Category Archives: Rationalism

Amnesty International protesters in front of the Saudi Embassy in London. Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA

It was the fifth anniversary yesterday of the arrest of the Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, whose supposed crime was to argue for secularism, democracy and human rights. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes a punishment that amounts to death by torture although only 50 lashes were inflicted on him in the one session. Medical opinion was that he would not survive the remainder of that part of his sentence.

His cause has been taken up by humanist organisations, as well as by Amnesty International. He has been honoured with the EUs Sakharov prize. Even Prince Charles raised his case on a visit to Saudi Arabia. We may be sure that neither Theresa May nor Donald Trump would do so. It is one thing to coat huge arms deals in the rhetoric of defending western freedoms, but quite another to risk any of the profits for the sake of a Saudi man who wished to enjoy those same freedoms.

The Badawi case is illuminating about the nature of the Saudi regime and the ideas that it understands as an existential threat. These include Badawis brisk dismissal of the role of Islam in public life: No religion at all has any connection to mankinds civic progress the codes governing the administration of the state can hardly be derived from religion. Such ideas are obviously incompatible with the practice of theocracy. And perhaps they are so strange to the Saudi authorities that they cant be taken seriously after all, those convicted of sorcery in the kingdom are beheaded, whereas Badawi may survive his sentence, given enough attention and support from the outside world.

It is, of course, the Saudi regime that is chiefly responsible for his suffering, and that has the power to release him, but the case also suggests how hollow are western commitments to so-called western values. Badawi believes in democracy, rationalism and freedom of speech. These are all ideas we are supposed to promote and applaud, but in places where their exercise is costly we are mostly silent.

I suppose the Saudis might defend their repressive state by pointing to the horrors that have engulfed Iraq and Syria to their north and even Yemen to their south. But in all those cases, and especially in Yemen, the repressive Saudi state has itself been a destabilising factor for its neighbours.

There isnt a clean or simple answer to the appalling horrors of the Middle East. If the Saudi theocracy falls, as it eventually must, what comes after wont be a tranquil, secular democracy. Nonetheless, we owe it to Badawi to support and honour his courage with as little self-righteousness as we can possibly manage. At its root, the idea of human rights means that there are some things that it is wrong to do to any human being, and the punishment to which he was unjustly sentenced is one of them.

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Ten years in jail and 1000 lashes: why we must defend Saudi blogger Raif Badawi - The Guardian

Tom Cruise is back with a summer blockbuster. The last of the Hollywood stars is trying hard to navigate a world in which franchises and sequels have replaced the Romanticism and elegance of yesteryear. The Mummy is nowhere near as good Jack Reacher was, nor Edge of tomorrow. But compared to its summer or blockbuster competition, it fares quite well. Its certainly far more thoughtful.

Blockbusters are what they are in our generation because they severed their connection with comedy. Instead, they are always circling the problem of evil and what could justify suffering and what redemption there might be for people in a cruel or indifferent world. Like it or not, entertainment is far more moralistic than it used to be and it only rarely achieves any moral depth or any insight into what might be evil about being who we are.

Mummy does have something to contribute to this, and its ancients vs. moderns structure and Americans vs. monsters plot are reliable allies. Director Alex Kurtzmann, with a fairly impressive resume for success, is unfortunately rampantly mediocre. Writer Chris McQuarrie is the real asset on the movie-making side. He once enjoyed Oscar prestige for The Usual Suspects, a film both overrated and misunderstood.

In the last decade, hes written for, directed, and produced five Tom Cruise movies including this one, with another one upcoming. Their partnership is about the only thing there is to be said for the serious claims of popular movies. A cinematic style, something almost forbidden in Hollywood, they certainly have going for them.

But they also find ways to work out strange insights that start from banal observations. First, The Mummy deals with a story caught somewhere in-between ancient mystery and horror. Well, this time, the mummy is a woman who murdered her royal family. What that is supposed to teach is that a certain kind of lovea desire to be approved and to be admiredcan turn against the very people who stir it.

The mummy in this sense is sterile individualism, which is derivative without knowing itself to be so. The very principle of giving birth is destroyed in this ancient mystery. The kind of love discussed turns out to be a death cult, really. In trying to move from the possible perpetuation of the species to the immortality of the individual, in trying to turn a beautiful image into a being powerful enough to be eternal, monsters are created.

This Mummy is like the Greek story about the man on whom eternal life is bestowed without the powers of youth. But it is far more than a warning story. The Mummy forces a comparison of modern scientific politics with the ancient science of Egypt. It explicitly compares the realism by which science rules our politicswho really believes the health imperative and the fear of death will be stopped when it comes to cloning human beings, for example?with human sacrifices in ancient politics.

