once again from the Sword of Peter
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
this says a mouth full
Stupidity: A Malady of the Cultural Elite
We live in something of a meritocracy,
and our rulers believe they are by far the most enlightened and
well-informed people who ever lived. For that reason they feel entitled
to make the aspirations of the present day, or what they consider such,
the compulsory standard for public life. They view the claim that there
are principles that transcend those aspirations as the sort of thing
that led to 9/11, and treat the past as worth considering only as
something to escape from or a foreshadowing of the glories of the
present.
Nonetheless, a variety of conditions, from the state of education and
the arts to that of political discussion, makes it evident that Western
society is growing less and less able to think clearly and effectively.
That’s a big problem, and one that’s hard to deal with, because it is
difficult to cure oneself of mindlessness. Still, we should do our best
to understand what’s going on.A basic part of the problem is that the kind of meritocracy we have leads to stupidity. Its effect is that local and subordinate groupings are deprived of talent and respect, and the leadership at the top becomes unable to think or function outside established understandings. The people at the top mostly went to the same highly competitive schools, where they were all told the same things, and it’s taken all their effort and devotion to get where they are today. The result is that they’re absorbed in their social function and setting, and would find it very difficult to adopt an independent perspective if the desire to do so ever entered their heads.
The results are evident in our public life. How often do our leaders say or write anything that would be of interest if a different name were attached? Can anyone imagine Hilary Clinton thinking something she isn’t supposed to think? And to get to the bottom line, do our rulers give the impression that they know what’s going on or what to do about it?
Naturally, meritocracy isn’t the only culprit. There are other factors at work that also stem from the nature of a society ruled by technology and technocratic ideals. Their effect is that the understandings that guide thought are becoming increasingly nonfunctional:
- Electronic diversions train people out of the habit of consecutive thought. Tweets, texting, and multitasking mean discussions never get to the point and are hardly discussions at all.
- Rejection of transcendent standards leads to denial of the good, beautiful, and true in favor of rhetoric and power. That means the subordination of thought to politics, propaganda, and partisanship.
- Bureaucracy, commerce, and the media absorb functions once performed by individuals, families, and tradition. Instead of the arts of life, which require thought, we have consumer goods, social programs, and industrially-produced pop culture. The result is that thought becomes less important as a day-to-day matter.
- Thought requires engagement with reality. Electronic entertainment and the distance between cause and effect in a complex globalized society mean people do not engage reality, while skepticism as to truth means they consider it theoretically impossible to do so.
- A technological approach to society means mechanical unity of components, and thought and discussion are not mechanical. Common histories, understandings, and commitments, as well as freedom of association, are necessary for complex and subtle activities such as scholarly inquiry and speculative thought, and technocracy disrupts such things.
- Thought depends on recognizing and applying patterns, and technology rejects pattern recognition in favor of simple relations of cause and effect. To make matters worse, relating individual cases to patterns means stereotyping and discrimination. Ideals of diversity and inclusiveness, which draw their institutional strength from the technocratic desire to turn people into interchangeable components, thus require suppression of the habits of mind that make thought possible.
- Thought also depends on standards of cogency, which are disfavored because they are at odds with diversity. People want to include marginalized voices, so they feel called upon to treat thoughts nonjudgmentally, as long as they are politically acceptable.
- In any event, standards require effort, so they’re at odds with consumerism, comfort, and lifestyle libertarianism, and the technological outlook makes those the goals of life. Such an attitude may help explain the recent startling decline of academic achievement among thoroughly assimilated Jewish and Japanese Americans.
It seems unlikely the Chinese will take over, since they have their own problems. For starters, selective abortion and the one-child rule mean they’re going to have a huge population of young men with no prospect of marriage, and an even huger population of elderly people with no one to support and look after them. Nor does genetic engineering look like a cure-all for stupidity, if only because the problems are mostly cultural and grow out of an understanding of man and society that reduces human life to an engineering problem. So the obvious outcome of present trends in the West is growing incoherence of thought, leading to nonfunctional public life and a retreat into inward-turning networks of survival. We’ve tried to turn Iraq into Minnesota, but it’s more likely we’ll turn Minnesota into Iraq.
What’s needed, then, is a basic change of cultural direction that allows better things to develop. That’s not impossible. Intelligence is more functional than stupidity, and cooperation works better than chaos, so why shouldn’t they have a competitive advantage?
What’s caused the problem is the habit of viewing the world exclusively as a mechanical system. That approach has been fruitful in the physical sciences, but it has no place for intelligence, meaning, or agency, so it defeats itself when applied to the world as a whole. It can deal with protons, but not with physics as a science carried on by intelligent human beings, so in the long run it undermines even science.
Man is rational, at least to the extent that if he drives intelligence and meaning out of his understanding of the world he will eventually drive them out of his way of life. What we need, then, is a fundamental change of understanding that makes intelligence and meaning integral to how things are. To be functional and stable the new understanding must be concrete enough to give determinate results, and to deserve confidence it must have a way that can be counted on to settle disruptive questions.
