. Further, Little House on the Prairie families need to work almost twenty-four hours a day in order to subsist on the fruits (or vegetables) of their labor, leaving no time for leisure, which, as Joseph Pieper points out in Leisure, the Basis of Culture, is the thing which defines a man. Our job - our financial output - our productivity - is not the thing which defines us and gives us purpose as human beings. Big surprise. In fact, our true meaning for existence is union with God - also known as contemplation or prayer. Now, of course, productivity is necessary for life, but caring for half of us - just our bodies, not our souls - cannot fulfill us as human beings, body and soul. Therefore, families join together - again naturally - into communities in order to secure the good of the entire human being - body and soul. These communities require laws for their own good and the good of every individual, and therefore these laws are natural ("All things have a nature, and flourish only in accordance with that nature." Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics). As a result, man is social (or, in other words, exists and participates in a political environment) naturally.

Aristotle FTW.

~Ambrose

Another rant?

2010-03-22T08:23:00.002-04:00

...on Health Care? Oh, God save us all! *fire rains down from the heavens*

But, yeah, it's fun to talk on controversial issues. Regardless, though, I'm really only goaded on to action because somebody on an e-mail list I am a part of decided to grab for attention and make a drama moment by saying he congratulated Obama on passing health care. Now, normally I don't want to make a fallacy of relevance, but it would also be unfair to make the fallacy of sweeping generalization, wouldn't it?

This member of the list and some/most/many/a few/[ambiguous amount] of the members supporting him (that I know of -- it's a big number, so I won't make the fallacy of hasty generalization -- refer to ambiguous list of ambiguous amounts of ultimate ambiguity (of spamming the word "ambiguous" and all its known forms!)) are on some form of governmental support (wellfare, extended unemployment, blah, blah, blah...). Now, I could attack his actual argument, but that's no fun since I have so many talk show hosts whom I can cite for that, and that just makes me sound like a wacko conformist (refer to previous post). But let me make a non-argument...

...the people that congratulated Obama were already relying on government support.

Just a thought, I swear!

Not to sound like Glenn Beck, but that's just really, really weird, izzenit? Okay, now back to something that sounds remotely intelligent.

I really want to mention that almost every argument I hear from everybody (quite frequently including myself, most regretably) is based around [dramatic music] emotion. Interesting, huh? Yah i kno, rite? Roflololol soisoi (Ambrose will get that). Okay, but seriously now! In spite of the fact that universal rules are nigh-on impossible to make, it is really quite universal (moreso than most!) that emotional arguments that rely on the emotions for their strength are logically fallacious. Granted that in this day and age the one who wins is the one who talks loudest and longest...that aside!

Emotions are human.
Humans are flawed.
Emotions are flawed.

Syllogistical form -- expanding upon the first statement, I say emotions are "human" because there is the undeniable fact that certain emotions are entirley characteristic of human beings as well as the expression of them.

Okay, so I'm not increidbly logically superior, am I? Hypocritical as I am, I do hope my point is across. I also hope I brightened up your day with my pseudo-witty sarcasm.

~Samuel

Because Barney Told Me So!

2010-03-09T12:14:00.000-05:00

I swear, that song will never be entirely out of my head. "You are special! special! Everyone is special!" but how, it's nice to know now and again that brilliant, poetic individuals are looking out for us.

In reading Dante's Divine Comedy, I come across a line very early on in Canto III of the Inferno a line that struck me as quite contrary to what this brainwashing public school I'm in right now informs me. I quote:

"They're mingled with that caitiff crew
Who against God rebelled not, nor to Him
Were faithful, but to self alone were true;"

Currently, Virgil is leading Dante' through a sort of limbo. A place neither heaven nor hell (nor purgatory, for that matter). Quite obviously from description and incredibly undesirable position to be in (naked and chased by swarms of hornets? Not my idea of a dream vacation!). The Gate of Hell, I believe it's called. Correct me if I'm wrong, though.

The part I'd really like to focus on is at the very end of that quote: "but to self alone were true;" This strikes me as ridiculously relevant in this day and age. Ridiculously relevant because...well, because it's ridiculous! I personally love debating man's position as a social animal and forming societies, blah, blah blah. Interesting post Ambrose made down there, however for the sake of this argument the basic unit lies more relevantly with the individual. I won't argue with Barney. Everyone is special. But it's the way the idea is applied that irks me.

For some odd reason, the system would have me believe that I am free to express myself in whatever special way possible I could ever conjure from the most deeply misconstrued portions of my evilly-inclined, twisted heart. They call it self-expression, or whatever. The ambiguity could cause intenstinal convulsions. Regardless, if everyone is special and everyone expresses themselves "specially," then there is no such thing as "group expression," or in short, "cooperation." No, I am totally not committing the fallacy of bifurcation here.

Ultimately, though, this goes back to my fun little pet peeve of conforming. Above case in point: if we are all special, we are not collectively special. Society relies on a certain amount of conformity. With authorities, with each other, and with God. Obviously it would take quite a few tomes and college dissertations to explain all those, so I'll allow them to be taken for granted. If society is non-conformative and insubordinate, it will both overthrow authority and errode equal relations. This, friends, relatives and distant relations, is why I'm always crazy about being a societal conformist. Not with trends, but in the best interest of society.

So let's all be some wacko conformists, okay? :D

~Samuel

Tower...!

2010-02-26T07:36:00.003-05:00

I swear, if I ever see that Redemption card again, I'll tear it to shreds.

But...hey! Look! An update! (crowd: omg!)

Was thinking on the seemingly eternal bus ride this morning on how to analogize the relationship between faith and reason. What did I get? A tower.

As faith flourishes it grows taller and grander in heavenly glory, taller as it grows closer to God and grander, like I said, in heavenly glory. However, no matter how tall or grand a tower may be, if it does not reach directly to heaven it is doomed to come crashing down at the onslaught of the storm. Why?

Heresy first: we can know God. This is, of course, not true. God is a mystical, all-powerful deity who created us without the ability to know God for we would [insert inspirational quote about seeing God here]. This makes perfect sense. And be aware, God's works are more often embodied in the spiritual than through the corporal, and the devil works on us in corporal ways. Makes sense, right? That's good.

Truth second: we can know of God. That's a vital difference. Granted, our God is a personal God as well as a universal God. I hope that wasn't a heresy just because that's my take. Why? Glad you asked.

We know of God because His existence is proven in His creation. Grounded in the depths of the earth where they'd like to say is proof of evolution is the undeniable proof of the fact that our creator is God Himself. No, not literally, I just thought that sounded epic and hopefully you get the idea.

Blind faith is foundationless. And no matter how glorified blind faith is, it is still blind, and cannot see the twists and turns in the narrow road to heaven. Furthermore, it is blind to other people, and though it may possess great virtue it will never cease to frustrate, for no person on this planet will understand the nature of groundless belief (unless, of course, it involves sexual intercourse...heh).

And so the foundation of reason gives rise to the most glorious and sturdy towers. The more grounded the reason, the deeper the foundation, and the greater the storms it will outlast. Termites and infestations will occur, but can do no harm to the reality that proof of God lays about us in as many quantities as there are atoms in the observable universe (10^72, I think). No, I don't have to prove myself, because now I'm speaking to those who believe, so atheists and go and brood for a while if they happen to read this. I'm happy to know I inflamed them.

Anyways, hurray, probably an incomplete analogy, too. But at least it sounds cool...right?

~Samuel

Hey, this thing maybe ought to be updated

2010-02-08T20:57:00.003-05:00

It's a pity that I don't have much time, and the time I do have I spend doing something else. This isn't exactly top of my mind. Maybe it should be. I have two philosophy courses, and spend two or three hours a day in socratic dialogue. Whatever.

Just a quick note then, today, about man and society. Again.

The human person (individual) necessarily comes before society and its laws, because the society itself would not exist without the individual person. Therefore, it is not just unjust for the societal order to wrong an individual, it is beyond the authority of the state and an intrinsic disorder. This is, perhaps, the basic principal of my political theory. The human person's rights always trump those of the state.

Another way to state this is to look at the end, or final cause of the state. It is ordered for the good of the individuals that live under its care. Not groups of people, but individuals. Not minorities, not lobbyists, not even majorities. The individual person. In fact, every individual, but not as a group - as individuals. You might call this individualism. I just call it common sense.

The logical implication of this is that any law which does wrong to the individual is unjust, and, as Thomas Aquinas would say, "no law at all." Therefore, there can be no enforcement behind it. The individual still should have the option as if the law did not exist. An example would be a person who has absolutely no money, no access to charity (say a traveling beggar in the middle of the country). It would be wrong for the state to punish him for taking food to prevent him from starving, because he has the natural right to do so. The government does have the right to punish larcenists, but each human being has the natural right to self preservation, which supercedes civil law. If the government seeks to punish him, it oversteps its bounds.

A small post. I'll see if I can dump my ideas here more often. This is a good philosophical outlet.

~Ambrose

A theological reason for contraception's immorality

2009-08-10T20:28:00.000-04:00

THREE CHEERS FOR ACTIVITY!!!

Anyway.

This post is almost entirely inspired by a tape recording of a talk given by Christopher West. The title is "A weed in the garden of Eden: A hypothesis on Original Sin." I was unable to find a transcript of this talk, but you can find it as a bonus in his tape series "A Crash Course in Theology of the Body," which can be obtained HERE for $10. I highly recommend everything that Christopher West has produced.

This is a theological "proof" of why contraception is wrong. I'll start with some very basic principles and quotes, and move on toward my conclusion.

First, basic Baltimor Catechism principles.

God is Love, and Life. He's a bunch of other things too, but He is definitely these two.

The Trinity is the ultimate, highest, and most central mystery in Christianity.

Satan's creed can be summarized as "I will not serve."

God created us to know, love, and serve Him.

And maybe others, I'll bring them up as I go along. Those are the most important ones.

So first, it is important in this proof to understand Satan's motives, as much as we can. We know that Satan "would not serve", or that his sin was of pride. More specifically, Satan fell because he knew that God would divinize human beings, leading even angels to serve us, through the Incarnation. Because spiritual beings are higher than physical beings, and angels are certainly greater in power than we are, this pride can sort of be understood. Therefore, Satan wishes to cease us from being divinized - he wants to stop, hinder, and undo the Incarnation.

He does this by keeping us from fulfilling our purpose as human beings - to know, love, and serve God. Our purpose, however, can be stated many different ways. Genesis puts it clearly. "God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply..." (Genesis 1:27-28). God made us in His image - we are His image, or we are (or are meant to be) symbols of Him. We are meant to actively symbolize our Creator. As Male and Female, we are built with the purpose of symbolizing the deepest mysteries of our Creator in our whole being - body and spirit. Pope John Paul II says that "The body, in fact, and it alone is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and divine. It was created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery [of God]...and thus to be a sign of it." (A talk given February 20, 1980). Since God intended us to be a symbol of Himself, the devil wishes to keep us from being this symbol - or, to keep us from being "in the image and likeness of God."

Any sin is an anti-sign. Instead of using our bodies to signify God, we signify something else. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says "...every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible is intrinsically evil..." (CCC 2370). What this paragraph does not explain, however, is why this act is evil. I shall attempt to do so.

The central mystery of the Christian faith is the Trinity. From the Trinity we all proceed and toward the Trinity we are headed. Because our bodies "make visible what is invisible: the spiritual and divine," our bodies symbolize the Trinity especially. However, we can look closer at Genesis to reveal that a certain part of our bodies, more than any other, symbolize the Trinity. Directly after saying in God's image, we have "Male and Female He created them." This leads me to believe that part of our image and likeness is our masculinity and femininity, and all the comes with it. In other words, our sexuality is both a symbol of the Most Holy Trinity and part of our being in the image and likeness of God. This is not a radical statement - Church fathers, theologians, and popes have been saying this for the whole 2,000 years the Church has been around. Allow me to give a very brief overview of how the nuptual union is a symbol of the Trinity.

The Father and the Son exchange love between each other so strong and so perfect that this love is actually the third person of the Trinity - the Holy Spirit (Remember God is Love?) The Husband and Wife, in their love for each other, produce a third person - their child.

The names Father and Son are not an accident. "I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, eternally begotten of the Father" (Nicene Creed).¹ To beget means "(esp. of a male parent) to procreate or generate (offspring)." (dictionary.com). The human father certainly begets his child.

Because the mystery is infinite, and because the nuptial union is the sign of it, we can conclude that this is a sign of infinite depth. I cannot possibly convey all of the ways in which the nuptial union signifies the Trinity. Those two, however, are the most important in my argument now. Furthermore, because the Trinity is the centralmost mystery, the nuptiual union is (at least) a very important sign, or an extremely important way in which we fulfill our purpose as human beings.

Now, back to Satan. What does he want? He wants to change the symbol (Greek Symboline - bring together, unite) into an anti-symbol, the diabolical (Greek Diaboline - to seperate). He wants to turn the symbol on its head. Suppose the nuptial union is intentionally sterilized (an intended 0% chance of pregnancy). What happens? Translated into what it symbolizes, the "perfect" love of Father and Son is no longer fruitful, and there is no Trinity. The love is no longer perfect, and no longer a Person. In effect, contraception turns us into this anti-sign, this diabolical tool which goes against our very nature as human beings.

Furthermore, if the human father does not beget, then in the symbol, God the Father is sterile, and the Son is not "eternally begotten" - the Incarnation does not happen. That, if you remember, is Satan's ultimate goal. So not only does contraception go against our nature as human beings (and, consequently, against God's plan - the definition of an immoral act), it is exactly what Satan wants. Clearly contraception is a grave evil. Christopher West, in the talk referenced above, hypothesizes that an intentionally sterilized act of intercourse might even be what the original sin was.

So, there you have it. As concrete of a reason why contraception is immoral.

~Ambrose

Notes:
1. The Latin is even more clear, giving "natum" (birthed).

Finished refurbishing blog

2009-08-09T14:03:00.001-04:00

So, after the split (and a request from The Cobbler to use a non-anachronistic name) I renamed the blog, changed the color scheme, got new quotes for the top and bottom, and added my brother as a blog-mate.

Both quotes are from songs. I highly recommend both bands - good music, and good lyrics.

The name of the blog comes from a habit that I and my brother share of adding ".5 plus or minus the square root of pi" to whatever number, for any reason. For instance, instead of welcoming 7 guests, we welcome 7.5 plus or minus the square root of pi guests. Just something random.

Well, I think that color of the blog, as well as its flavor when read, have changed, but hopefully it's the same at heart - honest inquiry from an honestly Catholic standpoint. I hope you enjoy.

Hereby I Introduce Myself...

2009-07-31T10:51:00.003-04:00

'Ello! ...I am Lindsey Lohan!

No. Heck...no. But at least I am the first one to notice that Philosophy was not meant to be entirely serious. I find that when someone tells me they're right in a blatant, beat-down, you're-always-wrong way it gets annoying. [insert comedy and zeekyboogydoog here] ...you get the idea. Otherwise, I'm rather serious. Just don't expect it all to be lead and powder.

Around the interblag I go by the name Samuel Ignes Fox, hence a furry and a philospher. Most of my time is spent on a bike saddle, doing schoolwork, playing and owning at Call of Duty: World at War on XBLive, and listening to amazing music while simultaneously pondering the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.

Most of my philosophical views point toward the more pressing and important questions that philosophy itself was made upon: who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? It seemed largely to me that modern philosophical views have gone in the opposite direction.

For the moment as I type this I am at Magdalen College in New Hampshire, checkin' the place out. I may post someting of worth next Tuesday or Friday before I get into my American Government class, but it all depends. I hope to begin a regular posting soon.

~Samuel Ignes Fox

Notice V2.0

2009-07-01T14:16:00.003-04:00

The Three Anachronisms have split, with what seems no hope of ever reuniting. The main cause of this split was a problem in relationships. From here on out, this blog will be run by myself and my brother, Sam Ignes. I still encourage you to read the (seperate) blogs of my former compatriots, they can be found here:

http://aeviternity.blogspot.com/
http://syzygyofworlds.blogspot.com/

I will also leave all of their old work here, since it would be a shame to banish such great writing into the realm of forgotten data.

~Ambrose

A Christian Response...

2009-06-02T12:14:00.003-04:00

...to the killing of an abortionist: May the Lord grant mercy.

Well worth reading every sentence of.

"Spread a little chaos..."

2009-05-20T22:37:00.002-04:00

Perhaps one of the best quotes from The Dark Knight, this line also represents a fundamental flaw in modern thinking. The Joker may be able to rip people's lives apart, but he cannot help being modern, and he cannot help being wrong.

Chaos is, by definition, the antithesis of order. If something isn't ordered, it's chaotic, and to get rid of chaos, one must order. Or, conversely, if one wants to disrupt order, one must break up chaos. This would be the modern definition, no?

Well, then, it would seem that the Joker is right. Killing people and destroying the social order spreads chaos. In a social sense, he is right. But, human beings are defined by far more than society. We existed before it did, anyway. What order preceeds societal order, and even self-regulated mental order? Natural order, of course.

The natural tendency of all things is toward destruction. This is a scientific property called entropy. In chemistry, this means that if the end result of a reaction is more chaotic than the beginning, it will happen. We can see the effects of this around us - cracks in the sidewalk, chips in the paint, dirt on the floor. When we drop a glass bottle - in other words, cease ordering it, it naturally shatters and breaks into fragments. In other words, disorder is the natural state of things.

Before you think I'm heretical, notice I say natural state of things, not supernatural. Obviously, God, being order, is not naturally disorder. I'm talking about the natural right now. In the beginning, darkness covered the void. Then God said "let there be light," and light was made. God ordered everything in the beginning, and the fall caused it to start breaking down from there.

Anyway, back to the main point. Disorder is the natural tendency of all things. A History Channel show, "Life After People," exhibits this perfectly. The producers of the show break down exactly how, after people die out, our creations and our work will fall apart and be ruined. The natural tendency toward disorder will win out, despite our intentions.

Thus, we can conclude that, as Chesterton would say, order is really the thing to be wondered at, not disorder. A glass shattering is not nearly so beautiful as the glass itself. The fact that man can extract minerals from the billions which abound in nature and make himself a vessel for the drinks he brings out of nature with the sweat of his brow is far more beatiful than cruel nature reclaiming her own few pieces of shattered glass. The fact that man can take such a disordered mob and form out of it cities, and societies, and human relations is more than just putting things in their place - it's a miracle.

Thus, we come back to the Joker. If the natural tendency of things is chaos and disorder, isn't it far more chaotic for us to break this natural tendency and order things? Isn't one block set atop another far more revolutionary than toppling a building, given that the building will topple of its own accord in a few years? Isn't the giving of one penny to a poor boy far more revolutionary than shooting him, given that he'll be dead of his own accord in a few years? Isn't building a society that functions and thrives more revolutionary than breaking one down, given that we'll all be dead in a few years anyway? So spread a little chaos - love a little.

What a wonderful new administration we have!

2009-03-27T12:03:00.004-04:00

I apologize. I was in a bit of a bad mood when I first posted this. I've added a note at the bottom, please read it.

News story at TheVoiceMagazine.com

Let's have three cheers for unconstitutional BS! For crying out loud, if you want to just ignore the entire sentiment, spirit, and basis of our whole society, go ahead and burn the constitution, exterminate all dissenters, and move on with your communist superstate. This bill had better get 100% opposition from every person who considers themselves american and from everyone who believes in simply following the laws we have in place.

How long has the new administration been in office? Two months? This is one of their first acts as the leaders of our country. Imagine how bad this can get if this is one of the first things they do. Goodbye tax exemption.

Granted, some of you may not agree with my religious sentiments, but at the very least you can understand that the government has no right to take away my right to attend mass every sunday if I want to. I thought America was created so that people didn't have to move somewhere else in order to be Christian. Wasn't that the whole reason that the pilgrims came here in the first place? What happened?

I can see some of the arguments that could be raised in favor of this clause in the bill. By accepting federal money, the young people become employees, or at least representatives, of the state, and as such the state's policy of no-established-religion applies to them. This statement is absolutely true, and if the bill stated that all recipients of federal loans had to become Christian, Buddhist, or Muslim I would very much oppose it. However, this employment, or representation, does not remove the person's right to free exercise, the very next clause in the first ammendment. Senators can still attend Mass (even if they ought to be excommunicated). As individual representatives of the youth of the United States, the ideal of "freedom to exercize one's own religion" ought to apply to them threefold, not be revoked. No logic whatsoever can possibly support this.

