I don’t mean by ‘adult’ the sorts of stuff once restricted to the combat zones of major cities, the sorts of stuff which wasn’t to be found in most small towns but for back closets of certain stores also dealing in numbers and sports bets, the sorts of stuff once hidden in boxes under the … [Read more…]
We shape our minds by active responses to our immediate environments and maybe to greater realms of Creation. Even without active responses, something like a flabby mind takes shape. The flabby mind of a modern man is invincibly ignorant in the sense that it’s shaped to what’s pushed into it by the public school system … [Read more…]
Not long ago, I posted an essay, Is Power for the Sake of Power the Same as Power Earned by Productive Achievements? where I responded to a study which found: [T]hat individuals in roles that possess power but lack status have a tendency to engage in activities that demean others. According to the study, “The … [Read more…]
I stretch the truth when I sometimes talk as if I were the only one who sees being as a spectrum from the abstract to the concrete. Clearly, there is a sense in which Platonic and Neoplatonic Realists see being in two forms, abstract being (what they call the Real) and concrete being (the real … [Read more…]
We need some creative solutions to our problems, so long as those solutions are the right kind of creative solutions. You know which solutions I mean, the ones we already know about but we just need to try again and do it better this time. Yeah, we need creative solutions, like the ones we already … [Read more…]
The main point of this article, Put Down That Game Controller: Researcher Suggests Video Games May Not Boost Cognition, is that we should pay attention to the ways in which social scientists recruit participants in their study. The argument is that earlier researchers claiming to find improvements in such attributes as hand-eye coordination from frequent … [Read more…]
Without a doubt, we are children of our age. There have been indications that the young folk with higher IQs tend to drift away from Christian and Jewish belief and practice. The interesting exception in some of those studies is the Church of the Latter-day Saints. I’ve read lightly, but substantially by current standards, in … [Read more…]
This article, Power Corrupts, Especially When It Lacks Status, explores a very important subject and extends a line of research which is decades old or centuries old if you wish to consider the work of Jeremiah and Plato, Tacitus and Augustine, Dante and Goethe, and so on. That older understanding is substantial but poorly focused … [Read more…]
On a regular basis, commentators of various viewpoints will re-evaluate what we Americans have done in Afghanistan and other occupied countries, wondering whether we could have acted more effectively. Some even express a bit of concern for the impact of our actions on the innocent civilians who have been killed or injured or impoverished in … [Read more…]
I’ve started rereading Science and Creation by John Polkinghorne, the physicist at Cambridge University who left his professorship to enter an Anglican seminary before returning to Cambridge as a chaplain and administrator. Father Polkinghorne is quite polite to those who denigrate natural theology and to those who simply question what natural theology can really tell … [Read more…]