New friendships!

I have discovered a new (for me) philosopher, Pascal Bruckner, and he is interesting:

"One could cite such quotations forever, given the spread of apocalyptic literature. Authors, journalists, politicians and scientists compete in their portrayal of abomination and claim for themselves a hyperlucidity: They alone see the future clearly while others vegetate in the darkness.

The fear that these intellectuals spread is like a gluttonous enzyme that swallows up an anxiety, feeds on it, and then leaves it behind for new ones. When the Fukushima nuclear plant melted down after the enormous earthquake in Japan in March 2011, it only confirmed an existing anxiety that was looking for some content. In six months, some new concern will grip us: a pandemic, bird flu, the food supply, melting ice caps, cell-phone radiation.

The fear becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, with the press reporting, as though it were a surprise, that young people are haunted by the very concerns about global warming that the media continually broadcast. As in an echo chamber, opinion polls reflect the views promulgated by the media.

We are inoculated against anxiety by the repetition of the same themes, which become a narcotic we can't do without.
 

and..............

 In classical Judaism, the prophet sought to give new life to God's cause against kings and the powerful. In Christianity, millenarian movements embodied a hope for justice against a church wallowing in luxury and vice. But in a secular society, a prophet has no function other than indignation. So it happens that he becomes intoxicated with his own words and claims a legitimacy with no basis, calling down the destruction that he pretends to warn against.

You'll get what you've got coming! That is the death wish that our misanthropes address to us. These are not great souls who alert us to troubles but tiny minds who wish us suffering if we have the presumption to refuse to listen to them. Catastrophe is not their fear but their joy. It is a short distance from lucidity to bitterness, from prediction to anathema.

Another result of the doomsayers' certainty is that their preaching, by inoculating us against the poison of terror, brings about petrification. The trembling that they want to inculcate falls flat. Anxiety has the last word. We were supposed to be alerted; instead, we are disarmed. This may even be the goal of the noisy panic: to dazzle us in order to make us docile. Instead of encouraging resistance, it propagates discouragement and despair. The ideology of catastrophe becomes an instrument of political and philosophical resignation.

Mr. Bruckner is a French writer and philosopher whose latest book is "The Paradox of Love" (Princeton University Press, 2012). This article, translated by Alexis Cornel, is excerpted from the Spring 2012 issue of City Journal

Vote responsibly.

I realize that my voice in these elections is tiny, but I will do what I can if it means that the inevitable collapse of America is delayed. If for no other reason than the collapse of the worlds' most prominent democracy will lead to the more rapid disintegration of western societies around the globe, and though I hold no fear of my future I do wish at least some future for my children.

I hold  therefore to what bill Meuhlenberg has to say in this excerpt:

“I would hope that all who love the Scriptures would agree that we should not vote for President Obama. There are compelling reasons why a Christian should be distressed with the current administration. The President’s unqualified support of abortion goes beyond anything we saw from previous Democratic leaders like President Clinton. His public endorsement of same-sex marriage is well known. His fiscal policy has launched the federal government into reckless spending which runs up our deficit at a rate of more than a trillion dollars per year—that is, more than $3250 of additional debt per year for every one of our 312 million people. At present, our government is in debt more than $51,000 for every person living in our nation. People have documented his socialist agenda for the government to use its coercive power to steal wealth from some in order to redistribute it to others as its officials see fit.”

He then deals with the usual objections to voting in the only man who can stop Obama. What about Mormonism? “It is outside the bounds of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It adds other writings and so-called prophecies to Scripture as the Word of God. However, we are not electing a pastor. We are electing the President of the United States. We do not live in a political system where the head of state leads the established religion of the nation. We live in a system of religious liberty where our Constitution says no religious test must be passed by a candidate for public office.

“Christians can in good conscience support the political office of non-Christians. If godly Daniel was able to serve in the administration of the pagan king Nebuchadnezzar, then godly believers can support a President who is not a believer in the God of the Bible. The President’s job is not to teach sound doctrine, but to punish wrongdoers and to protect good citizens (Rom. 13:3–4), as the head of the executive branch of the government. To vote for Mitt Romney is not to endorse his views of religion, but to support him politically.

“I might also point out here that as far as I can see in Mr. Romney’s past political record, at no point has he promoted his Mormon views upon the people he has served. I cannot find a single instance where he has tried to impose unsound Mormon theology on those whom he has governed.”

After looking at other objections, he concludes, “Your vote is precious. Please do not throw it away when you could use it to defend our children against a future of abortion, sexual perversion, socialism, crushing debt, and tyranny.

Addiction anonymous

Well put Steven Kates:

In miniature, this captures the problem of the right in dealing with the left. The right has a vision of how a world can be best constructed by leaving each of us the freedom and opportunity to find our own way. It is always an adventure and nothing can be guaranteed, but there are satisfactions in being allowed to build our own lives ourselves and in our own way. But it comes with fewer forms of open-ended government support.