I, as a devoted patriot and loyal American, am forced to oppose this bill because it destroys the very union which the constitution created. The ideals, the morals, and the people who make up this nation cannot be so blindly and malignantly cast aside. Give me this liberty, or give me emmigration to some other country where I can practice my American ideals.

~Ambrose

This is the text of the bill as given in the Library of Congress website, showing that I'm not making this up. The version of the bill linked is the one that will be voted on in the senate.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Alright, so instead of first rationally reading the senate bill, I posted. After a bit of discussion with my friends around campus, I've rethought a bit, and feel like I was succombing to the alarmism which I warned against in my previous post. I've looked at the text of the bill again.

HR 1388 Sec 132A
Prohibited Activities- An approved national service position under this subtitle may not be used for the following activities:

This means that officially sanctioned activities. Or, in other words, things that you would do for public service. Thus, the bill itself does not directly prohibit any activites, it just defines what kinds of public service you can do.

The list quoted in the article was from this section, so while no public service could build churches, give religious instruction, or street preaching, the individual members of public service, in their free time, are not prohibited from doing any of the above, or attending church.

I'm sorry for any misunderstanding.

Acting, art, and immitation.

2009-03-18T15:36:00.002-04:00

After coming out of a theater, we'll often say "that was an awesome movie", or "that movie was awful!" or something similar. We make a judgement on these movies based on some idea of good or bad, but how can we truly discuss the worth of a movie - what standard is there to hold a film up to?

First, we have to understand movies as an art form, and what an art is. An art is to "see something that is good/true, and to portray it." (paraphrasing my English/Art teacher). Two things are necessary in creating something that is good art - first to see something that is true. You can't draw lines about nothing, even if it is good-looking. You have to see something for it to be art. Secondly, you have to portray it through a medium, and portray it well. No matter how well I see the true in my head, if the clay I'm sculpting comes out to a lump, it isn't art.

So, with that in mind, and knowing that films are an artform, and should be judged that, here are some criteria for calling films (and plays) "good" or "bad".

1. Is it true? Is there some truth behind what is shown on screen, or is a mere excitement drawn from flashing explosions and physically impossible fight scenes hooking our attention and adrenaline? For example, the movie Valkyrie displayed very little in the way of explosions and fight scenes. There was one brief shoot out, at the end, and few explosions. It had no sex scenes, one kiss. In short, it had very little in the way of visually and physically attracting the viewer. However, the truth it contained - the statement it made about human nature, right and wrong, and the German people (view my post on it earlier - LINK) - gave it more value as a movie.

2. Visual presentation. Does it look good? Part of the art is the portrayal. It could have the most wonderful truth behind it, but if the movie itself looks awful, with horrid acting, CGI effects that look like they're from the twenties, and a soundtrack that drives you crazy, then no one could possibly say it is a work of art.

A movie (or play) needs both of these elements in order for it to be good. Therefore, a good movie will portray truth, and at the same time look good. Judging by only one element, though is deceiving yourself.

~Ambrose

A Note of Respect

2009-03-17T20:54:00.006-04:00

I've recently blogged about the possibility of having to replace and/or secede from the existing government of the US. A while before that in a post on preparing for possible civil unrest I linked to a spectacular blog by the title of the Yeoman Farmer. Today I noticed a post there that I'd like to echo in regard to my positions political and societal.

The Yeoman Farmer makes note of a very good rule of thumb concerning troublesome laws: "if you don't like the rules in your state or your country, advocate for and work to change them --- but don't flaunt and break them unless you're being asked to do something immoral or unconscionable." I'd heartily agree, and as I do write from time to time about the need for a government better on levels that might be best achieved with a new Constitution I wish to add something on top of that.

Don't harm your fellow man to try to bring about more justice, freedom, or anything else good. It just doesn't work that way. On a more practical level, as noted in one of my recent posts, it is treason against the US to make war on it/them, so you lose a certain amount of your freedom to make your change if you go about it that way. On a purely moral level, it is absurd to claim you are protecting the good of man by hurting him. That's not to say that the new system's help to society must be flawless or it invalidates itself: anything better than the existing system will do in that respect; but you cannot free people by giving them a new government by force, nor make people safe by needless physical harm

I guess what I'm saying is, if I ever sound like a revolutionary, keep in mind both that I'm also a bit of a pacifist who would not approve of violent revolution unless the tyrant to be removed was directly inflicting worse violence (and directly inflicting does not mean merely implementing programs that have serious adverse consequences), and that I don't approve of disobeying the law when the law still applicably exists.

Of "Ghetto" and Monasteries

2009-03-17T15:00:00.000-04:00

The modern faithful Catholic has a very good and healthy concern for being able to live in the world even while being not of the world. It's been emphasized extensively in recent Papal documents and backed up just as extensively with references to the Church's mission in the world. The reason is simple: we're supposed to make disciples of all nations, and it's awfully hard to do that while refusing to stray out of our own little "bubble".

I don't want to protest that there's anything wrong with this in itself, but I feel the need to defend from it something that it was never meant to be against.

Because of the corruption in the world (which I will be among the first to say hasn't destroyed everything good out there if you happen to bring up the right topic -- say, videogames) and the sheer magnitude of great traditions of the west and Catholicism, there's also a strong tendency for faithful Catholics trying to preserve these traditions to find it difficult to live in the world in any more than a minimal way. However, when we talk about this or if our fellow Catholics start to notice it they often remind us that we have to live in the world and engage with it or whatever the phrase is.

As for the Church on the whole, they're right. In fact, they're right to remind us of that as a general principle. What concerns me is I never hear about the case or reason where/why there could be an exception -- and a fairly major exception unless I'm mistaken.

Before I get to this exception, let me dissuade a probable objection: contrary to popular belief, our modern situation is not terribly different from that of ancient Rome, anyone who actually reads the ancients (I don't care which ancients, Greeks, Romans, Babylonians, anyone) can tell humanity hasn't changed, and we're more different from the Romans technologically than societally/morally, so don't waste your breath/fingerstrength telling me that it's not the same because times have changed.

You've probably figured out from that that I'm about to pull some example out of history. If so, you're right.

Back in the days when Rome was burning down it was the monasteries that preserved learning while the Christian evangelists worked with the cultural mess of the remnants of fallen Rome and the barbarians (whether the barbarians were any better at the time is not a debate I'll get into here). The Church on the whole was on a massive mission to convert the pagans, and her teachings about good led them to salvage both much of Rome that would have been obliterated as well and many an aspect of barbarian culture (come on, you have to admit the Germans are not like the romance-ized French, although that's a poor example as it's two modern cultures). If you think the Catholics who are working to make use of film and internet today are engaging the world, you haven't seen anything compared to the post-Rome age. Nonetheless, a lot of the saving of culture and thought and holiness could not have been done if many communities of Christians hadn't built themselves refuges to fall back on.

I'm inclined to think, therefor, that it's not necessarily a failure for some of us to focus less on being out there as a sign in the world and more on perfecting the sign. There have always been Christians who focused on that, and they've always been a great source of aid and strength to the Christians who go out into the world. The trick is merely keeping the two in contact so that they can provide that aid.

With that said, is there some real concern that these "ghetto-ized" Christians may not provide as much good advice for evangelizing because they aren't as aware of what the real objections in the world are? There can be. I don't think that invalidates it though, for the simple reason that it didn't stop the monasteries of the post-Roman age from preserving so much good. I also am not too concerned about it because in our modern world there are degrees between monastery and being totally immersed in the world. I think having both is an ideal to strive for, so long as we also strive to keep the two from being seperated.

So, I don't think it's necessarily wrong of parents to shelter their families to some extent or another, or for me to wonder whether, with the global economy arguably about to go down in flames, the price of islands might get low enough for us to buy one, for the sake of future generations.

A Political File on Bizarrity

2009-03-16T14:09:00.002-04:00

Preamble: Here are three examples of why I hate politics.

Item 1: recent oddities in the embryonic stem cell issue. Apparently there's an appearance of President Obama undoing his own work of freeing up legal funding and whatnot for it. However, there are claims that President Clinton reinterpreted the offending restriction. Never mind my question, since when is the executive branch an interpreter. The confusion then passes from "Did President Obama read what he was signing?" to "Does anyone truly know what the law is?" Even if our leaders up there have decided what it will mean as far as they're concerned, how are the rest of us supposed to know?

Bridge: The founding fathers made some deal of fuss over the need for citizens to know what their government is doing. Part of it was so that the government couldn't get away with becoming a tyranny. Part of it was simply because laws that aren't known are morally indistinguishable from arbitrary acts. Whatever the purpose, I think it is criminal to steal my valuable time by requiring that I do extensive research simply to know what my government has really done, and between this and the preceding arguments of the founding fathers I'm inclined to believe that the government invalidates its authority when it makes things muddled like this.

Item 2: The creators of our government had certain ideas about certain things making the government invalid and perfectly open to being replaced. They even put in the Constitution a limitation on the definition of treason that was restricted to actually making war on or aiding enemies of the United States, nothing whatsoever about peacefully seeking to replace the government or secede from it. Yet tell someone that secession may be a valid solution to the problem of our government wrecking its own function and authority with muddles like the above and they will, even if they acknowledge you may be right, attempt to remind you that you're talking about treason -- even though it's quite arguable through the way the founding fathers' opinion on government authority got put into the Constitutional definition of treason that it really isn't.

Side note: All those of you Conservative journalists types who would like to smear liberals as traitors need to shut your traps too. I say that as someone sympathetic to Conservatives, by the way.

Nonbridge: And now for something completely different, or rather not different at all but on a totally different level.

Item 3: It is obvious that politics and law are worse when they are muddled and unclear. Logically that can only mean that to make them better we should make them clearer. Yet one of the favorite responses of anyone from any political persuasion to an attempt to go farther in doing so than they are willing to is to say that politics has always involved misleading, lies, yadayada. Never mind the fact that if I simply wanted things as they have been I wouldn't be arguing that they should be some other way in the first place, let alone the fact that it's self-evident that to make politics clearer is to make it better.

Postscript: Did I mention I hate politics?

Why read journalists' opinions on the Pope's motives...

2009-03-13T23:28:00.004-04:00

...when you can just read the Pope himself?

(If you want more where that came from, just go here and look through the selections on the left.)

Besides, you gotta admit its cool that he thinks the complaints about needing to be more internet-savvy are worth looking into. Given the way the media can't seem to handle the rise of the blogosphere, it'd be awfully funny if someday the journalists were behind the Pope in the workings of the information age. (Not likely to happen, I know, but you have to admit the mere possibility is ticklishly hilarious.)

Should you find Papa Ben's letter too hard to follow for some reason, I reccomend Fr. Z's comments over those of most journalists. (On the other hand, you probably won't find the combox arguments over the hairy details as helpful; just so you can't say I didn't warn you.)

So go on, be an honest examiner and read His Holiness for yourself.

Scott Adams is a prophet -- with an addition

2009-03-12T18:30:00.000-04:00

The proof: a 2000 Dilbert strip predicting in shocking detail the events of our present day.

Of course, everyone who's been reading Dilbert noticed his prophetic tendencies years ago.

Update: just two years later, yet more insight into the future?

Or is it just that the media is six+ years behind him in actually showing the public this nonsense? (Knowing the media...)

When did this happen?

2009-03-10T09:43:00.002-04:00

Conneticut Bill Threatens Church

What?

When did America hit this low?

Preparing for War or the Dark Ages

2009-03-05T21:38:00.006-05:00

I don't know what's going to happen to our country. In fact, I'm pretty sure almost nobody knows. But if you think loony extremists who are always freaking out anyway are the only people too seriously concerned, you'd better look again. Most of us may not be as worried about preparing to protect ourselves and/or hunt our own food as we are simply about keeping our jobs. Nonetheless, there is a notable increase of late in Americans stocking up on ammo and guns.

Myself, I'm young and I don't care to go through the legal hassles... if things collapse, I'll just make a bow and arrow set out of plastic coat hangers, rubber bands and stakes (a relative of mine did this for fun a long time ago, it works great) and nunchaku out of the small logs in my backyard and anything I can find to serve as rope (I've never been trained in them, but I've toyed with the dynamics of string with and without weighty things on the end long enough that I bet I could teach myself... with enough practice... to be effective enough against common thugs, any animal I need to hit, and/or zombies, even if helpless against any real martial artist...). And I don't even have to go through legal hassles about non-gun weapons because I don't even have to make them ahead of a collapse because I've got what I need here. Meanwhile, going to college, I'm prepared if things don't collapse. Come to think of it, I'm covered.

So, folks, be aware, and put a little thinking into what you can do to be covered either way too, and then don't worry -- but do keep yourselves aware.

Change?

2009-02-25T11:05:00.003-05:00

Given that Obama has been preaching the virtues of change, recently, along with any other buzzwords he's been using, I began to think about it. This is a sort of chain reaction logic that occurred last night, and was finalized today on paper.

Logic Chain I

Statement: Changed is defined as a difference between end result of an action and the state of things before the action.
Corollary: If the state of things before and after the action are the same, then there is no change.
Further: Because there is a difference between before an after, that difference is either positive or negative, i.e. the change is either for the better or for the worse.
Conclusion: All change is for the better or for the worse.

Logic Chain II

Statement: All change is an action (that's part of the definition given above).
Statement: A human being will not do anything for no reason whatsoever, i.e. all of his actions are ordered.
Reason: A human being will not do anything which is against his method of ordering.
For Example: A child will not rip his own "masterpiece" off of the refrigerator, and will be upset if someone does it for him.
Statement: This ordering can be called a "law".
Conclusion: All changes enacted by humans follow a law.

Logic Chain III

Statement: All change is for the better or for the worse. (conclusion of Logic Chain I)
Statement: What is better is more desirable than what is worse.
Query: What is better?
Answer: Better means that one has more good in some respect than the other.
Statement: God is most good in every respect (revelation! If you don't agree, just assume with me for the sake of this argument).
Corollary: God's mind is therefore also most good.
Statement: God's mind ordered all of creation (revelation again). This ordering is also called eternal law (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Part II, question 91).
It follows: Eternal law is "better" than any other law.
Statement: All change is governed by Law (conclusion of Logic Chain II)
Conclusion: It is desirable that all change be ordered by eternal law.

So, if a person agrees with me that God exists and that God is good, then he must agree that all change ought to be ordered by eternal law. Now, Obama says that he believes in God. The huge majority of Christians in America say that they believe in God. If so, then they ought to begin ordering their lives by His Eternal Law.

Ten, Eleven or So Positions

2009-02-22T16:57:00.007-05:00

Over at Fr. Z's, reader "jack" puts forth the following insightful categorization. I've editted the numbers after seven as there was a duplicate seven though a new entry, and inserted two words he missed in the last and mentioned in a followup comment; other than that I'm not doing any editting.

Now that the debate is how to deal with V2, I’m seeing these positions emerge:

1. Rupturing Ruptured Pentecostals : i.e., The Liberals. They say V2 was a ground zero for the Church, they rejecting everything that came before, and oddly muchy of what came after (e.g. Dominum Jesum, etc.). Thus they are stuck in the 60s. They, like all Liberals, Leftists, and ideologues in general, demolish what came before, look instead at a blue print, and build from scratch. They say that V2 was a supercouncil, or the only council. But regardless of what they say, they in fact ignore what the texts of V2 really state and instead believe in a phantom called “The Spirit of Vatican II”, a spirit which has nothing to do with the texts of V2. Because they claim to have a direct telephone line to this supposed spirit, I call them “Pentecostals”. They too “speak in tongues” – ICEL tongues or the words of psychobabble and Cultural Marxist politics, and their version of “Slain in the Spirit” and “Holy Rolling” is liturgical dance.

2. The Looney , the Sedevacantists. “Back to 1958!”

3. The Ultra Ultras: “Williamson can do or say no wrong! Fellay has betrayed Williamson! Heck, the Society has betrayed Williamson!”

4. The Ultras, or The Double Oughts (to pun on some shot shell terms): “Everything about V2 is wrong! It was the Great Apostasy! V2 ought to be totally demolished and junked! We ought to go back to 1962! It’s Rome that needs conversion”.

5. The Cafeteria Traddies: “Let cut out what was bad in V2, and leave what’s left”

6. The Post Hoc Fallacious. “What came after the Council – Bugnini, ICEL, facing the people, in the hand, praise bands, assorted other liturgical abuses, assorted heresies and moral scandals, liturgical dance, etc. – ARE the Council and are authorized by the Council.” Liberals, by the way argue, this way too. But in fact, these events and activities betrayed the Second Vatican Council.

7. The Single Oughts: The Protestant Catholics: “V2 ought to be interpreted by The Tradition, The Tradition being an established, un-developing, unchanging, and inerrant Bible.”

8. The Great Divorcees : the pastoral divorced from the prophetic.
They say either
i. “the pastoral isn’t part of the magisterium”, or
ii. “whatever is pastoral isn’t binding”, or
iii they separate violently the Pastoral and the Prophetic offices of the Church as if there were no relation between the two, just as High Church Anglicans separate the Priestly office from the Pastoral and Prophetic.

9. Filers in the Wrong File Cabinet : “Quanta Cura is dogma; V2 is pastoral.” Both in fact are pastoral.

10. The Foghorns: “V2 is unclear and ambiguous” – a massive fogbank. These critics sound the warning. “BEEEEEEEEEE-ohhhhhhhhhhhhh!” (One wonders if the Foghorns will accept the clarifications when they are forthcoming from the Holy See)

11. The Continuarians. Hermeneutic of Continuity; V2 continues The Tradition and develops it. If one prunes, then one does it to nourish.

Que Ocurrió en Chile

2009-02-19T18:24:00.005-05:00

Here's an interesting little horror story.

***

XYZ is a country in the western hemisphere with a problem. Actually, a lot of problems. Even though it has a democratic government, a number of factors, the aftereffects of recent world politics not excluded, have rendered its economy in a state of crisis, and left various social issues in a state of disrepair.

In XYZ's next election, two men run for office. One cries out charismatically for change, presents great plans to help the economy, and feeds the people's dreams. Many worship him as a messiah. His name even means savior, to some. He ends up winning over the conservative candidate in an extremely close race.

Once in office, this President does indeed bring change to XYZ. He nationalizes the healthcare system, and many large-scale industries. He encourages industrial jobs, giving displaced workers hope, and increasing the demand for generated goods. He even redistributes some land. Along this “peaceful path to socialism,” for a little while XYZ shows signs of hope.

After about two years, though, many people are disillusioned. The President can't fix all their problems, whether they expected him to or not. Many things that he promised never happen. Many things that happen, they never wanted. Laws become harder to enforce- especially because the President isn't sure if the military is loyal anymore. It comes to a crisis, which he proposes to fix with a plebiscite. Nothing is getting any better. In the midst of the socialist turmoil he has wreaked, the President placidly insists that XYZ has never been a more democratic country than during his reign.

Suddenly, the XYZ military holds a coup d'etat. The President commits suicide. The General of the army seizes control, and for the next almost twenty years, XYZ is a nightmare in which human rights are suspended. But- the economy gets fixed. Actually, the economy does really, really well. The rest of the world considers it an economic miracle. And thousands of people die, and thousands upon thousands of hearts are broken, and centuries cannot make amends for the things that happen there.

***

No, this isn't a fabrication predicting dire fortunes for America. It's a very condensed account of what happened in Chile less than 40 years ago. My history profesor brought it to my attention, not necessarily intending to parallel it to the current situation in this country (it being a Latin American history course). Told by a chileno who was a political prisoner and tortured under the Pinochet regime, the harrowing details remained with me, and the similarities stuck out glaringly.

I wish I could point out more of the details of Salvador Allende's plan, but since I am not well-versed in presenting economics, I am hesitant to attempt to explain them myself. Any number of books on Chile can provide you with more coherent details than I, and if even I can see parallels to our present situation, someone more knowledgeable on the topic should be proportionately more uneasy.

I am not trying to be a prophet, but seriously- one of these days, a generation should really learn from history...

Orthodox Rabbi Supports Papa Ben

2009-02-12T20:47:00.002-05:00

Fr. Z has the scoop. I tried to repost it but I couldn't find an easy way to copy his formatting (emphases and [comments], ya know) and was too lazy to reproduce it "by hand" (so to speak) and didn't want you to miss seeing this with his highlights. So just go over there and read it, now. It's worth it, trust me.

Real thought?

