Category Archives: Rationalism

Portrait by Jakob Schlesinger, Berlin 1831

Modern German Catholic thought is influenced by a heretical view of God's nature

Otto von Bismarck, the 19th-century Chancellor of Germany, tried and failed to bring the Catholic Church to heel. He would have been delighted to see its state today. With pews emptying at a great rate, and few priestly vocations, the fact that the Church remains one of the largest employers could only prove that it had become the servant of state that he hoped it would be. Yet perhaps Bismarck might want to know: How have others achieved what I failed to bring about? At least part of the answer comes from within the German Church.

Theologically, Germany has been ground zero for centuries: just think of Albert the Great mentoring St Thomas Aquinas, or the Jesuit-led Counter-Reformation which answered Luthers schismatic dissent. But German theology has never quite recovered from its greatest challenge: Enlightenment rationalism and the attempts to overcome it through Hegelian dialectic. Even today, Hegels influence dominates German theology.

The Hegelian view of Gods involvement in the unfolding of history as Geist (Spirit) is at root a Christian heresy, reminiscent of the spiritualism of the 12th-century theologian Joachim de Fiore. For the Hegelian, God suffers with, and changes, precisely through the sin and suffering of his creatures, dialectically pouring out his love and mercy through the progress of history.

Citing a Lutheran hymn, God Himself is Dead, Hegel argues that God unites death to his nature. And so when we encounter suffering and death, we taste the particularities of the eternal divine history. As he puts it, suffering is a moment in the nature of God himself; it has taken place in God himself. For Hegel, suffering is an aspect of Gods eternal nature. Our sin and suffering is necessary for God to be God.

This heretical view has had widespread influence in modern Catholic and Protestant accounts of Gods nature. Its often given a pastoral veneer of the God who weeps with us. Yet, tragically unaware of his error, the Hegelian homilist preaches a God who cannot save: a God who is so eternally bound to our tears he cannot truly wipe them away.

Many 20th-century German theologians followed in Hegels footsteps. A basic principle was Hegels dialectic process itself as revelatory, which is to say they smuggled into their ideas on doctrinal development the notion that God was continuing to reveal himself in history, as though there was always something becoming in God, and thus, in the Church. Hegels spiritual forerunner Joachim de Fiore had predicted a third age of the Holy Spirit which would sing a new Church into being, and its striking how many German theologians have been entranced by the idea of a future Church very different to the holy and apostolic one of the past.

This is not to say Hegel is the answer to Bismarcks hypothetical question. There is a great difference between the Left Hegelian Ludwig Feuerbachs idea of religion as projection of inner spirit and the theologies of Karl Rahner or Walter Kasper. But there is nevertheless something deeply Hegelian about making the unfolding of human experience in history a standard for theological development to which God or the Church, always in mercy, must conform. Unfortunately, this is a terrible standard for change which leads not only to false reform, but to apostasy and desolation.

The standard for development, as 19th century German theologian Matthias Scheeben understood as well as Cardinal Newman, must be divinely revealed truths, the deposit of faith, passed from Christ to his apostles. Spiritual renewal in Germany can only begin if German bishops, priests, and laity alike recognize that change and development must be ordered to eternal truths, not to the needs of state, the Geist of culture, or the historical unfolding of inner human experience. The Church conforms not to the needs of nations, but to the fullness of Truth revealed by God Incarnate in Jesus Christ.

C C Pecknold is associate professor of theology at The Catholic University of America

This article first appeared in the August 11 2017 issue of the Catholic Herald. To read the magazine in full, from anywhere in the world, go here

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The philosopher who poisoned German theology - Catholic Herald Online (blog)

Surrealism is celebrating its 100th birthday this year. The poet Guillaume Apollinaire coined the term to describe his play Les Mamelles de Tiresias (The Teats of Tiresias), which opened in a small Parisian theater in 1917. Beginning with an actress removing her breasts and ending early with an unscripted riot featuring a pistol-flailing audience member the play launched a movement that long convulsed French art and politics.

The centenary arrives in a surreal news environment. Indeed, among the dozens of isms used to explain the Trump presidency from isolationism and pluto-populism to narcissism and authoritarianism none does a better job than surrealism in capturing the current mood.

Andr Breton, the Pope of Surrealism, defined it as a psychic automatism in its pure state exempt from any moral concern. In his First Manifesto of Surrealism, Breton railed against rationalism and the reign of logic. Clarity and coherence lost bigly to the tumult of unconscious desires, while civility and courtesy were for bourgeois losers. Upping the ante in his Second Manifesto, he claimed the simplest Surrealist act consists of dashing down into the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd.

Unarmed Surrealists were content to brandish their ids. What was once the stuff of repression was now ripe for expression. Everything that welled up into the conscious mind flowed across paper and canvas. The true Surrealist turns his mind into a receptacle, refusing to favor one group of words over another. Instead, it is up to the miraculous equivalent to intervene.

Or not. As a sober reader finds, most Surrealist literature is unreadable. The precursor to Surrealism, the Romanian Tristan Tzara, famously composed poems by cutting words from a newspaper, tossing them into a bag, pulling them out and reciting them one by one. The result, Tzara declared, will resemble you. (Perhaps thats true if you happen to be crashed on your kitchen floor, sleeping off an all-night bender.) As for Breton, he favored automatic writing by becoming a recording machine for his unconscious. The final product, he beamed, shines by its extreme degree of immediate absurdity.

