“It was the biblical empathy for victims that aroused a truly historical interest in ‘actual historical events,’ and it is this interest that helped define the world’s first counter-cultural culture — what we call ‘Western culture'” (Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled, p. 131).
Still Trying to Find a Rock to Throw
This editorial column ran in our local paper last night in response to a front page article that they ran some days before. That article described the release of a book by a local academic as a response to what I have written and said about slavery. So Why Isn’t the Record Straight? Here is …
Art As Death Throes
“For the Enlightenment was to change the world. It is a period in which we today are still living, though at its end. Its aims have been fulfilled” (H.R. Rookmaaker, Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, p. 41).
Murderous Myth or Gospel Unveiled
“The spirit born of the sacrificial murder inspires the community of its perpetrators to remember the murder as holy and creative. The Spirit of the Gospels, on the other hand, remembers the false accusations, sordid plots, the sham trials, and the weak faith of those who fled” (Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled, p. 130).
Not Just a Mirror
“Believing as I do that the arts in general are not merely a mirror reflecting social and cultural values, but are, on the contrary, powerful forces which shape and mould the way in which people live and behave (a view, incidentally, held by every major literary critic from Plato to T.S. Eliot), I have examined …
The Gospel Bars the Old Way Out
“Wherever and whenever the biblical tradition morally incapacitates a culture’s sacrificial system, the aggravating effects of mimetic desire flourish precisely because there is no reliable way to focus them on one flamboyant object of lust or loathing and eliminate them at his or her expense” (Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled, p. 110).
Election Thoughts
For those readers in New Zealand, you can skip over this post. Our election is tomorrow and for those in Idaho, here is a good breakdown. The only places I really differ with Dale is on the gubernatorial race (where I will probably vote for the Libertarian candidate, or maybe Dave Barry), and on one …
Confessing Sin in Narnia
Learning how to say you were wrong about something, and that you are sorry, is one of the most important lessons anyone can learn in his life. It is basically a question of learning how to be genuinely honest. And as such an important lesson, it is not surprising that the Narnia stories are full …
Just Because a Group is in Formation Doesn’t Mean They Know Where They are Going
“Contemporary authors, playwrights and poets thus find themselves in a disconcerting dilemma. If they attempt to delineate an ideal, they are accused snobbery, of being anti-proletarian, illiberal, undemocratic and, in certain instances, racist. Accordingly, all but a dwindling minority have chosen to join the ‘Raskolnikovian’ ranks of iconoclasts, consoling themselves with the thought that they …
With No Release Mechanism But War
“Not only can we no longer believe, with the Aztecs, that our victims are gods, but the belief that our victims are incarnate devils is one we can sustain only for as long as the social contagions that so designate them last. ‘As early as the next morning’ we begin the process of coming to …