The first classical school in Great Britain is in danger of closing (thanks to overly burdensome bureaucratic regulations from the government).
The Classical School movement has taken off and is growing all over the USA. Alfred the Great is trying to bring this same stellar education, rooted in the humanities, back to Britain. And this endeavor could use your help.
Another great talk from the ARC Conference (Alliance for Responsible Citizenship). This one detailing the negative impacts of screen-time for children and youth, and the complete lack of empirical basis for introducing screens for "educational purposes" into schools.
Despite the lobbying and marketing from software companies, he only evidence we have suggests a negative correlation between increased use of tablets and smartphones for "educational" purposes and actual educational outcomes - with all the other negative effects of screens on developing brains thrown in as well.
How new Scientific Discoveries are Pointing toward God
This is a pretty in-depth look at new evidence from cosmology and from cellular biology and other fields that suggest a Divine Intelligence behind the universe and our own lives.
I remember reading a while back about a Canadian Province that changed its traditional motto (Latin, if memory serves) to the multi-cultural mantra "Diversity is our Strength." This is, I would posit, true in some senses or scenarios, but is not always true. Nevertheless it is believed without question - sometimes in spite of the evidence - as an article of faith in the "secular/progressive religion" that is so prominent in our culture (and even more so in Canada, from what I can gather).
I've just lived through a denominational split that was caused by... well... diversity. We had a diversity, even a divergence, of beliefs and priorities: We did not all believe the same things about God, Scripture, or Sin; We were not "on the same page"; we could not walk together because we did not intend to walk in the same direction. If we had had a little less "diversity" and a little more "sameness" or commonality, maybe the United Methodist Church would not have split.
Though "diversity is our strength" is the kind of thing you'd hear at meetings and church conferences; it is precisely what killed our ability to work together cohesively.
Of course, there is another kind of diversity that is a strength, as the Scripture affirms: different members of the body bring different spiritual gifts, skills, experiences, to the work of the Church, and the whole is stronger because of it. There is a diversity of gifts and even backgrounds, but a common Lord, a common mission, a common faith that shapes a common worldview: One Body, One Spirit, One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism... That God-given diversity is held together by a transcendent Source of unity. That is the Biblical vision. There is a Commonality that makes the diversity "work."
But what about in secular society? Is Diversity our strength? The sociological evidence seems to indicate that the answer is "No." I remember reading about this from Putnam's research years ago (that gets mentioned in this video) and I was hesitant to even share those articles online, because I thought I might get pushback for even suggesting that - just maybe - this "article of faith" in our secular culture might not be correct after all (and I did get some pushback when I shared the findings on social media).
Here is a video from a British conservative talking about this in light of the highly polarized situation. I think the video does a good job raising the questions: how much "sameness" or "commonality" do you need for diversity to work? I think the distinction he makes between a multi-racial society that shares a common culture and a multi-cultural society is an important one to ponder.
Why so much mental illness and gender confusion among young people?
Many of us, especially those with children, have grave concerns about the dramatic rise in mental illness, anxiety, depression, suicide and other "deaths of despair", and also gender confusion and LGBTQPIAN+ lifestyle among young adults, and even children. This is a great discussion between Megyn Kelly and mental health professional, Dr. Nicolas Karadras. The good doctor is willing to say exactly what the evidence points toward, even if some may be afraid to state the obvious. It is worth your time:
I am increasingly worried that, among the gatekeepers of power in our society - and among masses of people willing to riot when they are upset - feelings and "lived experience" increasingly trump actual, empirical, facts.
This is why some prophetic and prescient individuals have referred to our time as a new "dark age."
There are lots of people these days who advocate for casting off tradition - including Christianity - as part of the wicked "patriarchy" in order to establish "social justice."
I have long held that this whole movement is incoherent - it begins with basic assumptions that are part of traditional (and Christian) morality, and then uses them in its assault upon Christianity and Tradition. But no new grounding for the moral claims is offered.
CS Lewis points out the basic problems with "new moralities" that actually borrow some aspects of the classic, inherited, morality in order to attack classic and inherited tradition. It is a self-contradiction.
Important Books: The Shallows - What the Internet is doing to our Brains by Carr
I know I've blogged about this one before, but here it is again, well worth a revisit. Along the book discussed in my last book review video, Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, I believe Carr also helps identify some of the reasons that our public discourse has become shallower and more foolish and less civil and wise in recent decades. It's the way we are re-shaping our brains through the use of the internet.