Trumpian word salads bear the surrealist seal of absurdity. In Exquisite Corpse a Surrealist exercise aimed at unleashing the unconscious you write a word on a piece of paper, pass it to your neighbor who jots a second word without looking at the first word, and so on. This led to sentences like The exquisite/corpse/shall drink/the new/wine. Trumps gift of free association His one problem is he didnt go to Russia that night because he had extracurricular activities, and they froze to death allows him to play a solitaire variation of the game.

A French translator recently marveled that Trump seems to have thematic clouds in his head that he would pick from with no need of a logical thread to link them. This is true not just of his speech, but also of his governing strategy.

Igniting a reaction similar to those following Marcel Duchamp entering a urinal at an art show, Trump has exhibited his Surrealist aesthetic in bureaucratic Washington. But he subverts ready-made expectations instead of ready-made objects. With a Surrealist flair for showmanship worthy of Salvador Dali, he randomly pairs titles and individuals. Thus, his son-in-law, a New York real estate developer, plays Middle East envoy one day, opioid crisis czar the next. Trumps claim that if Jared Kushner cannot bring peace to the Middle East, no one can expresses the Surrealist conviction that where reason and strategy have failed, unreason and whim will prevail.

The same aesthetic lies behind or, rather, below the Wall. Its failure to make economic, strategic or diplomatic sense is not beside the point; it is the point. Its raison dtre is to shock the political establishment and to give shape to what, until now, had been the repressed desires of Trumps base. Think of it not as a real security measure, but as a virtual sculpture that will allow its audience to touch, and not just talk about their phobias. Like a Surrealist object, the Wall is a shape-shifter opaque or transparent, continuous or discontinuous, topped with barbed wire or solar panels and expresses the Surrealist values of excess and extravagance, aggression and transgression.

In the end, Trumpism, like Surrealism, seeks to force reality to conform to individual desires, no matter how illicit, illegal or simply outrageous. This might work aesthetically, even financially just ask Dali, whose name Breton turned into the anagram Avida Dollars and, it seems, politically. But, one can hope, only in the short term.

Eventually, Surrealisms revolt against the reality-based community ended with a whimper, with its art relegated to post-dinner games and dorm room posters. One day, perhaps, politicians will look back on Trumpism in the same dismissive way.

Robert Zaretsky teaches at the University of Houston and is finishing a book on Catherine the Great and the French Enlightenment.

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The best ism to explain our time: Surrealism, which turns 100 this year - Los Angeles Times

Hegelianism is the philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel which can be summed up by the dictum that "the rational alone is real",[1] which means that all reality is capable of being expressed in rational categories. His goal was to reduce reality to a more synthetic unity within the system of absolute idealism.

Hegel's method in philosophy consists of the triadic development (Entwicklung) in each concept and each thing. Thus, he hopes, philosophy will not contradict experience, but will give data of experience to the philosophical, which is the ultimately true explanation. If, for instance, we wish to know what liberty is, we take that concept where we first find itthe unrestrained action of the savage, who does not feel the need of repressing any thought, feeling, or tendency to act.

Next, we find that the savage has given up this freedom in exchange for its opposite, the restraint, or, as he considers it, the tyranny, of civilization and law. Finally, in the citizen under the rule of law, we find the third stage of development, namely liberty in a higher and a fuller sense than how the savage possessed itthe liberty to do, say, and think many things beyond the power of the savage.

In this triadic process, the second stage is the direct opposite, the annihilation, or at least the sublation, of the first. The third stage is the first returned to itself in a higher, truer, richer, and fuller form. The three stages are, therefore, styled:

These three stages are found succeeding one another throughout the whole realm of thought and being, from the most abstract logical process up to the most complicated concrete activity of organized mind in the succession of states or the production of systems of philosophy.

In logic which, according to Hegel, is really metaphysic we have to deal with the process of development applied to reality in its most abstract form. According to Hegel, in logic, we deal in concepts robbed of their empirical content: in logic we are discussing the process in vacuo, so to speak. Thus, at the very beginning of Hegel's study of reality, he finds the logical concept of being.

Now, being is not a static concept according to Hegel, as Aristotle supposed it was. It is essentially dynamic, because it tends by its very nature to pass over into nothing, and then to return to itself in the higher concept, becoming. For Aristotle, there was nothing more certain than that being equaled being, or, in other words, that being is identical with itself, that everything is what it is. Hegel does not deny this; but, he adds, it is equally certain that being tends to become its opposite, nothing, and that both are united in the concept becoming. For instance, the truth about this table, for Aristotle, is that it is a table. (This is not necessarily true. Aristotle made a distinction between things made by art and things made by nature. Things made by art--such as a table--follow this description of thinghood. Living things however are self-generating and constantly creating their own being. Being in the sense of a living thing is highly dynamic and is defined by the thing creating its own being. He describes life not in terms of being but coming-into-being. For instance a baby's goal is to become old. It is neither absolutely young or absolutely old and somewhere in the process of being young and becoming old. It sounds like Hegel made the comparison between being and not being while Aristotle made the comparison between art and nature.)

For Hegel, the equally important truth is that it was a tree, and it "will be" ashes. The whole truth, for Hegel, is that the tree became a table and will become ashes. Thus, becoming, not being, is the highest expression of reality. It is also the highest expression of thought because then only do we attain the fullest knowledge of a thing when we know what it was, what it is, and what it will be-in a word, when we know the history of its development.

