Category Archives: Links

Giving to the Poor in Spirit at ‘The Everyman’

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Today at ‘The Everyman,’ I talk about the issue of beauty, modern churches, and who these hideous, spare edifices are actually built for:

The beatitude runs “Blessed are the Poor in Spirit, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.” But one of the marks of the poor and meek is that they love wealth and glamor. The very celebrity gossip magazines and reality TV shows understand this. The quality of beauty, glamor, and majesty is that they inspire admiration and can only be enjoyed from a position of comparative inferiority, or at least self-forgetfulness, which is why the poor in spirit (those who don’t put on airs or try to see through the world to prove how clever they are) love these things. There is no merit in enjoying a beautiful painting or a beautiful church, which is precisely the point—there shouldn’t be. It’s a pleasure not designed for those who think overmuch of their own merits.

And this, at bottom, is the practical principle of what modernism actually does; take from the poor to feed the rich. When art becomes more about the glory of the artist than the enjoyment of the audience, then it loses all appeal to the humble. ‘Avant-garde’ means, in the end, ‘for the rich and rich at heart.’ When a large part of the population can say, “I don’t get art,” or poetry or literature, that means that these things have been stolen from them.

Read the rest here.

“Games as a Service”

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I’ve been following this fellow’s work for a long time: he’s a very entertaining game critic and comedian (he has a great style of saying outrageously odd things in a perfectly normal tone), but he also draws attention to a major issue in the gaming world. I’ll let him explain it, since he lays it out better than I could. Though I’m not a big gamer, I care about all forms of creative art and the issue he discusses is disturbing (light language warning, I think: he sometimes swears, but doesn’t do it non-stop or anything). It’s kind of a long video, and a bit of a niche issue, but I think it’s something that ought to be better known and understood.

Cultivating a Heroic Imagination at Catholic Match

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My latest ‘Catholic Match’ piece is up; this one about the benefits of cultivating a heroic imagination. Or, in other words, I’m writing in praise of fantasizing:

It has been said that, “as a man thinketh, so he is,” but perhaps it would be equally accurate to say, “as a man imagineth, so he becomes.” Not because, in Napoleon Hill fashion, he imagines himself becoming a certain way and becomes so, but because through imagination he is able to feel the value of becoming a certain kind of man and consequently able to desire it.

That is why I say it is good for men to fantasize about heroic deeds; charging into the breech of a battle line, standing up for the truth against the ridicule of the world, and, of course, rescuing the damsel in distress. The imagination allows us to see heroism and self-sacrifice as valuable things, and thus to desire them for their own sake.

This heroic imagination is very helpful in relationships.

It should be clear now why I say this is a very useful practice, especially for a relationship. A man who regularly daydreams of slogging through the swamp to rescue the girl from the villain’s alligator farm has already created a mental habit of self-sacrifice and devotion in spite of hardship; the idea that ‘it is desirable to endure hardship for her sake; to protect her, comfort her, and provide for her.’

Read the rest here.

Captain Marvel gets MauLered

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I’ve been waiting for this ever since the film came out. My favorite YouTube critic, MauLer, takes his trademark logical approach to the diseased tumor of a film known as ‘Captain Marvel.’ I’m glad to see that he shares most of my objections (which we’ll get to in turn), while reminding me of many that I’d forgotten or didn’t notice and going into full detail of just how awfully constructed this plot really is.

Sample: “…Meaning that this is a power limiter that only limits the subject’s power if they believe their power is limited. Who. Wrote. This?”

His evisceration of Fury losing his eye to the cat is particularly good, as are his compare and contrasts with the other MCU characters.

Oh, and he swears a good deal, so language warning.

 

Equality at the Everyman

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At the Everyman today, I discuss why holding ‘equality’ up as an ideal is a terrible, terrible idea:

Which raises a more fundamental issue. Before you can say any two things are equal, you first have to have a common and objective standard of measurement between them. I can say that two people are of equal height because ‘height’ is an empirical measurement. But honesty, virtue, intelligence, wisdom, kindness, talent, beauty, and all the other factors by which we judge men are not empirically measurable (an IQ score is not an objective measure of intelligence, so that a man with an IQ of 100 is exactly twenty points smarter than a man with 80. It only serves, at best, to give a general idea of relative intelligence).

Thus, ‘equality’ cannot really apply to human beings in any meaningful sense. You cannot measure, say, wisdom and create a scale by which one man can be compared to another. We can identify these things to a greater or lesser degree, but we cannot empirically measure them. Moreover, these qualities are incommensurable: they cannot be compared one to another (how does talent measure up against wisdom? how many ‘units’ of beauty are equal to a single unit of virtue?). Moreover, even if we could, anyone can see that we would not, in fact, find ‘equality’ even between any two given individuals, let alone across the entire human race.

What this all amounts to is that ‘equality’ is simply meaningless when applied to human beings. Law is ‘equal’ in the sense of applying indiscriminately among the population (‘indiscriminate’ would probably would be a better term in the first place), but to say that all men are ‘equal’ in any other sense is simply a misuse of language, like saying that painting is on a level with music. The point is that there is no ‘level’ by which the two can be compared.

Read the rest here.

New Aleteia Post

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I sent this in about three or four months ago; kind of expected it to have been dropped, but it’s up after all! On Aleteia today, In Defense of Grumpy Christians.

For such people there’s often a bit of a quandary: They know that, as Christians, they ought to love their neighbor and be good to others, but they can find being in the company of others to be emotionally draining and often irritating. They may, in fact, frequently feel like they’re being bad Christians — edged on, it must be said, by people who seem to equate “Christian love” with “being nice.” So, if you’re one of these “mean” Christians, or you know of them, here are some things to keep in mind …

How you relate to God is the main thing

If you’re the kind of person I’m describing, most likely you will alienate or offend other people at some point in your life. You’re not the sort who naturally inspires popularity, and this can be difficult. You will likely feel that it’s your fault and that it’s because you’re fundamentally flawed.

Remember that all people have flaws, however, and that God knows your struggles. Focus on pleasing Him, not on pleasing others. This way, not only will you be more likely to succeed, but you’ll probably find that you get along better with other people as well. Sincerity and good will are very attractive qualities, even when coupled with irritability, and if you cultivate these, people will recognize and value them.  

Read the rest here.