"What kind of society, what kind of civilization, produces such apocalyptic madness inside its greatest universities?"
Weimar America, of course.
Trans being a relatively new phenomenon, or at least new in terms of its pervasiveness, it would seem there are lots of intellectual, academic angles to be "studied." In other words Carlo's ludicrous thesis is just the tip of the spear/tip of the iceberg.
While Elon Musk is figuring out how to catch rockets, these geniuses are figuring out how to reproduce trannies using aliens. Really can't make this sh*t up.
One wonders to what extent it's just a grift, but that's cold comfort even if it is, because we've learned the hard way the past 15 years or so that some fraction of people aren't in on the scam or find ways to use it for their own purposes, so nutty concepts like CRT don't stay on campus; they filter out to broader society. Also, if elite universities can't keep out grifters, what does that say about them in general?
There is the fair question of how people will organize their lives with skinny families, both in science fiction and in real life. The frequent lack siblings and cousins at the same time as people living perhaps to 100 or more years changes the family dynamic. People may spend a lot of time not in regular family life. This puts some weight to the question of alternate family arrangements also by choice, carried along with the original question of skinny families. Today we can look to China and Japan to at least speak to this issue but this was a science fiction question at first.
Queer theory of alternate pairings, as in anything other than a fertile male and fertile female pairing, can be explored but is unconvincing. On the whole, alternate reproduction doesn't work in science fiction without Shulamith Firestone's dreams of artificial wombs. Alternate pairings by themselves are a dead end.
Instead, within this context of how to organize future life, I found The Benediction Option satisfying, of calling for a new monasticism and a rebuilding of Christian living. After piles of sci-fi, I believe Rod grasping for an answer is just about the best current answer out there. Christians are going to have the serve the old in some way out of sheer necessity, and the desire for Christian living makes this a possibility with hope rather than a point of despair.
Lastly, the second point on reproduction re-imagined from the Yale author lines up well with Mary Harrington's argument that the Pill was the first Transhumanist intervention, and that we would be wise to not let the Pill drive our choices.
Re: People may spend a lot of time not in regular family life. This puts some weight to the question of alternate family arrangements also by choice
If people were replacing family with intimate friendships that would be good. But it's not what's happening. Friendship too is diminishing in our Brave New World, and loneliness triumphs.
As for the Pill it was hardly the first means of contraception. The ancients had a plant called silphium. All manner of diaphragms and condoms have existed. Also, there was coitus interruptus. The Pill is more effective, but that's true of a lot of things in today's world-- but it's nothing new under the sun.
People are indeed being more isolated. There's an Isaac Asimov angle on near total isolation being the norm.
In a society with enough to live alone, need brings community together. In families that's often the needs of young children. But the needs of the elderly are a possible door. Of course this is more of a happy angle if people connect with their aging relatives soon enough to know them before they decline.
Maybe people will have to get a little bored of the internet to go out and be friendly. I have a few more in real life people now, and while I don't see them often, it's nice. Edit to add, being a woman, I have a feeling that when I make friends older than me that there's the possibility that I can keep that connection in some way as the person ages. People afraid of death drop people, and older people get moved around, but I have a hope that I could be friends with at least someone to the end.
On the Pill, the expectation that people have that they can just decide to be DINKs for sure is a recent cultural dynamic. Most of the other contraception there is either the expectation of a child eventually within a marriage or it's an illicit situation. The Pill takes the extreme choice of rearing no offspring at all on purpose and makes it within normal, at least for Protestants and nones.
Roughly a quarter of younger adults say they do not want children*. That number has increased over the last twenty years, but most people still do want to have kids, with the number varying between 2 and 3. Though increasingly people despair of ever being able to have children, with the biggest constraint no longer being financial, but rather the fact that people are finding it difficult to enter into stable long term relationships-- though that seems to be mainly true in the bottom half of the income distribution with better off people still marrying and having kids as a general rule. We definitely have a problem, but the Pill is not the source of it.
* You have to do some math on the available stats to get to that.
Eh, I think the Pill, as a stand in for technology that controls reproduction, actually has quite a bit to do with it. Women don’t need men anymore, or at least they believe they don’t, and that’s very close to the root of what’s causing the sexes to pull apart. And that in turn has a lot to do with why people are having a harder time finding relationships, etc.
I am speaking to what set off the change. Included today is long acting contraception that is an extension of the Pill, but that is included in changing a woman's body with hormones.
Janet Yellen and her husband wrote a paper on the Pill unending the system of a shotgun marriage, or in nicer terms, the requirement of a promise of marriage if a child showed up.
In America there was also a norm that IUDs like the Chinese government imposed for the one child policy, the only long acting choice without hormones, were only for women who previously had children. So it came after this norm of women using hormones to change their situation.
The Pill is not perfect, and that fed the demand for abortions. The fact is, women's attitudes about their lives rest on a two faced position that speaks on one hand to "just plan your life" and on the other hand ferociously defends abortion to shore it up.
Mainline Protestants of years past were not good at addressing this full picture honestly or guiding 20 something women on how to start their lives. Secular woman might be more honest with their defense of abortion but Christian women could just voice a quiet support for abortion, because their church had not threaded a moral path forward. Churches were also two faced, approving abortion as long as it's quiet.
I recently heard about a woman who said she had a tubal ligation and then had twins. It seems the doctors sutured the wrong tube or something. Nothing is 100 percent. I think there have also been rare cases of a vasectomy where the severed tubes spontaneously grew back together.
From a population biological perspective, all this anti-life stuff may be Nature’s way of culling the herd. At 8 billion, this might be it. That number may simply produce cultures that turn on themselves and self-destruct.
That’s a bit like comparing the internet to the telegraph. Yes, each allows you to send information essentially instantaneously over thousands of miles, but…
Not everything can be attributed to the pill, but it was a game-changer in many ways.
Rod, I came back to paid subscription , I left because I thought you had become to negative, since Easter I’ve been back, and I’ve liked it a lot, I feel like your more hopeful, God bless
In re Gell-Mann amnesia (which now becomes part of young Ted's lexicon). Did you see Bill Murray on Rogan? He said he read the first 50 pages of Woodward's John Belushi book and said the sources didn't know the subject at all and that it was all b.s. "It makes you think that maybe Nixon was framed."
Woodward is the same journalist who interviewed the comatose Bill Casey at his guarded hospital after Casey had a stroke in 1986. Perhaps with his expertise at getting past armed guards, maybe Woodward killed Epstein.