In the same way as "being" and "nothing" develop into the higher concept becoming, so, farther on in the scale of development, life and mind appear as the third terms of the process and in turn are developed into higher forms of themselves. (It is interesting here to note that Aristotle saw "being" as superior to "becoming", because anything which is still becoming something else is imperfect. Hence, God, for Aristotle, is perfect because He never changes, but is eternally complete.) But one cannot help asking what is it that develops or is developed?

Its name, Hegel answers, is different in each stage. In the lowest form it is "being", higher up it is "life", and in still higher form it is "mind". The only thing always present is the process (das Werden). We may, however, call the process by the name of "spirit" (Geist) or "idea" (Begriff). We may even call it God, because at least in the third term of every triadic development the process is God.

The first and most wide-reaching consideration of the process of spirit, God, or the idea, reveals to us the truth that the idea must be studied (1) in itself; this is the subject of logic or metaphysics; (2) out of itself, in nature; this is the subject of the philosophy of nature; and (3) in and for itself, as mind; this is the subject of the philosophy of mind (Geistesphilosophie).

Passing over the rather abstract considerations by which Hegel shows in his Logik the process of the idea-in-itself through being to becoming, and finally through essence to notion, we take up the study of the development of the idea at the point where it enters into otherness in nature. In nature the idea has lost itself, because it has lost its unity and is splintered, as it were, into a thousand fragments. But the loss of unity is only apparent, because in reality the idea has merely concealed its unity.

Studied philosophically, nature reveals itself as so many successful attempts of the idea to emerge from the state of otherness and present itself to us as a better, fuller, richer idea, namely, spirit, or mind. Mind is, therefore, the goal of nature. It is also the truth of nature. For whatever is in nature is realized in a higher form in the mind which emerges from nature.

The philosophy of mind begins with the consideration of the individual, or subjective, mind. It is soon perceived, however, that individual, or subjective, mind is only the first stage, the in-itself stage, of mind. The next stage is objective mind, or mind objectified in law, morality, and the State. This is mind in the condition of out-of-itself.

There follows the condition of absolute mind, the state in which mind rises above all the limitations of nature and institutions, and is subjected to itself alone in art, religion, and philosophy. For the essence of mind is freedom, and its development must consist in breaking away from the restrictions imposed on it in it otherness by nature and human institutions.

Hegel's philosophy of the State, his theory of history, and his account of absolute mind are perhaps the most often read portions of his philosophy due to their accessibility. The State, he says, is mind objectified. The individual mind, which, on account of its passions, its prejudices, and its blind impulses, is only partly free, subjects itself to the yoke of necessitythe opposite of freedomin order to attain a fuller realization of itself in the freedom of the citizen.

This yoke of necessity is first met within the recognition of the rights of others, next in morality, and finally in social morality, of which the primal institution is the family. Aggregates of families form civil society, which, however, is but an imperfect form of organization compared with the State. The State is the perfect social embodiment of the idea, and stands in this stage of development for God Himself.

The State, studied in itself, furnishes for our consideration constitutional law. In relation to other States it develops international law; and in its general course through historical vicissitudes it passes through what Hegel calls the "Dialectics of History".

Hegel teaches that the constitution is the collective spirit of the nation and that the government and the written constitution is the embodiment of that spirit. Each nation has its own individual spirit, and the greatest of crimes is the act by which the tyrant or the conqueror stifles the spirit of a nation.

War, Hegel suggests, can never be ruled out, as one can never know when or if one will occur, an example being the Napoleonic overrunning of Europe and putting down of Royalist systems. War represents a crisis in the development of the idea which is embodied in the different States, and out of this crisis usually the State which holds the more advanced spirit wins out, though it may also suffer a loss, lick its wounds, yet still win in the spiritual sense, as happened for example when the northerners sacked Rome, its form of legality and religion all "won" out in spite of the losses on the battlefield.

A peaceful revolution is also possible according to Hegel when the changes required to solve the crisis are ascertained by thoughtful insight and when this insight spreads throughout the body politic:

If a people [Volk] can no longer accept as implicitly true what its constitution expresses to it as the truth, if its consciousness or Notion and its actuality are not at one, then the peoples spirit is torn asunder. Two things may then occur. First, the people may either by a supreme internal effort dash into fragments this law which still claims authority, or it may more quietly and slowly effect changes on the yet operative law, which is, however, no longer true morality, but which the mind has already passed beyond. In the second place, a peoples intelligence and strength may not suffice for this, and it may hold to the lower law; or it may happen that another nation has reached its higher constitution, thereby rising in the scale, and the first gives up its nationality and becomes subject to the other. Therefore it is of essential importance to know what the true constitution is; for what is in opposition to it has no stability, no truth, and passes away. It has a temporary existence, but cannot hold its ground; it has been accepted, but cannot secure permanent acceptance; that it must be cast aside, lies in the very nature of the constitution. This insight can be reached through Philosophy alone. Revolutions take place in a state without the slightest violence when the insight becomes universal; institutions, somehow or other, crumble and disappear, each man agrees to give up his right. A government must, however, recognize that the time for this has come; should it, on the contrary, knowing not the truth, cling to temporary institutions, taking what though recognized is unessential, to be a bulwark guarding it from the essential (and the essential is what is contained in the Idea), that government will fall, along with its institutions, before the force of mind. The breaking up of its government breaks up the nation itself; a new government arises, or it may be that the government and the unessential retain the upper hand.[2]

The "ground" of historical development is, therefore, rational; since the State, if it is not in contradiction, is the embodiment of reason as spirit. Many, at first considered to be, contingent events of history can become, in reality or in necessity, stages in the logical unfolding of the sovereign reason which gets embodied in an advanced State. Such a "necessary contingency" when expressed in passions, impulse, interest, character, personality, get used by the "cunning of reason", which, in retrospect, was to its own purpose.