2009-02-05T22:06:00.002-05:00

This is an interesting proposal. All it's missing is the noise in the bushes argument -- although it includes mention of the point of said argument, that unless we really know that the fetus/embryo/whatever is not human we cannot risk murder. We could very well say it's not worth our time to speculate on something that we don't think is going to happen. However, there are two problems with that: one, that just because we shouldn't expect good things such as conversion doesn't mean we should despair of them either, and two, that there are some things about the hypothetical situation that may very well be relevant to other, some real, situations. What interests me specifically is the possible reaction should Obama take up the idea.

My question, then, is this: is there a way he could present it that genuinely would stimulate real thought, and niether be just dismissed by conservatives as being wishy-washy intellectual fakery nor be simply taken by liberals as a call to uphold flimsy rationalization as justification?

English Class

2009-02-04T17:01:00.003-05:00

Where we read ~*~LITERATURE~*~.

In this post I compiled the themes and modes of expression I have been diligently studying this semester for your enjoyment and edification. I feel good because I am reading and learning what the true masters of my art have to teach me, and my anthology informs me that this is the very best America has to offer me.

____________

“Ain't got cash on me,” Fitzgerald mumbled, the ends of two cigarettes lolling in his mouth as his hand twitched around the greasy pockets of his loose-hanging jeans. “Ain't got cash on me. But Simmons still has some. Ask Simmons.”
I remembered Simmons- a more unprintable young man I never met since running the last unprintable shipment of unprintable weed to the unprinting unprinted. I flipped the top of another can of beer and sat back in the bed of the pickup. Fitzgerald kept mumbling unprintably to himself. Didn't he remember Simmons was dead? Picked the unprintable unprintable out of a pool of his own blood that one morning back in June- tried to cut his own throat in the lavatory on a bus in Chicago, fainted, and drowned in the latrine. His hair'd been blue when they pulled him out- it was the last I remembered of him. Blue like the down on a bluebird's wings, and that struck me as unprintably funny- Simmons had never liked bluebirds, was always telling about one he shot down with a slingshot at his grandmother's house when he was five. He'd described the way it fluttered brokenly, and how that had made him laugh- I laughed at the memory of his light eyes with the pinpoint pupils, and the way he'd imitated that unprintable bird. Life is unprintable funny...

________

Eleanor threw herself in a chair by the window. Her husband was oppressive. It made her really sad. He'd never done anything unkind to her, but she didn't like him, anyway. He oppressed her. It made her really sad. If only there was a way to stop him from oppressing her- it made her sad. It took all her freedom away. Day after day she would stay here at home doing nothing, and night after night he would come home from work and she would have to smile at him and then the whole thing began again. It was so oppressing she couldn't believe it. For who can understand what it truly is to be a woman, to think deep thoughts, deeper than those of our oppressors? Eleanor also felt repressed. Everything repressed her- the feminine chair by the bedside, with the cat sitting on it. Wearing underclothing repressed her, too. Taking a deep breath, she tore it off herself and cast it out the window, the white things going like flags of truce into the puddles in the street nine stories below. No flag of truce for Eleanor- no more would she negotiate with men. Eleanor felt a joy welling up inside her, a joy and a freedom heretofore unimaginable. No longer would she be oppressed. No longer would she feel sad. A moment she balanced on the windowsill, and the last thing she knew was true freedom...

_______

The passion of love welled up in me as I saw Mrs. Barron's girlish form slipping toward me through the trees. “Hush,” she said, her face almost frightened. “George didn't hear me leave. We have three hours.” “If only it were eternity,” I murmured. “Darling-” She swooned in my arms and I *****************>>>>*<<<<*********************************************************************~~~~~****************and then she ********^^^^^***********************!*********************************!!***************************!!!****************and I************************and she*********************and we*************!!!!!!111!!!!!oneone11!!*******************************my zipper slowly and sighed....

_____

“Because this is a new generation,” he said firmly. “Because I can't live my whole life out here.”
“But son-” said the toothless old man, groping a blind hand toward the handsome, tall, determined boy.
“No one can stop me. I'm going forward into the future.”
The old man rocked arthritically in his rocking chair. “Do not forget the old ways of the past. Do not forget your heritage and the ways of your fathers! It is the only way you will ever be happy.”
“I have cast off the chains of my youth. Now I an adult and I am free! I must go and do what I think is the right thing, because therein lies freedom. This is my rite of passage. That means I don't have to think anymore if I don't want to, and Youth is mine which basically means whatever I do is admirable.”
“Oh, son,” said the senile old man with a twitching of his watery blue eyes. “Do not go into the future, for it will harm you! Progress is bad!”
“I will shake the dust of this house from my shoes,” he said firmly, with a flame of knowledge in his eye....

______

Her blue eyes looked at the man proudly. “You have no right to judge what I am doing. Would you prevent someone from following their conscience?”
“Lady, it ain't right.”
“What my conscience says is right.” She walked away. Her great-great-grandfather had been part Armenian, and now she was facing the overbearing racial prejudice of a cruel and uncaring nation.

__________

[POETRY]

I waited here, remembering the day I failed my Czech test
the day I left my last link to you lying
on the radiator in the abandoned apartment, with
cracks on the ceiling in the shape of a cyclops with three eyes
and a shattered beer bottle full of lost memories
Memories overcome me, as poignant as
the tang of a permanent marker left uncapped by an unsent package
in a room with marbles rolling over the floor,
a smell of yeast and bread and
Shakespeare's shoes
floating in a bowl of wonton soup pierced by a chopstick
outcrying against those who destroy the bamboo forests,
covered in rings of scallions like open green mouths protesting global warming
coming to a stop like the death of a dream,
poignantly
compellingly
like the woolly touch of yarn
and I know, with the assurance of thyme and peppermint growing in the moonlight
somewhere, nowhere, loneliness abounds
in an endlessly endless stream of unending sorrowfulness
like a trash can of wasted dreams
like my heart

~*~

Sheavings

2009-02-03T18:41:00.005-05:00

If my post a little while back got you thinking that I think Mark Shea sounds bad, I misled you. I actually love reading his writing. The post title apologizing for sounding like him was another one of my stupid attempts to respond to something that had never been said yet -- and probably never will be said, and the preemptive response to which only confuses people who don't know what I'm trying to respond to. I meant to blow off anyone who hates the way he tears apart stupid comments.

Enough about that. The point of this post is, I love reading Mark Shea. So much so that I've collected several quotes from him. Not all of these are even the ones he repeats all the time (like "Sin makes you stupid."). It's just whatever stood out to me.

So if you're free to laugh and learn at the same time, read on. For some of them I'll provide some context to make their points more evident, though I didn't record much context because they stand on their own for me.

-

At the religious end of the spectrum is the implication that to call the deeds of a men "evil" is to somehow declare that you know his eternal destiny or desire his damnation. This is rubbish.

One of the stupidities of modern political discourse is the notion that "As long as somebody isn't Hitler, then whatever they do is probably okay."

(Believe it or not, I don't think that was about Godwin's Law... but then I don't remember exactly what it was about either.)
-

This is as legal as the Nuremburg Laws, as long as you don't trouble yourself with Augustine's pesky observation that "an unjust law is no law at all".

(On the assertion that since something that would otherwise be obviously gravely immoral was declared legal we needn't worry about the morality of it.)
-

Throw off the shackles of the Catholic Faith...
...and make yourself a prisoner of the fear of Intergalactic Alien Attack instead.

(On the silliness of some who want to escape the religion.)
-

Every once in a while godless editors look up from their monitors and are astonished to find religion is still there. Then they announce it is "back"--as though it had left.

Personally, I think it's due, not to the circumstances in which we find ourselves but to the selves we find in our circumstances.

For the great artist is great not because he makes people feel something no one has ever felt, but because he makes them feel something everyone has always felt.

(And, I note, usually to the effect that we better understand it.)
-
And one I give from memory because it stuck with me but apparently never noted down (or noted down elsewhere?)...

The earth isn't sacred because she's a goddess. She isn't even sacred because she's our mother. She's sacred because she's our sister.

-

The longer I live, the more the counsel "Save yourself from this corrupt generation" seems like practical common sense and not mere religious enthusiasm.

If the bishops are interested in listening to actual youth (not to mention the Holy Father), they will note that what youth actually respond to is not bishops trying to disco, but bishops who challenge them to heroism. That's the secret both John Paul and Benedict understand and that's why there is such a disparity between the volcanic response of youth to the Pontiffs and the "Whatever" eyerolls of youth at the trendinesses of the English [and some American!] bishops.

One mark of progressive dissent is the extreme reverence paid to bureaucratic committees.

One of the fun things about being Catholic is that you are not only the locus of all evil in the universe for so many different people, but your pure evilness is evil for absolutely contradictory reasons! Sooner or later, you start to wonder (if you are not Catholic but still reasonably thoughtful), "What is this thing that people are so anxious to contradict that in doing so, they do not mind contradicting themselves?"

That's not, by the way, because our bishops are profiles in courage. It's because the Holy Spirit, the Soul of the Church, is the guarantor of revelation and our arms are too short to box with Him.

Everybody knows that Christmas is really just a warmed-over Celebration of the Feast of the Sol Invictus

Guess what? Everybody's wrong!

(As this quote makes rather a claim, here's the backup.)
-
(On our reaction to grave blasphemies and/or injustices [think last time you got really mad about something]...)

And all of a sudden our barbaric ancestors are revealed to be… people. People who felt exactly the way we feel when we see great evil done.

I suspect the enemies of the Church who are always banging on about how the Church is all about guilt and shame will suddenly discover that the Church is (like her Lord) scandalously merciful...

(For example, she lets people back who still are dealing with the Holocaust-denying kooks in their ranks...)
-

Now that you've read those, I'll make note of the following: he could use some help remembering that the majority of people in the real world are not like the majority of the people on the internet, what with all the stupidity-fighting he has to do on his own blog alone. So, in that interest, I quote myself on a suggestion I recently made...

On a more serious note, sometimes I consider trying to organize a minimovement to reassure Mark Shea that plenty of us out here in the real world are perfectly sane and these weirdos he has to deal with are not the majority of most groups of people. We'd poll all our real-world friends about the issues everybody here on the 'net gets screwed up and report the generally good results back to him regularly. He wouldn't have to blow off steam as often, and we'd get more blogging from him that isn't based on complaining about just how many people are just how crazy. Once the method has been going successfully for a while, it'll spread to other Catholic bloggers who struggle with the same, and maybe even wander out of the blogosphere to help real-world friends who get fed up with the world.

Anyone up for the project?

God and the Human Question

2009-01-26T11:30:00.002-05:00

When asked His name, God replied “I am”. A name, a perfect name, describes essence. God’s name is. Thus, since everything about God is perfect, including his name, His essence is essence, if we can speak of God in essences. Thus, He contains within Himself all other essence, since He is.

As I’ve stated before, the human person is a question: why. ¹ Why can be restated as “what is the purpose” or “ what is the essence”. Purpose is part of essence, thus asking the purpose is part of asking the essence.

As a result, the answer to the human person, or the human question, is God.

“Not because of who I am,
But because of what You’ve done.
Not because of what I’ve done,
But because of Who You are.”

~Who am I, Casting Crowns

¹This Post

On the Election of a Dark-Skinned Man

2009-01-20T17:38:00.003-05:00

If you ask me, the striking thing is not that a black man was finally elected, but rather that there was ever a time when people were stupid enough to think such would be bad. Evil is the absence of due good. It is such stupidities as prejudice that are out of the ordinary in the proper sense of ordinary (not common, but rather rightly ordered), not things being as they ought to be. So I can see celebrating that the ordinary finally is becoming what it should be and certain evils are being remedied, but I think we've thrown our attention a bit too much toward what we ought to consider just plain old the way things should be and need to realize that the astonishing thing is the wrong way that we had to fix.

Of course, being in disagreement with our new president on some matters and especially on the matter of something I believe is an even graver evil than prejudice, and furthermore not being very agreeable to American politics and government in their current form at all, I'm not seeing much in the way of an overall gain today. I could say more on some other oddities related to such. However, I'd rather you just focused on the first point I raised: the extraordinary thing isn't what happened today, it's what happened in past days that today is supposedly remedying.

The Working Man

2009-01-18T11:24:00.002-05:00

Perhaps there is a better distinction to be made than between manual labor and "educated" jobs. Let's try a different approach: between workers, whether simply those who throw boxes around or those whose education varies from housework details to flying planes, and those things we tend to think of as higher than workers (I hesitate to reduce these to "managers", but if that gives you an idea...).

Both are needed to some extent; we can't run society without people to actually do the work, but on the other hand people who organize, investigate, work out diplomacy, etc., can't be done away with altogether. However, it seems like there is an inordinate emphasis put on those latter, considering the others actually do the work.

Need an example? Ok, there's one right at hand. The plane businessmen will do plenty to find out what goes wrong when a plane comes down unexpectedly, argue incessantly over what to do about any and all given flaws in the airline business, and so on and so forth. On the other hand, even though computers do most of the flying, it's the pilot and crew of the craft who save lives if a flock of geese appears out of nowhere shortly after takeoff and knocks out the plane's engines. The mayor and his men up in city hall will do plenty to make the city a better place and facilitate everyone helping each other, but it is the ordinary men who see a downed plane on the river and, throwing schedules and whatnot to the wind, go to help ferry people to safety.

There are heroes among both these classes: who provided good training for the pilot and made sure they were armed with talented men to fly, and who runs businesses that do massive service to our nation and people and give surplus to charity to boot? But my point is that we have this very mysterious tendency as a society to place the latter as more deserving of reward and a standard paycheck except in the rare case that they actually do something criminal or the other saves the day in a crisis.

But when it comes down to it, they both play their part. Politicians argue forever about how best to protect our nation, but it is the ordinary man who dropped everything and drove across the country to aid disaster relief when we were attacked and when a hurricane hit. Just because the politicians do their job every day and the ordinary man does the extraordinary only occassionally when the opportunity shows itself we pay the politician more whether he's being a hero or not and pay the working man little?

It's not just a matter of heroism either. The point is that our society is held up as much by the people who do the work and help each other directly and substantially as by the people who make sure we're held up straight and not going to fall over on our side. Jobs that take more should require more pay, yes, as motivater and whatnot, lest people be motivated to stay where they are instead. But does it really take so much more to manage or informationize than it takes to actually handle a boat or a house, and does the mere fact that the work itself is undesirable not make some good difference in whether most people will be motivated to get "better" work?

Now, I understand there are lots of places where upping the salary of the ordinary worker would throw the company or whatever into risk of debt -- that's the whole problem with the airline business and its pilots, or so I hear. But considering those on top tend to make so much in most such companies (I don't know about the airlines, but in other cases) it strikes me that heroes up there, willing to sacrifice for their fellow men in need like heroes down here are, should be campaigning to have their own salaries lowered just enough to pay their workers better. I'm not a manager so I can't say it can be done in all cases, but it strikes me that when some people become billionaires as the top dogs of their companies it ought to be a piece of cake to give more money to those who actually do the work without substantially depriving anybody on top of money.

Mind you, some people fall into a quirky paradox on these things: the idea that government should take the excess wealth and send it down to the working man. This is paradoxical because the government is among those managing sorts of people, and isn't even the managers of the individual companies or organizations and so has to take a second-hand perspective on the generalizations of them all. That's somewhat dangerous. It can be rightfully done, but it shouldn't be our first resort -- indeed, it shouldn't even be appealing as a last resort. So long as a company doesn't have a monopoly on the market, our first resort should be for those of us who can tell what's going on to support and raise support for those that manage their men justly as opposed to those that promote a ridiculous and not truly just imbalance of wealth (not that all imbalance is unjust, but that in this case there is injustice in the imbalance).

In all, the biggest monkey wrench in actually pushing for the best concerning all this is that our society as a whole is so big that coming to the big managers of big things such as the government's politicians seems the only feasible way to effect change. Small things have a hard time competing anymore. Frankly, I'd like to see the States stay united and all -- I'm not for everyone fighting each other. But I'd like to see more, smaller societies in peace with each other rather than "peace" and difficulty attaining justice brought about by consolidating as many people over as much space as possible into one big society.

Granted, I also know there's a difference between politics of a society and business of a society, and that overcoming big business's flaws is going to take a lot more than achieving the above-described aim politically. The details get tricky here in part because there are so many different ways. I do mean to consider them and work on their details, and I recognise that many of them won't be possible. But I think that the impossibility of many should not deter us from considering what would, if it were to turn out feasible, be better. We should all be working on this problem rather than going straight to D.C. to try to solve it.

Whatever the solution may be, it is my hope that we may eventually see more justice in society where the ordinary working man is valued properly instead of seen as the bottom rung on the ladder.

Sorry if this sounds like Mr. Shea...

2009-01-14T17:16:00.003-05:00

But I just feel like doing this.

Almost a year ago the Immortal Philosopher made a post concerning the public school system and the strong overstepping their boundaries, whether well-intentionally or not, in ways that oppress the weak. In said post he qualified his point in the very beginning with the fact that public school isn't entirely bad nor the cause of the problems he says it is the epitome of. He then goes on a whole bunch of political philosophy tangents to explain why he means what he means. Today, somebody decides to leave the following comment on that post:

Yea, because if you have a totally private run education system that may not cost a kings ransom, but your average car mechanic or Hair dresser can afford, but big daddy stock broker can, that’s going to create an equal and fair world, isn’t it?
You just sound bitter at some lost chances, so you’d rather America turn it’s back its children because your parents couldn’t afford a college education or something as preposterous.
Also do you think you would have been able to construct that lovely peace of critical prose without your state education?
Knowledge is power; don’t give it to the minority that can afford it.

This should crack me up and then need be said no more of. Unfortunately, I'm not in as good a humour as I sometimes am (and wish I always were). So instead, I'm going to critique it so it can crack you up.

First, he challenges an assertion the Immortal Philosopher never made. The assertion was simply that the common good was not being well served by the public school system and had several pages worth of explanation as to why.

Next he goes into ad hominem. Where he got the idea that anyone on this blog missed opportunity I have no idea. He might have gotten it from the mention of having not had a public education, but then he closes with the assertion that the state education was what allowed the Immortal Philosopher to write so well. This is funny, both because the commenter does not write well in either the intellectual argument aspect or the technicalities of grammar aspect, and because all on this blog have gotten excellent educations from homeschooling (which anyone who knows anything can tell you isn't even funded by the state in this part of the world, let alone provided in any such way as to be considered a state education -- unless you mean that the knowledge was gained by mankind in the first place through state educations, which we could challenge but probably wouldn't have the patience to if our challengee was this bloke). Also, the members of this blog are mostly going to private colleges (although we could argue over loans, which I'll bring up at the end of the next point).

His comment, both in the ad hominem and in the initial assertion, assumes the all-too-common "either-or fallacy". Ignoring the possibility that there are ways to make education commonly available and obtainable besides having the government provide it, he suggests that the Immortal Philosopher would rather have an education system that only the rich can afford and thus turn our backs on America's children. In fact, we could have a large amount of discussion concerning how to maintain an educated and prosperous society with state education only as a sort of emergency backup, if we were to find enough interested people know how to have intelligent conversation instead of these ad hominem attacks. For example, while education prices may seem ridiculous for the average person, part of the reason they're up so high is that the government provides a good sum of the money and so they can push prices higher without losing students -- at least, this is the case with college, despite the fact that loans seem like better than flat-out providing the stuff (told you I'd bring up a point about the loans -- to return to where I brought it up, if most people weren't using loans then most colleges would have more reasonable prices such that those of us here might not need loans).

Besides this either-or fallacy, he seems not to have read a sizable chunk of the original post concerning the fact that we as a society need to stop viewing purely knowledge education as the only worthwhile tool for well-being. The commenter speaks as if we will go down in flames if our children are not educated. The Immortal Philosopher had tried to point out that, far from that, we need to relearn the value of the more physical, directly practical work that requires less formal education but is both necessary for our society and, if the society is set up right, fulfilling and as enjoyable as any other job. I myself have this to add: it becomes sickening rather than fulfilling when one has to work on someone else's overpushed and/or confusing setup and schedule and/or do work with no tangible, obvious benefit of good. Throwing boxes in the back room of Walmart and listening every night to the managers tell you to go faster does not leave one with the good feeling that putting a roof over someone's head does. We're not saying we should all be put to manual labor either, but merely that we need to change society so that manual labor isn't ants being crushed holding up the grand designs of the desk-anchored, and one ought to be able to gather that from the Immortal Philosopher's post as well. So the either-or fallacy used by the commenter not only puts the issue in false extremes but also gets it wrong when it comes to what the issue fully is.

Finally, in a fit of irony, whoever it is mentions that knowledge is power, right at the end of a comment displaying an inability to discuss information rationally.

