tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post8807599548328447269..comments2024-03-28T11:33:16.271-05:00Comments on Adventus: The Kindness of StrangersUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-16364163844864181612016-12-14T10:43:26.314-06:002016-12-14T10:43:26.314-06:00In the interest of full disclosure, I must confess...In the interest of full disclosure, I must confess that I am one of those commenters who has historically at least implicitly insisted that my position be identified with "good," or at least sane - if not constructive versus destructive – though now that is something I am trying to work on in myself. I do not feel a lot of charity toward those whom I feel should know better; or, if they lack the capability to understand complex social issues could at least practice the golden rule, and aren't.<br /><br />As I said, I'm working on it....<br /><br />So I'm no Merton, though I wanted to be. I read "Seven-Story Mountain" and "Seeds of Contemplation" when I was 14 years old and it was one of the factors that inspired me to want to find expression for a felt spiritual need as contemplative priest in a religious order. My parish priest managed to shame me out of that course of action, painting it as a waste of time and gifts, but Merton certainly didn't waste his. I'm rediscovering the treasures of his thoughts.trexhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16838170190127187564noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-15127043027866163172016-12-14T07:05:41.590-06:002016-12-14T07:05:41.590-06:00" We will never get anywhere unless we can ac..." We will never get anywhere unless we can accept the fact that politics is an inextricable tangle of good and evil motives…"<br /><br />True. And interesting in the light of how many commenters I encounter (not here!) who insist there is only good or evil in politics, and one must prevail over the other, absolutely and finally, with no admixture whatsoever.<br /><br />Their position, of course, being identified with "good."<br /><br />Thanks for the whole, by the way.Rmjhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06811456254443706479noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-76635124079948446552016-12-13T23:19:13.865-06:002016-12-13T23:19:13.865-06:00Rmj: "We are always the reason. And we always...Rmj: "We are always the reason. And we always have to struggle, not just with each other, but with ourselves."<br /><br />Similarly, Thomas Merton:<br /><br />"As long as we are on earth, the love that unites us will bring us suffering by our very contact with one another, because this love is the resetting of a Body of broken bones. … There are two things which men can do about the pain of disunion with other men. They can love or they can hate. Hatred recoils from the sacrifice and the sorrow that are the price of this resetting of bones. It refuses the pain of reunion.<br /><br />Hatred tries to cure disunion by annihilating those who are not united with us. It seeks peace by the elimination of everybody else but ourselves. But love, by its acceptance of the pain of reunion, begins to heal all wounds.<br /><br />…Another characteristic of the devil’s moral theology is the exaggeration of all distinctions between this and that, good and evil, right and wrong. These distinctions become irreducible divisions. No longer is there any sense that we might perhaps all be more or less at fault, and that we might be expected to take upon our own shoulders the wrongs of others by forgiveness, acceptance, patient understanding and love, and thus help one another to find the truth. On the contrary, in the devil’s theology, the important thing is to be absolutely right and to prove that everybody else is absolutely wrong. This does not exactly make for peace and unity among men, because it means that everyone wants to be absolutely right himself or to attach himself to another who is absolutely right. And in order to prove their rightness, they have to punish and eliminate those who are wrong. Those who are wrong, in turn, convinced that they are right…etc.<br /><br />We never see the one truth that would help us begin to solve our ethical and political problems: that we are all more or less wrong, that we are all at fault, all limited and obstructed by our mixed motives, our self-deception, our greed, our self-righteousness and our tendency to aggressivity and hypocrisy.<br /><br />…Perhaps in the end the first real step toward peace would be a realistic acceptance of the fact that our political ideals are perhaps to a great extent illusions and fictions to which we cling out of motives that are not always perfectly honest: that because of this we prevent ourselves from seeing any good or any practicability in the political ideals of our enemies–which may, of course, be in many ways even more illusory and dishonest than our own. We will never get anywhere unless we can accept the fact that politics is an inextricable tangle of good and evil motives…<br /><br />I believe the basis for valid political action can only be the recognition that the true solution to our problems is not accessible to any one isolated party or nation but that all must arrive at it by working together.'trexhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16838170190127187564noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-24320189331582467522016-12-13T12:56:16.570-06:002016-12-13T12:56:16.570-06:00I agree with you, and I think that thinking is at ...I agree with you, and I think that thinking is at the heart of my critique of Ta-Naheisi Coates (sp?). I heard him on NPR this morning discussing his essay in The Atlantic, and he critiqued Obama for being naive about race in America.<br /><br />It's not that he's wrong, it's his application of that insight to a leader like the POTUS. Until you've been in a leadership position of any kind, you have no idea that the restrictions and responsibilities on that role are. This is why I still admire Jeremiah Wright, who taught Obama the phrase "the audacity of hope." Wright, as a pastor of a church, understands the problems of leadership, the responsibility of being in charge. He is still, IMHO, in a better position to critique Obama about his weaknesses than Coates is. Wright understands the position, but also has a moral authority Coates simply lacks.<br /><br />I guess I could turn that into a blog post more easily than I thought....Rmjhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06811456254443706479noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-19904515803924498732016-12-13T10:00:39.653-06:002016-12-13T10:00:39.653-06:00Unfortunately, it wasn't only Republicans who ...Unfortunately, it wasn't only Republicans who gave up on good will and morality. Liberals did to an extent that it was destructive of liberalism. I would guess that easily a third to a half of those who identify as liberals would more honestly qualify as libertarians. It takes more than a mere and vague sense of niceness, such as is sometimes found among college faculty, to carry off liberal government. <br /><br />The undermining of morality is one of the most enduring programs of modernism. I know it might seem like beating a horse I shot a long time ago but I do attribute a lot of that to the framing of Darwinism, natural selection does not produce kindness or generosity or even a willingness to sacrifice for the benefit of the weaker, the more unfortunate, the more disadvantaged. The Social Darwinist economics of which AynRand is merely a more ruthless expression is, in fact, and by Darwin's own definition, the same thing as natural selection. This is the real message of William Jennings Bryan in his undelivered final argument in the Scopes Trial. I have sometimes wished I could find out what Scopes would have thought of that later in his life after he converted to Catholicism, something left out of the plays and movies that inform most people's would-be knowledge of that trial. The Thought Criminalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01381376556757084468noreply@blogger.com