thoughts in and out of season
If Alexander is right in The Nature of Order, what do we do about it? His examples of good design (except for some wonderful images from Matisse) are almost all from the vernacular, often from times and places like the European middle ages when artists were anonymous because even high art was vernacular. He’s … More ...
Some time ago J. Bottum, now editor of First Things, published a sort of hit piece on T. S. Eliot, What T.S. Eliot Almost Believed, that I just ran into going through some old correspondence.
It’s not clear just what claim Bottum is making in the piece, for example when he says “I … More ...
This sounds like a techie’s fantasy: hundred dollar laptops for Hottentots. Someone wants every poor kid in the world to get his own laptop. Computers haven’t done much for education in America, though, and it’s not clear they’d do more in Waziristan. It’s not as if every third world schoolkid is a computer nerd who … More ...
The point of present-day political thought is to integrate everything into a single system of technological hedonism that managers and functionaries can dominate with the aid of their ideological champions. A better and more human way of thinking would recognize that we live in a larger and less controllable world, one in which things … More ...
So far I’ve proposed beauty and contemplation as pieces of a program for restoring the transcendent and therefore humanity. What else is needed?
One obvious point is tradition. I’ve gone on and on about what tradition is, how it comes about, why we need it and why it’s generally reliable. I don’t think I’ve … More ...
Today’s quote:
… More ...“Minorities often behave the way majorities want them to. America’s German and Sephardic Jews in the nineteenth century tried to model themselves on WASP high society, believing that they had to do so to move up socially and professionally. Today Jews who spew hate on gentiles also move up, because they are
Or at least something called by that name:
Turning to another side of Iranian life, I just watched a pleasant and rather well-made movie from over there, Children of Heaven. It’s about a young boy who loses his little sister’s shoes and their attempts to get them back or replace them, in the mean time keeping it a secret and getting by … More ...
I just finished another of Belloc’s books, Characters of the Reformation. He published it in 1936, and his view of nationalism had shifted by that time from what it was when he wrote the two previous books I’ve read by him, Danton: A Study (1899) and The Jews (1922). In the earliest book he … More ...
I suppose people could claim things like these are signs of some such:
And so on. Still, there have always been a lot of local revivals and ups and downs, and I keep seeing overall … More ...