We are, therefore, to understand historical happenings as the stern, reluctant working of reason towards the full realization of itself in perfect freedom. Consequently, we must interpret history in rational terms, and throw the succession of events into logical categories and this interpretation is, for Hegel, a mere inference from actual history.

Thus, the widest view of history reveals three most important stages of development: Oriental imperial (the stage of oneness, of suppression of freedom), Greek social democracy (the stage of expansion, in which freedom was lost in unstable demagogy), and Christian constitutional monarchy (which represents the reintegration of freedom in constitutional government).

Even in the State, mind is limited by subjection to other minds. There remains the final step in the process of the acquisition of freedom, namely, that by which absolute mind in art, religion, and philosophy subjects itself to itself alone. In art, mind has the intuitive contemplation of itself as realized in the art material, and the development of the arts has been conditioned by the ever-increasing "docility" with which the art material lends itself to the actualization of mind or the idea.

In religion, mind feels the superiority of itself to the particularizing limitations of finite things. Here, as in the philosophy of history, there are three great moments, Oriental religion, which exaggerated the idea of the infinite, Greek religion, which gave undue importance to the finite, and Christianity, which represents the union of the infinite and the finite. Last of all, absolute mind, as philosophy, transcends the limitations imposed on it even in religious feeling, and, discarding representative intuition, attains all truth under the form of reason.

Whatever truth there is in art and in religion is contained in philosophy, in a higher form, and free from all limitations. Philosophy is, therefore, "the highest, freest and wisest phase of the union of subjective and objective mind, and the ultimate goal of all development."

The far reaching influence of Hegel is due in a measure to the undoubted vastness of the scheme of philosophical synthesis which he conceived and partly realized. A philosophy which undertook to organize under the single formula of triadic development every department of knowledge, from abstract logic up to the philosophy of history, has a great deal of attractiveness to those who are metaphysically inclined. But Hegel's influence is due in a still larger measure to two extrinsic circumstances.

His philosophy is the highest expression of that spirit of collectivism which characterized the nineteenth century. In theology especially Hegel revolutionized the methods of inquiry. The application of his notion of development to Biblical criticism and to historical investigation is obvious to anyone who compares the spirit and purpose of contemporary theology with the spirit and purpose of the theological literature of the first half of the nineteenth century.[citation needed]

In science, too, and in literature, the substitution of the category of becoming for the category of being is a very patent fact, and is due to the influence of Hegel's method. In political economy and political science the effect of Hegel's collectivistic conception of the State supplanted to a large extent the individualistic conception which was handed down from the eighteenth century to the nineteenth century.

Hegel's philosophy became known outside Germany from the 1820s onwards, and Hegelian schools developed in northern Europe, Italy, France, Eastern Europe, America and Britain.[3] These schools are collectively known as post-Hegelian philosophy, post-Hegelian idealism or simply post-Hegelianism.[4]

Hegel's immediate followers in Germany are generally divided into the "Right Hegelians" and the "Left Hegelians" (the latter also referred to as the "Young Hegelians").

The Rightists developed his philosophy along lines which they considered to be in accordance with Christian theology. They included Karl Friedrich Gschel, Johann Philipp Gabler, Johann Karl Friedrich Rosenkranz, and Johann Eduard Erdmann.

The Leftists accentuated the anti-Christian tendencies of Hegel's system and developed schools of materialism, socialism, rationalism, and pantheism. They included Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, Bruno Bauer, and David Strauss. Max Stirner socialized with the left Hegelians but built his own philosophical system largely opposing that of these thinkers.

In Britain, Hegelianism was represented during the nineteenth century by, and largely overlapped the British Idealist school of James Hutchison Stirling, Thomas Hill Green, William Wallace, John Caird, Edward Caird, Richard Lewis Nettleship, F.H. Bradley, and J. M. E. McTaggart.

In Denmark, Hegelianism was represented by Johan Ludvig Heiberg and Hans Lassen Martensen from the 1820s to the 1850s.

In mid-19th century Italy, Hegelianism was represented by Bertrando Spaventa.

Hegelianism in North America was represented by Friedrich August Rauch, Thomas Watson and William T. Harris, as well as the St. Louis Hegelians. In its most recent form it seems to take its inspiration from Thomas Hill Green, and whatever influence it exerts is opposed to the prevalent pragmatic tendency.

In Poland, Hegelianism was represented by Karol Libelt, August Cieszkowski and Jzef Kremer.

Benedetto Croce and tienne Vacherot were the leading Hegelians towards the end of the nineteenth century in Italy and France, respectively. Among Catholic philosophers who were influenced by Hegel the most prominent were Georg Hermes and Anton Gnther.

Hegelianism also inspired Giovanni Gentile's philosophy of actual idealism and Fascism, the concept that people are motivated by ideas and that social change is brought by the leaders.