I may as well leave the comment to stand since I've reposted it here as well; but be warned: despite this problem being rare on this blog I'm feeling mightily tempted to from now on take to just deleting anything ad hominem or otherwise half as nonsensical as that comment. If I decide such I will put up a post declaring that to be standard practice here complete with a list of fallacies to avoid if you want to say something and be listened to.

Thank you, and have a nice day.

Perhaps the reason Christians get a bad name.

2009-01-05T16:40:00.004-05:00

Today, I got this e-mail in my inbox. And I quote:

For those of you who do not know, the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) is set to be signed if congress passes it on January 21-22 of 2009. The FOCA is the next sick chapter in the book of abortion. If made a law then all limitations on abortion will be lifted which will result in the following:

1) All hospitals, including Catholic hospitals will be
required to perform abortions upon request. If this happens Bishops vow to close down all Catholic hospitals, more then 30% of all hospitals in the United States.

2) Partial birth abortions would be legal and have no
limitations.

3) All U.S. tax payers would be funding abortions.

4) Parental notification will no longer be required.

5) The number of abortions will increase by a minimum of 100,000 annually.

Perhaps most importantly the government will now have control in the issue of abortion. This could result in a future amendment that would force women by law to have abortions in certain situations (rape, down syndrome babies, etc) and could even regulate
how many children women are allowed to have.

Needless to say this information is disturbing, but sadly true. As Catholics, as Christians, as anyone who is against the needless killing of innocent children, we must stand as one. We must stop this horrific act before it becomes a law.

The e-mail continues to list an idea for saying a novena.

Now, before I continue, please understand two things. I believe completely in the power of prayer. If nothing else can stop the monstrosity that is FOCA, prayer can. Also, FOCA is definitely an evil abuse of power that the constitution of the US does not allow. For both moral and logical reasons, this bill should not be passed.

That aside, the e-mail is riddled with factual errors.

"1) All hospitals, including Catholic hospitals will be
required to perform abortions upon request. If this happens Bishops vow to close down all Catholic hospitals, more then 30% of all hospitals in the United States.

In fact, the bill states that "...a government may not deny or interfere with a woman's right to choose..." (Section 4.b.1). [source 1] The bill nowhere says that all individual hospitals must offer abortion as a service.

"3) All U.S. tax payers would be funding abortions."

All US tax payers already fund abortion because US money goes directly to all state hospitals, which perform abortions, and Planned Parenthood.

"5) The number of abortions will increase by a minimum of 100,000 annually."

There are only one million abortions per year (study in 1996, I can't find anything more recent) [source 2]. The likelihood of it increasing by 10% after this bill passes is minimal. I'd like to know where this figure came from.

Now, why am I writing this? Shouldn't people pray to end FOCA?

Writing things like this gives Christians a bad name. The secular world thinks that we are ignorant people clinging for our life to a sinking ship, while the guns of science and facts hasten our doom. This e-mail is typical of what they think of us. We are simply ignorant fools who pray to a deaf God simply because we are too stupid to do anything else. Obviously, the idea is false, but a reader of this e-mail couldn't tell otherwise.

For the Church's sake, don't forward e-mails like this around. We are not ignorant, illogical fools who don't know better. Let's act like it.

~Ambrose

Sources:
1. The text of the bill can be found at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.R.1964
2. http://www.abortionno.org/Resources/fastfacts.html

Valkyrie

2009-01-03T17:20:00.003-05:00

This movie received such bad reviews from many different places.

"“The film just isn’t a thriller at all” said one “Valkyrie” viewer. “It’s a bunch of white guys in Nazi uniforms. It’s too bad. And Tom doesn’t speak with a German accent — though they did add a voiceover of him speaking German to the beginning of the film. Still, it’s as if he could say ‘I complete you’ at any time. This is not his Oscar moment.” " [msnbc.com]

"McCarthy also has some kind words for Singer, but concludes: "Allowing for the need to compress and streamline events, the scribes have hewed pretty closely to the facts but haven't injected sufficient sizzle into the dialogue or individuality into the characters." He surmises that Valkyrie "looks destined for just so-so commercial returns." [FOXnews.com]

Today, I went and watched the movie myself. I'm somewhat of a history buff, and from what I could tell the movie was almost dead-on correct. On that front, I think the movie does an excellent job portraying the event that took place. When I watch a movie based on a historical event, that is one of the topmost things in my priority list of things to do right. You're telling the story of something that actually happened. Get it right.

This movie, despite the reviews, was one of the best movies I have seen in a very long time. I am not a movie person, and I don't get out and watch every new picture, so perhaps I missed something. But from what I can see, this movie enters deeper levels of thought and reality than most I've seen in a while.

Perhaps the reason it's getting such bad reviews is because it was advertised as a thriller. I was thrilled. Even through there was only one scene in which guns were actually fired (very brief gun fight at the very end), I was in absolute suspense the whole movie. I even knew how it was going to end, yet I was captivated. The exposition and filmography were perfect. I enjoyed every minute of this film, just as much as other thrillers like Mission Impossible. However, it's not quite the same style. This movie does things that other thrillers don't, and perhaps can't, do. It messes with your mind. Maybe if the reviewers at Fox and MSNBC stopped thinking about actors and movies and payed attention to stories and people in them, then they would see the true beauty of this movie.

I am not the sort of person who cries at movies. To date, I've cried at three: Fellowship of the Ring, when Boromir died (honestly, the most heroic death scene ever); Return of the King, when Sam gives the famous "I can't carry it for you" line (more heroism); and at the end of Valkyrie, when the conspirators are being executed. If the last two movies were because of heroism, then it stands to reason this one would be also. I'm not moved by petty romantic moments staged between to actors, or when some long-lost friend is dying. I'm moved when something truly heroic takes place. In Valkyrie, the heroism is plain to see.

Col. Stauffenberg and his co-conspirators endure the utmost risk in order to do what they know is right. Even though themselves and their families will probably be killed, they attempt an unreasonably difficult attack on Hitler, and nearly succeed with ending the Nazi regime. Ending the Nazi regime is heroic enough, especially at such odds. However, the film's heroism does not end here.

Why they attempt this is shown in several small quotes. "We have to show the world that we are not all like [Hitler]." In todays world, the first words that pop into a person's mind when Germany is mentioned are "Hitler" and "Nazi". Germans are all Jew-hating Nazis who want to conquer the world. As a man of German descent, this has always bothered me. Whe exactly is the entire race of Germans branded with this evil stigma just because of one man and one regime? Isn't this racism? Not all Germans are like that.

"Long Live Sacred Germany!" shouts Col. Stauffenberg as he dies before the firing squad. Stauffenberg, unlike some others in the army, sees immediately that what Hitler is doing is horribly wrong and is injuring Germany. He knows that when the Allies come in a few, short months, and Hitler is killed, Germany will be branded with an eternal mark of shame. This is against his every principle. Stauffenberg is a true patriot. Chesterton says that a true patriot will love his country so much that he will be willing to do anything for it - even throw it into chaos. This is definitely Stauffenberg's love of country. He does not attach this love to the regime of Hitler, like some of the Germans did.

Movies are classics because they apply to our lives timelessly. Even though Hitler died in 1945, human nature has not changed. We still have difficulty with patriotism. America is in a similar position. We are not at all patriotic. Granted, not for the same reasons as the Germans who followed Hitler. We don't love our government, thinking we are loving our country. We have simply thrown patriotism out the window. What is America? What does it mean to be an American? The first words that come to the mind of most people are liberty or freedom. But as our freedoms are slowly slipping away, people don't seem to notice - unpatriotically so. If our nation is losing its identity - which should be the reason we love it - then we ought to be moved to action. Like Col. Stauffenberg says, "There have to be actions, and there have to be effects."

This movie is definitely one of the best movies I've seen in a while, not just because it entertained me, but because it caused me to think about what I'm doing for my country. Movies aren't great because of their acting and cinematography. Those things can make a movie good, and Valkyrie certainly had them. A movie is great when it takes what you know and shows it to you, so clearly that inaction is impossible. Along with Wall-e, this is my choice for Best Picture of 2008.

~Ambrose

Why.

2008-12-17T14:48:00.003-05:00

The human person is essentially a question: why. I don't mean a human's physical body - humans are not in essence physical matter. A human's essence, their defining trait, that which seperates them from all other beings, is a question.

Aristotle states that man is the "rational animal". While man is an animal, and has physical matter, he is more than that. He is "rational". He is seperated from the animals in that he can think - he has self knowledge, and he can link things in his mind. He is rational. He can ask questions, and answer them on his own. Man is not different from the animals because he is "smarter"; he is different because man can function on a spiritual level - a rational level.

Man is also different from all the spiritual beings (angels, demons, God...) in more ways than just having a physical body. Man can ask a question. This may seem odd, but think of it this way. God is omniscient. He knows everything, and sees the full course of his actions and everybody else's actions before any of them acts. Thus, he cannot ask a question (intellectually - he can, of course, form words into a question). There is nothing that he doesn't know. Similarly, angels see the end result of their actions plainly - Satan knew that he would be thrust into hell even before he fell (thus he cannot repent). Humans, alone among the spiritual beings, does not know the end result; man does not know, and thus can and must ask questions. This is sort of a physical trait displaying itself on the spiritual level. Because of time and matter, out minds simply can't know beforehand, and we end up having to ask questions.

So if man is divided from the animals by rationalism, and from spiritual beings by physical matter, then the point of connection between these two (the question) is man's essence. His defining point, what makes him man, is questions.

However, not just any question. One question in particular is man's. Why. Animals, because they do not have self knowledge, cannot see motive (the answer to "why"). They can ask "where is the food?" or perhaps "where is the pain coming from?" but they cannot ask "why don't I have any food?" or "why am I being hurt?" They can recognize things - pain, hunger - but cannot see the reason. Man can. He can see that the man who tortures him and deprives him of food wants information out of him.

This also differentiates him from angels and God. Both of them see the whole matter through clearly, since they are out of time. Satan knew that his actions would lead directly to Hell. He saw that distancing himself from God intellecutally would lead him to be distanced from God by being thrown into Hell. Satan didn't ask why. Man, however, misses the connection and has to ask. His mind doesn't automatically do that, and thus he asks a question.

So, man's essential trait is "why". Men ask "why" since they are two years old. Any parents will back up this claim - most children ask questions like "why is the sky blue?" until they are blue in the face. However, man is also himself a question, waiting to be asked.

"Why?" very much describes the relationship between God and man. God created man "to know, love, and serve Him" (Baltimore Catechism #1). Now, man doesn't see his purpose straight from the beginning. He asks a question, an essential question: "Why am I here?" You can see this question written all over the media and explorative art. Man asks his creator what his purpose is, and the creator responds, "I AM." From this question-answer, man moves forward to the loving and serving, which can be described as the natural reaction to the question-answer. If God is, and we are because God is, the loving and serving make sense. Man loves his life; he ought to also love the source of his life. Man serves himself; he ought to also serve the source of himself.

So, if man's essential nature is the questions "why", why is "why" so absent in our culture? In our fast-paced, work-a-day week, there is no time for deep theological question-answer. We get up every morning, drink our coffee from our automatic coffee makers, drive to work in our automobiles, use our word-processors for eight or nine hours, and then drive back home, eat a meal, and go to bed. The question "why" is gone. Or at least, we only get shallow "why". The deepest essence of our human nature is gone.

Why is this? It is uncomfortable to ask "why", because after we know the answer, an action is required. After we know God, we must love Him and serve Him. There is no middle ground. "Take up your cross and follow Me" is not an easy command to follow - for death on a cross is a very unpleasant thought in any human mind. Thus, in order to keep these questions out of our minds, so that we can live in a world of shallow, material pleasures, we confine ourselves to the shallow "why" and ignore our true human nature. We don't want to be human.

The only reasonable move is to begin, as a culture, to ask "why?" If we simply asked "why?" and moved rationally to the answer, then the implications of the answer would be realized. We'd have to love; we'd have to serve. So, instead of losing twenty pounds or being nicer, why don't we try this new year to become more human - to ask why, and find the answer.

Some random quotations...

2008-12-04T14:26:00.009-05:00

I went looking in the ol' dictionary of quotations in the back of the dictionary that used to belong to my mom's mom, wanting to add one I recalled from it to my list of quotations on the Aeviternity sidebar. It took me a ridiculous amount of time to find it because none of the key words were cross-referenced in the back of the d of q like they were supposed to be. As a result, I wound up stumbling across countless other quotes that I just had to either add to the sidebar there or post here. In both cases, they're not in much particular order.

In the end, I gave up looking, figuring that having read through well over half the d of q in random shots and not found it I would be as likely to find it elsewhere (actually, I started wondering whether I hadn't read it elsewhere) and that I was getting sick of deciding which quotes to copy (there are so many good ones) and which here and which to my sidebar to boot.

Anyway, here's some to mentally chew on, and I'll resist commenting on them myself as then I would really go on forever.

"Science is not a sacred cow. Science is a horse. Don't worship it. Feed it."
~Aubrey Eben

"The futility of riches is stated very plainly in two places: the Bible and the income-tax form."
~The Gilcrafter

"Russia has abolished God, but so far God has been more tolerant."
~John Cameron Swayze

"Most of us spend the first six days of each week sowing wild oats; then we go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure."
~Fred Allen

"Pity the man who believes in communism--he believes in something that doesn't believe in him."
~Fred McAlister

"The Devil is easy to identify. He appears when you're tired and makes a very reasonable request which you know you shouldn't grant."
~Fiorello H. La Guardia

"A fanatic is a man who does what he thinks the Lord would do if only He knew the facts of the case."
~Finley Peter Dunne

"One of the first things a man notices in a backward country is that the children are still obeying their parents."
~Claude Callan

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."
~Oscar Wilde

"In the little world in which children have their existence, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as injustice."
~Charles Dickens

"We forget what gives money its value--that someone exchanged work for it."
~Quoted by Neal O'Hara

"It seems that everyone is smoking the pipe of peace, but nobody is inhaling."
~Cherryvale (Kans.) Republican

"A sure sign of bureaucracy is when the first person who answers the phone can't help you."
~Dr. Kenneth J. Fabian

"There's something alive about a kitchen, the way it smells and sounds and feels. Maybe sick people would all live longer if they sat in kitchens."
~Christopher Morley

"If a nation values anything more than its freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money [editor's note: or security, someone else pointed out] that it values more, it will lose that, too."
~Somerset Maugham

"The U.N. was set up not to get us to Heaven, but only to save us from Hell."
~Winston Churchill

"When you make your mark in the world, watch out for guys with erasers."
~The Wall Street Journal

"It is a great mistake for men to give up paying compliments, for when they give up saying what is charming, they give up thinking what is charming."
~Oscar Wilde

"Remember when it took only heaven to protect the working girl? Today it takes a union, wage-hour law, unemployment insurance, Social Security, and a pension plan."
~Bert Bacharach

"The true value of horse sense is shown by the fact that the horse was afraid of the auto during that period when the pedestrian laughed at it."
~Atlanta Times

"Laws should be like clothes. They should be made to fit the people they are meant to serve."
~Clarence Darrow

"Few children fear water unless soap is added."
~William Franklin Gaines

"The error of youth is to believe that intelligence is a substitue for experience, while the error of age is to believe that experience is a substitute for intelligence."
~Lyman Bryson

"Classical music is the kind that we keep hoping will turn into a tune."
~Kin Hubbard

"Once we assuage our conscience by calling something a 'necessary evil,' it begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil."
~Sydney J. Harris

"All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened. The courageous man is the man who forces himself, in spite of his fear, to carry on."
~General George S. Patton, Jr.

"The ultimate effect of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools."
~Herbert Spencer

"A boy gets to be a man when a man is needed."
~John Steinbeck

Conference:
"A meeting of the bored."
~Russell Newbold

"It is as absurd to pretend that one cannot love the same woman always as to pretend that a good artist needs several violins to play his music."
~Balzac

"When the Tatar curses one, instead of exclaiming, 'Go to-----!' as we do, he says: 'May you stay in one place forever!'"
~Trips

"No mariner ever enters upon a more uncharted sea than does the average human being born in the twentieth century. Our ancestors knew their way from birth through eternity; we are puzzled about the day after tomorrow."
~Walter Lippmann

"I wonder where mothers learn all the things they tell their daughters not to do."
~Eddie Cantor

"The best cure for worry, depression, melancholy, brooding, is to go deliberately forth and try to lift with one's sympathy the gloom of somebody else."
~Arnold Bennett

"I think a man and a woman should choose each other for life, for the simple reason that a long life with all its accidents is barely enough for a man and a woman to understand each other; and to understand is to love. The man who understands one woman is qualified to understand pretty well everything."
~J. B. Yeats

"The world started going to smash about the time it abandoned the hand-cranked ice-cream freezer, the finest device ever invented for teaching youth that work has its rewards."
~Cleveland News

Being Alive

2008-12-01T15:27:00.005-05:00

As Scott said, I've been adjusting to life at a secular university, and as Ambrose said, sorry for not letting you know sooner.

Life here is certainly not boring, nor is it comfortable. An example of this is that at the moment, I'm learning to trust God with the fifth in a series of spiritual attacks and writing a paper on elbowed squid.

Some days it's just hard to keep going- everything can frighten me if I let it, and not letting it takes exorbitant amounts of energy.

I have a plethora of ponderings on the election, amorality, ego and evolution, the prevalence of profanity, intellectualism, nutritional deficiencies, the importance of classical music, nonconformity, and why not joining a crowd of streakers setting off fireworks makes a person racist. I'll try to write them down as I reconjure them.

For right now, here's a poem my guardian angel led me to a few weeks ago when I was feeling really depressed. I've since committed it to memory and think it to myself whenever I start losing my grip on reality. It also fits to any 8787 hymn tune, if you want a mental accompaniment while reciting it.

A PSALM OF LIFE
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Tell me not in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!-
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined path and way,
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than today.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,- act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

~Mari

A Healthy Dose of Anarchy

2008-11-19T16:00:00.005-05:00

Anarchy? What? Ambrose, you've lost your marbles.

This is a follow up to THIS post.

Well, perhaps not anarchy per se, but certainly what we need is to stop following our government around like sheep. This simile goes further than you might think, actually. The sheep have no idea where they are going, how to take care of themselves, or what to do with their lives. The shepherd has to do all that for them. Similarly, the government dictates what education we receive, or rather what tools we have to work with in our lives; what food we can purchase and eat, and in some cases pays for the food; and sponsors minimum wage, job elligibility, and other things. Like sheep we are forced to follow the bidding of our shepherd.

This is for our own good, of course. For instance, a man became drunk at a bar and killed himself by chugging to much ketchup from the dispenser. Big Brother needed to come in, therefore, and protect us from those nasty ketchup dispensers, mandating design for them, all with the intent of furthering our safety. We, of course, are too unintelligent to discover that choking ourselves with ketchup is a bad idea. All for the common good!

The problem here is that the American people have the wrong idea about what the government should do. They believe that the government should protect the people from itself. We forget sometimes that ours is a government "for the people, by the people." This would mean that the government ought to protect us from itself, which it hardly seems willing to do. The focus must be different.

There are five levels of society in America: family, community, county, state, and federal. The family is the smallest and most fundamental unit of society. It ought to be fully capable of deciding what food to buy for its members, which hospitals to go to, which ketchup dispensers to choke on, etc. However, when two families have a quarrel over property or something, a higher (in the sense of broader sphere of influence) society has to decide. This is the community. The community can decide who owns what land, what roads there need to be in the city, etc. However, when two cities need to trade power or perhaps need to be linked by a road, a higher power is needed again. And thus, you can go up the list from community to county, from county to state, and from state to federal. Therefore, the federal government's power ought to be restricted to matters of state to state, and of outside government to outside government. This way, the people closest to the problem can solve it. Joe in Alabama doesn't have the same needs as Jack in Pennsylvania. The lowest level of society that can deal with it should, so that each person gets what he needs (See the post linked above for further explanation on why individuals have different needs).

However, in our nation today, the general idea is that we should go to the federal government for everything. This stems from a disordered desire for equality. We don't want anyone to have an unfair advantage, so we force everyone to follow the same rules. Again, not everyone has the same needs, so this is absurd. The American people merely want equality, and not what is best for them. "[The American people] call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot have that, they still call for equality in slavery." (Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America) Thus, we give up individual freedoms so that the man next to us doesn't have more freedom than us. We gladly say "Just so long as Fred over there does not have a liberty I cannot, I will go without it." This is an absolutely foolish and selfish subjugation of ourselves to tyranny. The federal government does far too much to regulate us (see previous post for more examples of this).

