Category Archives: Rationalism

The label may be limiting how we see the design of the capital subway stations.

Larry Levine/WMATA

The Washington Metros form, structure, and space surely relate much more to these historical models than they do to Brutalism. The vault geometry is reminiscent of the structural virtuosity in Antonio Gaudis catenary arches and vaults, and the coffers are shaped to be as efficient as possible with material and reduce the weight of the structure, a technique possibly influenced by the experimentation of Buckminster Fuller and Frei Otto, both widely known in the 1960s. By contrast, buildings characterized as Brutalist often are over-structured, because the rationalism of the early European approach morphed into idiosyncratic sculptural expression in the USa battered bunker aesthetic of fortress-like piles of gray concrete, according to the Boston Globe. Louis Kahn bashed what he called the muscular posturing of most Brutalism, which the authors of Heroic call more Marlboro man than Mad Men.

In this view of Brutalism, it was fascinated with weighty massiveness, while Weeses Metro is all lightness and lift, an effect that is evident even in his earliest concept sketches (which, incidentally, indicate no particular material or structure). The airy and spacious design, as the AIA described it in 2014, is markedly different from canonical Brutalist structures, which have more spatial complexity. The clarity of the Metros centering makes the space navigable and understandable (AIA), while at the Boston City Hall and especially the Rudolph building at Yale, space continually pivots, forcing diagonal views and paths, shifting perspectives to create a sense of movement and mystery. While some point to repetition of a single elementsay, Metros waffle-shaped ceilings as a typical attribute of Brutalism, this doesnt apply to many of the most noted examples, including the Rudolph, the Pei, or the exterior of Gordon Bunshafts Hirsshorn Museum, also in DC.

At most, the Washington Metro has a peripheral affiliation with Brutalism, mainly due to its material and age. Yet, the stations have been described as landmarks of Brutalist design and emblematic of all the rules of Brutalist architecture, and Hurley insists, The Washington Metro is not a minor work of Brutalism. If it is such a major example, why did no one identify it as such until recently? Zachary Schrag, author of The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro (2006), tells me that in his research he did not encounter the word in relation to the Metro in any formal architectural publication from the 1960s til his book was published. Online, I can find little or no evidence of the term applied to the Metro until the past decade, over 30 years after the first station opened and 40 years after it was designed.

Various

In 2007, the Metro appeared in Americas Favorite Architecture, the AIAs survey of the 150 most popular buildings in the US. While the AIA makes no mention of Brutalism, Wikipedias entry on the survey identifies the Metro as Brutalist, and its page on Weese calls it the only brutalist design to win a place on the list. I cant determine the dates and authors of these references, but otherwise I have found virtually no online references prior to 2009, when a few commenters began to use the appellation. One of the earliest instances occurred that summer in Greater Greater Washingtonby none other than Matt Johnson, the same planner who kicked off the paint controversy this year: Metro is widely known for its soaring, brutalist vaults (8/24/09). (Capitalization comes and goes with the word.) References practically exploded in 2010, and by the time it received the Twenty-five Year Award in 2014, the label had become fairly commonat least among a particular cadre of critics, editors, and journalists. To this day, with relatively few exceptions the identified writers who apply the term to the Metro apparently include only a small group of Washington-area residents: notably Johnson, Capps, Hurley, Madsen, Dan Reed in the Washingtonian, Michelle Goldchain in Curbed, and Katie Gerfen, who in her 2014 coverage of the AIA award for Architect magazine mentions the Metros signature Brutalist vaults, although the AIA itself did not use that designation.

What accounts for the prolonged delay, even among these writers? According to Google Ngram, which tracks words and phrases in print sources through the year 2008, use of the term Brutalism climbed steadily from 1950 to 1970, flatlined in the 70s and 80s, had a resurgence in the 90s, and peeked around 1997 (incidentally, the year Paul Rudolph died). In the past decade, the number of books published on Brutalism appears to exceed the total number published at any point before. As mid-century concrete buildings began reaching middle age, and many, including DCs Third Church of Christ, Scientist, were being razed, preservationists took notice. As more and more examples of classic Brutalism face demolition by neglect, Madsen has said about his Brutalist Washington Map, we hope that putting these examples of D.C.'s Brutalist architecture on the map will foster public appreciation that ensures their longevity. Schrag observes, If you want to get people to value a concrete bunker, you need to articulate its particular worth, and identifying it with a particular brand of modern architecture is one way to do that.

Whatever the reason for the resurgence, as Brutalism was on the rise, the Washington Metro also was getting more attention, making the AIA 150 list in 2007 and receiving the 25-Year Award in 2014. The following year brought a flurry of media attention on the preservation of Brutalist buildings. Over the past decade, the coincidence of general interest in the movement and specific interest in the Metro brought the two together, and the project retroactively got a new label, half a century after the fact.

Google

But does the shoe fit? Pasnik and Grimley demur: I dont think were in the position to evaluate the Metro and its classification, suggesting that even some experts on Brutalism dont immediately see an obvious alignment. Bruegmann is more decisive: Certainly the Metro is not a good example of the Brutalist style [as it was understood in the 60s and 70s]. It did not come out of the same mindset as, say, Rudolph's building at Yale. Susan Piedmont-Palladino, Director of the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center (WAAC) and a curator at the National Building Museum (NBM) in DC, agrees: I don't put Metro in the Brutalist category. Simply being made of concrete isn't sufficient to be labelled Brutalist. She has lectured widely on Brutalism, and her 2010 NBM event arguably helped spur local interest.

