Enjoying the view from Limbo
Let us list, with comments, a few terms that one cannot avoid hearing or reading persistently these days, at least to the extent that one’s mind has the misfortune of being within range of the popular media (in all its manifestations) and the headline-shouting world it both embodies and engenders. The far right. This expression has no determined meaning in modern discourse, beyond...
When the print media was dominated by men with high school educations or less, armed with real-world experience and an enthusiasm for clarity of language and for “getting to the bottom of things,” the news was commonly reported with literacy and punchy verve, in vocabulary and grammar suitable to a population of self-governing adults. Today, as the print media — paper or virtual...
Fool’s atheism.– “Why would an omnipotent and benevolent God allow evil things to happen?” So says the scientific fool with great smugness, believing he has thereby confounded the essence of all faith. The problem is that this very question reveals the nihilistic and trivial perspective of the questioner, based as it is upon a child’s presumption of absolute certainty, and an infant’s standard...
A headline I just read, from the Washington Post: ‘Patience has worn thin’: Frustration mounts over vaccine holdouts My patience has worn thin with propagandized “frustration” against any human being who believes he still has the right to make his own decisions, and judge his own needs. My patience has worn thin with people who assume you will believe exactly what they believe...
If you have seen any news coverage of the Sri Lankan bombings, whether on the internet, in a newspaper, or on television, you have no doubt seen many images of random strangers wailing uncontrollably. This is the most popular and pervasive sort of imagery in these cases, because it responds to an instinctive weakness in the human soul that has been heightened, normalized,...
A lunatic shot a bunch of people in a Pittsburgh synagogue. This is horrible. It is sad for the families and friends. It is another instantiation of the increasingly typical mindlessness of modern society. And if we were writing an essay on the increasingly typical mindlessness of modern society, it would be a useful example. But is it news? I mean national news...
A dead soul makes a desperate lunge for the nihilist’s meaning-substitute, notoriety, by killing people in the hope of becoming infamous. The media grants the dead soul’s wish, sensationalizing his act as though it were Significant. Other dead souls get the idea: “I could go out in a blaze of glory, too.” Question: Does the media desire this result? Or do they merely...
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