So, if the federal government is doing far too much to regulate our lives, what do we do? Simple. Take the power of the federal government and give it back to the state, county, community, and family level. Let the families decide for themselves what kind of ketchup to buy. Let the cities decide for themselves what roads to build. Let the counties decide for themselves what kind of speed limit to set. Let the states themselves decide whether abortion is legal or not. Keep the power as far down the list as possible to prevent tyranny. Certainly, some may say that this is anarchy; that I am carelessly throwing our nation's security into the wind. If it is anarchy, anarchy is certainly better than security. The freedom to choose what kind of ketchup I may buy is more important than a false sense of security, where Americans are mindlessly led through a pasture by the federal shepherd. "Give me liberty, or give me death."

~Ambrose

Does anybody else notice this?

2008-11-16T14:21:00.006-05:00

Legally in our modern world there is a huge push to outlaw explicit acknowledgements of the differences between the sexes. They claim that all exploitation of women by lustful and greedy men is a result of men having long ago, through no reason of actual superiority, shaping society to favor their exploitation of women. The Christian view of men desiring women being part of the natural relationship between the two that has only unfortunately been marred by sin is slandered away as being part of that alleged cultural exploitation.

Meanwhile, YouTube is advertising an event. After some time I notice the odd fact that the ads all have a picture of a woman in them, not a man. I think of most other "hot" ads (though to YouTube's credit, these ads for their event aren't necessarily "sexy", as in immodest, as far as I can tell), and realize that the vast majority of them have a similar trend.

So while attempts are being made to "equalize" the sexes, advertisers are all the while taking advantage of the plain fact that men really are oddly attracted to women more strongly than women to men. Not only that, but no one ever raises the question of whether such advertising is really exploiting men's emotional setup. No, it's only exploitation if it's cultural tradition. Other things that implicitly acknowledge the difference between the sexes can go right on their happy way as long as they're going the other way and giving men payback by exploiting their emotions.

Then when Christians see the obvious contrivance and begin to fear that the whole thing is set up specifically to attack their faith because no other view of the whole business makes any sense, society comes back and says their religion makes them paranoid.

Well, that may be partial paranoia, but it's not religion's fault. While they're at it with their nonsense, they might take it a notch more honest and call me a conspiracy theorist -- all they'd be leaving out is the fact that I don't think humans are the conspirators.

The evils of centralization.

2008-11-14T16:29:00.002-05:00

This debate goes back to the beginnings of our country, and our present course of action was not decided until the end of the Civil War. *history over*

According to Alexis de Tocqueville, "Complicated systems are repugnant to [the American people], and [the people's] favorite conception is that of a great nation composed of citizens all formed upon one pattern and all governed by a single power." And again, "The notion [the American people] all form of government is that of a sole, simple, providential, and creative power." In essence, de Tocqueville is saying that the American people naturally desire the government to have no limits in its centralization and power, or in other words, the people naturally think that all federal power ought to be wholly in the federal (as opposed to state or local) government, and that this power ought to be limitless. Although I disagree with him in that it is a natural desire, he is uncannily correct in the effect - the American government has gradually moved from a very distributed, freedom-oriented government, as opposed to the current centralized, authoritative machine we have today.

For example, before the Civil War, one would always write about the United States in plural. E.g., "The United States are very nice." Now, we would say "The United States is very nice." This is a subtle but meaningful shift. Before, in 1840 or so, the Supreme Court would nothave had the power to decalre abortion constitutionally acceptible - the state governments, not the federal governments, would have. Now, of course...

What does this mean? Isn't this just a simpler system that guarentees equality across the states, so that no one is greater than the others? Doesn't it take all the problems of state-border issues, and doesn't it give a greater unity to the nation? Well, certainly. But are those things necessarily good, and do the benefits outweigh the cost?

All men are not created with equal needs. Granted, all humans have equal rights and dignity before God, but each man in his individual situation has unique needs. Just like you wouldn't give a person needing a pain killer something more like an antacid, you shouldn't give a man in the country the same regulations as someone in a city. The city dweller may need more heavy police protection in his area, because the dangers are greater, but certainly the man living in the middle of nowhere does not need police patrolling at every minute. The principle is simple enough - every man needs something different to thrive.

The federal government, however, cannot treat each citizen according to his needs. Although, perhaps, it can see the problems with the country as a whole, it simply cannot know the complex set of circumstances which surround every American. Thus, it cannot possibly give every man what he needs. It can try to please most people, but there will be a group who are not taken care of, or perhaps even harmed by regulations. This is an absolute tragedy.

Moreover, the central government in our country is amassing more powers and rights over us. For instance, no food product can make it onto the market unless approved by the FDA. Maybe that's a good thing, since quacks cannot produce poison and sell it to the masses. However, I think that the government deciding what food you can buy is a particularly bad thing. Similarly, the government decides - how you can make additions to your house (Zoning boards...), what TV and radio you can listen to (FCC), what lawyers and doctors can treat you, and even where you can go in the world (Passports). In essence, you can't do much of anything without the federal government's permission. Am I the only one who thinks that there is a problem with this? Am I crazy to think that I should be able to buy whatever food I want? Is it evil for me to want to add a new room to my house? What happened to America, the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Clearly, something is wrong here. And, quite frankly, if we don't do something, we may end up in a dictatorship. And I'm quite sure that nobody wants that.

In Hindsight These Fit Better Here

2008-11-11T16:36:00.003-05:00

My take on what to do about dishonesty in politics.

My take on the problem of virtue and politics.

Subsidiarity and the Republican Party

2008-11-11T15:58:00.006-05:00

During the election a certain divide in America was highlighted, however briefly, by the nomination for Vice President of Sarah Palin. Whether this divide was partially exagerated or not may be debated, but it almost certainly exists. It is the divide between do-it-ourselves "hockey moms" throughout the nation and "bring in the certified government experts to help" elitists.

A particular complaint of the do-it-ourselves-ers has long been that this idea of having to spend years and years becoming "qualified" before one can do basic help through en masse programs both puts unnecessary restraint on the American dream and furthermore makes it more difficult to achieve help from anything less than the government, which in turn leads us closer to socialism.

A further complaint to back this one up has been that it is simply absurd to believe that someone who has spent his or her days debating the theories about a thing is without a doubt better qualified to deal with everything related to that thing than someone who spent his or her days learning it from experience. Why let people who studied macro-economics control the people who made small businesses all on their own? Shouldn't the people who actually worked out their own rise be advising those theorists, instead of the theorists forcibly affecting those fellows through government or union regulations?

Government, theorists and experts are needed, of course, but we shouldn't make them our only source of help. Indeed, in many cases we shouldn't even make them our first source of help. It follows from a principle of Catholic social teaching called subsidiarity.

Subsidiarity means that those closest to a problem deal with it first, the next level up are called in only when it is seen that they are needed, and the same for each further level up.

While the Federal government has its place, many of these hockey mom types have a good point about not letting our world be controlled by the people who don't do the down-to-earth running of its base.

A peculiar thing occured, however, when these subsidiarity-loving fellows allied with the modern Republican party. It turned out, over time, that either they did not truly understand their own principle or else the party on the whole did not truly agree with them. Not only did it become common to smear anyone who didn't favor the likes of Sarah Palin as elitist, but many (though not all) of these would-be Conservatives fell into some un-subsidiarity-like elitism of their own.

It began at first with a justifiable claim that we needed to defend ourselves from a self-identified enemy who showed signs of attempting to aquire weaponry that would be a threat to us. A case was made that this was clear enough to fall under just war theory in self-defense. Ultimately, however, prudence and subsidiarity were overlooked in our fight against this enemy, and they continue to be overlooked.

For you see, these enemies, first Saddam Hussein and then various extreme Islamic factions, are within a culture totally foreign to us, in a place far away and utterly unlike almost anywhere we have ever seen, and among people whom, due to their distance from the West and the development of its thought, you or I or anyone in this nation would have a great deal of difficulty persuading of anything through reason.

Thus, in short, we somehow thought that our more enlightened American sense of things would be able to deal with the Iraqi people and help them be set on a path to better civilization once we got rid of the tyrant who ruled them. However bad the tyrant was, this was utter rubbish. It is rubbish whether we speak of it as a forgotten consideration going into the war or rather as a necessary consideration to the "we're already there whether we should have been or not and we can't leave them in shambles" argument. For this argument never addresses its unspoken assumption that we are capable of leaving them better off. If we are not, then there is no reason to stay "till we finish the job" that we cannot finish. Subsidiarity suggests that it is highly unlikely that we can finish it.

Yet while Republicans across the nation turned around and were insulted by "elitist Liberal" smears against their hockey mom from Alaska, many Republicans also saw this continuing war as necessary despite the fact that it essentially was the same sort of "I know better so I'll help you whether you like it or not" garbage that they abhorred being on the receiving end of from Liberals or, as they preferred to call them, Socialists.

I also could go into how the one man in the Republican Party who appeared to most strongly believe in subsidiarity was smeared out of the race in part because he was extreme and in part because he believed this very things about the war being a mistake not only in being there in the first place but in continuing to be there as if we could somehow set it right, but I'm sure most of you don't want to hear complaints from a bitter Ron Paul admirer who never got over the fact that the least bad of the three top media Republican picks was given the nomination instead.

I do fear that those who believe in subsidiarity are going to be forever smeared with the guilt-by-association nonsense that their party believed it could solve the problems of wild Muslim Arabs. I strongly suspect that if we who believe in subsidiarity are to make an impact in society, we will have to throw off the hypocritical stigma of the Republican Party. What we will do instead remains to be seen, but I will (after making a few other points) end this post with a call to discussion of alternatives.

In fact, while the matter of guilt by association is up, we might bring up the fact that the Republican Party has unfortunately become known as the big business party, the party that would rather let society fall under social tyranny than do anything other than culture wars and anti-terrorism wars. We may as well, if we want to be known for subsidiarity, abandon it on the grounds that it isn't enough about subsidiarity as far as the part about doing things at higher levels when necessary goes, whatever good it may be about.

After all, we don't have to worry about losing our only ally, for our current ally already lost. We have four years to see to the building of a subsidiarity movement in America without fear of losing our force against extreme and subsidiarity-ignoring Liberalism, thanks to the unfortunate fact that said Liberalism has already won this time around.

What we need is a movement to ensure the rights of people to deal with their problems within their local community and still have the larger government levels there if needed. What we need is a movement to make the larger government levels capable of helping, but nonetheless put limits on their always "helping". We need some way to make it so that we the people will decide when a particular help is no longer needed and can be thrown out. Mayhap even to have limits of time set on any act of the government and require, whether directly or indirectly and if indirectly then with securities against our being manipulated, that we the people must approve of them and of any extension or repetition of them.

Of course, that's what representative government was supposed to be about, but it doesn't seem to be working to that end anymore... or not well at all.

At any rate, as already stated we don't have any reason to worry that we'll be taking away support from our only defense against rampant Liberalism, as that battle was already lost this time around, so let's start discussing. Reshape the Republican Party enough to remove its previous stigmas? Go to a third party? Form a totally new party? Secede? Use some manner of making most Federal law irrelevant to our business and life down here where it matters? Mobilize a grassroots protest campaign to make the current leaders hear our point? Toss around, till we can actually implement it, some other idea?

Comment on yesterday's readings

2008-11-10T16:13:00.001-05:00

Sorry, folks, college life gets hectic. This is actually a paper I wrote for my Catechesis teacher, so it will probably make more sense than my normal ramblings.

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The readings for this Sunday, the feast of the Lateran Basilica, are more connected than most other Sundays. The first reading comes from a dream the prophet Ezekiel had, where the Lord was showing him through the temple. This is the image the Lord paints – calm, serenity, and holiness flowing out from the temple into the world. “Wherever the river flows, every sort of creature that can multiply shall live, and there shall be abundant fish, for wherever this water comes the sea shall be made fresh.” God’s presence in the temple flows out into the world through those who worship there. In Jesus’ time, however, the flow of healing water is polluted. Vendors and money changers have come to deal business within the temple grounds itself. The image this gives to the people, instead of one of healing and calm, is one of greed and materialism. When the stream is thus polluted, the only way to clean is to clean at the source. “He made a whip out of cords and drove them all out of the temple area…” The temple of the Lord should be holy and pure, so that the river flowing out of it can spread life and peacefulness. In the second reading, St. Paul tells the Corinthians that “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for the temple of God, which you are, is holy.” We are, each of us, God’s temple. This temple, however, is easily clogged with greed, materialism, lust, and other evils. We ourselves destroy the temple. When this happens, we must call Jesus into ourselves to drive out our impurities with a whip made of cords, so that the river flowing out of us, our influence, can be pure and holy, and “the sea [can] be made fresh.”

Truce!

2008-11-09T17:00:00.001-05:00

No, I'm not suing for peace with Obama, our new President Elect, as if I think we've lost and have only some kind of surrender as hope for survival. I'm not here to engage in hyperbole about the situation Catholics are in with the government being run by modern liberals. Assessing the situation of faithful Catholics and the action they should take in this situation is something I hope to do thoroughly soon, but I have a different object in mind at the moment, a particular detail that I think I've found more or less how to address.

I am prompted rather by reading some discussion at the diary of a former atheist formerly known as Et Tu?, where a post on dehumanization sparked some response from some pro-choice people (among lots of response from readers in general). I made the realization suddenly that the stereotyping that occurs in national politics, along with the focus on legal aspects and away from the whole issue, was causing a good deal of misunderstanding about what pro-lifers and many, perhaps most, of pro-choicers actually believe.

I'm also aware that though we must be honest about the acts we believe are evil it is very tricky business to persuade people, whose intrinsic dignity we must respect, who have commited or supported those acts or even who merely are in disagreement with us concerning the morality of the acts or, in more cases than we realize, concerning the approach we should take to overcoming them. Some have objected to the saying "hate the sin, love the sinner" because one cannot love the person as a sinner, so a less simplistic approach to the matter seems necessary to achieve the needed balance of judgement of evil and upholding of the person's intrinsic good in spite of the evil they may have done or may be inclined to do or support. It seems to me that we must simultaneously condemn the evil act, help the conscience of the individual to judge it truly without forcing the judgement on them, and uphold the person as basically good and worth forgiving (although forgiveness does not itself revoke all consequences or punishment) while nonetheless bringing them to see that to be good they must reject this evil act. I know, very paradoxical.

Put more practically but still oriented toward truth, we need to bring people to the truth about evil but actually accusing them tends to turn them off and shut them away instead.

The point I mean to get at here is that I want to set forth ground rules by which honest discussion between people of different opinions on abortion can actually happen, minimizing the damage both of flawed preconceptions of the other's position and of speaking against the other himself or herself in ones right zeal to speak against the evil.

In short, I propose a "truce" of sorts to the culture war as wrongful dogfights, such as will enable us to better achieve the real purpose of the so-called culture war: that of bringing people fully to the truth and to respect for life.

The first draft of my proposed peace treaty, or whatever you wish to think of it as (maybe a social contract?), specifically on the matter of abortion is as follows. I would appreciate feedback on it and suggestions for names for it and for some of the more reference-needing particulars within it. I will attempt to keep this briefer than most arguments themselves, but will make sure it covers the grounds thoroughly so that it may proportionally save time for those in debate because of the already established grounds of discussion.

[draft one]

Note on the Organization of these Terms

Due to the lengthy nature of a thorough grounding such as this, these terms have been divided into three sections.

Section A is about the use of the terms themselves. Section B contains general principles of the terms. Section C contains particular details.

It is hoped that this will aid clarity and efficiency of use of these terms; for example, because the idea of the general terms and of how to use these terms should for the most part become as universal as the terms themselves so that in specific copies they may be glanced over and only the particulars need be checked in detail; further specifics of how this division should be helpful will be mentioned in the explanations in Section A.

Section A

1) The following guidelines or terms of discussion may be referenced and agreed to before discussion of abortion between those who appear to largely disagree. If these grounds are agreed upon, they shall be held to as much as possible. If these grounds are not agreed upon in the beginning, they cannot be used as a phariseeical afterthought. The discussors will have to take what they can get without them if they are not agreed upon. Should they be agreed upon part way through a discussion, any points prior in the same discussion that may be violations of these grounds are to be considered out of the discussion.

1a) As these guidelines may be improved or elaborated on by individuals, those using them as grounds in their discussion should ensure, to whatever extent is reasonable, that they are referencing a copy or set of these guidelines that will not change.

1b) Specific changes made to details of the guidelines may also be agreed upon on a case-by-case basis within the discussion and separate from the guidelines referenced.

1c) It is to the benefit of those using these terms, as per the Note in their beginning, to lean toward minimal modification of the first two Sections.

1d) If in the course of a consideration of point 2 below an offense that can be clearly shown against Section B is not covered in Section C, it may be for the best to make an addition to Section C for said offence.

2) If during the discussion someone feels that these grounds have been violated, they may respectfully point out so with the following conditions.

2a) The accused shall be given a chance to either acknowledge his violation and apologize or else to defend by reasonable explanation why his apparent breach is not so but rather an honest assessment.

2b) Should the retraction and apology or explanation in defense by the accused be reasonably adequate, the matter is to be left behind unless it come up again of its own accord.

2c) Should the offended decide that the apology or defense is not reasonable, or should none be made, the offended is free to consider the discussion under these terms closed.

2d) It is to be noted that more concern should be given to violations that can be pointed out through Section C, the particulars, than only through Section B, the very general principles, due to the difficult nature of arguing in vague fuzzy terms. However, see point 1d.

3) Violations of these terms that occured in other discussions, rather than having occured in the same discussion and been dealt with as outlined in point 2, are not to be used as ad hominem bludgeons. Bad arguments that would have been such violations had these terms been in effect in the discussions in which they took place are similarly to be overlooked for the sake of sticking to the issue at hand rather than the character of others involved.

3a) It may come to pass that one uses or proposes these terms who has at times spoken less hospitably, has said or done such as would have been a violation of them. They may have had many different reasons for doing so, e.g. aiming their comments or points to be made at those who already agree that abortionists are practically baby-killers, brevity (it is so much faster to just apply labels, isn't it?) or simply having failed in patience. As such, and given that one purpose of these terms is to prevent human failings from getting in the way of attempts to aid understanding of truth, even these are to be overlooked in the interest of sticking to the issue itself.

Section B

4) Those engaged in this discussion shall strive not to make assumptions about the position or character of the other(s).

5) The actions or words of those not engaged in discussion are not to be projected onto those engaged in it. Guilt by association is off limits.

6) The words given to you should be understood as they are meant by the one who speaks them to you.

6a) Note that this point does not prohibit discussion of the accuracy of the words used in debate, nor of how they could be misconstrued.

7) Should there be confusion or lack of understanding during the debate/discussion, all involved should endeavor to step back and explain what they are trying to say and make sure the other(s) understand as much before moving on to what they think of what the other(s) say or questioning whether that ought logically lead to another thing.

8) A position or explanation from either side shall not be dismissed as ridiculous, stupid, etc. Rather an explanation of why it does not follow or why it should not be held shall be given, with all previous points put into effect in making sure the point one is critiquing is properly understood and said understanding agreed upon by both before the critique is made.

9) It is to be mutually acknowledged that both sides have real reason to fear oppression. On the one hand, there are anti-abortion radicals (although far off from the love that drives the real pro-life movement) who have enacted violence against abortionists, threatened women who procure abortions, etc., and even besides that many women turn to abortion out of great need that has to be addressed somehow. On the other, despite the argument that "nobody is forcing you to have an abortion," it has happened that some public schools have favored teaching the benefits of abortion without allowing speakers against it, and governments have been known to try to regulate alternatives to public school, and furthermore it has happened that under modern medicinal insurance payment for help other than a practice believed by some to be immoral has been denied, financially forcing some to choose between evil and probable economic ruin, and there has long been controversy concerning those in medical practice who do not wish to participate in what they believe to be grave evil. All this is just for example.

9a) Whether one position or another has more reason to fear oppression is not a helpful argument, and shall not be allowed to distract from more important points.

9b) It is preferable rather to discuss ways that those who hold mutually opposing positions can help prevent the other from being oppressed or harmed.

10) Those engaged in discussion shall endeavor to reference human beings in terms that describe them as such and avoid degrading them with name-calling or euphemisms.

Section C

11) As per points 4, 5 and 6, those who call themselves pro-choice are not to be called pro-abortion without first establishing that they would agree to being called such; they may, after all, really believe simply that it should not be an illegal choice even if they do not believe it is a good choice.