Piedmont-Palladino sees the style as less Classical and more Gothic: You want structure? I'll show you structure! The British critic John Ruskin affectionately called Gothic architecture rude and wild, she says. I would argue that's a pretty good description of Brutalist architecture. Weeses metro design is anything but rude and wild. Even before the first station was completed, Bruegmann recounts, the Washington Post hailed its serene kind of beauty.

Art-historical shorthands can be helpful to guide us toward prevailing views of a work, but the best works invariably resist pigeonholing because they transcend particular movements or styles. As the late architect Michael Graves remarked, labels have the negative value of making smaller boundaries. During the 60s, when Brutalism was emergent, Walter Gropius complained about the irrepressible urge of critics to classify contemporary movements [by] putting each neatly in a coffin with a style label on it. In a 2013 essay, Pasnik and Grimley write that the reduction of Brutalism to a stylistic label exclusively associated with concrete has made it a rhetorical catastrophe.

During the paint debate this Spring, the US Commission on Fine Arts (CFA), which helped develop the Metro system, sent a letter to WMATA to express concern. It emphasized the majestic quality of the Metro stations, now considered a masterpiece of modern design and some of the most important civic spaces in Washington. The DC chapter of the AIA sent a similar letter. Neither mentions Brutalism, which remains an historical trend with many detractors that is vaguely defined at best and for which the Metro is not a perfect example.

Champions of Weeses design might be more effective in appealing for better upkeep if they portray it in the most expansive terms possible, as do the CFA, the national AIA, and the local AIA. As one of the 150 most popular structures in the country and one of fewer than 50 buildings to win the Twenty-five Year Award, the Washington Metro is so much bigger than Brutalism.

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Is the Washington Metro Brutalist? (part 2) - HuffPost

(AhlulBayt News Agency) - The fact even admitted by Iran's enemies that the country's power has increased ten times more than before is indicative of Tehran's policy and rationalism as well as its support for the oppressed people of the region, said IRGC senior commander Major-General Qasem Soleimani.

Speaking in a local gathering, Soleimani, the Quds Force commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), said the clear example of the increase of Irans power in the region is that images of Father of the Islamic Revolution the late Imam Khomeini and Irans current Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei are presented in all regional countries.

He described the cause of Palestine as a pivotal issue for the region saying that certain Arab states were against establishment of the International Quds Day.

The International Quds Day was initiated by the late Imam Khomeini after the Islamic Revolution as an opportunity for world Muslims and non-Muslims to express their support for the cause of Palestine and their hatred towards atrocities of the Zionist Regime against the defenseless people of Palestine.

The innocent people of Palestinian are surrounded by a number of their friends and also certain Islamic countries.

Designating the International Quds Day was one of the masterworks made by Imam Khomeini, Soleimani said noting that the event has brought more and more dignity for the Islamic Iran.

Noting that the terrorist group of ISIS was created by Takfiri terrorists to establish a so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Levant aiming at ruining the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The commander underscored that those who sponsored the Takfiri terrorists were trying to fan the flames of insecurity but they have finally failed to bring the Iranian nation to its knees through numerous acts of aggression.

Thanks to Irans global defense from the innocent Iraqi and Syrian people, Soleimani noted the Islamic Republic of Iran is considered as the most beloved country across the globe.

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General Soleimani: Support for oppressed people increases Iran's power - Ahlul Bayt News Agency: Providing Shia News (press release)

Nebulous lines and shifting policies make it difficult to know where the culture wars start and end in America. Its no secret that chasms are growing wide, and walls are getting taller. In a new book, sociologist Philip Gorski elegantly traces two diverging lines of popular ideology, arguing convincingly that our current political gap isnt new. Rather, its a part of a deeply ingrained battle for control between two American religious traditions that date back to before our country was founded.

In American Covenant, Gorski portrays a political culture split between conservative, apocalyptic nativists who believe themselves to be the inheritors of the fiery religious fundamentalism of the early Puritans and atheist liberals, the cultural elitist heirs of the Enlightenments secular rationalism. While one side wants freedom of religion, the other side wants freedom from it. Yet Gorski puts forth that the unifying tissue between these two camps is the American civil religion, a concept pioneered by sociologist Robert Bellah in 1967 that seeks to describe the foundational shared ideals that both sides can agree upon.

Thats a promising thought.

But for all the discussion of so-called civil religion in Gorskis book, he manages to barely discuss what it looks like. Sure, there are quasi-religious rituals existing within our national life, such as the sacrosanct Fourth of July, and numerous depictions of Civil Religious art, like The Apotheosis of Washington painted on the dome of the U.S. Capitol. But at its heart, what are the core doctrinal creeds that Gorski argues have the power to unite America? Sadly, theyre not as easy to identify as one would hope. Of course, if they were, perhaps we wouldnt have such a fractured political landscape in the first place. And given that the two groups Gorski describes are so different, it is unsurprising that he struggles to describe the space where their views overlap, thus challenging the entire premise of so-called civil religion.

If Gorskis two camps sound a bit extreme, thats because they are. With its blustery descriptions of apocalyptic Hebrew prophets and enlightened freethinkers, the story of civil religion in American Covenant can come across like fantasy. Gorski describes the relationships between religious nationalism, radical secularism, and civil religion as akin to tribal warfare with ancient roots. Comparing the United States that Gorski depicts to stories like Harry Potter or the Lord of the Rings might be unfair, but the author certainly manages to show how both sides of the religion and political divide in America see themselves as the heros of a polarized moral universe in which each sides noble prophets serve as leading actors in a showdown between good and evil.

