Theology That Bites Back
The main category for book reviews and cultural interaction.
This month my selection is a book that has been on my shelves for quite a while, but which I recently pulled down and read. Calvin’s Company of Pastors is a fascinating social history that records how Reformed pastoral ministry first took root in Geneva, and how it flourished there in the decades following. I …
“The proper name for a technology that is available only to the few is not ‘appropriate,’ but ‘privileged.’”
Nation of Rebels, p. 298
“They walked across about half an acre of carpet that you could lose a croquet ball in, came to another set of glass doors, and went through those.”
“What eventually led to the undoing of these views was the failure to appreciate the competitive nature of our consumption and the significance of positional goods. Houses in good neighborhoods, tasteful furniture, fast cars, stylish restaurants and cool clothes are intrinsically scarce. We cannot manufacture more of them because their value is based on the distinction that they provide to consumers. Thus the idea of overcoming scarcity through increased productivity is incoherent; in our society, scarcity is a social, not a material, phenomenon.”
Nation of Rebels, p. 294
“The landscaped slopes on either side of the broad steps were covered with junipers, which Rourke had long considered to be the orcs of the plant kingdom. The automatic sprinklers on a timer were busily spritzing them, which just made them wet, botanical orcs.”
Introduction: As many of you know, I have really enjoyed the books of Nassim Nicholas Taleb. In the true confessions department, I have not yet read every last one of his books, but I have read the ...
“The notion that we are all brainwashed by technology is, of course, just the standard critique of mass society dressed up in different clothes . . . [but] we aren’t unconscious, we aren’t brainwashed and we aren’t sleepwalking.”
Nation of Rebels, pp. 291-292
“But this was panic on stilts and steroids. This was a prison riot. The noise from that isolated chamber down below few more insistent. A metal cup raked across the bars. Guards! And somewhere farther up, unseen clammy hands were industriously attaching a nylon strap and winch around the upper portion of Chad’s chest and ratcheting it tight”
Morning . . . Letter to the Editor: You gloss over it but it is quite disturbing that the editors of P&R would have even given this a second look let alone a first. Jeff ...