12) Similarly, those who call themselves pro-life are not to be called anti-abortion without first establishing that they would agree to being called such; for the most part pro-life people oppose abortion because of their belief about the right to life.

13) As per point 10, an abortion practitioner is not to be derided as a baby-killer, nor are pro-choice politicians, etc.

14) As per point 10, what is formed by a mother and father inside the mother's womb is to be called a baby unless it can be proven not to be or unless the distinction between stages of development and not the baby itself is under discussion.

15) As per point 4 (also 5 and 6), when confronted with a pro-choice person a pro-life person shall endeavor to find out what this person thinks of abortion morally, whether they believe in endeavoring to minimize it through methods other than legal action, why they believe so, etc.

16) Similarly, it shall not be assumed that a pro-life person would have everyone who ever was not stringently pro-life jailed for life, or any other such nonsense, but rather it is to be respectfully asked how they would deal with the issue legally.

17) As per points 4 and 5, the motives of pro-choice people are to be understood as what they say they are, not assumed to be greed, hatred of children, etc.

18) As per points 4 and 5, the motives of pro-life people shall be understood as those they explain, not assumed to be out of some kind of sex-controlling cult craziness or some other such unrealistic, even if less extreme, view.

19) Should a pro-choice person raise concerns about women who have abortions, women for whom abortion seems necessary for whatever reason, etc., how as a society to deal with these concerns is to be addressed.

20) Similarly, should a pro-life person raise concerns such as are in point 9 or about the harm done to women or families by abortion, these concerns are to be considered honestly and measures to deal with them are to be discussed.

[end]

Suggestions? Criticisms (fair ones that is)? Anything incomprehensible? Any way to shorten long parts without leaving anything out?

I'd say we're in trouble

2008-11-07T08:24:00.002-05:00

"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money."
-- Alexis de Tocqueville

(Whoever posted it and thus allowed me to find the quote must forgive me for forgetting who they were. I dug it up recently and decided to post it, but found I had never noted where I found it.)

War Analogy

2008-11-06T15:50:00.003-05:00

One of the peculiar effects of believing in good and rightness is that all the ruination of it in the world gives a constant impression of being besieged and assaulted by evil. With such weight pressing on the upright man and the great temptation to despair, it is very comforting to think of upholding right in terms of fighting a seemingly hopeless but nonetheless heroic battle. Thus the so-called "War Analogy" is always going to be attractive to those struggling for good.

With that said, it is true that the war analogy can give the wrong impression -- both to those hearing it and believing they are the "enemy" in it and to those using it to encourage themselves.

On the one hand, let's take conservatism for an example of how people could be afraid of those who see themselves as at war, even metaphorically. The conservative movement has long been tied to the so-called culture wars. In more recent times, conservatism has become tied to fighting a literal war against evil on the other side of the globe. Although the Republican leaders have tried to claim that damage will be carefully limited to those who deserve it and only done to bring about good, concerns persist that unnecessary and often downright wrong harm is being done. With that as an example of what conservatives can mean by "war", it isn't as unreasonable as we might think for those who find themselves in disagreement with some aspect of the conservative movement in the culture wars to worry that conservatives would be similarly ruthless in "fighting evil" in said culture wars.

On the other, let's take the even graver danger that someone thinking in terms of the war analogy faces. If one does forget that the people who work for the evils we seek to repell and overcome are not themselves evil, we face a very great risk of sinnig against charity by hating the people themselves. If we do that, we throw away any chance at all of doing what we truly should be focused on, bringing them to understand good and be willing to uphold it. Not only do we throw away this chance, we do damage to our own upholding of good by implicitly refusing to uphold the good of the person.

The question is, given the usefulness of a properly understood war analogy that does not see the other person as evil, is there a way to maximize the safety of using the war analogy? Say, is it enough to consider others who seem on the side of evil rather as prisoners of war? Or is it possible to be careful enough in when, where and how we use the war analogy to make its risks less than its benefits? These are questions I unfortunately do not know the answer to; they are questions we ought to consider as we work through very troubling times.

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.

2008-11-05T14:37:00.004-05:00

Yesterday Barrack Obama became president of the United States. This is a fact. We cannot wish ourselves out of it, get around it, or discount it. It happened. What's more, yesterday the people of America voted for him as president. This is also a fact. Obama won both the popular and the electoral vote. Clearly, the people wanted him.

What in him did they want? This man, who is only debatably a citizen, who has been on the political scene only since '04, who has never adequately been examined for character, was voted to be president. Allow me to elaborate - We knew who McCain was. He has been in the political spotlight for years and years. His voting record goes back to before the first Bush. We know his character from what has been seen on the media, in his record, and in his speeches. Generally speaking, we know what he will do. Not so with Mr. Obama.

What do we know about Obama? His voting record is inconclusive - only four years of flip flops to look at. His past is almost virtually unsearched by media and private people alike. His citizenship is not even apparent. Why is he our president, when we don't even know who he is or what he will do? Why did we the people choose someone preaching a general message of "Change" for better or for worse?

Earlier in the history of our country, I guarentee that no unexamined man would ever have been president. In the time of Lincoln, or Jefferson, when races were close the people payed close attention to the candidates. They knew that the choice of A or B could lead to catastrophic crises. Now, however, we hear very little substance in the political debates. We hear sentimental stories about Joe the Plumber, about poor, homeless persons, and about how tomorrow will be brighter, but very few issues. We hear abstract allusions to economic programs, but nothing more than that. We hear plenty of ad hominem, but no true rebuttals of policy. Apparently, this show of sentimental stories was enough to convince the populace to vote for a candidate of whom they knew almost nothing, aside from flashy comercials and sweet words. Something in the American has changed.

If it was not substance that decided the election, then what? It was all about showmanship and providing the proper images to the people in order to woo the masses. The media, for ages on end, has been supplying the citizens with disenheartening messages about how our economy is failing, about how the war is failing, and about how our president lied. Naturally, if everything is wrong, you change. So, a candidate comes along who has a brilliant presence, a strong ability to convince, and the banner of "Change". No substance even needs to be mentioned. The people were so misinformed, so hopeless, and so materialistic that what had value was valueless. Obama's cheery smile and thumbs up won out over McCain's tired, raspy voice. Nothing more. Our nation pays so much attention to the appearance that substance did not matter.

Could America be this far gone? Could our souls be so weary that we have not the strength to consider right and wrong? If so, our nation is already damned. Could the people of America be so apathetic and materialistic that they cared more for a president with dimples than for a nation sinking into economic, moralistic, and internation crisis? If so, it is best to strike off and head for better shores; the nation is already doomed.

Yet outside every school the courageous flag with stars of white and stripes of red rises above the schools, houses, and facilities. Still its blue demands of us honor, its red sacrifice, and its white purity. There is hope still in America. This country and its laws still belong to its citizens. The country is ours, and we have not yet let it slip from our grasp into that of tyranny.

Then let us stand for every right, let us fight against every wrong, and let us struggle for every moral. The battle in our country is not a political one; the battle in our country is one of apathy attempting to extinguish the flame of virtue. So long as we can fight, the battle is not lost. Hope springs eternal while the strength of virtuous men bear hope onwards. No, America is not lost. America is merely dazed from the blows of its enemy. The enemy has moved in amidst the confusion, but he will be driven off. America will remain the titan of virtue.

Refusal to Persuade

2008-11-04T21:49:00.009-05:00

It's quite curious how the most noticable opposition to a bright idea is often not from people who think it's inherently bad, but from people who think not enough support can be gathered.

Let's take third-party voting as it's the most obvious example.

One of the most peculiar arguments I ever heard against supporting Ron Paul was "he doesn't have a chance". There are real reasons not to support him, but is the fact that most people at the moment don't look like they would one of them? After all, that is simply a matter of convincing people. We're not always going to be able to convince people. But we don't have a chance of convincing people if we begin by assuming we can't and refusing to support something/someone on that basis.

A similar argument gets leveled at those who wish Catholics would do something about being forced to choose the lesser of two evils every time. The most common objection to the notion that we ought to make some effort to get something better is that not enough of us would be in agreement.

Let's take a third example but on a broader issue: Distributism's most common criticism is that it will simply never happen without government mandate which would be tantamount to communism. The idea that that very criticism contributes to making it harder for it to happen doesn't seem to occur to those who make it. Since they just *know* it can't happen, it's apparently better for them to minimize the number of people trying.

In all three of these cases there is a good possibility that even the best attempt to champion the cause it would fail. I'm not trying to say that it's only because people don't want to champion a seemingly lost cause that causes aren't won. But I have to question whether it's wise to cut off a cause on the basis of its seeming lost.

Of course, an obvious objection is that Christ Himself pointed out (toward the end of Luke 14) that a prudent king will before setting out to war consider whether the war is winnable and sue for peace instead if it is not. Clearly such a suggestion bears some merit. It bears merit even if one dismisses it with the fact that Christ was comparing His call to totality of conversion to that situation and that Christ did elsewhere point out that we could learn something from the prudence even of wicked men (the dishonest steward who yet is merciful to his subjects so that he will have people who are kind him when he is, well, fired), ie in short that Christ's referencing said king's prudence doesn't necessarily amount to Christ's approval of what he is referencing.

Clearly to throw ourselves into a project that we know we cannot win is a waste of energy and time. What I would question is whether we genuinely know we cannot win some efforts due to lack of popular support or whether rather we are neglecting to give it due consideration in our belief that we cannot win.

Here's my take.

Succeeding in any endeavor involving the persuasion of many people will depend greatly on whether enough people can be persuaded, of course. What seems to be overlooked is that whether enough people can be persuaded has very little to do with whether enough people at the moment are open to persuasion. I say this because persuasion of masses is not a simple matter of saying x and seeing how many people across the world respond with "Yes, x!" It's a long and multi-leveled process and self-nourishing cycle. You see, as more people are persuaded, there are more people to do the persuading. Thus it is very hard to simply look at the initial condition of the populace and say "there are not enough people who would be persuaded," for the simple reason that such saying really amounts to "there are not _yet_ enough people who would be persuaded," which says nothing about ultimate outcomes but only that the outcome will not be immediate.

Now, if we want to argue whether a system would be too dependent on persuasion even after everyone was persuaded to try adopting it, there is a point there. If we want to argue that we need to account for certain difficulties we will have in convincing a particular people -- say, overcoming the media or dispelling a prejudice -- that is most certainly to be done. Yet to dismiss the idea outright on the simple grounds that it requires persuasion for it to be adopted?

Well, I will tell you where that practice would have led us. There would be no United States. Christianity would not be legal. Whatever barbaric emperor would reign over us would have no reasonable opposition.

So for Pete's sake, let's do more discussing of how to persuade people to adopt a system and how to make the system self-surviving once it's adopted, and less dismissal of any idea that would require a lot of persuasion.

After all, most of the best ideas -- say, charity -- say, the very call of our Lord to conversion and living for God -- are lost causes at some point or another for the simple reason that man tends to get worse rather than better.

Get over it.

2008-11-03T16:54:00.002-05:00

From Strunk and White, which is considered by most professors to be the Bible of grammar.

"The use of he as a pronoun for nouns embracing both genders is a simple, practical convention rooted in the beginnings of the English language."

So get over it already. All men ought to be able to tell that using he to mean a male or female is perfectly rational, not exclusive, and simply part of our heritage of Western culture.

Politico Discovers Media Unconscious

2008-10-31T09:32:00.003-04:00

I was sitting in the health center waiting room the other day for my allergy shot (sort of the allergy equivalent of vaccine -- or, if you prefer, similar to the Dread Pirate Roberts' building up of an immunity to iocane) when I heard something remotely interesting on the news. It seems that the news site Politico did a study on the whole media bias thing. Guess what they found? The media, it turns out, will not admit to having ideological bias, but will chalk its obvious bias up to the need to emphasize the "big stories".

Now it's obvious to any observer not himself biased that the media has impacted the elections by overemphasizing any gaffs or even rumours of gaffs on the part of one campaign and only minimally reporting any gaffs on the part of the other. The crazies up there have managed to convince the world that a man with a short record of voting "present" is more qualified to run the country than a woman with a barely shorter record of handling a State. They've also managed to convince people that because said woman is pro-life and doesn't hate men she is anti-woman. And the list goes on, or as the Romans said, "et cetera."

So if they're obviously reporting biasedly but chalk it up to what makes good stories for the media, are they or are they not biased?

I answer that they are not conscious of their bias in favor of one ideology, but that they have gotten a bias into their heads at a deeper level that some things are more to be criticized for profit than others.

I mean to ask, nay, demand by what ojective standards is this one campaign really that much more susceptible (that is, as much more as the coverage is more) to criticism than the other? They cannot possibly tell us, nor anyone. Therefore I conclude they are not biased in a conscious belief that one must win over the other, but in an unconscious belief that one should be better and thus less criticizible than the other.

I would say furthermore that if they are reporting based on interest/impact in the story rather than based on whether it's info the people should know, they are clearly in their job for the business more than for the truth. It's like that editor of the small paper in New York that reports on Spiderman: it just sells the paper so much better to question whether the superhero is a villain, but is better-selling papers a justificiation or is that editor more concerned about his salary than about bringing people the truth? He may talk about how he's the only guy who will tell people about Spiderman as if he were aiding spread of the truth, but we know that's the quietus he's given his own conscience. Similarly, I think the media in the real world have convinced themselves that they're just trying to do their jobs when in fact two things are amiss: an inordinate love of their own business and/or its profit over the truth, and a bias as to what issues should be of more interest (and therefore sell better).

We were told long ago by whoever wrote the Proverbs of the Bible that the love of money (not money itself, mind you) is the root of all evil. Greed, I seem to recall, is one of the Seven Deadly Sins -- that is, the main sins that form a foundation for much more sin and which whole genres, as it were, of sins build onto. I strongly suspect an ignored greed problem on the part of the media.

Socrates taught us that wisdom cannot be possessed, only pursued. He was speaking against the tendency we humans have to assume we know and thereby cut ourselves off from considering whether we do know the thing we think we know or may on the contrary be mistaken. In doing so he was bringing to light a far more dangerous unconscious than Freud could imagine. For Freud's subconscious is not stronger than conscious, rational thought, whatever Freud may have imagined. But to allow one's rational thought to be a pawn of never genuinely considered assumptions, as to refuse to consider the possibility of error in whatever conclusion one reached when basing other things off that conclusion, now that is a lack of consciousness that can only be overcome by choosing to do the consideration one has been neglecting.

It seems there is a dangerous media unconscious indeed at work in our nation.

A Question of Truthfulness

2008-10-16T19:49:00.003-04:00

I would appreciate it if this idea were to be more widely considered. Not going to be given attention by the bishops or otherwise become commonly known anytime soon, I know, but a start is necessary for it to get anywhere in the long run at all.

And as an aside, this little related idea can also be handy these days.

St. Augustine and Love

2008-10-15T14:47:00.002-04:00

Thank you Scott for updating the masses about my absence...in my rush to get to school, I forgot to inform everyone that I wouldn't be here at all...

Anyway, in Latin today I was translating a sermon by St. Augustine, called "God, I will sing to You a new song." I have realized two things: St. Augustine wrote better Latin than Vergil, and that he was more of a genius than I had previously thought. He drew from the psalms, St. Paul, and John to come to the conclusion that Love is a new song to the Lord. I can't really describe the logic at the moment, since I don't have it in front of me, but let's assume for the moment that St. Augustine was right.

Love is a song to the Lord. Now, love means a billion different thing today, but it is quite obvious from context that St. Augustine was speaking about caritas, or divine love. So this means, whenever we act with charity, we are singing to the Lord a song of praise. After all, because of our human weakness, we couldn't love without God, so each act of charity is praise to the creator - a song of praise. And when we sing, we pray twice... Therefore, a person who acts always with charity will constantly be offering up a prayer to the Lord. Intersting stuff, huh. I love St. Augustine.

Whenever you get the chance, read the Church fathers/doctors. They really are brilliant. We are meant to follow in their footsteps, but how can we if we don't know them? They will pray for you, and give you the best examples. Read St. Francis de Sales' Introduction to the Devout Life, or perhaps St. Therese of Avilla's autobiography. Any sermons by all the doctors who were priests or bishops... Don't just read them, though. Take them and meditate on them. That way, not only your understanding of the faith will grow, but also your prayer life.

Put a little saint in your day!

I may or may not ever post again until Thanksgiving break...

~Ambrose

Hiatus?

2008-10-01T15:56:00.004-04:00

What does that word technically mean? All I've gathered is that it's the favored term among bloggers for "a break from blogging".

Well, at any rate, since some are probably wondering where the Three Anachronisms went, here's the short version:

Ambrose only has a small amount of internet each week at the college he's at: blogging hasn't been on high enough priority to merit use of his highly limited time.

Mari has her hands full handling life at a secular college: I expect she'll be back when she gets the hang of it and starts finding spare time and spare thoughts, but till she's in that... how you say... groove, she'll be scarce.

And I've my brain bouncing off the walls trying to decide whether I hate politics too much to care if McCain is worth voting for, which is becoming a nuisance with the need to vote soon coming up and the diminishing of time for researching whether he's reliable enough to be worth it (and whether Palin is half what she's said to be): thus my mind's too preoccupied to post anything reasonable and of substance so all you get are a few little half-baked ideas I've let out 'Neath Aeviternity.

So, when will we be back?

Ambrose: when school's out or when he feels like writing about something off the 'net and quickly transferring it to a post here, but even that may not happen because he may not be as up on net-based news and we all know non-net-based news is gradually dying (at least, this is my suspicion; he might just surprise us all and become the most active member again).

Mari: beats me; when she feels up to it.

Myself: when I can avoid contact with politics again, probably in several months when not only is the election over but people have quit talking about it till two years from now when "election year" (which is two years, not one) starts up again; I suppose the main thing will be being able to disregard it because the need to know about it to vote is no longer present, but there may be a month or two after the inauguration till the fact that I made an official choice about it stops bugging me... I guess we'll see.

Y'all's in Christ,
Scott

P.S. We don't seem to have a label for "how we're doing right now" because we hardly ever post on that here... Is it arrogant for me to use the label "Great Authors" on the basis that I think my friends Mari and Ambrose fall in that category or will someday at least? 8^)

Way to go!

2008-08-27T21:17:00.002-04:00

So, Speaker Pelosi made this statement about Church doctrine:

I would say that as an ardent, practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I have studied for a long time. And what I know is, over the centuries, the doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition. St. Augustine said at three months. We don't know. The point is, is that it shouldn't have an impact on the woman's right to choose. Roe v. Wade talks about very clear definitions of when the child-first trimester, certain considerations; second trimester; not so third trimester. There's very clear distinctions. This isn't about abortion on demand, it's about a careful, careful consideration of all factors and-to-that a woman has to make with her doctor and her god. And so I don't think anybody can tell you when life begins, human life begins.

Obviously, this is a gross mangling of Church doctrine. The Church is, in fact, very clear that abortion is always wrong, regardless of any circumstances. In response to this, just about every bishop in America spoke up in defense of the Church, just as they should. A few selected responses:

From the USCCB:

The Church has always taught that human life deserves respect from its very beginning and that procured abortion is a grave moral evil. In the Middle Ages, uninformed and inadequate theories about embryology led some theologians to speculate that specifically human life capable of receiving an immortal soul may not exist until a few weeks into pregnancy. While in canon law these theories led to a distinction in penalties between very early and later abortions, the Church's moral teaching never justified or permitted abortion at any stage of development.

And from His Emminence Edward Cardinal Egan:

We are blessed in the 21st century with crystal-clear photographs and action films of the living realities within their pregnant mothers. No one with the slightest measure of integrity or honor could fail to know what these marvelous beings manifestly, clearly, and obviously are, as they smile and wave into the world outside the womb. In simplest terms, they are human beings with an inalienable right to live, a right that the Speaker of the House of Representatives is bound to defend at all costs for the most basic of ethical reasons. They are not parts of their mothers, and what they are depends not at all upon the opinions of theologians of any faith. Anyone who dares to defend that they may be legitimately killed because another human being "chooses" to do so or for any other equally ridiculous reason should not be providing leadership in a civilized democracy worthy of the name.

This leaves no room whatsoever for doubt. Pelosi, and any other Catholics in office who support abortion are completely seperating themselves from the Church and its doctrine, and in doing so are leading astray other Catholics. This is a very evil thing, indeed. Let us be thankful that our bishops were so quick to refute her unfounded statements! Three cheers for the U.S. bishops!