Gorski highlights some of the radically different ideas that exist at the nexus of each sides prophetic thought, focusing on important thinkers across the spectrum from Martin Luther King himself to John Calhoun. Yet, while Gorski himself writes that his civil religion is a panoramic portrait of a diverse people marching together through time toward a promised land across landscapes both light and darkhopeful without being fantastical, and progressive without being naively optimistic, the traditions from which he draws on arent all that diverse.

Gorski offers civil religion as a framework for maintaining the political center in our country the famed moderates that are much discussed by pollsters during election years yet who seem to be absent from Washington, D.C. But Gorski paints this type of religion as possessed of a single, Judeo-Christian and largely white lineage. While it is undeniable that there is an extreme emphasis on Judeo-Christian tradition within the United States, is there room in our unique civil religion for the traditions of other cultures? While there are some Jews and African Americans mentioned as prophets of the civil religion outlined by Gorski, what of the Asian, African, Mexican or Native American religious traditions that exist in the United States?

A more fruitful conversation about what it means to be moderate in America will likely require the inclusion of more cultural voices than appear in American Covenant. The civil religion of the nations founding was forged by European immigrants. If the movement is to survive our current, fractious politics, perhaps we should consider that its defining characteristics in the future may not come from within our tradition at all just as none of its founders did.

Jake Rosenberg is a writer and playwright based in New York City.

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What's left of the political center in America? A new book seeks answers. - Casper Star-Tribune Online

In a design world so obsessed with all things "curated," surprisingly little time is devoted to the actual curators. Meet Maria Cristina Didero, the Milan-based design curator behind many of todays hottest happenings. "I believe design is about people, not about chairs," says the fiery redhead, who moved to Milan rather on a whim in 1999 when she couldnt get on a flight to Rome. That distinct point of view has manifested in a wide range of projectslast year she assembled a Nendo retrospective at the Holon Design Museum and curated Fendis presentation of work by young talent Cristina Celestino at Design Miami. During Milans Salone del Mobile furniture fair this spring, she worked with Atelier Biagetti on the presentation of "God" (the third of three provocative furnishings collections) and wrote the curatorial text for "Foundation," Formafantasmas buzzy lighting exhibition at Spazio Krizio.

Photo: Delfino Sisto Legnani

Photo: Courtesy of Fendi

Beyond curating shows, Didero is an expert in Italian Radical design (a period from the 1960s to mid-'70s that thumbed its nose at International Style rationalism). As such, she has contributed to Maurizio Cattelans Technicolor tome 1968 and has curated several exhibitions of design, art, and architecture from the period. Currently, shes working on a project called "Over-Curated," in which she will collaborate with four other curators on a show of design.

Photo: Takumi Ota

As for the current state of the design scene in Milan, Didero explains: "Italy, and therefore Milan, underwent a great crisis when the economy collapsed. But with every crisis comes a huge resource: Even with less money around, a new generation of designers came about, and a new spirit and a fresh international pride have invaded the city. What I like about Milan is that when you have an idea it can actually become possible."

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Meet Milan's Coolest Curator - Architectural Digest

Morgan Library & Museum, New York, is currently hosting, 'Poussin, Claude, and French Drawing in the Classical Age', on view through October 15, 2017.

The show explores the work of some of the most celebrated artists of the time. More than fifty drawings largely from the Morgans collections including works by Claude Lorrain (16001682), Nicolas Poussin (15941665), Jacques Callot (15921635), and Charles Le Brun (16191690) are featured in the exhibition. Together they demonstrate the eras distinctive approach to composition and subject matter, informed by principles of rationalism, respect for the art of classical antiquity, and by a belief in a natural world governed by divine order.

The French refer to the seventeenth century as the Grand Sicle or the Great Century. Under the rule of Louis XIII and Louis XIV, the period saw a dramatic increase in French political and military power, the maturation of French courtly life at Versailles, and an unparalleled flourishing of the arts.

The exhibition is on view at Morgan Library & Museum, 225 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016, USA.

For details, visit: http://www.themorgan.org

Click on the slideshow for a sneak peek at the exhibition.

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'Poussin, Claude, and French Drawing in the Classical Age' at Morgan Library & Museum, New York - BLOUIN ARTINFO

A Torah scroll. Photo: Rabbisacks.org.

As if we are not cynical and jaded enough, enter the latesttrendin fake news: the miracle survivor story that turns out to be a lie.

This week, the BBC was forced to apologize after publishing a breaking news story on its website, claiming that a babyhad miraculously been discovered alive in the ruins of Grenfell Tower, 12 days after the London building was destroyed in a devastating fire .

But rather than focus on the sick motivations of the click-bait website that came up with the story, lets consider something else for a moment: if the story had been true, would the BBC have been accurate in describing the babys survival as a miracle? After all, if the baby did survive (and for 12 days, no less), it might better be described as exceptionally good luck. No laws of nature were broken, and no oneclaimedthat the child was protected or fed by an angel, so why would the story be labeled a miracle?

June 30, 2017 1:13 pm

US President Donald Trump was vindicated this week, after CNN Supervising Producer John Bonifield was caught on a hidden camera...

This question cuts to the core of religious faith, and has vexed philosophers and theologians for millennia.

The first person to formally wrestle, as a rationalist, with the existence of the supernatural was the Greek philosopher, Aristotle. He believed that supernatural miracles defied reason, and that anything that defied reason was, by definition, impossible. The great medieval Jewish philosopher and rabbi Moses Maimonides, was an avid devotee of Aristotelian philosophy, and he went to great lengths to reconcile Aristotles views with the numerous stories of supernatural events in the Torah not always very convincingly, it must be said.

