Saturday, December 1, 2012

Russell Woolen: Nativitie

Text:  John Donne


Wednesday, November 28, 2012

A Comment Awaiting Moderation At Tikkun


The religious right, as it acts, instead of what it professes, has far more in common with the materialist “left” in that they consider people and other living beings as being objects for use or neglect or, in some extreme cases, disposal. Both of them, in practice and, to a great extent, in profession hold people to be subject to the category of commerce based on different valuation. I’ve come to think that materialism will, inevitably, degrade into some variation of conservatism, one with a libertarian twist, based on the self-interest of the materialist, at most on the basis of the culture of their club.

A left that doesn't reject that materialist analysis and attitude is a left with no real basis, no real motive to exist and no prospect of ever gaining power and making real change.

Monday, November 26, 2012

Marilynne Robinson's Birthday

No living author has had more of an influence on my thinking than Marilynne Robinson, her great, suppressed book, "Mother Country", is one of the greatest of little read books of the past century.   It is the Rosetta Stone  that explains why much of  the modern culture of English speaking people is inimical to the continuation of life and the morality that is required for it to continue.   Her collections of essays, "The Death of Adam" and "Absence of Mind" continue her exposition on that theme, the most important possible and among the most neglected in the superficial and celebrity addled intelligentsia current today.  Her non-fiction writing is the most significant body of work by a single, living,  author on those topics I'm aware of.

Her great novels, especially "Gilead" and "Home", show how imperfect people can strive to live moral lives, even as they don't understand so much and fail.  "Home" helped me to cope with the death of my brother from chronic alcoholism and helped me to understand many things about that which I am still dealing with.   For that I'm in her debt in so many different ways.