I associate "hallelujah" with Protestantism, especially with Evangelical and Charismatic churches which allow for emotive behaviors. I was once in attendance at a black Baptist funeral. As the preacher preached a lengthy sermon cries of "Hallelujah Jesus!" from the little old black ladies in their gaudy hats were not infrequent.
“ When J.D. Vance, then a senatorial candidate, gave a speech a few years back declaring that “universities are the enemy,” it understandably caused alarm among academics.”
Are people trying to sell us on a future of transhumanism and autonomous drone warfare (looking at you, JD’s mentor Peter Thiel) any less of an enemy to humanity?
Ernest Tubb, the legendary country singer, required his band members to dress a certain way. In the later years, some of the hip young guys in his band chafed at wearing the western hat. Finally one day one of them got the courage to approach him on the bus and said, "Mr. Tubb, is there a way I can not wear this hat?"
ET replied to the effect of,"Sure, son. We can pull the bus over and you can get off right now."
People do this crap to politicians they don't like all the time. If an American poltician so much as says "Good morning" to someone they don't like, well that politician is a syncophant of the disliked person.
That doesn't cut it. You are taking a mentorship on finance and attempt without more evidence to convert it into a mentorship on transhumanism. Sorry, you fail.
I worked closely in my career with people whose politics and world views are anathema to my own. But the subject areas of common relevance were not those in contention. Your brand of purism leads to chaos and mass destruction.
I think everyone works with people with whom they disagree.
If you think your interpretation of my opinion leads to to chaos and mass destruction, wait until you live through the rise of transhumanism and autonomous drone warfare (I believe the DOD just signed a lucrative deal with Palantir, so keep your eyes open!).
Please let's concentrate on the hope Leo is giving us.
Yesterday Father Martin sent out what was easily a 500-word Tweet "defending" Leo's refusal to move into Bergoglio's faux 'umble digs (obviously that's your agent talking, Jimbo framed it as how much he looooved Francis, etc., etc.). Now, just the day before I was texting with a (Protestant) friend of mine that the move into proper quarters was not as trivial as it looks because a weaker man would have felt compelled at least to stay for a awhile in the old spartan lodgings. But Leo just went ahead. It's like the vestments. The more I see the more I like.
I do find it intriguing that both the Modernist progressive wing and the more doctrinally orthodox/traditional wing seem to be claiming Leo XIV as secret adherent and fancy the other side is getting 'played'. Perhaps this pontiff is truly 'katholikos', that is to say, universal.
It's difficult to say with Father Martin. He's not very bright (it's actually one of his endearing characteristics), and he may just be whistling in the dark. Cupich et al. are covering their asses proleptically.
Cupich seems genuinely thrilled with Leo's election. I saw a video where he began weeping tears of joy/excitement as he gushed how great it was to have a 'Chicago guy' (never mind the 40 years in Peru) in office. Or that could be the 'seat shielding' you describe.
He's out of Chicago in any case, he already submitted his resignation to Francis, it's only a matter of time before Leo picks it up (and Leo certainly knows about it from his past position). And God willing this will be his last conclave, he ages out in 4 years.
No matter where you live later in life the place where you grow up leaves an indelible stamp on you. I spent last week in my native Michigan, and while I will never live there again, it's still true that I am very much a Michigan guy.
It will be interesting to see what happens with Cupich. I live in Chicago and Cupich is now 75 and therefore had to submit his resignation as Archbishop. But it has to be accepted by the Pope and replacement appointed. My guess is that Cupich will be replaced in the next couple of years and it will be fascinating to see who he is replaced by. I imagine that will be a very important appointment for Leo XIV.
BTW people in Chicago are nuts over Leo - even non Catholics. It has been a surprising and joyful week here so far.
When Pope Francis passed over dozens of candidates to move the mediocrity that is Cupich from Spokane to Chicago, he was sending a message about what he thought important in a bishop. Yes, Chicago's one to watch.
Chicago celebrates - and monetizes - local boy does good. Both the Sox and Cubs initially tried to claim Leo XIV. Portillo's named an Italian beef sandwich after him and a hot dog joint lettered its sign "Canes Nostros ipse com edit", he has eaten our dogs himself, etc., ad naseum.
Yep. Even Hey Jack*ss has jumped in with their collection! https://www.shopjackass.com/ The "Da Pope" shirt is hilarious, but touching at the same time.
Recently saw a snarky headline claiming Mayor Brandon Johnson's popularity lower than several communicable diseases. He's desperate to hitch his wagon to anything positive.
I was so excited to learn that Pope Leo attended HS in West Michigan (Holland, Michigan). As a Michigander, it was a cool tidbit to learn - even if the school doesn’t exist anymore.
Yesterday, my friend Mary, very much a modernist was very pleased that "at least he isn't wearing those stupid expensive red shoes". To which I replied, OK, I do see your point, but those were made by craftsmen who treasure their trade and whose pride in their creative work is a way in which they show love for God. She was quite taken aback by that and that little bit of knowledge that individual craftspeople have a gift from God changed her perspective a little bit, like the Parable of the Talents. ( I think?)
Much was made of the red shoes during Benedict's papacy. Do you know what noted theologian Andrew Sullivan had to say about them? "How Gay Is the Pope?" The swine.
Symbolically, the pope wore red shoes because he is walking in the shoes of another, even if he must walk through his own blood. I expect that is lost on the modern audience. I expect as well that there is a shoemaker who relished the chance to make shoes fit for a pope. A really bad joke has it that the shoemakers who had this honour were Jewish and the sign proudly displayed above their shop was ‘Cobblers to the Pope.’
It's worth bearing in mind that the Papal Apartments still had to be maintained even when Francis the Humble wasn't physically living in them. So he was basically taking up two residences instead of one.
I'm hopeful but reserving judgment until more evidence is in.
Meanwhile, Regime media is positively desperate to claim this guy as one of their own...in the mold of The Merciful One. This week they spazzed out in delight when Leo, who was asked whether he had any messages for America, cryptically replied: "Many."
They rushed to interpret that one word as some sort of coded reference to displeasure with Trump and MAGA.
It's instructive, the priority they put on the possibility of having another Judas Pope on their team. In fact, I guess you could even say it's flattering to the Catholic Church.
I'm a big believer in "embracing your office". My small-time experience tells me that many of the folks claiming humility are often vain and and vice versa. Wearing the regalia, and attempting to live up to the office and expectations is much more trying than attempting to blend in. The "sell the Vatican art" folks will always be with us.
The small symbols we spot are significant. The Santa Maria digs were largely for show. A friend in Rome told me that it needs extra security because of its position, unlike the old papal apartments.