It makes sense to sacrifice people when youre looking for power over life and death. But we tell ourselves our hands are clean both individually and as political communities. And if you think mummies gone for millennia are somehow a joke, well, how many tech-scientific prodigies in Silicon Valley, the princes of America, are freezing their own bodies cryogenically in hope of a future life? Not so funny when you think how much the two situations have in common Maybe abandoning Christianity is a bad idea, you see

The ground of our modernity is really Christianity. This is always rehearsed in movies about sacrificial salvation, redemptive acts, and attempts to put an end to the cycle of violence in nature and politics. Life has to be understood providentially to be anything but tragic. Hence the continuous competition in this story, and so many others, between a Christian and a pre-Christian view of immortality or divinity. In that sense, this kind of blockbuster does well to remind people of the moral stakes in heroism, which is not mere fun for Americansjust like it was not merely a good story for the Greeks thousands of years ago.

One element of the story is all-American. Everyone learns young from blockbusters what Tocqueville taught: In America, the head may fail, but the heart wont falter. When reason would surrender to chaos, faith will carry Americans forward, even if seemingly against their better judgment. Tom Cruise is a star in part because of his rare ability to speak up for democracy and inspire ithes always telling sidekicks its going to be okay, and he tries his hardest. His action movies are a model of stylish striving thats not barbaric or insane.

The problem here is political. The story starts with a view of the overriding principles of the American military in Iraq. Looting on the one hand, saving a culture on the other. These are standings for realism and idealism and about as stuck in caricature as American foreign policy debates. But they do show a failure to think about America beyond an ordinary guy in extraordinary circumstances. Giving a good account of striving at the national level is simply beyond Hollywood in our times.

The solution to this problem, this failure of political imagination, is the other element of the story: its romanticism. Tom Cruise is handsome enough to evoke that, even at 50. Whereas his democratic insistence on acting together with the other actors, as I mentioned above, tends to move the discussion from idolizing to idealizing, his beautiful face tends to distract people from the crisis of the action.

For the same reason, people become invested in his suffering and travails in an unusual way. He is a star in part because he is the only action movie guy who has a nearly inexhaustible attraction for the audience. He is a beloved, not a lover. The resolution of the plot is almost always going to be a turning around of the character from receiving love to offering lovein saving the day, hes returning the love of the audience. It goes without saying, this is remarkably rare in Hollywood, where beauty is more flattery than anything else.

Romanticism is supposed to offer a halfway house between the modern rationalism of the beginning, which has a counterpart in the monstrous rationalism of Dr. Jekyllevil is a disease to be cured scientificallyand the irrationalism of ancient splendor, which hides horrors like politics by human sacrifice. A mythology of sacrificial love will justify individuality while giving scope to powers simply dormant, if not endangered in the scientific-bureaucratic world we live in, which is incredibly safe and so incredibly boring that audiences flock to shows of chaos and destruction.

We need Tom Cruise, really, for that reason. We are tempted as audiences to turn to fascination with evil as a reaction to the world-hospital in which we, at some level, live. He helps audiences back away from the temptation to turn love into a death cult or dissatisfaction with our world into political paranoia. Love and war are still possible and make sense morally in this kind of story.

This is not to say The Mummy is not as much of a failure as more or less any blockbuster these days. People find it almost unacceptable to produce expensive movies with intelligent plotting, in fear that audiences wouldnt tolerate it. It sometimes seems that the way audiences declare their love for bad writing and thinking is a defiance of better stuffwhen audiences throw billions at rampant mediocrity, is there anyone who dares risk good writing and bet lots of money on it? But that does not do away with the insights into the audience of the blockbusters, and the fairly healthy pleasures this movie has to offer.

One hopes that the kind of talent one sees in front and behind the camera will see better use in their next collaboration on yet another Mission Impossible movie. Thats a series which attempts to bring a kind of reasonableness to political intrigueas this movie attempts to make mysteries a bit more reasonable. But thats a discussion for next year.

Titus Techera is a graduate student in political science and liberal arts, a Publius fellow, and a roving writer for Ricochet and National Review Online.

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'The Mummy' Reminds Us To Step Back From The Abyss - The Federalist

It will not have escaped your notice that the results of the teaching excellence framework are conspicuously absent from the pages ahead.

The postponement of this most controversial of government interventions may seem significant for universities but is, of course, a very minor footnote in the fallout from the general election.