Interestingly, although they never openly debated the veracity of miracles, the Talmudic sages in Abot (5:8) acknowledged this theological challenge by proposing that certain supernatural events recorded in the Torah were conceived of by God at the dawn of creation, but only crystallized at a particular time and place when thecircumstances were right. Abot lists 10 such phenomena, including Moses staff, Miriams well, and the mouth of Balaams talking donkey.

My own ancestor, Rabbi Judah Loew, the Maharal of Prague, offered a compelling theological compromise to reconcile Aristotles rationalism with numerous biblical occurrences of the supernatural. His theory is an intriguing alternative to the proposition in Abot. Just as there is an order to nature, he wrote, so too there is an order to the miraculous.

In the Maharals opinion, miracles do not defy natural lawbecause Gods creation was never set up to be a binary system of nature and the supernatural. Instead, miracles have their own set of laws, in parallel to nature, although these laws cannot be subjected to the rigid empiricism demanded by Aristotelian philosophy. That is because miracles are self-evidently extremely scarce, requiring very specific circumstances to trigger them, and even the slightest deviation from those circumstances will prevent the supernatural manifestation from occurring.

Perhaps this explains an anomaly in the episode of Miriams well that is found in the Torah portion of Chukat. When Moses approached God to ask Him how he might resolve the water crisis, God told Mosesto draw water out of a rock. According to the medieval commentator Rashi, Moses attempted to find the exact rock that God wanted him to use, but was somehow unable to locate it. Irritated by the delay, the thirsty nation of Israel began to get restless. As far as they were concerned, any rock would do surely if God wanted Moses to produce water from a rock, it would make no difference which rock it was.

This explains Moses cryptic response to the nation when they began to protest (Num.20:10): are we to produce water for you out ofthisrock?Namely, who said that this is the rock set up within the laws of miracles to produce the required water? God does not indiscriminately break the laws of nature. The conditions have to be exactly right, or the miracle will not occur.

Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Leiner of Izbica, one of the 19th centurys most original Hasidic thinkers, took this even further. He believed that the Torah attributes Gods refusal to allow Moses entry into the Promised Land as a reaction to this episode. But rather than being a punishment, it was simply based on Moses own rationale. Circumstances had to be exactly right, Moseshad told the people, and if they were not, the miracle could not occur.

Moses had known for quite some time that it was going to be Joshua who led the nation into the Promised Land, and that once the40-year period in the wilderness was over, his time was up. Nevertheless, Moses was hoping that God would reverse the natural order and allow him to enter the land in defiance of his destiny a miracle, as it were. So how was God going to break the news to him that his destiny was irrevocable?

After the confrontation over the rock, God had the perfect explanation for Moses. Asked to produce water out of any rock, Moses had responded that the rock had to be exactly the right one. Similarly,Moses entry into the Promised Land did not fit into the exactorder of things, and after the incident with the rock, this sad reality would finally make sense.

Ultimately, supernatural law is no different than natural law; it follows strict criteria that cannot be overruled. The refreshing consequence of this brilliant idea is that both the natural and the supernatural emanate equivalently from Gods will, making science and mysticism cousins in one family rather than mutually exclusive foes.

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Why Rationalists Can Believe in Miracles - Algemeiner

This post is the first in a new series on the Sacramental Imagination and is designed both to celebrate 20 Years of Harry Potter and to whet the appetite.

This week marks the 20th anniversary of J.K. Rowlings Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone. For starters, Alan Jacobs of Wheaton wrote a delightful piece on Harry Potter in 2000 and the piece was recently re-published by First Things. Anyone who knows me will know that I am a diehard-Potter fan. I discovered the books early into the series, I believe it was in between the publishing of Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban. Since my adolescence, I have read the books with vigor, attended 4 midnight book releases, watched the movies with a mixture of joy and zealous criticism, listened to the books while I paint, and most recently I attended Harry Potter in Concert with the Kansas City Symphony at the Kauffman Center. I feel a bit like Paul at this point in giving my credentialsonly slightly jokingbut I do this to suggest that I am not some squib jumping on the HP bandwagon.

I was listening to the original NPR announcement of Harry Potter this morningit can be found hereand something grabbed my attention. Margot Adler predicted that the word muggle would become a big thing in common language and then shared an audio clip from Rowling discussing it further. Within the HP series the term muggle simply means non-magical person. However, Rowling shared that she began receiving letters and emails from fans who began expanding the term for modern, non-literary usage. In this form the term came to mean something like dull and unimaginative person. And I cannot tell you why, but it was like a lightning bolt scared my brain (see what I did there) and it got me thinking:

What if there are liturgical muggles? What if the loss of the sacramental imagination is like the difference between magic and muggle (or at least squib)? I suppose the easiest place to begin is first with the sacramental imagination and its loss.

Before I go on, please hear: I am not suggesting that the liturgy is an actual form of magic or that words spoken over bread and wine is a spell or an enchantment like Stupefy or Avada Kedavra. I am not looking to debate hocus pocus (hoc est enim corpus meum) or medieval superstitions. If you find yourself arguing with me on these points then youve missed my meaning entirely. The reader may continue

We are heirs of the Enlightenment. Our collective sacramental imagination has shifted over the course of 2,000 years. The ways in which we interpret information, tell stories, share experiences, and view the world today as Christians in the democratic, capitalist West is different from the earliest centuries of the church in the East and in Rome, it is different from the medieval church, it is different from the overwhelming majority of church history. Why does this matter?