Rod Dreher on Defending and renewing Western and Christian Civilization
This is an interesting video that brings together a number of authors and themes that I've been chewing on in recent years: He talks about Patrick Deneen's thesis in Why Liberalism Failed, about how Christianity has been supplanted in the hearts of many by "spin-off religions" such as "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism" or "Social Justice Warrior-ism." He discusses Alister MacIntyre's After Virtue, and how the Benedictine monasteries preserved Western Civilization as the Roman Empire collapsed and knowledge and technology actually regressed. He discusses practical things that we can be doing to help preserve the legacy of all that is best in Western Civilization (while also being frankly honest about the bad and the ugly).
Definitely alot to chew on here (and maybe a bit some readers may want to spit back out); I certainly think Dreher is on the right track here, and have come to see my role as a parent and as a spiritual father to my church as passing on, first and foremost, the Biblical faith in Christ, and secondly as passing along the very best of the Western tradition to others.
Genuine Beauty more sustainable than Trendy Fashions
Here is another really great video from Roman Catholic layman Brian Holdsworth discussing artistic beauty. As in other videos, he talks about how modern and postmodern architecture (and other forms of art) that are simply 'trendy' do not age as well as more classic designs; trendy or fashionable modern designs tend to look "dated" or simply "ugly" within a generation, while the classic designs tend to be acknowledged as beautiful for centuries.
What is the difference? The ancient Greek philosophers believed that beauty was objective, and not simply "in the eye of the beholder." Those designs that come nearest to expressing objective truth are most enduring and beloved over time. The Early and Medieval Christians believed the same thing, holding that Beauty was objective precisely because its ultimate source is God himself.
But, don't different people look at works of art and respond in different ways? Doesn't this prove that beauty is subjective? Holdsworth deals with this objection by pointing out that different people also give different responses to a mathematical equation, but it does not therefore follow that there is no right answer after all. It is simply a reflection of the fallible nature of human thinking. This applies also to our thinking about beauty.
I'm sharing this video as one more plea for everyone to support the building and maintaining of buildings that are built according to classic modes or styles rather than modern or post-modern or trendy buildings that will look terrible in 40 years.
Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist and Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University's Stern School of Business. He is another "YouTube intellectual" I've been following a bit lately.
He has been a prominent voice (and one from the political left, I might add) calling for reform at our universities that are increasingly homogeneous in terms of political perspective or ideology. He is (rightly) concerned that efforts to stifle free expression of ideas and shield students from any and all viewpoints that might be upsetting leads inevitably to a loss of intellectual rigor, both among faculty and students.
If controversial (often simply another word for "conservative") speakers are banned or shouted down when they attempt to share their perspectives on campus, this means that students and faculty never "do business" with their ideas, never examine the claims, never evaluate the evidence.
Far from protecting the students, this intellectual sheltering can only leave them less prepared to evaluate the many new or challenging ideas that they will encounter for the rest of their lives upon leaving the university.
He also shares about the work he and colleagues are doing at https://heterodoxacademy.org/ to bring about reform and also rank schools according to their openness to free inquiry and the free debate of ideas.
As I mentioned in a recent post, I've run across Brian Holdsworth recently, a web designer, graphic artist, and lay Roman Catholic apologist. I've really been enjoying his thought-provoking videos on various topics, which are his attempt to do his part to help renew Christian Civilization.
Here is one really insightful example:
I must hasten to add, as with all things, there are exceptions to this generalization - there are works and styles of modern art that are quite good (indeed, numerous different styles fall under the heading of 'modern art'). But a great deal of modern art (contemporary abstract art in particular), and a great deal of modern architecture really is...ugly. And for that reason, is loathed by the masses of common men who have not taken college courses on appreciating modern art.
I believe the intuitive reaction is quite instructive: A 'common man' intuitively understands that a gothic cathedral is beautiful; the same with the ancient Greek Parthenon in Athens, or Leonardo's Mona Lisa, or Michelangelo's Pieta, or the Mayan Pyramids of the Yucatan, or the knot-work carvings of the ancient Scandinavians. No one needs to take a university class be taught to appreciate these things.
We all see immediately they simply are beautiful; in some small way they share in and communicate the reality of Heavenly Beauty and Harmony.
On the other hand, I have certainly had the experience of visiting a University Art School's exhibition or (worse still) standing in a museum, looking at some crumpled up pieces of metal or some random smears of color across a white canvas, and said "Why is this considered art? I could have done that when I was 4..."
Maybe you've had that experience as well. Why is it that so much unintelligible rubbish passes for art among wealthy or well-educated elites?
I suspect part of the issue may indeed be elitism itself: 'We who have taken courses on modern art are insiders, we get the reference, we are in on the joke, while the poor uneducated folks on Main Street just don't get it.'
But despite the ridiculous prices that some of these works can fetch at auction, it seems to me that more people are waking up the fact that the emperor has no clothes.
