“Extreme sports are just sports for people who don’t want to be mistaken for jocks”
Nation of Rebels, p. 132
Manners That Matter
“The child has bad manners, sure enough, and his father told him not to have those bad manners. But why does he have bad manners at the table? Because his father does. Snapping at your children at the dinner table is much worse than playing with your potatoes with a knife.”
How Our Markets Are Full of What No One Can See
“Ever since the 1960s, hip has been the nature tongue of advertising, ‘antiestablishment’ the vocabulary by which we are taught to cast off our old possessions and buy whatever they have decided to offer this year. And over the years the rebel has naturally become the central image of this culture of consumption, symbolizing endless directionless change, and eternal restlessness with ‘the establishment’—or, more correctly, with the stuff ‘the establishment’ convinced him to buy last year”
Nation of Rebels, p. 130
Honest Imitation and the Other Kind
“When we try to preserve our originality by being as unique and cool as possible, what is actually going on is that we are copying other people with sidelong glances and we are unable to admit to ourselves that that is what we are doing”
The Slaves of Jonathan Edwards, Part 2
Introduction: For those late to the party, I wrote last week (9/18/19) about the slaves of Jonathan Edwards. This excited comment, and so I followed it up with a piece on white supremacy (9/23/19). ...
Audio Reading of Post
The Anti-Club Club is Very Popular
“The problem, of course, is that not everyone can be a rebel, for the same reason that not everyone can have class and not everyone can have good taste. If everyone joins the counterculture, then the counterculture simply becomes the culture . . . ‘The club’ becomes less and less elite. As a result, the rebel has to move on to something new. Thus the counterculture must constantly reinvent itself. This is why rebels adopt and discard styles as fashionistas move through the brands”
Nation of Rebels, p. 129
No Robotic Saints
“The more like Jesus you are, the more like yourself you are going to be. The less like Jesus you are, the more monotonous and predictable it’s going to be. Sin is monotonous. Godliness is not.”
Letters, All on Edwards . . .
Letter to the Editor: Thank you for being a voice of reason in the national evangelical conversation about social justice/racial reconciliation. I appreciate your writing. ...
How Rapidly the Hot Cool Cools
“As soon as you go down the mass market road you lose control of who wears your product.”
Nation of Rebels, p. 127
No Other Way
“There are, of course, two types of imitation. True progress and godliness is something that develops through imitation, but because human beings are necessarily imitators, the same thing is true of ungodliness”