The reality is that TEF is still imminent once the new government gets its house in order (a point reinforced by yet another outing of the pro-TEF arguments in The Times this week, and with Jo Johnson reappointed as universities minister).

Among the many aftershocks of the surprise hung parliament, one of the most jarring was the tight-lipped determination of Theresa May to ignore the fact that a ravine had just opened up beneath her feet, and to carry on regardless.

Announcing her intention to form a government with the DUP, Mays tone-deaf victory speech on the steps of 10 Downing Street offered yet more evidence that the prime minister equates bloody-mindedness with strength of character.

Higher education is all too familiar with this trait, having won all the arguments (and the private backing of most of the Cabinet) for a welcoming stance on international students, yet failing to make any impression on Mays intractability.

Its worth acknowledging that there is a wider trend at play here, with politicians consciously moving away from rationalism in favour of appeals to the lower emotions and prejudices of their electorate. This issue is explored in depth in our features pages this week.

But for all Mays stubbornness, the truth is that everything has changed as a result of the poll seven days ago.

There are many factors at play as far as higher education is concerned. One is Brexit, and the pressure May will come under to adopt a more moderate negotiating position.

The DUPs stance, as set out in its manifesto, makes more than one reference to the importance of universities, stating as a priority that higher education should continue to attract international expertise and collaboration. We analyse what this hastily constructed government may mean for higher education in our news pages this week.

Taking a broader view, its also clear that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyns campaign connected with young voters in a way that will surely force future campaign strategists to take a more inclusive approach to policymaking and look beyond the vested interests of older generations and the newspapers they read.

I wrote a few weeks ago that this was an election that offered two distinct visions for higher education, and that if the great tuition fees repeal promised by Corbyn proved a damp squib at the ballot box, then it could be off the political menu for good.

Although it is impossible to untangle the motivations of the electorate, it seems pretty clear that fees did help to mobilise the young vote, and probably reached beyond that demographic too.

If you will excuse a taxi driver anecdote, a colleague recounted a conversation with a Somali Uber driver, who said he would be voting for the first time because of the tuition fees pledge (his son was at medical school). A 27,000 gift to your child or grandchild isnt a bad single issue to get you out of your Uber and into the polling station.

University leaders may worry about a tuition fee-free future a double whammy of painful Brexit plus the loss of fee income without proper reimbursement from the state would be a disaster.

But to fret excessively about that at this point would be getting ahead of ourselves. Labour lost the election, after all.

Whats clear, though, is that old certainties are no longer certain. And for as long as she lasts, Mays inflexible position on some of higher educations most pressing concerns might have to change.

john.gill@timeshighereducation.com

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Corbyn's vision for higher education ushers in a new era - Times Higher Education (THE)

Written by Dr Rakesh Sinha | Updated: June 16, 2017 1:13 am No one knows who the next President will be, but the likelihood of a contest based on entrenched positions certainly undermines the prestige of Rashtrapati Bhavan. (Illustration: C R Sasikumar)

The BJP has formed a three-member committee consisting of senior cabinet ministers, Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley and M Venkaiah Naidu to examine the possibility of a consensus candidate for the President of India. This marks a moral victory for the ruling party against forces in the Opposition, which include political parties and the predominantly left- liberal intelligentsia. Their quest for a presidential nominee is not based on the moral significance of this august office, but rather, on vendetta politics. It is no secret that they see the presidential election as an opportunity to fix both Narendra Modi and Hindutva politics.

No one knows who the next President will be, but the likelihood of a contest based on entrenched positions certainly undermines the prestige of Rashtrapati Bhavan. It is a truism that no presidential election has been without contest. But political binaries have led to the devaluation of the office. The 1969 election between Neelam Sanjiva Reddy and V.V. Giri was not merely a face-off between two individuals, but between two ideologies on the one hand, and the claim to be genuine heirs of the Indian National Congress, on the other. The election witnessed fierce public debate and unprecedented polarisation in the media. Giris victory vindicated Indira Gandhi and her ideology. But it did not add value to the presidency. Rather, it heralded the notion of a rubber stamp president. Since then, the choice of a candidate became a matter of political permutations and combinations, and the election, a game of dice.

This goes against the vision of the founding fathers of the Indian Constitution, who espoused that the President should not be a symbol of partisan politics. The first President of India, Rajendra Prasad, reaffirmed that the office ought not to be a reason for instability in our parliamentary democracy. During the political confrontations between the communist government in Kerala and the Congress party, Prasad made it clear in his letter to Gyanvati Darbar on July 10, 1959, that there had been a certain misunderstanding regarding the position of the President. Probably, many people feel that the President can intervene and exert influence on one side or the other. That is an incorrect view I cannot take sides I have to act on advice and cannot act on my own. Let me keep myself above all these differences I cannot have any viewpoint which is not for the country as a whole but for any group or party only.