Cy Twombly's "Untitled" sold for $46,437,500 in 2017. It was created by putting a brush on the end of a pole.
I think Holdsworth, in his video above, puts his finger on the core of the issue: there was a shift in our culture from Artist as expressing praise to the glory of God, or even praise to the nation, or even celebrating another human being, to the Artist as practicing self-expression. In many (obviously, not all) cases, art has gone from looking out at the world and celebrating something 'other than me/bigger than me' to a kind of navel gazing.
But then the question has to be raised, why is this artist's self-expression so exceptionally valuable? If there is no objective artistic excellence in the work itself, then why should I pay money to go see this work in a museum or to buy it to hang in my home? After all, I am every bit as much a 'self' as the artist, and I am more than capable of crumbling up my own tin-foil if that is what I feel like doing to express my own angst or whatever...and it is much cheaper than paying for the expression of some other person I'll never meet.
On the other hand, the more public nature of the classic understanding of what art is all about (not only my own expression, but also celebrating real objective beauty) necessarily puts an emphasis on excellence, which gives such art wider appeal. The result is that Michelangelo has produced something that I most emphatically could not have done myself - there is a wonder to the fact that another human being created this kind of excellence.
I've heard glad rumors of a renewed interest in representational painting in European schools in recent years, and I expect time and the changing of generations will sift out the more bizarre forms of modernist self-expression. I also expect quite a few cities will in decades to come begin to wonder how they might be able to remove the huge pillars of polished twisting metal from in front of their otherwise beautiful courthouses. But people will still travel across the world to crowd shoulder to shoulder in the Sistine Chapel and behold timeless art, and that is a hopeful sign.
Read Epic Poetry to save Civilization (or: What is an Epic Poem?)
A couple of years ago I re-committed myself to reading The Great Books, the Classics of Western Civilization. This is partly my attempt to continue the sharpening of my mind, having been away from the formal classroom for over 10 years now (I've mentioned in a recent post why I think the Great Books are well worth reading).
Reading and celebrating the Great Books it is also one part of my small attempt to preserve and uphold the glories of Western Civilization over against the onslaught of a multi-cultural (that is, anti-cultural and generic) consumption/entertainment culture (or better yet, "un-culture") that encourages us to forget our history, our roots, and the ideas and ideals that made Western Civilization great, so that we become acultural "consumers" of the latest widgets, willing to do whatever is needed to keep the global economy going, without regard to the ideas, quirks, habits, and inhibitions of our forebears.
Though no civilization is perfect, or anywhere near to it, I remain very proud to be an heir of the treasures of Christendom and Western Civilization more broadly: Our ancestors built the Gothic Cathedrals and put a man on the moon; they developed the ideas of Human dignity and the rights of the individual and democratic governance; they brought to the whole world science and technology, hospitals and schools; they abolished slavery and created some of the greatest works of philosophy, theology, music, architecture and literature ever known.
Of course they did plenty of terribly bad things too that we have to learn from; but I believe there is a strong tendency in our society, and especially among our gatekeepers of education, mass-media, and political institutions, to downplay and even reject our Western Heritage rather than celebrate its many noble achievements. Reading the Classics and celebrating our unique culture as members of what Winston Churchill called "Christian civilization" is a needed corrective in our era of cultural nihilism, intellectual distraction, and historical amnesia.
SO I've been working through a number of great and demanding works including of course the Epic Poems. I've read the Iliad and the Odyssey (in prose translation) and The Aeneid and The Divine Comedy (in verse translations). These poems share with us not only the stories, but many of the ideas, questions, and values that are at the heart of Western Civilization.
The only other Epic Poem that immediately came to mind is Paradise Lost by Milton. Following The Aeneid of Vergil (or 'Virgil'), Milton (eventually) divided Paradise Lost into 12 books (chapters), to mimic more closely the Epic poetry of the classical era.
I never cared much for narrative poetry in High School or really even in college. But now I find my tastes have changed (matured?) and I do enjoy reading narrative poetry much more. I've gone back to re-read the narrative poems and Psalms of the Bible, and looked for narrative lyrics in hymns (which there doesn't seem to be much of).
And of course, I've read and re-read other classic narrative poems. But the question arises do these other Classics of Narrative Poetry also "count" as Epics? I mean poems such as Beowulf or the Song of Roland or, more recently Idylls of the King by Tennyson (which are 12 narrative poems about King Arthur that do cover the major events of his life, but do not exactly form one continuous narrative).
As it turns out someone has made a YouTube video discussing just this point. I enjoyed watching this conversation between noted Classical School and Great-Books-based Home-Schooling proponent Wes Callahan (whose videos I've shared before) and the interesting Christian blogger and theologian Peter Leithart, asking whether Paradise Lost was the last epic, what exactly is an epic, and why has narrative poetry fallen out of literary fashion (which is a really interesting moment to reflect on the ways that culture, technology, and art all interact).