Because we no longer actively view the world as being full of Gods glory, imbued with his presence, overwhelmed by his love, rich with encounters of him, Gerard Manley Hopkins lyric, The earth is charged with the grandeur of God makes no sense to us. Our imaginations, our sense of awe and wonder, our belief in the movement and action of the Holy Spirit is greatly diminished. There is a reason that Harry Potter, Lewis Narnia, the Force in Star Wars, and many similar stories capture our imaginations. Its because it is so other than what we know and what we are used to. Its not that these stories view magic positively but that they show a world teeming with possibilities, of a world where the supernatural is bumping against the natural regularly, where things arent always as they seem.

And that brings me to the liturgy

Our post-Enlightenment, Protestant worship has seen a minimalist approach to liturgy and a dwindling view of enchantment, wonder, awe, and terror before God. These have been replaced with rationalism, with Bible, with Sermon. In many Protestant, evangelical churches the sermon is the centerpiece. Rather than a dually climactic service where Word and Table play off of and interpret each other, these worship services are almost exclusively comprised of worship songs and a long, highly intellectual (though not always) sermon. The mind is what matters here, and how it affects the hands and the feet afterward, but the body is left relatively alone.

Enter the liturgical muggle. Remember that I am using muggle as a dull and unimaginative person.

This is the subtle shift from sacramental worship to rational worship, from Word and Sacrament to more and more Word. I think, and I may be mistaken, that it is obvious how this shift would result in making liturgical muggles. But those in more historical, liturgical conditions arent entirely off the hook. This isnt an us vs. them situation. It is entirely possible to be(come) a liturgical muggle within the liturgy because, for me, liturgical muggles are those who have lost the sacramental imagination.

Even amid liturgical worship, we have lost a sacramental consciousness, awareness, and imagination as the sacraments have less and less to do with reality and more to do with vague and ethereal signs and symbols. Baptism becomes more about the confession of faith (or covenant promise) than the reality of and individual being washed in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, of being made a new person, of being anointed with the Holy Spirit. Or Eucharist is about nourishment for the spiritual journey, or a political act of the highest degree (dont get me started), or a sign of socio-economic equality in the Kingdom of God and not about bread and wine becoming Body and Blood, joining the worship of the cosmos in the heavenly throne room. I could go on and on and on here, but suffice it today that for liturgical muggles water, oil, bread, and wine are always just that. There is no imagination, there is no magic (be careful here) per se. Worship is dull and unimaginative because it is focused exclusively on what our minds can handle and conceive rather than that God is doing in and among us, breaking into our midst regularly, sacramentally.

In my opinion, and I say this with all sincerity and humility, we need to guard against making more liturgical muggles and losing even more of the sacramental imagination. Our Christian worldview needs to shift, and shift pretty dramatically. A deeper, richer, more robust view of the Sacraments will help us avoid becoming liturgical muggles. At the end of the day, rationalist worship or rationalist Christianity is a separation of mind from body, of head and heart, of brain and soul. It may not appear that way, it certainly wasnt intended that way, but it is its own form of escapism, of isolationism, of segregation. The reintegration of these elements, the reintroduction of Sacramental teaching and imagination will result in a holistic, fully-formed, fully informed, fully alive worship and a Christian spirituality that is committed to working within the world we inhabit rather than railing against it constantly.

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Liturgical Muggles and Losing the Sacramental Imagination - Patheos (blog)

As Jon Ossoff left the stage in defeat for the sixth congressional district runoff race last Tuesday, he said, Darkness has crept across this planet. Call it metaphor or call it spiritual, its not the scientific secularism the Left claims to represent. In fact, it represents a resurgent spiritual posture with distinct articles of theology. One of the loci theologici of this theology is its initiation sacrament, its baptism of blood if you will: political violence.

It begins, as we see in Ossoffs words, with the view that world as it exists in its totality is under the rule of dark powers. This is classic Gnosticism. The esoteric language of the historic Gnostic myth sounds arcane to the modern ear, but the psycho-spiritual mechanisms going on are resurgent, and until we grasp Gnosticisms various traits and characteristics (which you can get a fuller reading of here), we will not fully understand our era.

Note, for instance, the Manichaeism (an ancient Gnostic variant) of the leftist imagination. The world of the past is a realm of darkness and ignorance, generating systems and institutions like marriage, gender constructs, bordered nations, rationalism, individualism, federalism, capitalism, language, and so on. Stooges of this dark world order are the un-woke.

Meantime, for the woke (a truly Gnostic term) they envision a place of purity and light, where borders, gender distinctions, marriage definitions, distinctions between personal property, and rational meanings in language all dissolve. (The discerning will note its the darkness that blurs distinctions and the light which exposes them.)

When they win, the Left becomes Hermetical. Hermeticism, which was popular in the Renaissance after a Neoplatonism revival, was optimistic Gnosticism, proposing man can take the reins of the worlds dark overlord and run the world for good. This is the long march through the institutions approach, and with the actual success of this approach since the 1960s. the Left was content to sit back while History did its thing.

Now that the Left has lost, and keeps losing, another dynamic is taking over. Its not one of surfing History into the future, but of lashing out at phantom threats under the delusion that its self-defense. Its logical within the Gnostic framework: I do violence to defend myself against the oppression of the current system and its supporters. The obvious example of this is the recent shooting in Alexandria, Virginia. But consider some other high-profile examples and pay attention to the language.