Hegelianism spread to Imperial Russia through St. Petersburg in the 1840s, and was as other intellectual waves were considered an absolute truth amongst the intelligentsia, until the arrival of Darwinism in the 1860s.[5]

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Hegelianism - Wikipedia

The nineteenth century witnessed a great change in the outlook of Muslims of the Subcontinent. Colonialism, along with the development of scientific attitude, affected the religious universe drastically. And, this, in turn, led to a hot debate on religious dogmas and rationality; rather a paradigm shift in the thought of educated Muslims. This shift created a modernist school, comprised mainly of those Muslims who showed a keen receptiveness to western institutions of learning and who judged things through the prism of modernity. This intellectual vibrancy took place in a more enthusiastic and radical way around the person of Sir Syed Ahmad khan, who was born in Delhi in 1817. To make the re-conciliation between religion and western attitude was central to his religious philosophy. He started a famous periodical Tahdhib al-Akhlaq and set up a scientific society for translating English books into Urdu so that the Muslims of the subcontinent would get acquainted with the advanced/progressive ideas of the West. While expounding the belief in naturalism, he stated, Today we are in need of modern Ilm al Kalam by which we should refute the dogmas of modern Science or show that they are in conformity with the Islamic creeds. According to him, whole physical universe including man is the work of God and religion is His word, so there cant be any contradiction between the two. The only touchstone of a real religion can be this: if it is in conformity with human nature or with nature in general, then it is true and real. Like the modernists of Christian world, he too tried to relinquish the metaphysical realities from the realm of faith. Reason and empiricism, according to him, are the only yardsticks to measure the reality. Swathed with the ideas of rationalism, he maintained that there is no intermediary between God and the prophet(SAW). Gabriel is in reality a symbolic representation of the prophetic faculty. Eschatologically, he further maintained that paradise and hell described in a sensuous terms in the sacred text are just emblematical representation of the psychological states of individuals in the life after death. Ibn Khuldun, a great Muslim historian and thinker, dealt well with the people like Sir Syed who were the preachers of rationalism during medieval era and has rightly mentioned in his famous Muqadimah that the mind is an accurate scale, whose recordings are certain and reliable; but to use it to weigh questions relating to the unity of God, or after life, or nature of prophecy or other such subjects falling outside its range, is like trying to use a goldsmiths scale to weigh mountains. To reconstruct the edifice of Muslim civilization, Sir Syed strongly advocated the ijtihadic endeavour. Apart from trying to untie the cosmic knots with reason and science, his buttressing to nullify Taqlid was very energetic and progressive. Taqlid is the sole reason, according to him, for the downfall of Muslim Ummah. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan not only started a sort of neo-Muttazilite understanding of the cosmos and the sacred text but also endeavoured to dilute the antagonistic attitude of western colonials. To meet this end, he dedicated himself to write an exegesis of the Bible in the light of Islamic intellectualism. Tabayin al-Kalam fi Tafsir al-Torahwa al-injilalamillahal-Islam is the name of that exegesis. It is not a commentary in a sense of Muslim Tafsir of the Quran. It is a collection of critical essays on certain aspects of Christianity that tends to stress the common ground rather than the differences between the Christians and Muslims. The main contention of Sir Syed, as Syed MunirWasti would put it, is that there is no fundamental difference between the account of Christianity given in the Bible and that given in the Quran. The Muslim society in India was very much hesitant to get socially intermingled with Christians. In order to dismantle this social barrier, he wrote a booklet, entitled Ahkam-iTaam-i Ahli-Kitab, to explain that Muslim Jurisprudence doesnt prevent Muslims from dining with the people of Book provided Haram food is not served.

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Muslims and Modernism - Kasmir Monitor

Last week, a software engineer at Google, James Damore, posted a ten-page memo, titled Googles Ideological Echo Chamber , to an internal company network. Citing a range of psychological studies, Wikipedia entries, and media articles on our culture of shaming and misrepresentation, Damore argued that women are underrepresented in the tech industry largely because of their innate biological differences from mentheir stronger interest in people rather than things, their propensity for neuroticism, their higher levels of anxiety. Damore criticized the companys diversity initiatives, which focus on recruitment, hiring, and professional development, as discriminatory, and advanced concrete suggestions for improving them: de-moralize diversity, de-emphasize empathy, stop alienating conservatives, and be open about the science of human nature. On Monday, Googles C.E.O., Sundar Pichai, sent a note to his employees decrying the memos harmful gender stereotypes and noting that portions of it violated the companys code of conduct. Damore was fired, and promptly filed a charge with the National Labor Relations Board.

As soon as news of the memo broke, tech workers took to the Internet. (Ours is a privileged moment: never before has it been so easy to gain access to the errant musings, rapid-fire opinions, and random proclivities of venture capitalists and others we enrich.) There were calls for Damore to be blacklisted from the industry; nuanced analyses of the memos underlying assumptions and ripple effects; facile analyses of the same; message-board debates about sexual harassment, affirmative action, evolutionary biology, eugenics, and wrongthink; and disagreements about the appropriateness of Googles response. (Firing people for their ideas should be opposed, Jeet Heer, a self-described Twitter Essayist and an editor at The New Republic , tweeted.) George Orwells 1984 was trotted out, discursively, and quickly retired. More than a handful of people pointed out that the field of programming was created , and once dominated, by women. Eric Weinstein, the managing director of Thiel Capital, an investment firm helmed by Peter Thiel , tweeted disapprovingly at Googles corporate account, Stop teaching my girl that her path to financial freedom lies not in coding but in complaining to HR.

