Far from calling for microscopic views of reality and fishbowls, tragedies call for us to shatter the fishbowls and throw out the microscopes, to stop obsessing about our vulnerabilities and on how to overcome them, to stop thinking of ourselves as helpless victims of wicked forces. It is a grey day today. The sun was [...]
We’re blocking traffic in the city street Because we’re sick of inactivity Relating to the environment; it would be meet To see a bit of positivity Regarding rights of bison, bird, and bee; And yet among our governments we see no sign of urgency Concerning falling glaciers and rising sea – About the weather there’s [...]
What I have found among young evangelicals is a deep level of dissatisfaction at the church’s lack of spiritual power. I can’t emphasize enough how galvanizing a vision of spiritual warfare can be for millennials, in the positive sense of realigning the church as a center of resistance to dark forces. As an English professor [...]
To the People of the State of New York: Having previously exposed the unfailing dangers of Faction, the more pernicious and enticing danger of Efficiency may be revealed. Indeed, Efficiency, properly ordered as a servant, aids humanity in frugality. An efficient farmer may feed more people; an efficient merchant may employ more people; an efficient [...]
In his latest book, Joseph Epstein takes on the elusive topic of charm, which consists of being pleasing to others and making the world seem a better place. Charm radiates light, order, and good humor; it is cool and calm, not hot and excited. Perhaps, like beauty, charm is one of the blessedly “useless” things [...]
When things collapse, childish narratives no longer are an option. The class of 2020 will have no choice but to mature or fade away. How fortunate its graduates will be if they accept the responsibilities of adulthood. This year’s graduates can become America’s “Second Great Generation” or a lost one. Rarely have graduates faced challenges [...]
The Western canon as typically presented is increasingly unable to rally the enthusiasm even of devoted admirers of Western civilization, who recognize the commonly proffered canons as, at best, an impoverished rendition of Western culture and, at worst, a perpetuation of the very same cultural forces that are at the source of its decay. The [...]
Little did Ray Bradbury know of his prescience in 1951, as he criticized society’s obsession with screens and the far-ranging effects of technology. Could television supersede community? Could it control us to the point of isolation and loneliness? Bradbury’s writing gives us much to think about. I am haunted by a lonely man. At sundown [...]
The dual definition of “modern”—something that is current and something that is done in a certain manner—touches on a problem that is at the heart of the literary and artistic movement of the early twentieth century known as “Modernism”: Is Modernism something that was meant to represent the “just now” or is it something that [...]
Living in isolation flattens days, homogenizes them. Gone are the trains, the colleagues, the students. Gone the friends, the flights, the lectures. Gone the plans, the urgency, the team. I am no longer flummoxed by the mere thought of Descartes’s mad flight. So here I am back at my desk. It is another day, a [...]
Learning and language are intimately related. People speak well—clearly, concretely, and accurately—about the things they know, and poorly when they pontificate about things they don’t. Broadly-educated people speak well about many things; they are dilettantes rather than pedants, the two kinds of intellectual according to Miguel de Unamuno. Primo Levi, a professional chemist as well [...]
Does online education mean the end of universities? Or, if pursued with an understanding of its limits and of the necessity of a non-virtual community of learning behind it, could online learning be part of the idea of a university? Is there anything better for a teacher than watching one’s students do great things? I [...]
We teachers have been hearing for years how online learning will soon sweep our worlds away. That’s possible, but my concern is more immediate: that in the rush to put our classes online, we are tempted to create a world of Total School. I am—genuinely—one of the luckiest people in the whole coronavirus pandemic. With [...]
One of the most encouraging trends among conservatives in recent years has been the increased amount of recognition and discussion they have given to the importance of culture and the arts. There is, on the right, a growing sensitivity to the ways that many of the political and social ills we commonly bemoan have their [...]