After the University of California-Berkeley erupted in leftist violence, the Daily Californian ran five editorials under the banner of Violence as self-defense. Nisa Dang wrote, To people with platforms who decide when a protest should and should not be violent: You speak from a place of immense privilege. As I recently wrote in a tirade against this brand of idiocy, asking people to maintain peaceful dialogue with those who legitimately do not think their lives matter is a violent act.

Then theres Kathy Griffin and her odd justification for mock-beheading President Trump: Ive dealt with older white guys trying to keep me down my whole life, my whole career.

Now we hear from Huffposts La Sha on the death of Otto Warmbier at the hands of North Korean torturers: The hopeless fear Warmbier is now experiencing is my daily reality living in a country where white men like him are willfully oblivious to my suffering even as they are complicit in maintaining the power structures which ensure their supremacy at my expense.

Or consider the mocking reaction you get from leftists on the rising suicide rate among middle-aged white males. Bill Maher is typical: Its hard out there for a wimp, and thats why tonight Id like to remind white people of something very important they may have forgotten, youre white, cheer the f-ck up.

In each of these examples, the author or speaker has lost touch with basic human decency, caught up in a psycho-spiritual drama where the world is imprisoned by dark forces operating through entities, including people, deserving of destruction. Why? Because the salvation of humanity requires it.

This all reminded me of my favorite quote I discovered while researching for my book, Gnostic America, where Donna Minkowitz claims she had sadistic lesbian sex (even calling such sex a gnosis) as a rebellion against marriage norms. On these terms we get insight into the Lefts regard of abortion as a sacred act: its a bloody political revolution against traditional systems of oppression created by reproductive biology in cahoots with traditional culture.

The fact that Minkowitz made her reflections on rough sex after attending a religious right charismatic eventand seeing a similar spirit there as she saw in the gay rights movementonly underscores the total permeation of a certain, iconoclastic spirit in the American soul. And that spirit is Gnostic.

Gnosticisms iconoclastic streak throughout history is apropos. Iconoclasm literally means to break images. Images, in their original Greek progeny, are phantasmic, as in, they are something mentally or psychologically induced taking projected form. Of course, for the Gnostic, what is mentally or psychologically induced is the only sort of reality that matters.

Heres the kicker. As I become woke to my imprisonment in the external, dark world order, reality transfers from the outside to the inside. My engagement with reality evolves from a posture of reception to a posture of projection. Where before I might see a particular human being as a unique, independent entity sharing a humanity with meChristians call that my neighbornow I project onto him my newly woke imaging. Everything outside of me now becomes a projection of internal phantasms, characters, and symbols in my own psycho-drama.

The bottom line is that, once woke, you see the world in symbolic, iconic idioms, icons deserving destruction. Thus iconoclasm. A simple shop in an inner city becomes a symbol of the system of capitalistic oppression, deserving of riotous destruction. A police officer becomes a symbol of white privilege, justly murdered in an effort to break free from oppression.

A soldier becomes a symbol of American colonialism, rightly spit upon. Donald Trump symbolizes the patriarchy keeping women down. Republicans become symbols of all that is evil, the archons ruling the world, who will keep us all in chains unless destroyed. Language must be deconstructed, by violent legal fiat if need be. As icons of a hopelessly corrupt world oppressing me, it all must be iconoclastically broken. Violence is salvific.

So long as we are a media-saturated culture, its not likely things are going to get better. Media by its very nature works in the realm of the phantasmic, manipulating archetypes and narratives. Every story has to have a hero and a villain, and in the gnostic psycho-drama, representatives of traditions and long-standing systems or institutionslike capitalism, republicanism, federalism, the rule of law, individualism, marriage, family, and faithare the villains keeping the hero from his journey of authentic self-realization.

The Left is no longer dealing with passive Christians, but with a new, irreligious rightist element that will fight back.

Exhibit A: just about every movie ever made. Exhibit B: the mainstream medias framing of news and events. Its the gnostic psycho-drama that haunts the American soul, a truly American religion.

Until we pass through this gnostic moment, and begin seeing each other as our flesh and blood neighbors with names and not through the phantasmic and archetypical lenses of Facebook, the mainstream media, pop music, and any number of other media, the violence will only heighten. This is true on the Left as well as on the Right. The Left should know that theyre no longer dealing with right-wing, passive Christians, but with a new, irreligious rightist element that will fight back. Have fun with that.

Over the last several decades our society has made the wager that we can disconnect from a religion whose central message is that God traversed the gulf between spirit and flesh, becoming our flesh-and-blood neighbor, making our neighbor an object of love, and miraculously creating a community of human beings transcending race and nationality.

But as that same religion has warned us, madness lies the way of that disconnect. Madness, and also violence.

Link:

Why You Can Expect Increased Violence When The Left Is Out Of Power - The Federalist

1. History will puzzle over our eras ruling faith in rationalism. Behavioral economics is shaking that faith but as Nick Romeonotes, Plato described cognitive biases ~24 centuries ago.

2. And Plato is far from alone. Hasnt every realistic writer described humanitys everywhere-evident cognitive foibles? Except some math-obsessedeconomists?

3. Doesnt history, and the arts, and daily experience, testify against those hyper-rational individualists of econo-models?

4. For instance, here's Shakespeare on confirmation bias: Trifles light as air / Are to the jealous confirmations strong / As proofs...

5. The gist of many cognitive biases shouldnt surprise non-economists (a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush = loss aversion).