~Ambrose

Random science...

2008-08-22T22:27:00.002-04:00

So I randomly decided to record alcohol purchase versus gender today at work. I wanted to ascertain whether males or females were more likely to purchase alcohol. Out of the 114 customers who came through my lane tonight, 77 were female and 37 were male. Here are the results:

Percentage of customers who purchased alcohol: 31.58%
Percentage of women who purchased alcohol: 29.87%
Percentage of men who purchased alcohol: 35.14%

Draw what conclusions you will.

A few notes about methodology:

Anyone who was obviously too young to purchase alcohol was not included in the study.
This study is not supported by any business, company, group, or foundation. It is purely the work of a single amateur. No personal or valuable information was collected.

Of Service, Duty, Man's Natural Knowledge of God's Law, and Little Emperors

2008-08-15T22:46:00.005-04:00

A story my mom related having read about got me thinking just now.

There's tell that a generation of only-children in China (darn one-child policy) has grown up getting everything. So much so that they call these now grown-up and successful professionals "little emperors". And yet, though you'd think they'd be spoiled -- and maybe, had things gone differently, they would be -- they went out in response to the earthquake and helped their fellows in need. Amazingly, the crisis brought them out of getting everything they wanted to willingly giving everything instead.

I'm awed by how God has written His ordainment of good and evil into man's heart such that we can be moved to such heroism by dire situations. It is not for nothing that we consider exceedingly vile the man who takes advantage of others in distress. Such a man not only has chosen his own desires over the good of others, he has repressed his sense of good and ill -- or worse, chosen to revel in ill and evil, not just to put his own desires too high. It has been plainly shown many times that man, even without the clarification of Revelation or Philosophy, have a basic sense of good and evil, right and wrong, and know for which they ought to act.

Yet there is a puzzling question... why is it that in China, where ill befalls many in the name of... gosh, I don't even know what they claim 'tis for, a bunch of seemingly spoiled young men and women would go out in disaster to save, heal and help, and over here young men went out pillaging when a hurricane hit (yes, I'm talking about Katrina, and the stealing and shooting was far more shocking to me than the lack of government aid... you can't expect the government to solve everything, after all...)?

Another thought came to mind. I thought on the discipline I saw among the many, many Chinese performing in the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Could there be a connection? In both cases, the Chinese people showed themselves able to give themselves over to something good in an incredible way. In one, I was amazed at the discipline. In another, I was amazed that they retained a desire to help their fellow man.

Now I have put things a little backward in asking whether there's a connection. As I was thinking about it, the connection is how I came to think of the other one. You see, I have a strong suspicion that, much as I despise their believing they have so much duty to a communist state, the Chinese people seem to have a much better sense of duty and are more disciplined to give themselves to whatever they believe their duty is. I could be wrong, but it certainly would explain much.

What are we to make of this? For all the evil of their sacrificing their selves to the false god of communism, they look like they know what and how they should be sacrificing. I'm not sure whether they taught their youth this duty humanely or not, but if my theory is correct they succeeded in ingraining it in them.

A question that arises is, how might a sense of duty and discipline be taught again to our youth humanely, where we are at least allowed (for now) to try to find the true God to whom to sacrifice it?

I suppose we must start by ridding ourselves of the idea of freedom in the sense of having no responsibility. I would say we must free ourselves from the idea of freedom from all but self-invented ideas of right and wrong, but then I don't either want to have some kook's idea of right and wrong imposed on me regardless of my belief. Thus a balance must be maintained between freedom and what we can agree on about objective right and wrong. We must, at the very least, rid ourselves of the idea that we each get to decide even what is good -- while there must be room to disagree on what is good, we should not delusion ourselves that we come up with it ourselves rather than trying to find it out.

With that self-idolatry thrown out, we'll be halfway there -- after all, China's mistake clearly is swinging to the other extreme of self-anihilitry.

To get us the rest of the way there, I suppose a good idea would be to require a couple, maybe a few, just not more than half a dozen, years of public service by all adults (well, maybe not women or maybe fewer for women... they're special 8^). Military service would be one form possible, but I would say we ought to be able to choose others. I'm not saying I'm eager to be subject to such at all, but I nonetheless am willing to if we were to get wise enough to try it. Having various options other than military service would be helpful in several ways. First, some gentle souls like myself would greatly prefer not to have to endure being drill-sergeanted -- call me a softy, but I'm more suited to being strong in quite different ways. Much beyond that, we could show how duty and freedom work together by allowing people to find whatever good for which they wish to work. Far beyond, there's all the good that would be done for our people, especially the poor, with work other than the military. Further still, when such work is done, the government need spend less, meaning lower taxes for everybody. Ultimately, we also get the benifit of being taught first-hand to be disciplined and duty-bound.

If we were to enact such a policy, it is possible we could reach toward a society where people know how to sacrifice themselves to greater good and yet are free to seek out the greatest good rather than bound to follow an ideology imposed on them. We could be a great nation again. In time, we could become an even greater nation than back in the old days before our corruption.

But then again, now that the combox is open on it it's that time again when people get to tell me why nobody will consent to following my "utopian" ideas (despite my arranging them to be perfectly non-utopian really).

On Editing Hymns

2008-08-13T11:19:00.002-04:00

A sure-fire way to make a conservative Catholic with a deep love of classical music happy is to bring back some of the old hymns among the more contemporary songs heard today. There is a problem, though- many of them were written at earliest in the century before last, and there is some language that may cause confusion to your congregation.

Like Thee, Thou, Thy, and Thine.

Take, for example, the following hymn, written in the mid-1800s.

Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, thy great Name we praise.

Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light,
Nor wanting, nor wasting, thou rulest in might;
Thy justice like mountains high soaring above
Thy clouds, which are fountains of goodness and love.

To all life thou givest, to both great and small;
In all life thou livest, the true life of all;
We blossom and flourish, like leaves on the tree,
Then wither and perish; but naught changeth thee.

Great Father of glory, pure Father of light,
Thine angels adore thee, all veiling their sight;
All laud we would render: O help us to see
'Tis only the splendor of light hideth thee.

The first three verses are easily enough edited to substitute you, your, and yours, but that last verse is tricky. So it gets changed to:

Great Father of glory, pure Father of light,
Your angels adoring, all veiling their sight;
We too, God invisible, offer our praise;
O light inaccessible, Ancient of Days!

See what we did here? We couldn't think up anything to rhyme with see instead of thee, so we cut off the last half of the verse, rehashed and regurgitated the first verse, and tacked it on the end! Nevermind the climax of the poem, nevermind the expression of the immanence of God and that glorious revelation that nothing is between us and him.

Nevermind people whose favorite hymn phrases just might include 'Tis only the splendor of light hideth thee.

And now it's published in hymnals all over the nation, to be used in churches that say "Hallowed be THY name" out of sheer habit and then switch over to "For YOURS is the kingdom..."

Why not
All laud would we render: O teach us it's true
There's only a splendor of light hiding you.
?
Rather a vulgar combination of rhyme and contraction to fit the meter, but it's truer to the original than the "gracefully edited" one, and perhaps its clumsiness would make people question why it had to be changed in the first place...

One of these days I'm going to denounce and renounce the English language.

Re-Reading LotR....again.

2008-08-12T11:30:00.003-04:00

Yeah, the fifth time through is actually better than all the previous four, because I started picking up little funny things that I hadn't noticed before. Little plays on words, ironies, etc. that just show themselves more clearly when you already know the story and aren't really surprised by any major things.

Anyway, I was reading the bit where he describes the Rohan for the first time, in the chapter King of the Golden Hall. The description reminded me acutely of America as it is today...you'll see why.

"'Many long lives of men it is since the golden hall was built.' [said Aragorn]
'Five hundred times have the red leaves fallen in Mirkwood in my home since then,' said Legolas, 'and but a little while does that seem to me.'
'But to the Riders of the Mark it seems so long ago,' said Aragorn,' that the raising of this house is but a memory of song, and the years before are lost in the mist of time. Now they call this land their home, their own...'"

He goes on to sing one of the saddest, best songs of LotR

"Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the west behind the hills into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning,
Or behold the flowing years from the sea returning?"

In America, we forgot how hard we fought to be free, how much blood our fathers spilled and how much of our fathers' blood was spilled in order for us to have our freedoms. We call this land our country, we call it our home, we take it for granted. We think since it's been here for scant two hundred years, it will be here, exactly as it is, forever. How foolish we are! Have we learned nothing from our history books? Rome lasted from 510 BC until 476 AD - almost a thousand years, about five hundred as a republic, and when the republic crumbled five hundred as an empire. During that period of time, there were civil wars, anarhy reined over by military governments, and people who came in time of need to save their civilization from certain ruin. The same with other great empires - Britain, Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, etc. They all eventially crumbled internally, and then were beaten by the outsiders. The same is happening to America - We're becoming apathetic, more concerned with the quality of our next meal than the state of our country's government. If America doesn't pull it together, become more patriotic, and less selfcentered, another world power might rise, and it won't be US.

Words of doom. oooOOOooo.

~Ambrose

thought on today's Gospel

2008-08-09T21:08:00.002-04:00

In today's homily, Fr. David made such a fascinating point that I had to share it with you all.

When Jesus told Peter to come to him on the water, he did not calm the elements first- instead, he gave Peter the ability to come to him even on stormy seas. Only after catching Peter and guiding him back to the boat did the wind and the waves die down.

~Mari ^_^

Yes! YES!

2008-08-07T11:30:00.003-04:00

Finally, a retranslation of the Roman Missal! I've been waiting for this since I first found it in Latin, and wondered why the English we used was nothing like it. It's so much more accurate!

Just to give those among you too lazy to read the whole thing a sample of how much better it is:

Latin: "Et cum spiritu tuo"
Earlier English Translation: "And also with you."
New English Translation: "And with your spirit", which is as literal as you can get.

Latin: "Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis"
Earlier English Translation: "Glory to God in the highest, and peace to his people on Earth".
New English Translation: "Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth peace to people of good will." Again, can't get any more literal than that.

This translation conveys much more than the old the true beauty and the glory of the Latin Missal. Although nothing can really match Latin for splendor and awesomeness, this new translation comes as close as possible, I think. Three cheers for the Church!

~Ambrose

The Purpose of a Marshmallow?

2008-08-04T10:50:00.003-04:00

This isn't a joke. It's a very serious philosophical question. In the form of a joke.

I randomly started asking this question (What is the purpose of a marshmallow?) to people who came through my checkout lane, and then tearing apart their answers with my logic skillz, a la Socrates. I got exactly the answers one would expect to get:

"To be squishy and soft and sweet?"

"Oh, they go great in hot cocoa!"

etc.

I however, do not think that this is the purpose of a marshmallow, as obviously a marshmallow can be used to build a model of atomic structure, or to throw at graduating seniors (don't ask). So what is the purpose of a marshmallow?

Man created marshmallow, and thus what he created them for must be their purpose. Man created marshmallows with the idea of eating them, so they exist to be eaten, right?

I disagree. Man did not create marshmallows - man did not create anything! He cannot create, he can only fashion something from something else. Man can form marshmallows out of sugar and preservatives, but he cannot create them. He gets marshmallow-ness from God, all that is marshmallow comes from him - the sugar, the preservatives, and the purpose. Therefore, along with all material creation, its purpose is to help us get to heaven, and nothing more or less. Just like the gold is created only to be made into the monstrance and the nourishment of our soul, the sugar is created only to be made into marshmallows so that we can have fellowship while roasting them over an open fire, so that the carbohydrates can give us the energy to worship our creator, so that a kid can either be consoled by its sweetness or discover the shape of a molecule.

So think next time before you eat your s'mores. XD

~Ambrose

A comment on today's gospel

2008-08-03T11:43:00.002-04:00

When Jesus heard of the death of John the Baptist,

he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself.

The crowds heard of this and followed him on foot from their towns.

When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd,

his heart was moved with pity for them, and he cured their sick.

Jesus, I find, is an extremely interesting character. He condemns the scribes and pharisees for hypocrisy, forgives the worst of sinners (to touch a prostitute in Jewish society would be to forbid yourself from entering the temple until you had done ritual washing), touched lepers (another Jewish taboo), and healed on the Sabbath. He was quite the radical. He shattered societal norms. But, today's gospel shows an almost completely different Jesus. His heart is "moved with pity" for the crowd, the helpless sheep who follow their shepherd. Jesus was deeply affected by John the Baptist's death - John was his cousin, after all. Naturally, Jesus wanted some alone time - probably to pray. This is not very much to ask. However, the crowd who follow their Messiah cannot be gotten rid of so easily. They follow him, on foot, all the way to this "deserted place". Jesus, who just wants to be alone, sees them and "his heart was moved with pity." Think about it - Jesus' cousin just died, and the poor man just wants to be left alone. But even though emotionally, Jesus has to be absolutely worn out, he "cured their sick", and preached to them the messages of the kingdom. So great was his love that he set himself, his emotions, and his problems aside to help the needy around him. He loved those poor people so much that he could not turn them away. He created them, and they came to him sick, needy, hungry, and ready to hear his teachings. Despite his tiredness, despite having his cousin's head chopped off, Jesus is immediately compassionate. He cures their sickness, he feeds their hunger, he fulfills their neediness, and gives them the greatest gift of all - His Word. So, let's take a hint from today's gospel, and next time we're tired, have headaches, and our siblings or our children are bothering us - let's try to be Christlike, and be kind to the ones close to us, and treat them with love, even when it's hard.

~Ambrose

The Empty Argument for Emptiness

2008-07-31T15:00:00.003-04:00

So we've heard that Nietzsche said that everything is meaningless. But what does that mean? *g* I have always thought it ludicrous for a person to hold that nothing has purpose. Here are my thoughts on the matter.

If everything is meaningless, why say so at all? Let people "console themselves with religion" or whatever they want to. If everything is meaningless, there is no reason for any one to do anything, or not to do anything. Government has no power. Sure, they can say that the common good demands that xyz murderer be punished, but the common good is a meaning and a purpose. If everything is meaningless, no action can have meaning, and as a result, charity, affluence, despair - none of these are possible, or if they are, none of them have any meaning, and thus are not what they would be. If an affluent person doesn't really have any power, he's not affluent. If a charitable person can't really change anything, he's not charitable. And thus, language at all is meaningless - we can't even say "the" without implying a certain thing is worth pointing out - or has meaning.

So, since everything cannot have no meaning, it certainly shoud have meaning. And if life means something, then I certainly want to find out what it means. Thus far, the only meaning I've come across that satisfies my desire for meaning is the theology of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.

Let your life mean something! Think about that before you spend all your time doing nothing.

~Ambrose

I love this quote...

2008-07-31T00:07:00.004-04:00

"Where there is great love there are always miracles," he said at length. "One might almost say that an apparition is human vision corrected by divine love...The Miracles of the Church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always."

~Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop

Mark Twain on Patriotism

2008-07-04T22:57:00.003-04:00

My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death.

- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Happy Independence Day!

"Come on in!" my foot.

2008-07-02T23:56:00.003-04:00

There's this ad on some of the tvs at Walmart (and perhaps elsewhere, but WM's the only place I've seen much tv lately) for the Olympics this year. This ad comments that for thousands of years China has held the world out and now the world will finally be invited in. There was no note for where to send comments or questions, so I just have to put them on the blog.

First of all, I'd like to point out that the current tendency of China to be hostile to outsiders has nothing to do with China's traditional and ancient appraisal of itself as better off kept to itself and everything to do with it being a no-good communist state.

Next, allow me to ask, was there no point when China was coming ino contact with he almost-modern world and hadn't yet had its communist revolution at which it allowed in the world in any meaningful sense? I don't honestly know, so I'm curious whether the impression given by the ad that this is the first time we're al invited to China is actually accurate or not.

Then, allow me to object that it is a very fake, done-up sort of company parlor invitation we're getting when the world will be shown to their Olympic arenas and never told how many and how large are the human rights violations that went into the making of those arenas. Granted it's possible there were none, but with modern China's history, I wouldn't be surprised if the people I've read claiming their inside sources tell of horrors are correct.

Finally (and more relevant if not more shocking), I hear (or rather read) from sources I believe to be reliable (although for absolute proof we'll just wait and see, right?) that while the world will be bodily invited in, its opinions will still be shut out by China's anti-free-speech laws. Aren't the Olympics supposed to be about sharing of cultures as well as coming together above our cultural differences? Or am I remembering the point all wrong?

A Culture of Death - What does that mean?

2008-06-29T16:11:00.001-04:00

This entire post came to me in the car last night at approximately 10:00 in the car on the way home from Florida. I spent to week at the beach doing three things, really - eating, sleeping, and recreating. My major form of recreation, naturally enough, was in-the-surf activity, but when that was not feasible I turned to reading, mostly. Agatha Christie provided the entirety of my reading. Five mystery novels in a week. On top of this, Aunt Kathy (whom I mention with the utmost respect and love) showed me all of her favorite TV shows - including NCIS, CSI, etc. More murder mysteries. I don't believe either of the two mentioned things are wrong in and of themselves. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a mystery story - the greatest author of them all (Chesterton) wrote a large series. I think, however, after a full week of them, it started to get to my mind.

It was in the car on the way home, watching another murder mystery (a movie adaptation of Agatha Christie), that I discovered something - my mind couldn't take it any more. I felt physically sick. This may have been my characteristic motion sickness, but honestly - I'm not the kind of person to fear bumps in the night, but I was honestly scared. Not scared of anything in particular (My mom was driving, so that might have been it... *shudder*) but just scared. I was constantly going over in my mind how I would get out of each improbable murderous situation I pretended to find myself in. This behavior, I believe, is both characteristic and uncharacteristic of me. I very easly get lost in something fantastic - Final Fantasy, Harry Potter (I've pretended to kill Voldemort in a satisfactory way many times, to fix the ending of the last book), Lord of the Rings, etc. I hate to dwell on bad things, however. I feel tired enough from work - I don't need to stress over things that aren't real. However, I was certainly stressed. When we got home (ca. 2:00 A.M.) I went straight to bed, but slept fitfully due to imagined murders I was solving/avoiding/performing. I couldn't get it out of my mind - I still can't. This led to some philosophizing.

Humans, as a whole, are absolutely obsessed with death. We are so obsessed with it, that we both invent millions of terms for it, "He passed away" "He is deceased" "She moved on" "She has shoved off this mortal coil - She took arms and, by opposing, ended it" (Shakespeare FTW), and at the same time use those terms to avoid the concept altogether. I'd like to push this off as just a complex of wanting to avoid it - we don't want at all to think about it, thus the euphamism. However, after thought this cannot be the case. Murder mysteries, horror stories, and war movies all dwell on death - inescapably. I can mention six television shows which are all about death. We don't like to think about it - but we can't get enough of it. Most paradoxical...

Death is mystical. If mystefies. It is a mystery. As a result of human beings having a fascination with puzzles, we can't get enough of it. Death, for some reason, just isn't natural. Nature, however, always tends towards enthalpy - in chemical reactions, gain of enthalpy (disorder) is what makes a reaction spontaneous (happens on its own) or nonspontaneous (doesn't happen on its own). Decay is the nature of the universe (after the fall, anyway) - the universe is spreading apart, the cicadas which a short time ago were a menace are now decaying, and the dirt in which we garden is nought but dead things. So death is natural.

Something, however, is wrong with death. A human does not want to die (the greatest saints, maybe, but this is because they were convinced that they weren't dying at all, but simply passing through a necessary evil in order to get to the greatest good). Fight or flight reflex - the human will grasp violently at life if death is inevitable. Another paradox.

Humans, nonetheless, are obsessed with death. In China, if you die, you are subsequently worshipped by your family members. Egyptions, Incans, Mayans, Aztecs - all of the above had mystic rituals involving death. Mummies are ways of both keeping the dead man partially alive, and of making sure that he is actually dead. Great pyramids and temples are built to honor death and the dead. For people who hate and spurn death, we certainly spend a lot of time working on it.

Today our culture is even more obsessed with death than ever. Death is rampant about us - the most helpless are killed for no reason whatever, or perhaps a very weak reason. Video games - even though they can be very, very good things - have a certain focus on it. Some bad one have no purpose at all save to glorify death. A funeral is one of the most expensive ceremonies today. We create weapons of mass death, the news is very good at pointing out death, and litte boys have fun blowing people up, or watching cartoons that involve glorified death. Why? From a purely materialistic point of view, there is no reason to it at all.

