Abba Joseph, Beetle Kings, and Jesus
This little piece from the desert Fathers helpfully illustrates Matthew 5:14-16:
Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, “Abba, as far as I can I say my Little Office. I fast a little. I pray. I meditate. I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else am I to do?” “What else,” Abba Lot says, “can I do?” Then the old man stood up, stretched his hands towards heaven and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire, and he said to him, “If you will, you can become all flame.”
Jesus, in the passage mentioned, challenges his disciples to be the light of the world. Abba Joseph above tells Abba Lot, "If you will [desire to be a light], you can become all flame."
Goals, Systems, or Virtues?
Scott Adams is of the opinion that goals are for losers and systems are for winners. The reasoning is that goals make it psychologically easy to stop doing everything it took to achieve them once you achieve them (this problem is the main point of the book The Slight Edge). But not only so, goals make it harder to do the needful thing, because every day you haven't achieved your goal, wake up defeated. So he recommends systems, daily/weekly, monthly tasks that move you in a positive direction regardless of the final outcome.
The Pincer Attack
One of the mostly commonly utilized conceptual weapons in the rhetorical attack on being a normal person is ‘sexual fluidity.’
In a nutshell: “Sexual fluidity is one or more changes in sexuality or sexual identity (sometimes known as sexual orientation identity).” It’s a favorite concept among third wave feminists, especially those who argue against hetero-normativity (which is another way of saying, ‘reproductively viable intercourse’). It is especially important to these theorizers because sexual fluidity is allegedly very common among women and therefore central to female experience. I suspect it’s actually common due to the difficulty some feminist theorists have finding partners of the opposite sex.
Thomas Sowell and Our Ridiculous Culture
Thomas Sowell observes:
The real war — which is being waged in our schools, in the media, and among the intelligentsia — is the war on achievement. When President Obama told business owners, “You didn’t build that!” this was just one passing skirmish in the war on achievement.The very word “achievement” has been replaced by the word “privilege” in many writings of our times. Individuals or groups that have achieved more than others are called “privileged” individuals or groups, who are to be resented rather than emulated.
For those who actually read this
For anybody who still reads this, any topics you’re interested in?
Don’t Switch The Blade
This song is just perfect. Incidentally, somebody combined it with Roddy Piper’s best film:
Teddy Roosevelt on Masculinity
A former student texted me out of the blue something like this, “Why isn’t there anything specific about masculinity taught at the school?"
It’s a problem I’ve thought about for a while. There are, at the high school level, many pitfalls. The first is the significant danger of shaming young boys for non-masculine behavior with girls in the room. Pastors like Mark Driscoll were famous for this at their churches and it was stupid pageantry. Obviously this wasn’t meant.
Brief thoughts on Eden
In Genesis 1:1-2, God creates chaos and starts to bring order into the world.
In Genesis 2, the author is retelling the creation story. You can tell because Adam and Eve are made on different days, and Adam precedes the plants and animals. That’s not a contradiction any more than Jesus telling a set of parables about sheep, coins, and prodigal sons is a contradiction.
But anyway, the chaos/order motif is still present in Genesis 2. Man must tend the garden (Genesis 2:15). There is a wall (garden means ’enclosed region’). The waters, which represented chaos in Genesis 1:1-2 are present but flow out of the garden (I suspect we’re supposed to suppose that that’s how the serpent got in).
Beautiful sounds for your morning
I haven’t watched the music video. So, I don’t know how epic it is.
#Science: Humor is sexy
The nerds at Live Science found a talk delivered to the APA which discovered the obvious:
Humor increases male attractiveness to women.
But they also found that the effect was not as significant when it came to female attractiveness being bolstered by humor. That’s another instance when Good Charlotte was right.
This provided the most food for thought:
In addition, people who were deemed less funny were also found to be less attractive than their ratings from the researchers.