WaPo: the thing to do is to go immediately from the illiteracy of the Rome bureau (and the foreign desk on 14th St.) to the Style pages. There you will read deep knowledge and sparkling sophistication about White Lotus, The Last of Us, etc., etc. Which induces vertigo, of course. About substance, meh, about nullity they have a lot to say and say it very well.
Re: To be merciful to these reporters, Leo said “hallelujah” at the end of a Latin prayer.
Maybe it's because I woke up far too early (thanks, cats) but what is so odd about that? I'm much more used to the word without the "h" and spelled as if it were a Greek not Hebrew word (that's how Orthodox hymnology pronounces and spells it), but "Hallelujah" is just a variant, one often found among Protestants. Nothing funny about it.
Re: In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus,
Not valid reasoning People can be wrong, disastrously so, in one thing yet also right about other things. Everything must be analyzed on its own merits or lack thereof. As an facile example, I think the Roman Catholic Church is wrong about the Immaculate Conception. I do not think they are wrong about the Virgin Birth.
Re: Back in the 1990s, we all rolled our eyes at the “political correctness” within universities, and reassured ourselves that when the kids got out into the Real World™, reality would correct their cuckoo ideas.
And that's mostly what happened. The current gang of college kids are another batch of kids. The people my age have been long tutored in the Real World™ and all but a handful have mellowed accordingly whatever their political leanings.
It may not be "valid reasoning", Jon, but it's the law. Judge Judy ends whole segments when she catches out one of her litigants in a lie bearing tangentially on the case. Less trivially one of the most hairraising moments in Witness is the transcript of the hearing at the Commodore Hotel where Nixon tells Hiss what he already knows, that perjury in one part of the testimony taints the rest. You can almost see the wet spot grow on Hiss's pants at a distance of 80 years.
Error is not a synonym for"lie". We'll wrong about some things. Dies that mean we are wrong about everything and we cannot accept anything anyone says ever?
“Falsus in uno…” refers to actual lying. Legally, if one is shown to be liar in one thing of importance, anyone else sitting in judgment may properly consider their other significant statements with the same reduced weight.
Sure, but in the usage above it's being linked notvto deliberate lies but to errors made by writers who lack the necessary background and education to discuss scientific and technical matters.
In this case, one rather sensibly infers that a journalist who doesn’t know some basic things about Christianity s also ignorant of much else about Christianity. It’s another way of stating the Gell-Mann Amnesia phenomenon—if a paper reports on your field incompetently, why trust it to be accurate about fields that aren’t yours?
Sure, if you restrict to just one topic. But the example, writers ignorant about technical scientific issues, does not lead us to conclude that other writers are equally ignorant on foreign affairs.
When I was a reporter my boss recounted how at one newspaper he worked at someone was assigned the religion desk. When the reporter complained, he was told he was “sufficiently ignorant” on the subject to get that assignment. It has been a fairly regular practice for reporters who become “experts” on a specific beat to be rotated out to other beats where their ignorance and curiosity might line up more with the readers.
On the other hand, some of the greats of religion reporting, Ostling of Time, Woodward of Newsweek, Russ Chandler of LA Times, even Steinfels of the NYT, were allowed to stay (or were hired in the first place) on the religion beat because of their expertise and knowledge. But there were other cases of good religion reporters reassigned because of the aforementioned practice of putting a "fresh pair of eyes" on a beat.
I work in the humanities - and unfortunately gobbledygook like the Yale thesis is not only common and unquestioned, but it’s actively rewarded.
In a world of dwindling decent jobs, funding, etc. a good strategy for success is to produce scholarship like this that is “relevant” to political issues.
The fact that this happened in sociology doesn’t surprise me. It’s probably also not a coincidence that there are precious few sociology majors these days. I can’t think of a sociology major who didn’t attend college after the early 90s.
There are entire middle schools in the New York City public school system seeking to undo the damage done by the Whole Language devilry coming out of Columbia--in other words teach the children how to read phonics at age 12.
What hurts most is that Whole Language is utilitarianism on stilts. Language simply conveys information. That words might be manipulated to become beautiful is simply closed off to this kids.
All they have to do is experience it, Laura, and they're being deprived of that opportunity. I've told this story before. My parents listened in the early '60s on the radio to the waning days. of big band music, bubblegum Sinatra (High Hopes, etc. etc.), but it was music. When I went up to receive my first Holy Communion the organist was playing the Mozart Ave Verum. I never forgot it. I had no word for it. But it was beautiful.
Young Ted, I hope you're right. On one hand was Last Action Hero's Jack Slater hearing Mozart for the first time and reacting with excitement. (fictional) On the other was my pal Thomas who upon hearing any opera, always exclaimed "stop that caterwauling!" (real)
I always remember that scene from The Shawshank Redemption in which Andy locks himself in the administrative office and plays a recording of a Mozart opera over the prison loudspeaker system, and all the prisoners just stop and listen, transfixed.
Yes. There is the idea that reading well can just be absorbed as you get older, but it’s just not true. I feel whole language is a way of limiting our vocabularies and thus limiting what we can think and, as you said, the beauty and wonder of ideas. I think it affects faith too, because sacred reading is not easy reading and requires a lot of experience to understand.
Laura, Hugo von Hoffmansthal wrote "Singing is near miraculous because it is the mastering of what is otherwise a pure instrument of egotism: the human voice." Written language also leaches the egotism out of speech and allows it to be a vehicle for beauty--or a weapon.
With English you need both approaches. Our spelling mess means you cannot just sound out a random word, unlike a good many other languages. Only French and Gaelic come anywhere close to having such a mismatch between pronunciation and spelling.
For the actual teaching of reading, phonics is the basis. There are enough ways English follows the rules to sediment that basis. Later on, the phonics rules can be a starting place to figure out the mismatches using a more experiential approach. But this won't happen with what children read first in a good phonics program - it will come along later after they've been reading progressively more difficult texts.
Jon, I'm afraid you don't know what whole language is. It's been enormously destructive. My wife taught our kids how to read phonics when it turned out their (parochial!) school was taking a two-pronged approach. It came out of Columbia and has been nothing but bad news.
Competing notions of "what it means to be human" are at the core of society's biggest cultural / political conflicts. Are we quivering bundles of desires seeking satisfaction encased in self-destructing meat machines or made in the image and likeness of God with immortal souls and bodies that rise again to glory or perdition? Each road leads to a different destination.
Is having sex as indifferent as a having dinner? - "All things human are permitted to me" - aside from substituting heartbreak for heartburn and perhaps a child, disease or legal entanglement tossed in as a chaser?
