Been out of town for a few days . . . we were down in Austin, TX for a wedding. A wonderful time, great friends, a really fun town. One of the things we did during our off-hours was visit the Whole Foods Market there in Austin. I understand that it is a mongo-big chain, …
Sign, Sign, Everywhere A Sign
“In line with the postmodernist slogan that everything is a text, advertisers have turned the world into a gigantic billboard, making commercials out of everything from sporting events to shopping carts” (Gene Edward Veith, Postmodern Times, p. 178).
The Victim Who Liberates
“This uniqute situation is a product of biblical influence. But we need not, like Nietzsche, become obsessed by mimetic resentment, so that we look on it as the legitimate heir to the Bible and even as its earliest inspiration. Resentment is merely an illegitimate heir, certainly not the father of Judaeo-Christian Scripture. Beyond the misunderstandings, …
God’s Word in the World Metaphor
“As an orthodox Puritan, Bradstreet could not adumbrate the French symbolists by arguing that her words created meaning; the meaning of the sensible world was in the things of the sensible world themselves. It had been put there by god before all time; it was seen and uttered by the poet. To follow the latter …
And Which Explains Why Some People Still Like Heidegger
“To react against the modern is in many ways to revert to the primitive, the barbaric. The fascism of the 1930s was never a conservative movement (despite Marxist propaganda), but it was a reaction against the objectivity, rationalism, and alienation of the ‘modern world,’ a reaction structurally parallel to that of the postmodernists. Fascism, like …
Redemptive Catharsis
“Like a bolt of lightning, the scapegoat mechanism suddenly frees all men without being answerable to anyone except perhaps to the victim himself, who is likely to become an idol after his disappearance” (Girard, Job, p. 75).
And In Their Case, Badly Told
“When postmodernists say that life is a story, they do not mean, as the Christians did, that a story can be true; they mean that truth is only a story” (Gene Edward Veith, Postmodern Times, p. 130).
Cathartic Sin
“If our translation is correct, Job is describing in this passage the beneficial effect of his unjust persecution on his own community. I know of no other text where that effect is so bluntly articulated (17:6-9). It is the same as the tragic effect, the Aristotelian catharsis, but this is not a theatrical representation, and …
It’s Just That We Don’t Have a Screen That Big At Home
“Ironically, concerts today usually feature giant video screens so that fans can see the live performance up close by means of TV! Reality and reproduction are thus, in the postmodernist way, hopelessly confused” (Gene Edward Veith, Postmodern Times, p. 105).
Taking Time to Brood
“Great men are too popular to succumb immediately to the intrigues that proliferate around them. Mimetic rivalry broods a long time in the shadows” (Girard, Job, p. 54).