Metahistory
-
The Post-Secularist Age
I've believed for some time that the religious right is fighting an enemy in secularism that is now a paper tiger. The culture war between the religious right and the secular left has more to do with the past than the future–it was a modern battle, and we are no longer moderns. It seems to
-
Dying Traditions IIIb: A Dissent & Response
Mike McG, a long-time ATF reader, from time to time sends me thoughtful dissents. I deeply appreciate that he takes the time and makes the effort to do it. I got this one last night as a comment in response Dying Traditions IIIb with a message that the site wouldn't let him post it there.
-
People and Their Mindsets
I'm getting a few lectures about how wrong it is for me to be so hard on the tea partiers because they are mostly good-hearted folks who hate the bailouts/outsourcing/corporatism just like the rest of us. But that argument makes me feel the same way I felt when people told me that Bush wasn't really
-
Better Angels of Our Nature
It's always interested me how the country was riven from the beginning by two different but fundamental political values constellations, the first, a static, rural, agrarian populist values of the 19th Century Democrats, and the other the dynamic, economic growth values of the Federalists, Whigs, and eventually the Republicans. Following Mark Twain we could call
-
Glenn Beck’s Day
After receiving the key, Beck spoke for about an hour, reminiscing about growing up in Mount Vernon, which he described as a "magical place," connected to the values of small-town America. "I believe in Norman Rockwell's America," he said. . . . Beck said he didn't remember politics being divisive growing up, and that if
-
Naturalism vs. Supernatualism III
Evolution, be it of organism or of mind, of subatomic matter or of the cosmos as a whole, reflects the pervasive role of process which philosophers of this school see as central both to the nature of our world and to the terms in which it must be understood. Change pervades nature. The passage of
-
From Outer to Inner; From Given to Chosen II
This post is meant as a follow up to the first post with the same title which can be found here. What I'm writing here is a beginning, a groping forward as best I can. I'm struggling for more concreteness and clarity, but I recognize I'm not even close: Barfield and Nietzsche start from the
-
Reasons Postscript
It wouldn't surprise me if some people reading my last post probably responded to it by saying to themselves, "Whatever." How all of that stuff about historical eras connects with them and the way they live their lives could be difficult to see. And what I'm going to say here may not help them much
-
The Reasons for My Concern
When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent. The term is not a slur, it is a technical label. . . . [Decadence] implies in those who live in such a time no loss of energy or talent or moral sense. On the contrary, it is a very active time,
-
Cosmogenesis II
I suppose if I'm going to make the case for mythopoesis plausible, I have to establish that all of us live within a mythic framework. I'll try to do that another time, but for now let's just assume that all of us live within belief systems. And because our belief systems, no matter how sensible