Month: June 2010

Cusco, Peru, 3.49 pm

The latest salvo from the theocon-dominated bishops is a thinly-veiled argument that lay Catholics have no right to engage in their own civic and moral reasoning on questions like the recent health insurance reform. It comes by way of an attack on the magazine, Commonweal, one of the few remaining Catholic venues where freedom of thought is not regarded as somehow hostile to true faith. Money quote from the editors:

Catholics seeking full and equal participation in American democracy have long battled the canard that they cannot think for themselves, and instead take political orders from their prelates and from the Vatican. Historically, however, American Catholics have shown a great degree of political independence from the hierarchy—and from political parties themselves—and there is little reason to think that will change. If the authors of “Setting the Record Straight” wish to seize a “new opportunity for the Catholic community to come together in defense of human life,” they can start by not questioning the motives of those Catholics who disagree with them about how best to interpret the provisions of the new health-insurance law. On questions such as this, disagreement should not be understood as a threat to unity, but as a sign of the church’s intellectual vitality.

"Those whom heaven helps we call the sons of heaven. They do not learn this by learning. They do not work it by working. They do not reason it by using reason. To let understanding stop at what cannot be understood is a high attainment. Those who cannot do it will be destroyed on the lathe of heaven." — Chuang Tse, from Ursula le Guin's novel "The Lathe Of Heaven"

The title is actually a slight mistranslation.

A reader writes:

In college, I was required to take 3 classes in religion at my Catholic institution. Looking through the course catalog, I was doing whatever I could to shoehorn in my last class in between a schedule full of business major courses. The only one that fit my schedule? Christian Marriage. "Shoot me," I thought, "this is going to be horrible."

I was wrong. It was a fantastic course and one that, I would argue, made the difference in choosing a small, private, Catholic school vs. a behemoth state school or other unaffiliated college. The professor (a biblical scholar who left the convent for her now husband), brought in couples at various stages of marriage — from the newly-engaged to the couple who celebrated 40+ years of commitment. The couples with more time together were the most captivating — they told stories of mutual hatred, marital infidelity, challenges with raising children and the classic toilet seat fights. To see the differences between what they showed to others publicly, what they discussed (or, in one case, litigated) behind closed doors, and the nearly unthinkable thoughts that passed through their very human minds at moments of weakness, was absolutely critical to how I now see relationships, love and marriage.

I'm 29 and single. I've been in a few serious relationships, several not-so-serious ones, and yet I see marriage as the big, hairy, audacious goal that it should be. As tough as the trying times are, they're the best times — the ones that show the true character of both partners. In those moments of absolute mutual disgust, it's so difficult to treat each other with dignity. I believe that when you find that quality in the person to whom you're red-faced anger is directed, you realize just how worth it it is. I also wholeheartedly believe that marriage, with its pitfalls, triumphs, abuses, comforts, disappointments and expectations, is the closest thing to what it is to know the struggles that God faces with us all. That might not fit our culture of not only instant but constant gratification, but I believe that any higher purpose comes with a price tag.

Jessa Crispin reviews Stephen Hall's Wisdom: From Philosophy To Neuroscience:

Wisdom is not the same as knowledge, and so it seems odd it has attracted the attention of science. There is such a thing as "wisdom studies" now, and in his book Hall talks to researchers and neuroscientists in a search for the latest information about wisdom. Scientists treat wisdom the way they treat anything else. They break it down into its smallest components to identify and test, and they attempt to figure out how it works, how to obtain it, and what it is. There are, according to Hall and the researchers he meets, eight attributes of wisdom: Emotional Regulation, Knowing What's Important, Moral Reasoning, Compassion, Humility, Altruism, Patience, and Dealing with Uncertainty. Tests are designed, studies are lined up, and college undergrads short of cash or in need of class credit are recruited as lab rats in our pursuit of wisdom.

The problem is that wisdom is elusive, and the act of reducing it down to a binary code seems ridiculous.

You gotta love this (even Maureen will):

A reader writes:

You fell for a sleight of hand with your headline on the possible breakthrough in controlled fusion.  The "clean" implies that there are not any dirty radioactive isotopes being used or being produced as with nuclear fission reactors.  In principle, nuclear fusion could be a radioisotope free process but the  one using deuterium-tritium pellets is definitely not — tritium is radioactive.

This is too bad.  I happen to support nuclear power but I do not think these DOE PR flacks are doing any service over-selling this technology.  Should these current experiments work, and some serious pilot projects begin, people will wake up and realize that the cleanliness has been over sold.  The anti-nuclear crowd will have a field day with this.   This objection to calling the deuterium-tritium pellet technology "clean" has been raised by physicists at the Livermore labs for the last 20 years, though I have not seen it publicly discussed.

Yglesias throws a wrench into the retirement age debate:

My concern with the idea of raising the retirement age is twofold. One is the pretty obvious point that many jobs are a great deal more physically taxing than the job of the average economist or political pundit. But you could in principle handle this fairly and equitably through the Disability Insurance element of Social Security. The other issue is that as best I can tell from the labor market fate of people in the 50-65 age bracket, employers aren’t exactly chomping at the bit to hire older workers in any capacity. Annie Lowrey has a good piece about this out today mostly in the age discrimination context. It seems to me that if your desire is to see more people in the 60-70 range working, that you have to show me you’re making some progress on creating meaningful labor market opportunities for older people. Just yanking the safety net out isn’t much of a solution.

A reader writes:

From the time I was a child, I was labeled "weird" by classmates. I often wore that title with pride, considering it to mean "creative, off the wall, unique and downright interesting." I did a long stint in the Midwest and tried to meld into the Evangelical world, but I was often told that I didn't really fit their scene. "Where are you from?" I would get frequently. As a military brat, I'd learned to say, "Everywhere and nowhere."

I'd always dreaded the idea of NYC, avoiding that city like it was Hell, picturing the horrors spoken of by Jagger in "Shattered." Last month, my father wanted me to accompany him to his West Point reunion and my daughter now attends school in the city, so I could no longer avoid the awful, big mean Babylon. She gave me a whirlwind tour. (She attends The King's College, so the Midwest evangelical influence had some effect.)

I was enamored with every aspect of NYC and knew instantly why it is such a loved place. I could live there easily, and sing my weird songs and be my offbeat self and no one would think I was weird at all. Maybe someday it'll be my home.

Another writes:

A few weeks ago you had a bunch of posts on the general self-satisfaction of NYC. This video, for NYC-ers, helps explain that feeling that we live in the best place in the world.

I was born in what we fondly refer to in my family as The Big Wicked and lived there for ten years in my 20s and early 30s (mostly in the East Village, for what it’s worth). This video made me cry, reminding me of everything I love, love, love about NYC, and what makes it an extraordinary place. I know something like this could happen anywhere, but during my life in New York it happened all the time – all the time! People grooving on other people’s cultures, taking care of each other, interacting, generally up in one another’s faces in a positive way. The casualness of the way these two guys just start making music, looking right at each other; that feels like the city to me.

I saw a lot of ugly stuff in New York, but what always makes me love the city is the moments like the ones in this video. Man, I miss New York. Thank you for making my day.