When Hercule Poirot or Sherlock Holmes cannot solve a mystery, it is normally through lack of evidence. I believe that new "evidence" is needed here. What sort of evidence? Divine revelation.

Death is not natural to humans. We were not meant for death. As a result of the fall, however, death is forced upon us. Our parents rebelled against God - at the same time our physical bodies rebelled against us, or rather we subjugated ourselves to it (C. S. Lewis, Miracles). Thus, we cling to life, yet know that death is inevitable.

Still we are obsessed with death. If we hate it so much, why? Because somebody else hates us. Satan is single-minded - he wants us all dead. Think about it. Who is likely to die young - not the good, the evil. A drug abuser will die. An alcoholic will die. A nymphomaniac will die. It is obvious - the devil hates us, and wants us dead. Why? We can only go to Hell if we die. He wants us to suffer.

A very complicated culture has come about as a result. We are "Scared to death of dying here alone." (band Switchfoot, song Easier than Love). We are both obsessed with death - look at our entertainment! - and mortified by it (oooh, look at that verb, there). Morbidity is both appalling and appealing to us.

Death, however, can be viewed in a different light. Life Himself died. As a result, Death cannot be the same. It is not for death that Christians are longing, it is what happens afterward. Death is the only way we'll get to heaven. Similarly, the road to Florida is necessary if I want to go there on vacation. However, I don't long for the road - I want to be on the beach. God is the God of the living, not of the dead.

As a result, there is a serious problem with out culture today. The only thing to save it is for Christ to take this culture of death and have it crucified, to rise with him in glory in to the New Life. The City of God will come about.

May God bless us all,
~Ambrose

The Calamity From the Sky...

2008-06-22T23:41:00.000-04:00

[Title taken off of Final Fantasy VII]

Why are so many space aliens hostile? Life is created by God, thus it should be good... unless like us it has fallen. To put it converesly, why is evil often from outer space? Mutants from every sort of science fiction, whether books or movies; even fantasy videogame monsters like Lavos and Jenova (from Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VII respectively); and the list goes on.

In my humble opinion, interstellar travel is physically unfeasible, so though there may be other life out there it probably wouldn't visit us.

Except one from not just "out there" but for that matter a totally different plane of existence...

...and which C.S. Lewis depicts in the famous Space/Ransom Trilogy as being in our universe but in a higher (and faster) manner, and having been cast down to Earth and bound there.

Yes, I'm speaking of the Devil.

My point here is, are today's menaces from outer space actually in any way linked with him in some primeval corner of man's mind? Do we have some sense, even without believing Christianity, that Evil fell to our world from the Heavens?

And if so, I wonder whether it is of mere analogous meaning with Heaven as a totally different dimension, as most Theologians describe, or whether there's some overlap in the manner described by Lewis that makes this sense actually rather accurate. Do any of our readers, or anyone they know, know whether that would be excluded by Catholic doctrine?

After all, if Heaven and Earth are both to be made new (cf. Revelation about "a new Heaven and a new Earth," unless I'm remembering seriously wrong), surely that means man will be in both of them. Would man wander back and forth from the two or would they be in some respect unified, Heaven more a higher state added to us existing in a better material reality of Earth, rather like the High Elves still living in both the material world and the spiritual world in Tolkien's work (it's mentioned around the ford with Glorfindel -- not Arwen, movie loverizers!! -- in LotR)? I'm curious how the spiritual and material meet and affect one another, and this is but one issue that is involved.

The Saga Continues - Prince Caspian Review

2008-05-29T14:39:00.000-04:00

Alright, so I'm probably biting off a bit more than I can chew with a full review, so I'll stick to a simpler version based upon impressions. The movie theatre was positively empty when I saw it, which was only the Monday after it was released. Therefore, I had the rare but pleasant experience of actually getting to pay attention to the movie itself.

"It's a lot darker than the original" is what the guy at the concession stand said. I have to agree. It doesn't deal with darker topics - Edmund's betrayal in the first movie tops anything Prince Caspian could come up with - but it consequently doesn't ascend to the same heights of redemption. If you're looking for a pleasantly Christian film - look elsewhere. Although the cinematography was stellar, including brilliant appearances by Reepicheep, I didn't find the same warm, righteous feeling I got from the first. Still, the second book was vastly different from the first, so I'm not terribly surprised by this. What really angered me was a complete shift of focus from book to movie.

In the book, the main focal point is social revival. The few faithful who remain were lifted up and founded a new society - one where the opression, the fear, and the corruption had been lifted and they could freely pursue their own betterment. Aslan, Lucy, and Susan roaming the land giving freedom to the captive - be it captive of the education system, captive of oppressive government, or captive of railroading progression. It was a wonderful fairy tale that not only showed how the war was won nearly without fighting - scaring the badguys away with trees is what did it - but that also showed how the result was a society free to be what they were meant to be. The priggish schoolboys, the irate father, and the bridge all were symbolically done away with in Graeco-Roman style.

In the movie, however, the focus is entirely upon fighting, and the reconquest of Narnia. The reliance on the supernatural - another thing that was key to the book - is gone, and strength of arms replaces it. The freeing of the countryside is written off, and doesn't even make an appearance. Instead, the film makers chose to highlight all the wrong elements of the book - those that Lewis himself chose downplay. "You'll find Narnia a much darker place than you remember," states Trumpkin (who, incidentally, isn't named...), and only because the director couldn't find it in himself to focus on the societal change. Wonderful fairy tales of societal restoration and supernatural reliance don't sell tickets - wars, fighting, and meaningless romance scenes do.

~Ambrose

Pope + US = AMAZING!!!

2008-04-16T09:17:00.000-04:00

Well, the big man himself landed in Washington yesterday. As I live in OH, I was not able to see it in person. However, EWTN has a great program tracking the Holy Father.

This, I think, is what America really needs. If I recall correctly, this is the pope of the "New Springtime". If anyone can liven the hearts of the faithful, I believe it is this man. For some reason, the popes tend to know *exactly* what to say at any given time. Thus, I have complete confidence in the Holy Father in his ability to speak the spark that will ignite the "sleeping giant" of the faith of American Catholics. And when that happens...devil watch out!

~Ambrose

It's Divine Mercy Sunday!!

2008-03-30T22:39:00.000-04:00

But I have almost nothing to say because I'm too overwhelmed right now!

Why am I overwhelmed? Well, because I went to the first Extraordinary Form Mass on campus here at Steubie and thought it was AWESOME! Lest ye suspect I may be a bad Traditionalist if I think a Steubie FE is awesome, let me tell you I know at least some of the Traditionalists I know here thought it was awesome too!

But since I've got to say something about this sunday, I'll pass along a comment made by the fellows of Tantum Ergo Sacramentum:

It's quite interesting that the readings for this sunday for centuries have been of Christ giving the Apostles the authority to forgive sins and then just a matter of decades ago Christ in a vision gives us Divine Mercy Sunday on the day of those readings. God plans ahead, doesn't he?

Sorry for the craziness, but I really am hyped right now.

God bless and happy Easter (it's a season, people)!

~Scott

Today

2008-03-22T15:35:00.000-04:00

Today is perhaps one of the quietest days of the year- a day for realizing, waiting, contemplating. Good Friday was yesterday but Easter is not until tomorrow- there's that feeling of both suspense and suspension, breathing in a dark but sanctified stillness. Today is a day to just be.

Every year for a long while I've had an experience, brief and unextraordinary in itself, but carrying enough symbolism in its very simplicity for me to notice and remember it. Every year, after the Veneration of the Cross on Good Friday, I take my stack of music back to the choir room, hoarse, transported, and emotionally spent. The sunny choir room (it never will rain properly on Good Friday, around here) opens through a small door off a short hall, dim if not dark. Everything needed to decorate the church for Easter is sealed in boxes piled inconspicuously to one side.

What I always notice is the lilies. Hundreds and hundreds of lilies, enough to ornament the inside and outside of the church. You can probably imagine what hundreds of immaculate flowers waiting in a dim hallway smell like- the gently strong, reverent fragrance is almost overpowering.

Moving from the passion and pathos of my renewed witness of the crucifixion through the quiet, fragrant darkness to emerge blinking in sudden, glorious sunlight. A seconds-long journey, but year after year it strikes me anew in its resemblance of my spiritual journey from Yesterday to Tomorrow.

May the Lord be with you as you prepare to emerge in the Son-light of Easter morning.

~Mari

Holy Thursday - A few quotes

2008-03-20T21:46:00.000-04:00

For the feast of Holy Thursday - the institution of the source and summit of our faith, the Holy Eucharist - I have collected a few quotes on the matter. They come from a few songs, mostly. The words are worth meditating on.

From "Carry Us In Your Arms", Steven R. Janco and J. Keith Zavelli

Bread of the angels, the flesh of forever,
Has nurtured us on our way.
Though we pass through the valley of death,
In his arms we will safely stay.

Wine of the promise, the cup of salvation,
Has shattered the grip of the night.
Though our spirits be darkened by grief,
At His word, darkness turns to light."

Translation of Pange Lingua by Melvin Farrell

Praise we Christ's immortal Body,
And his precious blood we prais:
Born of royal Virgin Mother,
He shall reign for endless days!
Dying once to save all nations,
Evermore he wins our praise!

On the eve of that Last Supper,
Breaking bread with chosen friends,
He obeys the Law's directions
Even as the Old Law ends.
Now he hands the Twelve a new bread:
His own flesh with their flesh blends!

Humbly let us voice our homage
For so great a sacrament;
Let all former rites surrender
To the Lord's New Testament;
What our sense fail to fathom,
Let us grasp through faith's consent!

Glory, honor, adoration
Let us sing with one accord!
Praised be God, almighty Father;
Praised be Christ, his Son, our Lord;
Praised be God the Holy Spirit;
Triune Godhead be adored.

And in closing, as if my words could ever make an impression after those, I'd like to add a little bit of my own. Jesus' death is often somehow overlooked. It's something we don't like to think about. Yet, it in itself saved us. Constantly, when we go to Mass, we are transported above time to the sanctifying sacrifice of Christ on the cross. You've heard the Passion told a million times, maybe this once during the Paschal Triduum, it will get through.

~Ambrose

What we all need really bad

2008-03-12T20:42:00.000-04:00

In a moment of inspiration, I picked up a catalog from the kitchen table and realized what America really needs-

http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/search/search.aspx?InDimSearch=1&nty=1&dim=1&N=4294966210&order_num=-1

New trash cans! On average, you only pay about $130.00. Stainless steel. All-new technology.

Good grief, what is this society coming to-!

If anyone out there is tempted to invest in one of these streamlined beauties, please consider giving 90% of the fund to charity instead. So maybe your trash receptacle will seem a little less special- I'm truly sorry.

As one of my brothers commented, "Talk about throwing away money...."

Outrage!

2008-03-07T09:57:00.000-05:00

Homeschooling is in danger in California!

I knew this would happen. If liberalism wants to take over, it will have to ensure that every kid is placed into schools where a few, elite persons can stuff whatever relativistic mush they want to into the minds of children!

The fact is, the parent is the primary educator of the child. The parents gave birth to the child, and therefore it is their responsibility to raise the child to be a strong, moral human being. Just as they taught the child to walk and be human, so also they must teach the child to be human well. Even if some, or most, parents delegate this authority, it is still in nature theirs. This right cannot be taken away without saying that the father and mother are not the parents of the child.

Democratically speaking, we must spread the word about this outrage. If enough people get angry, this will be overturned. America is not so far gone that the will of the people would be ignored. Spread the word! Link this on your blogs, send it on e-mail chains, etc.! We still have the power of protest!

~Ambrose

A brief thought on all things visible and invisible

2008-03-02T19:25:00.000-05:00

I almost always have either a song, an idea, or a line from something I’ve read or heard, stuck in my head. Sometimes all three at once. A few days ago, though, it was a line from the creed- "all that is seen and unseen." We believe in God and that he created all that is seen and unseen. I was musing on how sometimes it’s understandably hard to believe in something invisible. It takes faith.

When I heard the Gospel this morning, that thought recurred to me in a startlingly different way- sometimes it’s just as hard to believe in something you can see.

Today’s Gospel is about physical and spiritual sight. The blind man could and did see spiritually; the Pharisees chose not to. The resulting miracle manifested God’s power visibly- and still they chose a spiritual blindness over putting their faith into something even they realized was obvious.

In what ways do we find it hard to accept the signs before our eyes? What gets in the way of our spiritual vision- or what do we put in the way- or why do we turn away?

~Mari

"If you knew to Whom you were speaking..."

2008-02-24T23:45:00.000-05:00

There's a lot in todays Gospel that could be "unpacked" in reflection, but after a while I've decided on one particular point to focus on today.

The promise of the Living Water is generally taken to refer two-foldly to Christ's saving power in being able to bring us to Heaven and also to the fact that His grace can satisfy us despite our constant longing to just go in for material good and be done with the struggle for Heaven. Yet we find ourselves still falling back into sin and thirsting in temptation again. Why is that?

He told the woman at the well that she needed to know Who He Is. Is this our problem also, or is there some other difficulty we have in taking His gift? It doesn't seem like our problem is from not knowing Him... but then again, maybe in large part it is. You see, while we know Him up in our heads the way we know math and physics, I think a lot of our difficulty being serious about following Him comes from the way we pay Him so little attention in any other way. Even though I know I should focus on Him, I find myself constantly distracted.

Fortunately -- or rather Providentially -- part (in a sense most) of the point of Lent is to clean up our lives and get those distractions out of the way. Now is a time especially set apart for putting aside what we normally pay attention to specifically in order to come to really know Jesus Christ better.

The epitome of what's wrong with our world - Public Schools

2008-02-24T21:49:00.001-05:00

Okay, I'm officially leaving the philosophical ponderings to the people who are better at it, and doing what I enjoy much more - politics.

Okay, the above title may make it seem like I'm completely demonizing the public school system, but examine the words I used. It's the epitome of, or the personification of, what's wrong with our world. Not the very center of the problem itself.

Anyway, on to the real post...

So, my main problems with the public school system are: A, it's a major part of government spending, which is waaaay out of whack, and B, it is not the government's role to educate.

Alright, A. Cold, hard evidence - I'm 17, earning $8 an hour as a cashier, and the government takes $1.50 out of my paycheck. Mathmatically, that's fifty cents short of 25%. One fourth. And I'm a minor. I don't care who you are, the fact is that this is disordered. I'm a person trying to make my way through the world as a Christian. And what happens? The government pockets nearly 25% of my work effort (and I'm 17) to use on big plans.

One of those plans is the Public School System, and I have to say that I can't stand that my wages are being used to fund it, for two reasons. First of all, I'm homeschooled, so I don't see why I have to pay for someone else's education. And secondly, if we have to significantly lower standards just so that a good chunk of the population can past tests, there is something wrong with the system. What is the government's answer? Throw more money at it. More of my $8 an hour to try desperately to fix something that can't work.

It can't work? Why not?

Okay, point B - the government has overstepped its bounds with the public school system. It is reaching into something it shouldn't go anywhere near. Let me break this down.

What is the purpose of the school? To educate, or to give knowledge to people. To help people to grow and become mature. To help people to become, in a word, excellent.

What is the purpose of the government? Not to be the machine which controls everyday life, but to be the oil which keeps the machine of every day life moving smoothly. It should almost be non-existent, I think. It should only exist for the special cases where something is wrong. It should not be the thing which both defines and makes everything right.

I'm sure most of you think I'm crazy at this point. The government should have no hand in helping people be excellent? I would emphatically say yes. Government should not concern itself with the excellence of the population. Hitler's regime was very much centered around the idea of eugenics and the superman, or an excellent population. I'm sure even the leftmost of the left would distance themselves from that prospect.

The fact is, the government and education shouldn't mix, not so much because it would be wrong, but because they are different spheres. The government's job is not to control people. It is to ensure that people don't kill each other. The school's job is to form, the government's job is to clean up what goes wrong. I'm sure you could say that the government is proactively doing its job by forming the child, but I would disagree. If the government is forming the child, without the parents' say.... Remember, America was founded on the principal of freedom of thought and religion. And yet we have the government spoon-feeding ideas to children, spoon-feeding them whatever certain people in power think. Honestly, if that's not scary, I don't know what is.

There's an old saying - "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." I agree, and then would add that if it is something that can't work no matter how much you try to fix it, the money is better spent elsewhere. And now we're back to economics. Government spending is out the window, and the nation is in debt. The only way that problem will be solved is to chuck things like this that can't work out the window.

But oh no, what ignorance will there be if kids aren't given a free education! People will be in the streets because they don't know enough to get a job. There are two problems with this theory. Firstly, there is no such thing as a free education. Like I said, almost 25% of my paycheck goes to the government, who fund this, and I don't even attend public school. The fact is, the education system is a huge spending outlet for the government. Again, like I said they try to fix the system that can't work by throwing money at it. If we cut both that spending and those taxes, the government would have less money that it needed to spend (much less!), and the taxpayers would have that much more money to spend both on their own education and on their day-to-day needs.

Secondly, since when was a college education necessary to make a living? Politicians both vilify the rich for succeeding, and then turn around and say that unless your child succeeds in exactly the same way, he is a failure. Labor jobs, like builing houses, making clothing, styling hair, car mechanics, and many others are all necessary and fulfilling. A hard day's work definitely never hurt anyone - in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if a higher percentage of working people than corporate people were holy. There's something about the parable of the sower which can only be understood by a farmer, and the miracle of the fish and loaves by the baker and the fisherman. There is nothing wrong with the ordinary.

And thus, I get back to the problem with society, of which the public school is the epitome. Every position of power is overstepping its bounds to opress the common man. The scientists, who study the natural world, attempts to tell us that the supernatural cannot exist. The woman attempts to define both femininity and masculinity. The government, the corporal power, attempts to control the spiritual and moral. I say let the American man live up to the founding fathers' dream - to not, by mandate, sit in a classroom being spoon-fed beliefs for twelve years, but to grow and think independently. To be the person God created him to be, without the interference of a government which oversteps its bounds to tell the common man what he should think. On the contrary, I bet Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Adams would say that it should be the common man who tells the government what to think, not the other way around.

~Ambrose

P.S. According to my mom, Ron Paul wants to can the education system. I think I'm beginning to like this guy...

Over-Idealizing the Saints

2008-02-22T10:50:00.000-05:00

I've just decided what common mis-practice among Catholics bugs me most.

Mind you, I think abuse of the Mass is pretty much untoppably bad, with a few other things coming in close second, third... but I don't mean how bad it is objectively, just how much it bugs me.

And it bugs me a lot.

So what is it that I can't stand anymore?

The way we talk about the Saints.

Yup. I'm sick of hearing of them as if they were either perfect or else were terrible until they turned perfect. Half the point of having them is to give us hope that we, sinners like they were, can make it to Heaven by God's grace. If you give the impression that God's grace just wipes everything out of your path, it doesn't relate to our experience anymore. We don't just overcome sin in a snap. We fall back into it and have to be pulled back out... again and again and again and again and again... Why have I never heard of a Saint with that kind of difficulty? Even when some have had huge difficulties, generally they overcome it and that's that and the difficulty is made a big deal of so it seems even harder to relate to.

I'm not saying they shouldn't be held up as role models or anything, I'm just saying we could stand to not have them all seem so... beyond us entirely.

Perhaps I need to read more of their own writings instead of just getting hear-say if I want to find them realistic.

A Wonderful Change

2008-02-17T20:33:00.000-05:00

When I was little, the Transfiguration was one of my favorite stories in the Bible. It was exciting, Peter made me laugh, and the illustration was gloriously lovely. Today I spent some time thinking about how much deeper its meaning has become to me over the years.

I have "transfigured" moments in my life- we all do. Those too-few moments at Eucharistic Adoration, or saying the rosary on a windy, starry night, or simply being in the presence of a glorious God with friends you love, as the three apostles were. I don’t need to describe these moments, and I don’t think I could if I tried.

If only they lasted forever.

The hard part is that we have to come down off the mountain. We descend back to the distressingly familiar mundanity of earthly life and "get back to normal." Sometimes, after a while, we get back to normal so well that we forget one of the vital points of transfiguration: we must not only return, but return changed.

The Transfiguration is truly the story of an astounding change. "His face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light." Surely the apostles witnessing this were changed- the way they knew their Friend and Teacher could never be quite the same again.

This season of Lent is about changing the way we live. It is an opportunity to grasp those moments of transfiguration, those moments in which God reveals himself to us, and keep a spark of that glory always burning within us. To maintain that inspired change.

Carry the Transfiguration with you, and feel in your life that it is good to be here.

~Mari