Analogously, many debates and heresies from the first centuries of Christianity were about the nature of Christ. Change Christ; change Christianity. It's fascinating if you stop to think what all they had to work and pray through in the early Ecumenical Councils. Is Christ, as Son, subordinate to the Father? To what extent was Christ human and to what extent divine? If possessing a human and divine will, the latter dominate/annihilate the former? Did both God and man die the cross or just the human aspect? And then there's the Trinity and its interrelationship - that's a another couple centuries of questions right there.
Churchill writes that the desire for learning came upon him at age 24. It is evident that no such desire has ever come upon the journalists at our finest news organs.
AI is just finishing off education, which has been long in the works regardless of whether or not it was intended. Many of my top high school seniors are in need of remedial writing help, so much so that I’m reworking my AP course and gen Ed courses next year to focus on how to write good expository work and solid arguments. I’ve AI proofed quite a bit of my graded work, and my ungraded stuff is mostly done by hand. Kids that use AI and copy that down on paper are at least doing a little more than copy-pasting.
But it’s an uphill battle against a dying and decaying academic culture that values everything but the struggles that bring about learning. At least I’m in a place where I don’t hear “learning styles” or “multiple intelligences” anymore. I don’t know if it’s a good sign or that something even worse is percolating out of education schools. Thankfully we still have sports. Friday nights in the fall don’t lie about “achievement.”
Worth noting what traditional high school courses like A levels and IB do. Basically courses are two years long, in liberal arts courses ~25% of the grade comes from a~4000 word researched essay, the rest of the grade comes from 2-3 external end of course exams (which also have essays). The large essay is closely supervised partly to ensure that students are not getting outside help. Parental help has always been considered cheating so AI complicates but does not fundamentally change the dynamic.
Nothing else is graded so there is limited reason to cheat during the course, the goal is to be ready for the end of course essay and exams. (American schools running these courses commonly double grade like AP, this is not how these courses are meant to be run).
The thing that drove me nuts about Covid reporting a few years ago was the complete disconnection I had from ‘the experts’ and ‘the reporters’. They were panicking and the fear coming from them was palpable, even when we knew that over 90% of people survived getting Covid.
You could tell that they didn’t have any concept of an afterlife or faith and it affected how they presented themselves and the information. You also got the impression that life never went sideways for them. I stopped paying attention to them after a while because I just couldn’t relate to anything they were saying or the way they were behaving.
Yes, it was scary, but geez - you make a plan and stop with the fear p*rn.
I was ‘low grade’ skeptical of both ‘government authority’ and ‘reporters’ before the pandemic, but now…. I can still take my government seriously b/c I still have faith in our constitution, but mainstream reporters are just the worst and I refuse to pretend anymore that they are more than propagandists. They aren’t ’special people’ because they have a contract with a newspaper or TV network, nor have ‘special knowledge’ or ‘special skills’.
I’m totally not surprised that religion isn’t important to a reporter, especially one working for the Washington Post. All of these papers serve super secular, Progressive places. This is exactly what I’d expect at this point.
If I want religious information or a religious perspective- the MSM is the last place I would look. Sad, but true.
I wish I had stopped paying attention during covid. Instead I was obsessed with the train wreck. Also, it quickly became clear that the reporters were reading the press releases rather than the scientific papers. “Follow the science” was so infuriating when you realized they were repeating propaganda rather than what was actually reported in the scientific literature.
I’m here for the religion discussion. I know a lot about Protestant denominations but very little about Catholicism and nothing about Orthodoxy. I trust our journalist here to report deeply and honestly and offer knowledge and stories to bring us together.
Well bear in mind a lot of people go into journalism to be on television (TV) or because (print) they wanted to be novelists and some well meaning but misguided person told them "You can't make a living as a novelist, maybe you could go into journalism"
Andrew, you just nutshelled my working life of the past 38 years. On the written-word side. I have no complaints other than feeling lied to by whoever said "Do what you love and the money will follow." Still doing what I love, still waiting on the money to follow. I guess I'm a simp for this line of work!
Translated: "Buy this book that says 'Do what you love and the money will follow,' and your money will f(ol)low into my publisher's pocket with some trickle-down into mine."
I saw fear or at least fear mongering both ways. I normally don't watch much TV news, but I saw one that had back-to-back stories on the lockdowns. The first basically said "We are going to have a public health catastrophe if we don't lock down" and the second said "We are going to have an economic catastrophe if we do lock down." In the same broadcast! With no attempt to explain or balance. To me it's just another example of how these people don't care about informing the public, they care about controlling the public.
"What kind of society, what kind of civilization, produces such apocalyptic madness inside its greatest universities?"
Weimar America, of course.
Trans being a relatively new phenomenon, or at least new in terms of its pervasiveness, it would seem there are lots of intellectual, academic angles to be "studied." In other words Carlo's ludicrous thesis is just the tip of the spear/tip of the iceberg.
While Elon Musk is figuring out how to catch rockets, these geniuses are figuring out how to reproduce trannies using aliens. Really can't make this sh*t up.
Elon is also trying to figure out how to sell you a Neuralink. And a bot. And a new car. And a new banking system. Busy Bapho-man!
A dying one.
One wonders to what extent it's just a grift, but that's cold comfort even if it is, because we've learned the hard way the past 15 years or so that some fraction of people aren't in on the scam or find ways to use it for their own purposes, so nutty concepts like CRT don't stay on campus; they filter out to broader society. Also, if elite universities can't keep out grifters, what does that say about them in general?
Not to mention that they "credential" the gobbledy-gook of the PhD thesis written by Carlo. Who is, amazingly, also a graduate of Cambridge.
So once upon a time our best and brightest helped us get to the moon. Today they want to help trannies reproduce via aliens.
Stick a fork in Western Civ, we're done
Maybe. There are some folks still fighting the nonsense, thanks be to God.
It's part of the trinity of race, class and gender that academia, and especially the humanities, is obsessed with.
There is the fair question of how people will organize their lives with skinny families, both in science fiction and in real life. The frequent lack siblings and cousins at the same time as people living perhaps to 100 or more years changes the family dynamic. People may spend a lot of time not in regular family life. This puts some weight to the question of alternate family arrangements also by choice, carried along with the original question of skinny families. Today we can look to China and Japan to at least speak to this issue but this was a science fiction question at first.
Queer theory of alternate pairings, as in anything other than a fertile male and fertile female pairing, can be explored but is unconvincing. On the whole, alternate reproduction doesn't work in science fiction without Shulamith Firestone's dreams of artificial wombs. Alternate pairings by themselves are a dead end.
