January 2012
New Year's Resolutions: Expectations Vs. Reality →
“Today’s person spends way more time in front of screens. In fluorescent-lit...”
– David Foster Wallace, in interview with David Lipsky, in Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself (via fuckyeahphilosophy)
Sonnet 129
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame Is lust in action; and till action, lust Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame, Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust; Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight; Past reason hunted; and no sooner had, Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait, On purpose laid to make the taker mad: Mad in pursuit, and in possession so; Had, having, and in quest to...
December 2011
Shame (2011): The Loss of Self-Control
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well to shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.
—Shakespeare’s Sonnet 129
It’s funny, I think of Hollywood and immediately think of an industry so fueled by sex and hot bodies that to see a film like “Shame” portray sex as something so unsexy, so joyless, actually makes for an attractive sort of irony. This is not the kind of film you...
Jesus was an occupier →
During Jesus’ life the temple in Jerusalem was the symbolic center of Jewish religious, political, legal, and economic power. It was, in the words of one of my former Bible professors, the White House, Supreme Court, and Federal Reserve combined. During the time of Jesus’ life the temple had a practice of using “moneychangers.” Moneychangers had the task of exchanging Roman and other money for...
“To become intimate with someone means to meet that person or that being without...”
– Reb Anderson, Being Upright (via sharanam)
The Many Reasons Why I Love Cats →
Trials and Errors: Why Science Is Failing Us →
David Hume referred to causality as “the cement of the universe.” He was being ironic, since he knew that this so-called cement was a hallucination, a tale we tell ourselves to make sense of events and observations. No matter how precisely we knew a given system, Hume realized, its underlying causes would always remain mysterious, shadowed by error bars and uncertainty. Although the scientific...
On Perfection
The inability to attain perfection (or excellence, or self-actualization, or whatever you want to call it) is no excuse to give up trying altogether. In truth, we can all do a little better than we have done in the past. We can all be a little kinder, a little more generous, and a little more thoughtful of one another. We can be a little more tolerant and friendly to those who believe and ...
Whence then this nostalgia?
You do not have to be an inspired prophet to know that our world is fraught with danger, that life is more than we can handle, and death is more than we can face. Nothing is more real in this life than the constant awareness that things could be better than they are. But is that other world—the world of becoming, say, what the religious call “divine”—any more real? It is the...
4 Things Both Atheists and Believers Need to Stop... →
If you want to convince yourself that ignorance loves atheists as much as the devout just spend some time watching the flame wars between these factions online. Usually not a trace of intelligence. Just the worst aspects of blind faith from believers and atheists alike: some with unquestioning beliefs in a God just like the one in that Book, and other holding onto an undying conviction that...
“Last week, Hitchens — known for his intellect, eloquence and insufferable...”
– Gladstone
Thank God for atheists →
First, I don’t really believe there are true atheists. As Paul Tillich well pointed out, everyone has an ultimate concern and the object of their ultimate concern is their god. He called secular humanism as quasi-religion and the U.S. Supreme Court picked up on that and used it in a ruling about religion in the public square.
Second, every atheist I have ever read or met does not reject the God...
“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he...”
– Oscar Wilde
Shades of Universities: Insights from my temple...
Commitment to education among Latter-day Saints is an important aspect of the faith. We believe in learning and stretching and questioning all aspects of life, not just in matters of religion. And along with learning new things, whether at church or the academy, we believe above all that “to be learned is good” if only we “hearken unto the counsels of God” (2Nephi 9:2429). I find this to be a...
WatchColbert Report — Norway’s Butter Shortage
“The biblical expression for such existence is “eternal life.” We can be easily...”
– James P. Carse (via azspot)
ageofreason:
“Is your god really God?
Is my god really God?
I think our god isn’t God,
If he fits inside our heads.”
- Come Now Sleep, As Cities Burn, “Clouds”
“…does the thought haunt your head
That you’re really, rather small?
If there’s one thing I know in this life: we are beggars all”
- Beggars, Thrice, “Beggars”
Melancholia: Best Film of 2011
The end of the world is painful to contemplate but it also might turn out to be beautiful.
That, in a nutshell, is what I got out of Lars von Trier’s recent apocalyptic vision, “Melancholia.”
I believe many people will walk away from this film feeling disenchanted, dejected, alone, maybe even bitter because of how wild and scary its possibilities are. Are these the end of days? Are we...
