thoughts in and out of season
Here’s an interesting graph showing how liberals (blue), conservatives (red), and one self-described libertarian (green) test on a survey of “moral foundations”:
Basically, liberals emphasize “harm” and “fairness” and don’t care so much about “loyalty,” “authority” or “purity,” while conservatives give more equal weight to all five dimensions. (The libertarian can speak for himself.)… More ...
Jonathan Sacks, Britain’s chief rabbi (whatever that is), has come out with a book saying that multiculturalism threatens democracy. According to the article he defines multiculturalism as “an attempt to affirm … diverse communities and make ethnic and religious minorities more appreciated and respected.” If that’s the goal, it seems, then communities reap … More ...
Alexander’s outlook has definite implications when applied to society. It rejects the idea of imposing concept and image on reality, and so is anti-constructivist. It favors particularity of position and so is anti-egalitarian and anti-inclusivist. It accepts that patterns that reappear in a variety of traditions very likely have something to them that rationalism should … More ...
I’ve been talking a lot about contemplation—what it is, why it’s needed, and why it’s at odds with the modern spirit. I should note down a few thoughts on what happens if you don’t have it.
To get rid of contemplation is radically to subordinate truth to action, word to deed. That tendency has developed … More ...
The modern viewpoint tries to do away with obfuscation, so it tells us that reason has to do with things that are clear, distinct and verifiable. To know is to know such things, and everything else is fantasy that is not to be trusted. That view is often presented quite forcefully, and it’s led to … More ...
While composing my post on Ellul and rummaging around other things I had written, I ran into some comments I had made in in a discussion thread regarding a short essay of mine on liberalism and Christianity. The comments were extensive enough that I thought I’d edit them a bit and post them here, for … More ...
I’ve also been reading a bit of The Technological Society by Jaques Ellul. He’s good on presenting technology as an increasingly all-embracing system with its own demands. He tends though to view technological rationality as solely concerned with the ever-greater perfection of means. It seems to me that to explain what’s going on around … More ...
An objection to the view that advanced liberalism is simply an expression of the technological outlook is that technology can be turned to any purpose. The Nazis had a technology of war and oppression, Islamic terrorists have a technology of terror, and televangelists (it is said) have a technology of making money while spreading the … More ...
Another example of how people act when their metaphysics are challenged: Status of Catholic Church in Spain Threatened. The Catholic Church in Spain has protested a citizenship education program that promotes full normalization of homosexuality. Professor Gregorio Peces-Barba Martínez, apparently the socialist government’s main theoretician, has responded with a newspaper column in which he … More ...
People say religion is irrational and religious people are crazy. Sometimes that’s so, of course, but the same could be said of secular people and their views. The truth of the matter is that everyone has metaphysical principles that determine how he understands the world, and when someone insists on something without evidence, or even … More ...