Instead, within this context of how to organize future life, I found The Benediction Option satisfying, of calling for a new monasticism and a rebuilding of Christian living. After piles of sci-fi, I believe Rod grasping for an answer is just about the best current answer out there. Christians are going to have the serve the old in some way out of sheer necessity, and the desire for Christian living makes this a possibility with hope rather than a point of despair.
Lastly, the second point on reproduction re-imagined from the Yale author lines up well with Mary Harrington's argument that the Pill was the first Transhumanist intervention, and that we would be wise to not let the Pill drive our choices.
Re: People may spend a lot of time not in regular family life. This puts some weight to the question of alternate family arrangements also by choice
If people were replacing family with intimate friendships that would be good. But it's not what's happening. Friendship too is diminishing in our Brave New World, and loneliness triumphs.
As for the Pill it was hardly the first means of contraception. The ancients had a plant called silphium. All manner of diaphragms and condoms have existed. Also, there was coitus interruptus. The Pill is more effective, but that's true of a lot of things in today's world-- but it's nothing new under the sun.
People are indeed being more isolated. There's an Isaac Asimov angle on near total isolation being the norm.
In a society with enough to live alone, need brings community together. In families that's often the needs of young children. But the needs of the elderly are a possible door. Of course this is more of a happy angle if people connect with their aging relatives soon enough to know them before they decline.
Maybe people will have to get a little bored of the internet to go out and be friendly. I have a few more in real life people now, and while I don't see them often, it's nice. Edit to add, being a woman, I have a feeling that when I make friends older than me that there's the possibility that I can keep that connection in some way as the person ages. People afraid of death drop people, and older people get moved around, but I have a hope that I could be friends with at least someone to the end.
On the Pill, the expectation that people have that they can just decide to be DINKs for sure is a recent cultural dynamic. Most of the other contraception there is either the expectation of a child eventually within a marriage or it's an illicit situation. The Pill takes the extreme choice of rearing no offspring at all on purpose and makes it within normal, at least for Protestants and nones.
The Pill does not prevent people from having kids ever. That would be a vasectomy or a tubal ligation.
People act like it though, and that includes how women plan their whole lives and how girls are educated.
Roughly a quarter of younger adults say they do not want children*. That number has increased over the last twenty years, but most people still do want to have kids, with the number varying between 2 and 3. Though increasingly people despair of ever being able to have children, with the biggest constraint no longer being financial, but rather the fact that people are finding it difficult to enter into stable long term relationships-- though that seems to be mainly true in the bottom half of the income distribution with better off people still marrying and having kids as a general rule. We definitely have a problem, but the Pill is not the source of it.
* You have to do some math on the available stats to get to that.
Eh, I think the Pill, as a stand in for technology that controls reproduction, actually has quite a bit to do with it. Women don’t need men anymore, or at least they believe they don’t, and that’s very close to the root of what’s causing the sexes to pull apart. And that in turn has a lot to do with why people are having a harder time finding relationships, etc.
I am speaking to what set off the change. Included today is long acting contraception that is an extension of the Pill, but that is included in changing a woman's body with hormones.
Janet Yellen and her husband wrote a paper on the Pill unending the system of a shotgun marriage, or in nicer terms, the requirement of a promise of marriage if a child showed up.
In America there was also a norm that IUDs like the Chinese government imposed for the one child policy, the only long acting choice without hormones, were only for women who previously had children. So it came after this norm of women using hormones to change their situation.
The Pill is not perfect, and that fed the demand for abortions. The fact is, women's attitudes about their lives rest on a two faced position that speaks on one hand to "just plan your life" and on the other hand ferociously defends abortion to shore it up.
Mainline Protestants of years past were not good at addressing this full picture honestly or guiding 20 something women on how to start their lives. Secular woman might be more honest with their defense of abortion but Christian women could just voice a quiet support for abortion, because their church had not threaded a moral path forward. Churches were also two faced, approving abortion as long as it's quiet.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/new-mothers-not-married-technology-shock-the-demise-of-shotgun-marriage-and-the-increase-in-out-of-wedlock-births/
I recently heard about a woman who said she had a tubal ligation and then had twins. It seems the doctors sutured the wrong tube or something. Nothing is 100 percent. I think there have also been rare cases of a vasectomy where the severed tubes spontaneously grew back together.
From a population biological perspective, all this anti-life stuff may be Nature’s way of culling the herd. At 8 billion, this might be it. That number may simply produce cultures that turn on themselves and self-destruct.
My unscientific not researched beyond anecdotes is that fertility rates drop about a generation behind infant mortality.
That’s a bit like comparing the internet to the telegraph. Yes, each allows you to send information essentially instantaneously over thousands of miles, but…
Not everything can be attributed to the pill, but it was a game-changer in many ways.
Rod, I came back to paid subscription , I left because I thought you had become to negative, since Easter I’ve been back, and I’ve liked it a lot, I feel like your more hopeful, God bless
Thank you.
Thanks, as always, Rod. I like having your perspective for what is happening in this wild, wacky world.
In re Gell-Mann amnesia (which now becomes part of young Ted's lexicon). Did you see Bill Murray on Rogan? He said he read the first 50 pages of Woodward's John Belushi book and said the sources didn't know the subject at all and that it was all b.s. "It makes you think that maybe Nixon was framed."
I caught that too!
But Murray was still close with Hunter Thompson…
"Where the Buffalo Roam."
Woodward is the same journalist who interviewed the comatose Bill Casey at his guarded hospital after Casey had a stroke in 1986. Perhaps with his expertise at getting past armed guards, maybe Woodward killed Epstein.
Of course he was framed, at least according to G Gordon Liddy
Rod
What are the top 5 substacks you subscribe to? How different are they politically, theologically and ideologically?
I am a center left reader but enjoy perusing different substacks when I can. It helps me think more deeply and helps clarify where my biases might be.
It's easy to find Rod's recommended Substacks, he currently has 12: https://roddreher.substack.com/recommendations
Wait, was the mistake/assumption that "Alleluia" is a Latin transliteration of "Hallelujah", and that therefore, he was saying a Hebrew word in Latin?
Yeah. I think I’d have given some grace on that one
I associate "hallelujah" with Protestantism, especially with Evangelical and Charismatic churches which allow for emotive behaviors. I was once in attendance at a black Baptist funeral. As the preacher preached a lengthy sermon cries of "Hallelujah Jesus!" from the little old black ladies in their gaudy hats were not infrequent.
That caught me too, although it’s hard to give grace to Wapo reporters. Maybe that’s my test for the day. Hope so.
