Like | Dislike

As a kind of junior but powerful version of romanticism and existentialism combined, the emotivist movement insisted that all moral discourse could be reduced in any case to statements of likes and dislikes. "Murder is wrong" simply means "I don't like murder." "Giving to charity is good" means "I like people giving to charity." From this point of view, following moral rules and following your own inclinations both boil down to pretty much the same thing. Often today people who are discussing moral choices will say that this person "prefers" Option A or that person "applauds" Option B, as though moral choices were a matter of personal perference or taste. Sometimes they speak of "moral attitudes" as though what a particular person believed about the rights and wrongs of certain actions were simply an "attitude, an innate prejudice which they hadn't bothered to think through.

N.T. Wright, After you Believe, pg 50

McKee's Quotes on Story

“When talented people write badly, it's generally for one of two reasons: Either they're blinded by an idea they feel compelled to prove of they're driven by an emotion they must express. When talented people write well, it is generally for this reason: They're moved by a desire to touch the audience.”

“Beyond imagination and insight, the most important component of talent is perseverance—the will to write and rewrite in pursuit of perfection. Therefore, when inspiration sparks the desire to write, the artist immediately asks: Is this idea so fascinating, so rich in possibility, that I want to spend months, perhaps years, of my life in pursuit of its fulfillment? Is this concept so exciting that I will get up each morning with the hunger to write? Will this inspiration compel me to sacrifice all of life's other pleasures in my quest to perfect its telling? If the answer is no, find another idea. Talent and time are a writer's only assets. Why give your life to an idea that's not worth your life?”

“Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact.”

"...While it's true that the unexamined life is not worth living, it's also true that the unlived life isn't worth examining.”

On Submission

Submit to God--resist the devil and he will flee from you.

From a relevant magazine writer, "Submission to a right authority always means a corresponding refusal to submit to a false authority. Eve’s submission to the Serpent’s word meant she refused to submit to God’s. On the other hand, Mary’s submission to God’s word about the child within her meant she refused to submit to Herod’s. God repeatedly charges His Bride, the people of Israel, with a refusal to submit to Him because they have submitted to the advances of other lovers. The freedom of the Gospel means, the apostle tells us, that we “do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1)."

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life/relationship/features/27577-women-stop-submitting-to-men

Abolition of Man

"In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midsts. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful." -Abolition of Man, Lewis

A good relationship should have...

1) The "secret thread" that turns strangers into close friends.

"You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words...Are not all lifelong friendships born at that moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling...of that something wich you were born desiring..."

-The Problem of Pain

2) The ability to share everything. 

"The person love does to us fit, like manna, has the taste of all in it."

-Emerson

"For a good wife contains so many persons in herself. What was H. not to me? She was my daughter and my mother, my pupil and my teacher, my subject and my sovereign; and always, holding all these in solution, my trusy comrade, friend, shipmate, fellow-soldier. My mistress; but at the same time all that any man friend has ever been to me. Perhaps more. If we had never fallen in love we should have none the less been always together, and created a scandal...Solomon calls his bride Sister. Could a woman be a complete wife unless, for a moment, in one particular mood, a man felt almost inclined to call her Brother?"

-A Grief Observed

Rest - Confessions of St. Augustine

"Rest in him and you shall be at rest. Where do you go along these rugged paths? Where are you going? The good that you love is from him, and insofar as it is also for him, it is both good and pleasant. But it will rightly be turned to bitterness if whatever comes from him is not rightly loved and if he is deserted for the love of the creature. Why then will you wander farther and farther in these difficult and toilsome ways? There is no rest where you seek it. Seek what you seek; but remember that it is not where you seek it. You seek for a blessed life in the land of death. It is not there. For how can there be a blessed life where life itself is not?

pg 57, chapter XII

Suffering and Beauty.

"To possess true beauty, we must be willing to suffer. If Christ himself was perfect through his sufferings, why would I believe God would not do the same with me? Women who are stunningly beautiful are women who have had their hearts enlarged by suffering. By saying yes when the world says no. By paying the high price of loving truly and honestly without demanding that they be loved in return. And by refusing to numb their pain in the myriad of ways available. They have come to know that when everyone and everything has left them, God is there. They have learned, along with David, that those who go through the desolate valley will find it a place of springs (Ps. 84:6).

Living in true beauty can require much waiting, much time, much tenacity of spirit. We must constantly direct our gazes toward the face of God, even in the presence of longing and sorrow. It is in the waiting that our hearts are enlarged." (145 Captivating)

Finish strong.

Odysseus almost got home years before his actual homecoming. Ithaca was in sight, close enough that the sailors could see the smoke of their families' fires on shore. Odysseus was so certain he was safe, he actually lay down for a snooze. It was then that his men, believing there was hold in an ox-hide sack among their commander's possessions, snatched this prize and cut it open. The bag contained the adverse Winds, which King Aeolus had bottled up for Odysseus when the wanderer had touched earlier at his blessed isle. The winds burst forth now in one mad blow, driving Odysseus' ships back across every league of ocean they had with such difficulty traversed, making him endure further trials and sufferings before, at last and alone, he reached from for good.

The danger is greatest when the finish line is in sight. At this point, Resistance knows we're about to beat it. It hits the panic button. It marshals one last assault and slams us with everything it's got.

The professional must be alert for this counterattack. Be wary at the end. Don't open that bag of wind.