I hope it whets your appetite to go read some epic poetry or other classics of the Western Tradition...
Like a lot of United Methodist pastors and members I receive, and sometimes read bits of, Good News Magazine, which represents the evangelical and traditional-Wesleyan perspective within the church (probably, the majority of the church at this point).
A couple of years ago a clergy colleague quipped that it was a publication devoted to "the Good News: that we Methodists have a traditional teaching on sexuality", hinting that he thought Good News was in danger of becoming a one-issue publication, rather than representing all of the riches and fullness of the Christian faith and Christian tradition, especially in its Wesleyan form.
However (and perhaps this is in response to such criticisms), I have noticed in recent years that Good News has had a broader spectrum of articles and pieces. I ran across this one today and wanted to share it, because it touches on a topic close to my heart: Why Read Great Books?
The piece quotes from Homer's Illiad, a C.S. Lewis essay, and the anonymous Medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but does not (as I recall) have anything to say about the sexuality debate within United Methodism.
Certainly, as one who was raised with at least some engagement with the great Classics of Western culture, I have great love of them, and confidence in their ability to enrich and impart wisdom and beauty - enchantment even - into the lives of those who attend to them.
Of course, there are debates about just what are the "Great Books". Some of the 20th century sets (such as The Great Books of the Western World) have been criticized for mostly ignoring the great Medieval and Christian traditions, and skipping almost straight from classical antiquity to the more secular works of the 17th Century. While some books might be a bit "debatable" (included on some folks' lists, but not others), there are a great many works that are undeniably a part of Western Civilization's Great Books tradition.
I try always to be reading at least one of the Classics (at present, Dante's Divine Comedy, and I've just started re-reading Tolkien's Middle Earth saga, including the newer volumes covering the First Age), and I really do believe that doing so not only brings me pleasure and exercises my mind, but also puts me in closer contact with the generations that came before, with my forefathers on this earth.
The essay in Good News is worth the read...as are the Great Books themselves.
The essay also suggests that we United Methodists ought to be doing more to establish or to support Great Books schools and educational programs, and I think it is always worth contacting your local UMC-affiliated liberal arts college(s), and encouraging them to create a 'Great Books Curriculum' as The University of Chicago and St. John's College have famously done, plus we could always use more reading clubs that focus on the Classics (churches could sponsor groups that read the Spiritual Classics).
A couple of years ago I heard an NPR interview (which I'm sure you can find using a quick web-search) with an author named Nicholas Carr discussing his (then) new book, The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our Brains. I must say that his basic thesis was distressing, and yet also had the "ring of truth" when I considered my own use of the web and that of the those around me (mostly college students at that time). I put the book on my Amazon wishlist and eventually ordered a nice used hardback.
Over the last few weeks I read it. Though generally a slow reader myself, I found this to be a quick read (especially for what may be the first book on neuroscience I've ever attempted), and more than that this book has literally changed my life. I've noticed for years that I've been getting more "scatter-brained." I'd assumed that this was simply part of the ageing process or (scary thought) the first hints of some early-onset dementia. Since reading Carr's well-researched book I'm convinced that I'm feeling more scatter-brained precisely because my online habits have actually been reinforcing "scattered" thinking and attention.
I say that the book has changed my life because I've intentionally spent less time on the web - and social media in particular - since finishing this book. So far I am quite pleased with this change. It is surprising how quickly that feeling that "I'm missing something" subsides after you quit checking Facebook for a few days. Instead I've been able to spend more time book-reading.
Some argue that the web makes us smarter and more creative. They may have some evidence to support this (which Carr examines): without a doubt the web does help with certain kinds of mental activity. But while the web encourages some mental activities, it actually weakens others: the processes in the brain connected with memory (especially long-term memory formation), concentration, reflection, attention, and contemplation (of particular interest to me as a pastor) all become weaker through constant internet use.
In short we are becoming shallower thinkers and it is more difficult for us to gain wisdom, especially since (researchers have learned) long-term memory actually plays a crucial role in wisdom and character-building.
If someone were looking for evidence as to whether the web has indeed had a wide-scale deleterious effect upon our collective wisdom and our collective ability to think deeply, I suggest that the 2016 election process - from the primaries onward - stands as "exhibit A."
My advice to you: read this book. Read it as soon as you can.
Below is a video that introduces some of the basic concepts, but with a five minute video you cannot begin to capture the detail, the charm, and the sheer persuasiveness of the book itself.
Plus, 5 minutes may be a stretch to our "online attention span".