Why oh why did those Romans commit such an act of cultural appropriation so long ago?
“ When J.D. Vance, then a senatorial candidate, gave a speech a few years back declaring that “universities are the enemy,” it understandably caused alarm among academics.”
Are people trying to sell us on a future of transhumanism and autonomous drone warfare (looking at you, JD’s mentor Peter Thiel) any less of an enemy to humanity?
Who said they weren't?
I’m asking because JD, mentee of Thiel, is leveling the accusation; would he say the same of his mentor and Thiel’s fellow dystopian technocrats?
Oh, for Christ's sake he's a politician. If he had hankered after sainthood he could have joined a monastery.
If a man believes in God, he can put nothing before that.
Ernest Tubb, the legendary country singer, required his band members to dress a certain way. In the later years, some of the hip young guys in his band chafed at wearing the western hat. Finally one day one of them got the courage to approach him on the bus and said, "Mr. Tubb, is there a way I can not wear this hat?"
ET replied to the effect of,"Sure, son. We can pull the bus over and you can get off right now."
People do this crap to politicians they don't like all the time. If an American poltician so much as says "Good morning" to someone they don't like, well that politician is a syncophant of the disliked person.
It really happened to Gen. Flynn, remember? He was attacked for not reporting that he had passed the Russian ambassador in a crowded public hallway.
Mentee? Just how? Having a loose association with someone does not make them a mentee.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2024/07/16/jd-vance-and-peter-thiel-what-to-know-about-the-relationship-between-trumps-vp-pick-and-the-billionaire/
That doesn't cut it. You are taking a mentorship on finance and attempt without more evidence to convert it into a mentorship on transhumanism. Sorry, you fail.
I worked closely in my career with people whose politics and world views are anathema to my own. But the subject areas of common relevance were not those in contention. Your brand of purism leads to chaos and mass destruction.
His brand of chaos and destruction is cloaked as purism.
I think everyone works with people with whom they disagree.
If you think your interpretation of my opinion leads to to chaos and mass destruction, wait until you live through the rise of transhumanism and autonomous drone warfare (I believe the DOD just signed a lucrative deal with Palantir, so keep your eyes open!).
Please let's concentrate on the hope Leo is giving us.
Yesterday Father Martin sent out what was easily a 500-word Tweet "defending" Leo's refusal to move into Bergoglio's faux 'umble digs (obviously that's your agent talking, Jimbo framed it as how much he looooved Francis, etc., etc.). Now, just the day before I was texting with a (Protestant) friend of mine that the move into proper quarters was not as trivial as it looks because a weaker man would have felt compelled at least to stay for a awhile in the old spartan lodgings. But Leo just went ahead. It's like the vestments. The more I see the more I like.
I do find it intriguing that both the Modernist progressive wing and the more doctrinally orthodox/traditional wing seem to be claiming Leo XIV as secret adherent and fancy the other side is getting 'played'. Perhaps this pontiff is truly 'katholikos', that is to say, universal.
It's difficult to say with Father Martin. He's not very bright (it's actually one of his endearing characteristics), and he may just be whistling in the dark. Cupich et al. are covering their asses proleptically.
Cupich seems genuinely thrilled with Leo's election. I saw a video where he began weeping tears of joy/excitement as he gushed how great it was to have a 'Chicago guy' (never mind the 40 years in Peru) in office. Or that could be the 'seat shielding' you describe.
Maybe they were tears of relief it wasn't Sarah. Because Blaise'd be out of a job.
Somewhere, Cupich just winced. Multiple contacts tell me he hates people spelling his first name with an 'i".
Good. I don't have to be reminded to include it now.
He's out of Chicago in any case, he already submitted his resignation to Francis, it's only a matter of time before Leo picks it up (and Leo certainly knows about it from his past position). And God willing this will be his last conclave, he ages out in 4 years.
No matter where you live later in life the place where you grow up leaves an indelible stamp on you. I spent last week in my native Michigan, and while I will never live there again, it's still true that I am very much a Michigan guy.
It will be interesting to see what happens with Cupich. I live in Chicago and Cupich is now 75 and therefore had to submit his resignation as Archbishop. But it has to be accepted by the Pope and replacement appointed. My guess is that Cupich will be replaced in the next couple of years and it will be fascinating to see who he is replaced by. I imagine that will be a very important appointment for Leo XIV.
BTW people in Chicago are nuts over Leo - even non Catholics. It has been a surprising and joyful week here so far.
When Pope Francis passed over dozens of candidates to move the mediocrity that is Cupich from Spokane to Chicago, he was sending a message about what he thought important in a bishop. Yes, Chicago's one to watch.
Chicago celebrates - and monetizes - local boy does good. Both the Sox and Cubs initially tried to claim Leo XIV. Portillo's named an Italian beef sandwich after him and a hot dog joint lettered its sign "Canes Nostros ipse com edit", he has eaten our dogs himself, etc., ad naseum.
Yep. Even Hey Jack*ss has jumped in with their collection! https://www.shopjackass.com/ The "Da Pope" shirt is hilarious, but touching at the same time.
Yes, but he's still in red cardinalate regalia, not white. Hey at least the pectoral cross is properly centered between the two [stadium] thieves.
Even Mayor Johnson wrote a rap song in tribute to Pope Leo XIV. Perhaps even the White Sox might make the World Series.
Recently saw a snarky headline claiming Mayor Brandon Johnson's popularity lower than several communicable diseases. He's desperate to hitch his wagon to anything positive.
50/50 Brandon Johnson is reelected.
Cupich is 76, the resignation was submitted to the Vatican last year. I expect Leo will replace him before 2026.
I was so excited to learn that Pope Leo attended HS in West Michigan (Holland, Michigan). As a Michigander, it was a cool tidbit to learn - even if the school doesn’t exist anymore.
Yesterday, my friend Mary, very much a modernist was very pleased that "at least he isn't wearing those stupid expensive red shoes". To which I replied, OK, I do see your point, but those were made by craftsmen who treasure their trade and whose pride in their creative work is a way in which they show love for God. She was quite taken aback by that and that little bit of knowledge that individual craftspeople have a gift from God changed her perspective a little bit, like the Parable of the Talents. ( I think?)
Much was made of the red shoes during Benedict's papacy. Do you know what noted theologian Andrew Sullivan had to say about them? "How Gay Is the Pope?" The swine.
You should sock him in the nose. So unnecessary.
He's hoping for an audience.
No red shoes? I didn't know that. Pity.
