“Consider popular music. It has long been a stastis truism that the cultural imperialism of Western pop would wipe out the diversity of world music, as surely as McDonald’s is supposed to crush local cuisines. Once imported via mass communication, critics predicted, Anglo-American music would roll over local cultural forms, displacing them with what the …
Radical Poetics
“Although attention to the rhetorical figures in the biblical text had characterized Christian exegesis from the patristic ages onward, the Reformation brought in its wake both a greater emphasis upon, and a more systematic analysis of, the tropes and schemes that made biblical language radically poetic” (Lewalsky, Protestant Poetics, p. 72).
Serious Play
“Once established, this resilience is not just good for meeting threats. It extends to everyday habits. Play nurtures a supple mind, a willingness to think in new categories, and an ability to make unexpected associations” (Virginia Postrel, The Future and Its Enemies, p. 188).
What Are the Rules For?
“While reactionaries seek rules that would ban change and technocrats want rules that will control outcomes, dynamists look for rules that let people forge new bonds, invent new institutions, and find better ways of doing things” (Virginia Postrel, The Future and Its Enemies, p. 112).
A Little Cyber-Anarchy
“The Net not only managed to become big and important before any would-be regulator noticed, it evolved both software rules and social norms without official direction” (Virginia Postrel, The Future and Its Enemies, p. 36).
But All the Monkeys Are Out of the Cage
“What terrifies technocrats is not that the future will depart from a traditional ideal but that it will be unpredictable and beyond the control of professional wise men” (Virginia Postrel, The Future and Its Enemies, p. 8).
Stodgies and Planners
“Our new awareness of how dynamic the world really is has united two types of stasists who would have once been bitter enemies: reactionaries, whose central value is stability, and technocrats, who central value is control” (Virginia Postrel, The Future and Its Enemies, p. 7).
Stasis or Dynamism?
“How we feel about the evolving future tells us who we are as individuals and as a civilization: Do we search for stasis—a regulated, engineered world? Or do we embrace dynamism—a world of constant creation, discovery, and competition?” (Virginia Postrel, The Future and Its Enemies, p. xiv).
I Age Mine in the Basement, Like a Fine Wine
“It takes judgment to know when prejudice should be maintained and when abandoned. Prejudices are like friendships: they should be kept in good repair. Friends sometimes grow apart, and so sometimes should men from their prejudices; but friends often grows deeper with age and experience, and so should some prejudices. They are what give men …
Over Hill and Dale
“When Christ and the apostles preached, the established religious authorities were on the scene asking what appears to be their favorite question” ‘By what authority?’ John the Baptist was an eccentric hill preacher, Caiaphas had better establishment credentials than Jesus, and the Sanhedrin was amazed that men so obviously uneducated as the apostles could say …