6. Daniel Kahnemans cognitive-bias-cataloging Nobel involved studying grandmotherly wisdom (every psychologist knows were neither fully rational, nor completely selfish).

7. Beyond the fun of footnoting philosophy-founding dialogues with cognitive biases, Plato would have laughed at econo-rationalism.

8. And Plato saw money-lust as enslavement to irrational impulses (now driving mindless market priorities).

9. He knew were irrationally persuadable. He hated sophists for teaching how to sell seductive surfaces over substance (marketing over product). Marketing, obviously, has always used cognitive biases (under-theorized).

10. Even as many economists declare that were rational optimizers, businesses operate on the profitable principle that theres an easily manipulable fool born every minute.

11. But Plato abetted modern rationalisms rise by popularizing math-lust. 2,000 years later falling in love with geometry was an Enlightenment occupational hazard. And today similar math-worship (for algebra + stats) drives economists to irrational math-oholic fantasies.

12. Largely unnoticed is how Platos dialogues dramatize the shortcomings of cognitive individualism.

13. Social cognition research shows that individual knowledge is always remarkably shallow>we never think alone.

14. Isnt it self-evident that we evolved to reason socially? Thinking, like every other significant aspect of human nature, evolved collectively and tribally (not econo-individualistically).

15. Intriguingly, while confirmation bias worsens solo thinking, it can improve group reasoning (other cognitive perspectives countering your biases>dont think alone, or with cognitive clones).

16. Countering cognitive individualism is how science succeeds (bias-balancing processes).

17. That famed-science-institution motto "take no man's word for it," also applies to your own word. Feeling sure that youre right often isnt a reliable intuition. We fall in love with ideas and methods and become blind to our beloveds faults.

18. Math-method-loving economists strengthen faith in rationalism by routinely excluding "obvious empirical facts if theyre not equation friendly. This equation filtering begets theory-induced blindness (field-wide method-level bias).

19. This math-fashioned folly must misrepresent us for its beloved math model-making to work. Arguing that models, like maps, must exclude details, fails because here were ignoring known roadblocks. Theres no efficient-allocation market nirvana without rationally optimizing masses.

20. Beyond the matho-pathology of unbehavioral economics, misplaced faith in rationalism enabled Donald Trumps presidency. He grasps empirical psychology better than many rationalists. Every salesperson knows persuasion isnt factual or logical, but unavoidably emotional, and trust-dependent (see Aristotle on ethos, pathos, logos).

21. Ways of life that deny our deeply limited, deeply flawed, deeply social nature are doomed to historys dustbin.

IllustrationbyJulia Suits,The New Yorkercartoonist & author ofThe Extraordinary Catalog of Peculiar Inventions

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Plato Would Have Laughed at Our Era's Faith In Rationalism - Big Think

Author Michael Wallis says there are modern lessons to learn from the Donner Party primarily about the fatal combination of ignorance and arrogance. Above, an undated drawing of the pioneers, looking to make their way West. Bettmann Archive/Getty Images hide caption

Author Michael Wallis says there are modern lessons to learn from the Donner Party primarily about the fatal combination of ignorance and arrogance. Above, an undated drawing of the pioneers, looking to make their way West.

Tales from the American West are marked by heroism, romance and plenty of cruelty. Among those stories, the saga of the Donner Party stands alone a band of pioneers set out in covered wagons for California, and eventually, stranded, snowbound and starving, resorted to cannibalism.

Author Michael Wallis says the story of Donner Party has been sensationalized over the years. His new book chronicles the journey from its beginning, illuminating the challenges the families faced and the fatal error that set them on a tragic course accepting bad advice that an uncharted shortcut would ease their passage to California. About half of the party survived.

Without the cannibalism, Wallis suspects the ill-fated pioneers would have become a "footnote" in history. Instead, "the focus continues to be on the cannibalism itself," he says, "when in fact there's so much more. That's why I wanted to tell the back story."

His new book is called The Best Land Under Heaven: The Donner Party in the Age of Manifest Destiny.

On the Donner-Reed Party

The three principle leaders of what came to be commonly called the Donner-Reed Party were the two Donner brothers, George and Jacob Donner, and James Reed, an Irish immigrant who struck it rich in the lead mines of Illinois. Reed became friends, at least good strong acquaintances of the Donner brothers, and those were the three that forged this plan to take their families, to take their livestock, to take their belongings and to move West to follow the California trail to the so-called "land of milk and honey."

On what they packed for their journey

Both the Donner brothers and James Reed did their research, and they were actually quite well-prepared when they embarked on this long journey across the rest of the continent. They knew that ... as many as four to six oxen were necessary to pull those wagons loaded with all of their belongings that they wanted to bring with them to start these new lives. They brought with them cattle and spare horses, saddle horses.

They brought essentials that they thought that they would need along the way and once they got to California, including items that they could use to trade and win the good graces of people they might encounter along the way. ... They brought books, they brought bottles of fine wine.

In James Reed's case, he brought such a fine wagon that years later it came to be called "the prairie palace." He equipped it with a big feather bed for his infirm mother-in-law to rest in on the journey. He put a cook stove in it. ... It was quite a sight on the road. And most of this material, of course, never made it to the Sierras. It eventually had to be discarded along the way.

On the ill-fated Hastings Cutoff, an alternate route proposed by Lansford Hastings

[Explorer James Clyman, a friend of James Reed, made] a visit to Illinois ... and sat down over beverages that evening around a fire with members of the Donner-Reed Party and focused on James Reed and said, "Don't take this shortcut! Lansford Hastings doesn't know what he's talking about. He, in fact, has never taken this cutoff himself. I advise you strongly, don't take it. Stick to the known California trail. Don't take this shortcut that's going to save you time, because it won't." And unfortunately James Reed didn't heed his old friend's advice.