That sounds a lot like Catholicism. Things haven’t been going well for the Church lately, but we’re not the only ones with problems. In the long run basic principles determine results, so if we can remain true to what we are then even from a purely this-worldly standpoint we have advantages that the forces of secular modernity can’t match. The conversion of the Roman Empire became final when thinkers like Augustine found they needed the Church to make sense of life and the world. What works best wins out, so there are reasons to expect something similar to happen again.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
In honor of the new Pope, Francis
Just in case you have the wrong impression of St Francis, he did NOT go around prancing among the birds and wildflowers hugging everyone and everything,
he was a REAL piece of work, this could be very interesting. Hopefully he will "kick some butt" if you'll pardon the slang, however it is needed in the Curia and the church as a whole.
God Bless Him, and may His Pontificate be a good one.
E
From the Sword of Peter, one good catholic cartoon site
God Bless Him, and may His Pontificate be a good one.
E
From the Sword of Peter, one good catholic cartoon site
Monday, March 11, 2013
But they won't be lib religion hating leftist progressives like us
from the blog of Ann Althouse
Clueless, totally CLUELESS, almost painful to hear, realizing that contracepting aborting libs are facing the biological solution
Priceless
E
Daily Beast writers Harry Siegel and Allison Yarrow get the vapors over the possibility that conservative religion...
... might be the only viable solution to America's low birth rate problem. They get the vapors, they might be vapid, and Harry vapes.Listen to the desperation as they sidetrack into the topic of whether the children of conservative religionists will veer into decently acceptable liberalism (and become... tattoo artists!). They never return to the issue of whether religion is needed to keep the population going into the future. If the offspring don't maintain the conservative values that caused their parents to have children, how do you get the next generation?
Saturday, March 9, 2013
same old same old, the liberals keep trying
they keep hoping to drag the church into the "Modern World"
We are to be in this world not of this world
Friday, March 8, 2013
why does it take an athiest to explain things
He makes Piers Morgan look like the ass he is, Penn is closer to an understanding of Catholicism that the idiot catholic on the other side of the table
Monday, March 4, 2013
well I'm back
Well I guess I'm back, group blogs aren't for everyone, my interests were too broad and eclectic for the group and so with no malice to Rich or anyone at Over the Rhine and into the Tiber I take my leave, It was fun however my interests go far and wide beyond the Arch Diocese of Cincinnati and involve a critical and sometimes snarky, love of the Church and the world as a whole, I will endeavor to post my opinion and views, occasionally an update from the farm, usually expressed through articles and pictures from others and sometimes my own. (I'm a hopeless cut and paster)
If anyone has any hints at goings on that are worth covering, drop me a line in the comments box, there is so much going on here in our little slice of heaven, good and bad but it usually goes unnoticed. It is about time to put many of the bad things going on in the mass in the light of day. Don't worry i wont use you name and if you would like to post we can use a blog name
If anyone has any hints at goings on that are worth covering, drop me a line in the comments box, there is so much going on here in our little slice of heaven, good and bad but it usually goes unnoticed. It is about time to put many of the bad things going on in the mass in the light of day. Don't worry i wont use you name and if you would like to post we can use a blog name
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Which parish are you referring to?
an explanation, I was born and raised in the Egypt area, but now reside just over the line to the west in the "Marion School district, however my heart will always be in that little parish church full of farmers and their kids that was built on my families land
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That being said, over here in the Marion catholic Community,
If you are talking about our new "old" deacon, well I have some reservations about him that is for sure. He seems to be another 80's holdover, I sent him a post from Holy Souls Hermitage about servers
http://holysoulshermitage.com/2013/02/20/on-acolytes-altar-boys-girl-altar-boys-altar-servers/#comments
I was hoping to stir some kind of improvement in the absolutely sloppy, who cares attitude in our servers. Lets just say the response was underwhelming at best.
" My formative years were prior to the mid-sixties. So, I know a little about the pre-Vatican approach to worship and truly, I don't ever want to go back there".
His remarks told me that any discussion with him is a dead end, regardless of the Holy Fathers wishes
To quote Twain "When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it's always twenty years behind the times."
and it seems there is another 5 to 10 till it gets up here
I guess if i want to attend a truly holy NO mass I'll have to go to Russia and Fr Amberger, I suggest that all try to go to at least one. I'm not talking about a Latin mass, his NO mass is outstanding, it literally moved me to tears the last time, something I will never experience with the hand holding, happy clappy semi prot activity in our local parishes.
Even my 14 year old son is sensing something wrong, he is questioning the Mass and told me very few of his friends really want to go and claim that it is boring and they get absolutely get NOTHING out of it, just go because they are forced. Oh and the "hip relevant music" bores the teens to tears, it is "hip" to the "old" organist.and her age group not the kids, and don't go there, we do NOT need a drummer and guitars in the sanctuary. I would love to expose some of them to chant and polyphony, but for now I grit my teeth and pray, "forgive them they know no what they do"
As we worship and pray, so we believe