Though Damores memo draws on familiar political rhetoric, its style and structure are unique products of Silicon Valleys workplace culture . At software companies, in particular, people talkand argue, and dogpile, and offer unsolicited opinionsall the time, all over the place, including in forums like the one where Damore posted Googles Ideological Echo Chamber. In my experience in the tech industry, such forums serve as repositories for all sorts of discussionsfeature launches, bug fixes, birth announcements, introductions, farewellsand are meant, in part, to promote the open-source ethos that everyone can, and should, pitch in. But they also favor the kind of discourse that people outside the industry may recognize from online platforms such as Reddit and Hacker News; it is solution-oriented, purporting to value objectivity and rationalism above all, and tends to see the engineers dispassion as a tool for solving a whole range of technical and social problems. (Being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about the facts, Damore writes.) But the format is ill-suited to conversations about politics and social justice.

One of the documents that resurfaced in the online discussion of the Google memo was What You Cant Say , by Paul Grahamthe co-founder, along with his wife, Jessica Livingston, of the startup accelerator Y Combinator , which runs Hacker News. The five-thousand-word essay, which Graham published on his personal blog, in 2004, begins with the premise that there exist moral fashions that are both arbitrary and pernicious. Fashion is mistaken for good design; moral fashion is mistaken for good, he writes. The essay makes a case for contrarian thinking through a series of flattering analogiesGalileo was seen as a heretic in his time; John Milton was advised to keep quiet about the evils of the Roman Inquisitionand argues that opinions considered unfashionable in their time are often retroactively respected, if not taken as gospel. The statements that make people mad are the ones they worry might be believed, Graham writes. I suspect the statements that make people maddest are those they worry might be true. At several points, he refers to political correctness.

What You Cant Say is by no means a seminal text, but it is the sort of text that has, historically, spoken to a tech audience. Googles Ideological Echo Chamber, with its veneer of cool rationalism, echoes Grahams essay in certain ways. But, where Grahams argument is made thoughtfully and in good faithhe is a proponent of intellectual inquiry, even if the outcome is controversialDamores is a sort of performance. His memo shows a deep misunderstanding of what constitutes power in Silicon Valley, and where that power lies. True, Google and its peers have put money and other company resources toward diversity efforts, and they very likely will continue to do so. But today, in mid-2017, menwhite menare still very much in the majority. It is still largely white men who make decisions, and largely white men who prosper. By positioning diversity programs as discriminatory, Damore paints exactly the opposite picture. He frames employees like himself as a silenced minority, and his contrarian opinions as a kind of Galilean heresy.

It is conceivable, of course, that Damore distributed his memo to thousands of his colleagues because he genuinely thought that it was the best way to strike up a conversation. Open and honest discussion with those who disagree can highlight our blind spots and help us grow, he writes. Perhaps he expected that the ensuing dialogue would be akin to a debate over a chunk of code. But, given the memos various denigrating assertions about his co-workers, it is difficult to imagine that it was offered in good faith. Damore wasnt fired for his political views; he was fired for how (and where) he applied them. The memo also hints at a larger anxietya fear, possibly, of the future. But technological advancement and social change move at different velocities; someone like Damore might sooner be automated out of a job than replaced by a woman.

Minority groups in tech are no strangers to being second-guessed, condescended to, overlooked, underpaid, and uncredited. But seeing Damores arguments made publicand, in some cases, seeing them elicit supportwas a fresh smack in the face. It was a reminder that plenty of tech workers and executives still consider hiring women and people of color lowering the bar, and that proving ones place is a constant, Sisyphean task. After all, not so long ago, advocacy on behalf of womenand black, Latino, nonbinary, and otherwise underrepresented peoplewas the unfashionable, contrarian alternative in the tech industry.

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How Silicon Valley's Workplace Culture Produced James Damore's Google Memo - The New Yorker

11 Aug 2017, 2:21 p.m.

How well do you know where you live?

How well do you know where you live?

Are your neighbours likely to be young or old? Single or with kids? Renting or paying off a home? Born overseas or in Australia?

Take our seven-question quiz and find out. And if you get stuck try again, you'll getdifferent questions each time. There are also some hints below.

Enter the name of your suburb.

Once you have your score youcan compare your resultwith other people from your area.

The quiz covers almost every one of Australia's 15,000-plus suburbs. The only ones not included are those with tiny populations.

Oceania includes Australia, Papua New Guinea New Zealand and Pacific Islands such as Fiji, Vanuatu and Tonga.

The Americas includes North and South America.

Family households include any home that consists of a couple or some dependent children. For example, a family household can be a married couple without kids, a same-sex couple living together, a single parent looking after their two children, or a blended household with step parentsand stepchildren.

Christianitytakes in all denominations such as Catholicism, Protestantism and Seventh Day Adventism.

No Religion includes Agnosticism, Atheism and secular beliefs such as Rationalism and Humanism.

The data used in this quiz comes from the2016 Census.

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How well do you know your suburb? - Daily Advertiser

Eden Collinsworth

Eden Collinsworth is a former media executive and business consultant. She was president of Arbor House Publishing Co. and founder of the Los Angeles monthly lifestyle magazine Buzz before becoming a vice president at Hearst Corp...