On crossing the Great Salt Lake Desert

They needed to trim down the physical size of their caravan, and that meant leaving behind any nonessentials like big feather beds and iron cook stoves, and sadly some of the animals that couldn't make the journey. Some things were cached, buried in the desert sands, always hopeful that they'd come back and get them. Alas, that never really happened.

But they pressed on, facing this horrific heat and agony of the salt desert, and at night, the freezing temperatures. It just took toll after toll after toll on these people and on their animals. They begin to break up a little bit physically. People move ahead and so forth. This happened throughout the whole journey.

On the group starting to break up

There were some deaths. There was the death of a young infant. There was a death of a sick man they had picked up along the way. They lost a lot of their animals. They had to leave behind certain wagons belonging to the different families and groups. They had to consolidate. They had to ... learn to work together, something that proved to be very difficult.

There was already a force at work undermining what should've been a cohesive group. Part of that is, I think, just human nature. It was starting to be survival of the fittest and families pulling themselves into themselves and being concerned mostly with their immediate family as opposed to the whole group.

On the atrocities the pioneers committed against Native Americans

I don't think people realize that California, what became the state of California, was particularly brutal. [For] many California tribes, it was total genocide. There are stories of Anglos going out and literally having target practice by shooting Indians. That was part of that whole Manifest Destiny thing "we" could possess the continent because there were no people out there. There were Mexicans, yes, a lot of it belonged to Mexico and there were all these Plains Indians, but they in fact weren't people, they weren't human beings, so it's "ours" for the taking.

On the winter coming earlier than expected

By October, it became evident that winter was setting much earlier than expected, and in fact, it did. That, of course, was another big problem, another big reason for this tragedy. They made it up to what's called Truckee Meadows, right around where Reno now is, and were looking towards the Sierras. ... They got to these meadows. ... They rested a bit too long. They ended up literally stopped by these winter storms. They could go no further, so they set up camp ... and there they stayed from October throughout the winter of 1846-1847, just trying to survive.

On their failed attempts to get over the Sierra mountains

They didn't get into these camps and just give up and sit down, there were forays out. ... They'd get up as far as they could go and then they'd be repelled by this incredibly deep snow we're talking about snow 20- and 25-feet deep, just impossible to get through. They would even fashion snowshoes, and they tried all kinds of ways to get through the snow and couldn't.

Wallis has written several books about the American West. He is also a voice actor who plays the sheriff in the animated Cars films. Shellee Graham/Liveright hide caption

Wallis has written several books about the American West. He is also a voice actor who plays the sheriff in the animated Cars films.

On turning to cannibalism to survive

They ate literally everything before they had to turn to human flesh. They of course killed the great oxen, the horses, everything, and ate that meat. They boiled the hides, they picked out the bone marrow, they made this gelatinous, awful goo from the hides, and it had very little, if any, nutritional value.

They ate field mice they caught in their cabins and camps. They finally got to the point where they had to kill all of their beloved dogs, very sadly, and ate all of them. Then they were chewing on pine cones and ponderosa pine bark. They're starving and they're freezing to death, they're becoming delirious, they had to chew on something, so they chewed on anything they could find.

But ultimately, they turned to the protein that was the human the dead companions, friends, family that they had storehoused that had already died from starvation and from hypothermia in the snow banks. They did that totally to survive, but it was very much the last resort. ...

They tried their best not to consume flesh of family members, they were so careful.

On putting himself in their situation

When people say to me, "This cannibalism, how awful!" I always just turn it right around on them and say, "What would you do? What would you do if you were starving to death, freezing to death, and your children were around you, and you saw them, and they were dying, and you knew that this store of protein was there? What would you do?" I know what I would do. ...

Out of all those parties that did [survive], two entire families survived, two large families [including the Reed family.] ... But it was just the Reed family alone that never partook of a piece of human flesh, they were somehow able to avoid that due to the diligence and the care of the mother, Margaret Reed.

On members of the Donner Party murdering two Native Americans who came to their aid

These two Miwoks were with [a segment of the Donner Party,] the Forlorn Hope Party, and after cannibalism in the Forlorn Party began, the two Indians refused to eat human flesh. They were growing weaker and weaker and ultimately the rationalism was, once again, "Well, these are Indians, so they're fair game." So they were shot, field dressed, and eaten. ... Ironically, a few days later there were Miwok Indians who came to the aid of the Forlorn Hope and made sure they got down to safety.

On what can be learned from the Donner Party today

I think it tells us not only about the American West but really about the whole nation. ... So many people find that really the idea of Manifest Destiny still exists in this country, this whole idea of American exceptionalism. ...

Those of us who do not learn our history are doomed to repeat it the sins of the past and that's certainly the case with the Donner Party. The words that ring out to me continually are two words that combined can be very fatal, then as now, and those words are: ignorance and arrogance.

On a sentence from a letter Patty Reed wrote to a cousin after she was rescued

I think [this] serves as ... a fitting benediction to this whole story this is what she wrote: "We have left everything, but I don't care for that. We have got through with our lives. Don't let this letter dishearten anybody. Remember: Never take no cut-offs, and hurry along as fast as you can."

Sam Briger and Thea Chaloner produced and edited the audio of this interview. Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the Web.

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'What Would You Do?' Author Wants To Stop Sensationalizing The Donner Party - NPR