BY contrast, the left is filled with plans for what it will do for us: for “the poor”, “the disadvantaged”, for women, migrants, Aboriginals, or whoever can be transformed into a victim group and induced to become dependent on government programs, grants and handouts. Socialism is a drug of dependence. It is a narcotic addiction very hard to break.

The US election will be a test of the America's will to break free of this addiction. We will have our own opportunity to do the same sometime in the following twelve months.
 

I pray for the power to help break this addiction off Australia.

Sesquipedalianism!

This is a passage taken from a description of an artists inspiration for a new body of work:

This project, while it is more physically engaged, follows on from MacKenny’s on-going interest in examining the intersection of different visual conventions (illusionism and flatness occupying the same frame), and the conflation of potentially oppositional vocabularies which provide a locus for exploring perception within a worldview that is personal yet contextually aware. Her works investigate ‘solastalgia’ – a term coined by philosopher Glenn Albrecht to describe the effects of global warming on the mental states of Australians. The combination of solacium (comfort) and algia (pain) infers an emotional disquiet that results from nostalgia firmly rooted in the now. The pain of nostalgia comes from taking comfort in the things that have given one pleasure in the past, but realising that those things are no longer. Solastalgia, however, indicates a present that is becoming a past before one’s very eyes; the environment, which we imbue with so much meaning, is disappearing as we watch it.
 

The artist is an old friend and a once mentor and teacher of mine. I have always been inspired by her abilities as a painter and it pains me to witness such a talent in the service of such a farce. The pretensions in this verse reflect the disease that has gripped many segments of Western society not only the arts. The essay in its entirety is an explanation of what the exhibition is about as well as what has motivated the artist to make the works in it.

Art today must have a rationale, it is no longer acceptable just to make art because you feel like creating something. Today we must be motivated by something bigger, more 'universal' (the Quixotic quest) something of a 'religious' nature. In the pursuit of a questionable freedom, Western intellectuals have turned from a reasonable faith; Christianity (which they insist is irrational) to an 'upper-storey' (unreasoned and truly irrational) faith; namely Gaia.

Tom Wolfe writes about the literary arts thus:

"It is at this point that poetry, if it is to be considered serious, becomes difficult. The serious poet begins to make his work hard to understand in order to show that he is elevating himself above the rabble, which is now known of course, as the bourgeoisie. He is writing for what the French critic Catulle Mendes referred to as 'a charming aristocracy," "an elite in this age of democracy." There was something vulgar and common about harping on 'meaning.'"

In the visual arts you find millions upon millions (ad nauseaum) of words trundled out in support of the new(old)age neo-paganistic cult of Gaia (It was classified a cult in the 1st Century!). And the words visual artists embrace to explain their art and motivations are like those the Wolfe poet above uses; esoteric in nature and arranged in ways intended to confuse the non-initiate (bourgeoisie). The fact that such language tends to confuse the wannabe initiate (often even the initiates are baffled) is besides the point, the myth of the Emperors clothes is alive and thriving in the 'world of art'. The pretensions behind such buffoonery are almost amusing if they were not so tragic in their consequences.

Lord: May those who truly seek find true truth.

Cooling it!

This technique as discussed by Thomas Sowell sounds hauntingly familiar to Australian followers of political news:

Confidence men know that their victim — "the mark" as he has been called — is eventually going to realize that he has been cheated. But it makes a big difference whether he realizes it immediately, and goes to the police, or realizes it after the confidence man is long gone.

So part of the confidence racket is creating a period of uncertainty, during which the victim is not yet sure of what is happening. This delaying process has been called "cooling out the mark."

The same principle applies in politics. When the accusations that led to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton first surfaced, he flatly denied them all. Then, as the months passed, the truth came out — but slowly, bit by bit. One of Clinton's own White House aides later called it "telling the truth slowly."

By the time the whole truth came out, it was called "old news," and the clever phrase now was that we should "move on."

It was a successful "cooling out" of the public, keeping them in uncertainty so long that, by the time the whole truth came out, there was no longer the same outrage as if the truth had suddenly come out all at once. Without the support of an outraged public, the impeachment of President Clinton fizzled out in the Senate.

Manipulation

I have always tried to instill a healthy skepticism into my children, myself and my friends regarding the claims of Hollywood that the latest movie blockbuster is based on 'history'. I have not always been successful because the power of celluloid is mighty.

Consider what Francis Schaeffer said more than 40 years ago:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A place for Hollow people.

For any who might be enthralled by that hollow.org that is the United Nations...read this and weep!
http://freedomwatch.ipa.org.au/free-speech-is-a-gift-from-the-united-nations/