I wrote this rather poorly considered note about the work and ideas of Ta-Nehisi Coates, one I would simplify to the issue that I think Stephen Colbert was getting at: if all you can offer is problems, without solutions, then what good is that? Anybody can complain, but a "public intellectual" should offer something more than: "Everything sucks!" After all, it doesn't take much insight and intelligence to offer that, and nothing more.
I tried to offer my counter to that pessimism; I should have left it to Walter Brueggemann. Everything I learned worth knowing in seminary is summed up there.
*Yeah, it should be "goosey." I'm stickin' with "fuzzy," though.
I noticed that passage too, about the spirit not being just a "goosey feeling". I used to be convinced that you could meditate your way to "enlightenment" and while it's useful for learning to concentrate, it's far from being the beginning of being enough.
ReplyDeleteI agree about T.N.Coates. And I think his focus leads to unrealism at times. I was struck about how he seemed to think everything about the past election hinged on Barack Obama's race, he didn't seem to think it might, actually, have more to do with the actual candidates and the fact that one of them was a woman who has been the focus of a far more vicious smear campaign before Barack Obama first got into politics. He's talented and he's got some good ideas but he's still green and it shows. If he'll develop into the figure he's promoted as being remains to be seen.