Some 30 years ago, I took a bullet train from the airport in Shanghai to the center of that city. I was being hurled ahead at 268 miles an hour on a thin layer of air between the train and the magnetized narrow tracks. But that was not what fueled my disbelief. Far more disconcerting was what I saw outside the window when we slowed down: Some of the peasantsknee deep in rice paddieswere talking on cell phones.

Entering the telecommunications age with satellite-based platforms, the Chinese were able to leapfrog over the expensive cable-based systems in the West. Currently, over 75 percent of its 1.3 billion-plus people have at least one cell phone.

Even before Donald Trump forfeited the United States place at the global table, Chinathe worlds largest nation with a self-appointed government that seeks access to global markets and resourceshas been chipping away at the edifice of Americas dominance. As of May this year, the U.S. debt to China was $1.102 trillion, which is 28 percent of the $3.9 trillion in Treasury bills, notes and bonds held by foreign countries.

Chinas state-owned firms have sought out iconic Western companies for direct investment, taking stakes in Greeces largest port, Portugals biggest power plant, Londons Heathrow Airport and Canadas energy giant, Nexen. These are only a few of the Asian countrys investments in an unprecedented range of overseas deals projected to be worth between $2 trillion and $3 trillion by 2020.

The Chinese government has built other countries infrastructures, and it has made loans to nations hobbled by deficit. To add to this outreach, China is spending billions of dollars a year in the most extensive program of image-building the world has ever seen.

There was a time when WesternersAmericans in particularthought that the Chinese would convert to Western ways. But China has not become more like us. Indeed, it would be an understatement to say that China stage-manages the exposure of Western ideas to its citizens. So, no, the Chinese do not intend to become like us.

Chinese cultureformed over 2,500 yearsembraces a Confucian perspective, which is in stark contrast to the linear rationalism attributed to Western belief. Confucius Analects(sayings) concentrate on the practical rather than the theoretical. They advise against reducing morality to a universal truth. Unlike the West, where Judeo-Christian ethics designate a non-negotiable right and wrong, the Chinese do not adhere to absolutes. Since China comprises 20 percent of the planets population, one in five people in the world believes there is no single way of being wrong and many ways of being right.

Where does that leave the rest of us?

We in the West would like to believe that individual freedom determines our choices, but in reality we are ruled in large part by the prevailing time in which we live, and our world today is interconnected. Like it or not, we must confront a challenging question: What will anchor us in our own distinct beliefs and ethics while respecting other distinct cultures with different ethical and political systems?

To consider this, well need to take our eyes off the mirror in front of us and look at people with different truths and values, because only then will we be able to make the difficult decisions. At times, those decisions will require us to relinquish some part of our ground. At other times, they will call on us to protect the ground we are determined to hold. It will be these hard-won decisionsnot the false promises of politiciansthat will enable us to navigate the future of our conflicted, crowded world.

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Arithmetic Is on China's Side - Truthdig

the Irish News

Donald Trump's face-off with North Korea has made more than a few people terrified the Irish News All machismo, no rationalism #NorthKorea. Key, Esq. (@kishenybarot) August 8, 2017. Trump is sittin' here threatening Kim Jong Un and instead of him being scared we are. Sam Without A Hoodie (@hood_goat) August 8, 2017. Observers noted the ... and more »

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Donald Trump's face-off with North Korea has made more than a few people terrified - the Irish News

Since at least Max Weber, historians and sociologists have assumed that the Reformation contributed to what Weber called the disenchantment of the world. The thesis has inspired rich historical, sociological, and philosophical studies, fromKeith Thomas's Religion and the Decline of Magic to Charles Taylor's A Secular Age. As Alexandra Walsham puts it, the notion that the religious revolution launched by Luther, Calvin, and other reformers played a critical role in eliminating assumptions about the intervention of magical and supernatural forces in the world has proved remarkably resilient.

Walsham makes this statement in a review article that summarizes recent historical studies of the Reformation and post-Reformation era. Beginning with iconoclastic articles by Robert Scribner, she shows that the notion that the Reformation was a powerful catalyst of the disenchantment of the world' has been seriously questioned and qualified.

Walsham's is a long and detailed article, and I'll highlight only a few points.

By focusing on the religious life of Protestant people, rather than the treatises of Protestant theologians, Scribner discovered that the Reformation modified and curtailed, rather than wholly rejected, the traditional economy of the sacred': it did not entirely dispense with holy persons, places, times, or objects; it engendered rituals and even a magic of its own.

Studies of the centuries after the Reformation make it clear that the supernatural didn't pack up and leave Europe after 1517. Research into the

Investigation of the Catholic Reformation have also raised questions about Weber's stark contrast of Protestant rationalism and Catholic superstition, a trope that Weber, wittingly or no, borrowed from the Reformers. Recent studies have emphasized the continuity between theProtestant andCatholic reforming agendas:

If disenchantment there was, it wasn't a purely Protestant phenomenon.

From the other chronological end, studies of the medieval world have undermined the common conception of an enchanted middle ages.Walsham observes that, once again, historians and sociologists adopt the polemical stances of the early modern period they're studying when they perpetuate the polemical contrast between darkness' and light' that has been the invidious legacy of this movement, in combination with the Renaissance, and which remains fossilized in the conventional academic division drawn between medieval' and (early) modern' history.