Symbolically, the pope wore red shoes because he is walking in the shoes of another, even if he must walk through his own blood. I expect that is lost on the modern audience. I expect as well that there is a shoemaker who relished the chance to make shoes fit for a pope. A really bad joke has it that the shoemakers who had this honour were Jewish and the sign proudly displayed above their shop was ‘Cobblers to the Pope.’
Something to be said for keeping both sides happy. For now.
It's worth bearing in mind that the Papal Apartments still had to be maintained even when Francis the Humble wasn't physically living in them. So he was basically taking up two residences instead of one.
I'm hopeful but reserving judgment until more evidence is in.
Meanwhile, Regime media is positively desperate to claim this guy as one of their own...in the mold of The Merciful One. This week they spazzed out in delight when Leo, who was asked whether he had any messages for America, cryptically replied: "Many."
They rushed to interpret that one word as some sort of coded reference to displeasure with Trump and MAGA.
It's instructive, the priority they put on the possibility of having another Judas Pope on their team. In fact, I guess you could even say it's flattering to the Catholic Church.
I'm a big believer in "embracing your office". My small-time experience tells me that many of the folks claiming humility are often vain and and vice versa. Wearing the regalia, and attempting to live up to the office and expectations is much more trying than attempting to blend in. The "sell the Vatican art" folks will always be with us.
The small symbols we spot are significant. The Santa Maria digs were largely for show. A friend in Rome told me that it needs extra security because of its position, unlike the old papal apartments.
WaPo: the thing to do is to go immediately from the illiteracy of the Rome bureau (and the foreign desk on 14th St.) to the Style pages. There you will read deep knowledge and sparkling sophistication about White Lotus, The Last of Us, etc., etc. Which induces vertigo, of course. About substance, meh, about nullity they have a lot to say and say it very well.
Re: To be merciful to these reporters, Leo said “hallelujah” at the end of a Latin prayer.
Maybe it's because I woke up far too early (thanks, cats) but what is so odd about that? I'm much more used to the word without the "h" and spelled as if it were a Greek not Hebrew word (that's how Orthodox hymnology pronounces and spells it), but "Hallelujah" is just a variant, one often found among Protestants. Nothing funny about it.
Re: In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus,
Not valid reasoning People can be wrong, disastrously so, in one thing yet also right about other things. Everything must be analyzed on its own merits or lack thereof. As an facile example, I think the Roman Catholic Church is wrong about the Immaculate Conception. I do not think they are wrong about the Virgin Birth.
Re: Back in the 1990s, we all rolled our eyes at the “political correctness” within universities, and reassured ourselves that when the kids got out into the Real World™, reality would correct their cuckoo ideas.
And that's mostly what happened. The current gang of college kids are another batch of kids. The people my age have been long tutored in the Real World™ and all but a handful have mellowed accordingly whatever their political leanings.
It may not be "valid reasoning", Jon, but it's the law. Judge Judy ends whole segments when she catches out one of her litigants in a lie bearing tangentially on the case. Less trivially one of the most hairraising moments in Witness is the transcript of the hearing at the Commodore Hotel where Nixon tells Hiss what he already knows, that perjury in one part of the testimony taints the rest. You can almost see the wet spot grow on Hiss's pants at a distance of 80 years.
Error is not a synonym for"lie". We'll wrong about some things. Dies that mean we are wrong about everything and we cannot accept anything anyone says ever?
Jon, climb down. You're wrong. It's the law, not logic.
The law can be wrong too.
“Falsus in uno…” refers to actual lying. Legally, if one is shown to be liar in one thing of importance, anyone else sitting in judgment may properly consider their other significant statements with the same reduced weight.
Sure, but in the usage above it's being linked notvto deliberate lies but to errors made by writers who lack the necessary background and education to discuss scientific and technical matters.
In this case, one rather sensibly infers that a journalist who doesn’t know some basic things about Christianity s also ignorant of much else about Christianity. It’s another way of stating the Gell-Mann Amnesia phenomenon—if a paper reports on your field incompetently, why trust it to be accurate about fields that aren’t yours?
Sure, if you restrict to just one topic. But the example, writers ignorant about technical scientific issues, does not lead us to conclude that other writers are equally ignorant on foreign affairs.
When I was a reporter my boss recounted how at one newspaper he worked at someone was assigned the religion desk. When the reporter complained, he was told he was “sufficiently ignorant” on the subject to get that assignment. It has been a fairly regular practice for reporters who become “experts” on a specific beat to be rotated out to other beats where their ignorance and curiosity might line up more with the readers.
On the other hand, some of the greats of religion reporting, Ostling of Time, Woodward of Newsweek, Russ Chandler of LA Times, even Steinfels of the NYT, were allowed to stay (or were hired in the first place) on the religion beat because of their expertise and knowledge. But there were other cases of good religion reporters reassigned because of the aforementioned practice of putting a "fresh pair of eyes" on a beat.
I work in the humanities - and unfortunately gobbledygook like the Yale thesis is not only common and unquestioned, but it’s actively rewarded.
In a world of dwindling decent jobs, funding, etc. a good strategy for success is to produce scholarship like this that is “relevant” to political issues.
The fact that this happened in sociology doesn’t surprise me. It’s probably also not a coincidence that there are precious few sociology majors these days. I can’t think of a sociology major who didn’t attend college after the early 90s.
There are entire middle schools in the New York City public school system seeking to undo the damage done by the Whole Language devilry coming out of Columbia--in other words teach the children how to read phonics at age 12.
What hurts most is that Whole Language is utilitarianism on stilts. Language simply conveys information. That words might be manipulated to become beautiful is simply closed off to this kids.
They don't know what beauty is.
All they have to do is experience it, Laura, and they're being deprived of that opportunity. I've told this story before. My parents listened in the early '60s on the radio to the waning days. of big band music, bubblegum Sinatra (High Hopes, etc. etc.), but it was music. When I went up to receive my first Holy Communion the organist was playing the Mozart Ave Verum. I never forgot it. I had no word for it. But it was beautiful.
Young Ted, I hope you're right. On one hand was Last Action Hero's Jack Slater hearing Mozart for the first time and reacting with excitement. (fictional) On the other was my pal Thomas who upon hearing any opera, always exclaimed "stop that caterwauling!" (real)
I always remember that scene from The Shawshank Redemption in which Andy locks himself in the administrative office and plays a recording of a Mozart opera over the prison loudspeaker system, and all the prisoners just stop and listen, transfixed.
Yes. There is the idea that reading well can just be absorbed as you get older, but it’s just not true. I feel whole language is a way of limiting our vocabularies and thus limiting what we can think and, as you said, the beauty and wonder of ideas. I think it affects faith too, because sacred reading is not easy reading and requires a lot of experience to understand.