(War of Art, 18)

On poetry and inspiration.

Socrates, in Plato's Phaedrus:

"The third type of possession and madness is possession by the Muses. When this seizes upon a gentle and virgin soul it rouses it to inspired expression in lyric and other sorts of poetry, and glorifies countless deeds of the heroes of old for the instruction of posterity. But if a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique along will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman."

Cloud high

‎"I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird through the close-set bars of a cage: a vivid, restless, resolute captive is there; were it but free, it would soar cloud high."

"I had not, it seems, the originality to chalk out a new road to shame and destruction, but trod the old track with stupid exactness not to deviate an inch from the beaten centre."

Jane Eyre excerpt: angel of light

"...it is no devil, I assure you; or if it be, it has put on the robes of an angel of light. I think I must admit so fair a guest when it asks entrance to my heart."

"Distrust it sir; it is not a true angel."

"Once more, how do you know? By what instinct do you pretend to distinguish between a fallen seraph of the abyss and a messenger from the eternal throne--between a guide and a seducer?"

"I judged by your countenance, sir; which was troubled: when you said the suggestion had returned upon you. I feel sure it will work you more misery if you listen to it."

....

"They are, MIss Eyre, though they absolutely require a new statute: unheard-of combinations of circumstances demand unheard-of rules."

"That sounds a dangerous maxim, sir; because one can see at once that it is liable to abuse."

"Sententious sage! so it is; but I swear by my household hods not to abuse it."

"You are human and fallible."

"I am: so are you --what then?"

"The human and fallible should not arrogate a power with which the divine and perfect alone can be safely entrusted."

"What power?"

"That of saying of any strange, unsanctioned line of action--'let it be right.'"

" 'Let it be right' -- the very words: you have pronounced them"

"Mayit be right then" I said.

‎"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust" -T.S. Elliot

Postmodernism: seeing both sides

"Both absolutism and relativism have bright and shadow sides. The virtue of the Absolute is the power it offers the soul; its danger is in the fanaticism into which the power can narrow. In the case of relativism, its virtue is tolerance, and nihilism is its danger. Where social considerations predominate it is the dark side of absolutism (fanaticism) and the bright side of relativism (tolerance) that are noticed, these being their social components. In both cases, the vertical dimensions (which would reverse our estimates of the two) are under-played if not ignored" (210).

Story.

"Storytelling is the creative demonstration of truth. A story is the living proof of an idea, the conversion of idea to action. A story's event structure is the means by which you first express, then prove your idea...without explanation" (McKee 113).

Busy busy blob

GREAT excerpt that makes fun of American busyness. Mediated pgs 179-181.
..."Nowadays, in our more competitive schools at least, twelve-year-old have appointment books and family lives are scheduled as if they were presidential campaigns going into the last week before an election"

GREAT excerpt about the driftedness after college 182-183

About trying to find your keys "205"

Now I think it's interesting...that the multiplicity of options in the "blob" makes us have to invent ourselves. The focus is on us. Invention is a possibility. We "flatter ourselves" but is it really our fault? How much of self invention is necessary? Biblical? Harmful?

An Angel Rides in the Whirlwind and Directs this Storm

What you do is as important as anything government does. I ask you to seek a common good beyond your comfort; to defend needed reforms against easy attacks; to serve your nation, beginning with your neighbor. I ask you to be citizens: citizens, not spectators; citizens, not subjects; responsible citizens, building communities of service and a nation of character.

Americans are generous and strong and decent, not because we believe in ourselves, but because we hold beliefs beyond ourselves. When this spirit of citizenship is missing, no government program can replace it. When this spirit is present, no wrong can stand against it.

After the Declaration of Independence was signed, Virginia statesman John Page wrote to Thomas Jefferson: “We know the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong. Do you not think an angel rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm?”

Much time has passed since Jefferson arrived for his inauguration. The years and changes accumulate. But the themes of this day he would know: our nation’s grand story of courage and its simple dream of dignity.

We are not this story’s author, who fills time and eternity with his purpose. Yet his purpose is achieved in our duty, and our duty is fulfilled in service to one another.

Never tiring, never yielding, never finishing, we renew that purpose today, to make our country more just and generous, to affirm the dignity of our lives and every life.

This work continues. This story goes on. And an angel still rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm.

God bless you all, and God bless America.

Voiceless cry of modernity

The Scream, by Edvard Munch has become the universal symbol of the modern condition. These visual rhythms suggest the resonating sound of the voiceless cry described by Munch in the notes to a preliminary drawing for the painting: "I walked with two friends. Then the sun sank. Sudenly the sky turned red as blood. . . . My friends walked on, and I was left alone, trembling with fear. I felt as if all nature were filled with one mighty unending shriek."

(846 The Humanistic Tradition)

American middle-class apathy

"But there is much to be said for giving up such grand ambitions and living the most ordinary life imaginable, a life without the old longings; selling stocks and bonds and mutual funds; quitting work at five o'clock like everyone else; having a girl and perhaps one day settling down and raising a flock of Marcia and Sandras and Lindas of my own. Nor is the brokerage business as uninteresting as you might think. It is not a bad life at all" (9).

The Movie Goer

Socialism described succinctly and alliteratively. Mmm.

Comparing socialism to capitalism:

"Society, according to the socialists, should operate entirely in the interest of the needs of the people, communally and cooperatively, rather than competitively."

pg 748, The Humanistic Tradition