Walsham doesn't think the disenchantment thesis wholly mistaken: Protestant theology did in many respects constitute a significant and original assault upon the assumptions that buttressed the medieval economy of the sacred. She makes some good observations here, but the whole discussion is skewed by her continuing use of categories that may be anachronistic. She writes of the radical rejection of the immanence of the holy that emerged in iconoclastic movements during the Reformation. But were the axe-wielding Protestants worried about abstractions like the immanence of the holy, or fearful of the wrath of a jealous God? As a sheer question of historical accuracy, the difference between the two matters.

Overall, the trend that Walsham documents is a welcome development.Something very big happened around the time of the Reformation, but that very big Something isn't captured very well by terms like desacralization or disenchantment. JohnBossy's image (picked up by William Cavanaugh) of the migration of the holy has much to say for it. And perhaps there's something to my thesis that fresh sacred boundaries have beenerected over the past few centuries (a theme I attempt to develop, impressionistically, in the latter sections of Delivered from the Elements of the World).

In any case, there's new space for a more accurate narration of the Reformation and its effects, which means a more accurate understanding of our own place and time.

(Walsham, The Reformation and The Disenchantment of the World' Reassessed, The Historical Journal51:2 [2008] 497528.)

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Reformation Disenchantment? - First Things (blog)

Bengaluru: Challenge accepted -- AS Nataraj has been waiting to hear these words for the past 16 years after framing a seemingly simple challenge of 10 questions. To make it easier, he insists on only eight correct answers for the challenger to be eligible for the Rs 1 crore reward. The catch? The answers would involve the challenger accurately predicting an individual's future using janam kundali or astrological chart. Now you didn't see that coming, did you?

"The reward was Rs 10 lakh when I first issued the challenge in 2001. I increased it to Rs 1 crore because no one came forward despite initial promises. I am now sure that even if I raise the prize to Rs 100 crore, nobody will volunteer," says Nataraj, the 77-year-old founder of Akhila Karnataka Vicharavadi Sangha. His aim is to debunk astrology's main claim to fame - the power to pinpoint the future. "I know it is not true because I was also an astrologer," laughs Nataraj, author of Jyothishyakke Savaalu (Challenge to Astrology) and a veteran TV talking head on the matter.

The other challenge doing the rounds is aimed at busting a scientifically untested brain training programme. Narendra Nayak, the rationalist crusader from Mangaluru, has been holding demonstrations and challenging proponents of mid-brain activation for the last two years. The groups behind this fad take money from parents to enhance brainpower of their children through the 'activation'. Those trained can apparently see after being blindfolded. "People fall for new tricks all the time. Mid-brain activation involves teaching children to lie (about peeking from behind the blindfold). The organisers use pseudo-science jargons and it becomes difficult for lay persons to understand," says Nayak, president of the Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations (FIRA).

LOGIC WINS

For every new trickster in town, there are a few rationalists like Nayak who demand that fantastic claims should be backed by evidence, scientific reasoning and stone-cold rationale. If not, people like him resort to dramatic one-upmanship and myth busting on public platforms to uphold what they see as truth and rationality.

"Earlier, we used to go after petty godmen who produced ash from thin air or put their hands in boiling water. Now, the picture has changed," says Nayak, a 67-year-old trained bio-chemist. The new age miracles involve coming up with sales pitches to sell anything from yoga, millets, salt room therapy and apple cider vinegar as cures for various ills, including cancer, he says. The marketers rely on scientific terms or the ancient Indian label to bamboozle people.

As a trained scientist, the pseudo science gets Nayak going. Recently, he wrote a detailed complaint to the Advertising Standards Council of India about tall claims made by a coconut oil manufacturer in an ad. The regulatory body found that many of the claims such as the oil being a 'natural antiseptic' , 'restores thyroid function and reduces obesity' were not substantiated and hence, misleading. They asked the adverstiser to withdraw the ad or modify it.

ATHEISTIC START

For most such activists, rationalism starts with a healthy dose of atheism. Nayak says he became an atheist at the age of 11 after coming to a conclusion ("maybe hasty") about there being no god despite his prayers. A national science talent scholarship cemented his rationalist leanings and later, after a meeting with the legendary rationalist Abraham Kovoor, he joined the movement.

It isn't easy to break down strong beliefs. Nataraj, who became a rationalist after practicing astrology for several years, says he can hold his own in heated TV debates because he has studied several works about astrology. "There are times when TV astrologers have asked me in private why I oppose astrology as I know so much about it. I tell them we have to have proof," says Nataraj.

UPHILL BATTLE

Public confrontations have a tendency to deteriorate quickly. Sanal Edamaruku, a Delhi-based rationalist, had to relocate to Finland to avoid arrest in a blasphemy case filed by a Mumbai church. Edamaruku, who exposed 'Pilot' Baba and other assorted godmen across India, says in the Mumbai case, he was held up at a TV studio for hours after a violent mob thronged outside, opposing him for saying that miracle tears of a statue came from a leaky drainpipe. "I am not a hatemonger but I gave my opinion after observation (he was invited to see the statue). Listeners can choose to disbelieve. But the situation turned violent and I escaped through the studio's back gate after three-four hours," says Edamaruku, who is bringing out his memoir detailing 25 of the most memorable investigations he has done so far.

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Thinking their way through new superstitions - Print - Times of India