Laura, Hugo von Hoffmansthal wrote "Singing is near miraculous because it is the mastering of what is otherwise a pure instrument of egotism: the human voice." Written language also leaches the egotism out of speech and allows it to be a vehicle for beauty--or a weapon.
With English you need both approaches. Our spelling mess means you cannot just sound out a random word, unlike a good many other languages. Only French and Gaelic come anywhere close to having such a mismatch between pronunciation and spelling.
For the actual teaching of reading, phonics is the basis. There are enough ways English follows the rules to sediment that basis. Later on, the phonics rules can be a starting place to figure out the mismatches using a more experiential approach. But this won't happen with what children read first in a good phonics program - it will come along later after they've been reading progressively more difficult texts.
Dana
I agree you have to start with phonics-- but whole word is necessary at some point and in fact it's the way we actually read when we master the skill.
Also, consider Chinese whose writing system is completely non-phonetic. Chinese kids do manage to become literate.
Jon, I'm afraid you don't know what whole language is. It's been enormously destructive. My wife taught our kids how to read phonics when it turned out their (parochial!) school was taking a two-pronged approach. It came out of Columbia and has been nothing but bad news.
https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-how-schools-teach-reading
Could you explain what it is? I have always heard it means recognizing a word by sight, which is how we read.
produce "scholarship" like this that is relevant to political issues. There, fixed it for ya.
Competing notions of "what it means to be human" are at the core of society's biggest cultural / political conflicts. Are we quivering bundles of desires seeking satisfaction encased in self-destructing meat machines or made in the image and likeness of God with immortal souls and bodies that rise again to glory or perdition? Each road leads to a different destination.
Is having sex as indifferent as a having dinner? - "All things human are permitted to me" - aside from substituting heartbreak for heartburn and perhaps a child, disease or legal entanglement tossed in as a chaser?
Analogously, many debates and heresies from the first centuries of Christianity were about the nature of Christ. Change Christ; change Christianity. It's fascinating if you stop to think what all they had to work and pray through in the early Ecumenical Councils. Is Christ, as Son, subordinate to the Father? To what extent was Christ human and to what extent divine? If possessing a human and divine will, the latter dominate/annihilate the former? Did both God and man die the cross or just the human aspect? And then there's the Trinity and its interrelationship - that's a another couple centuries of questions right there.
Churchill writes that the desire for learning came upon him at age 24. It is evident that no such desire has ever come upon the journalists at our finest news organs.
AI is just finishing off education, which has been long in the works regardless of whether or not it was intended. Many of my top high school seniors are in need of remedial writing help, so much so that I’m reworking my AP course and gen Ed courses next year to focus on how to write good expository work and solid arguments. I’ve AI proofed quite a bit of my graded work, and my ungraded stuff is mostly done by hand. Kids that use AI and copy that down on paper are at least doing a little more than copy-pasting.
But it’s an uphill battle against a dying and decaying academic culture that values everything but the struggles that bring about learning. At least I’m in a place where I don’t hear “learning styles” or “multiple intelligences” anymore. I don’t know if it’s a good sign or that something even worse is percolating out of education schools. Thankfully we still have sports. Friday nights in the fall don’t lie about “achievement.”
Worth noting what traditional high school courses like A levels and IB do. Basically courses are two years long, in liberal arts courses ~25% of the grade comes from a~4000 word researched essay, the rest of the grade comes from 2-3 external end of course exams (which also have essays). The large essay is closely supervised partly to ensure that students are not getting outside help. Parental help has always been considered cheating so AI complicates but does not fundamentally change the dynamic.
Nothing else is graded so there is limited reason to cheat during the course, the goal is to be ready for the end of course essay and exams. (American schools running these courses commonly double grade like AP, this is not how these courses are meant to be run).
The thing that drove me nuts about Covid reporting a few years ago was the complete disconnection I had from ‘the experts’ and ‘the reporters’. They were panicking and the fear coming from them was palpable, even when we knew that over 90% of people survived getting Covid.
You could tell that they didn’t have any concept of an afterlife or faith and it affected how they presented themselves and the information. You also got the impression that life never went sideways for them. I stopped paying attention to them after a while because I just couldn’t relate to anything they were saying or the way they were behaving.
Yes, it was scary, but geez - you make a plan and stop with the fear p*rn.
I was ‘low grade’ skeptical of both ‘government authority’ and ‘reporters’ before the pandemic, but now…. I can still take my government seriously b/c I still have faith in our constitution, but mainstream reporters are just the worst and I refuse to pretend anymore that they are more than propagandists. They aren’t ’special people’ because they have a contract with a newspaper or TV network, nor have ‘special knowledge’ or ‘special skills’.
I’m totally not surprised that religion isn’t important to a reporter, especially one working for the Washington Post. All of these papers serve super secular, Progressive places. This is exactly what I’d expect at this point.
If I want religious information or a religious perspective- the MSM is the last place I would look. Sad, but true.
I wish I had stopped paying attention during covid. Instead I was obsessed with the train wreck. Also, it quickly became clear that the reporters were reading the press releases rather than the scientific papers. “Follow the science” was so infuriating when you realized they were repeating propaganda rather than what was actually reported in the scientific literature.
I’m here for the religion discussion. I know a lot about Protestant denominations but very little about Catholicism and nothing about Orthodoxy. I trust our journalist here to report deeply and honestly and offer knowledge and stories to bring us together.
Well bear in mind a lot of people go into journalism to be on television (TV) or because (print) they wanted to be novelists and some well meaning but misguided person told them "You can't make a living as a novelist, maybe you could go into journalism"
Andrew, you just nutshelled my working life of the past 38 years. On the written-word side. I have no complaints other than feeling lied to by whoever said "Do what you love and the money will follow." Still doing what I love, still waiting on the money to follow. I guess I'm a simp for this line of work!
Translated: "Buy this book that says 'Do what you love and the money will follow,' and your money will f(ol)low into my publisher's pocket with some trickle-down into mine."
Ha! Right?
True
Yeah well that well emaning but misguided person wasn't a hypothetical for me either.
I saw fear or at least fear mongering both ways. I normally don't watch much TV news, but I saw one that had back-to-back stories on the lockdowns. The first basically said "We are going to have a public health catastrophe if we don't lock down" and the second said "We are going to have an economic catastrophe if we do lock down." In the same broadcast! With no attempt to explain or balance. To me it's just another example of how these people don't care about informing the public, they care about controlling the public.