Whomsoever becomes President, he or she cannot alter the requirements and prerequisites of the office, or the essential features of Indias parliamentary democracy. The office does, however, have the potential to circumvent unnecessary controversies, particularly so in the present context: The rise of an alternative ideology and leadership have yet to be reconciled to by the elites which enjoyed status and privileges and considered themselves authors of the destiny of modern India.

The current situation is a replica of 1922, when, for the first time, nationalists became ministers in the provinces under the Government of India Act 1919. The colonial bureaucracy, along with governors of the provinces, were not merely unsympathetic but also contemptuous of them. In contemporary India, secularist forces are not prepared to relate Hindutva with secular, liberal and democratic principles. They unfailingly cling to their self-made belief that it is communal, intolerant and fascist. They are victims of the ossification which has set in within Left-liberal ideologies, a solidification of the mind which keeps them dogmatic and unable to re-examine their own position.

Therefore, the presidential election assumes significance for more than one reason: The office is not merely a constitutional head. It becomes a decisive player in democratic causality. There are instances of such situations the fall of the Janata Party government in 1979 made the role of Rashtrapati Bhavan crucial. Yet, there is a definite limit of presidential adventurism, even in times of political crises. Its importance lies in appealing beyond conventional politics or constitutional morality. Free from political compulsions or executive burdens, the President can act as an agent of redefining the idea of India, which is essential to restore the post-colonial identity of the Indian people.

This process was initiated by Rajendra Prasad, which led to a great confrontation with the then-Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Prasad, who confirmed the President should not intervene in executive and legislative business, also unfolded his role in discovering the soul of India. His confrontation with Nehru was not a battle for power, but a battle of ideas to rebuild India.

In his letter to chief ministers on August 1, 1951, Nehru stated that: It is little realised here what great injuries to our credit abroad is done by the communal organisations of India because they represent just the things which a Western mind dislikes intensely and can not understand. The recent inauguration of [the] Somnath temple with pomp and ceremony created a very bad impression abroad about India and her professions.

Prasad, differing outright with the PM, wrote to him, saying, By rising from its ashes again, this temple of Somnath is proclaiming to the world that no man and no power in the world can destroy that for which people have boundless faith and love in their hearts. Today, our attempt is not to rectify history. Our only aim is to proclaim anew our attachment to the faith, convictions and the values on which our religion has rested since immemorial ages India being a civilisational nation cant be provincialised, its roots go to hundreds and thousands of years celebrating umpteen diversities. The present challenge is to regain Indias identity through contextualising her age-old past.

Prasads letter to Gyanvati Darbar on March 26, 1959, unravels the civilisational role of the President of India: In the age of rationalism, where everything smacking of anything like religion and spiritualism is looked at askance, and when a wave of scepticism is carrying everything before it, at any rate, in the so-called educated and advanced and progressive people, it will be no small service if anything could be done to catch up with the spirit which made greater India, of which we are all proud, and of which we could get a glimpse in Cambodia, in Japan and even in Indonesia in ceremonies not in India but someday, we shall certainly regain and recover our balance.

A new President of India has to begin where Prasad left his great ideological legacies. In this regard, the election is not merely a political game of dice, but also a battle of ideologies. The office should be filled not with sectarian or other narrow considerations, but with an intent to privilege it with a philosopher-king. He must represent the soul of India, not a secularist soul. She should address not merely the present but posterity too. Besides constitutional requirements, his words and actions should be indicative of civilisational imperatives.

Rajendra Prasad aptly said, the country may throw out the ministry, not the president, for views. It is essential that the presidential candidate is not compromised, or used for the rehabilitation of a tired politician, but rather, is a positive mind who embraces the arduous task of the decolonisation of the Indian mind.The opposition parties and their intellectuals have lost their gravity and are

The opposition parties and their intellectuals have lost their gravity and are now defined more by what they oppose than what they support. Prime Minister Modi has combined the spirit of cultural legacies in his speeches, which are an assertion of a genuine idea of India, in the midst of ceaseless opposition from secularist forces. Therefore, the Presidents election would be far more than merely a defeat of the Opposition; it would be the resurrection of the spirit of Rajendra Prasad.

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New President for new India - The Indian Express

Romans chapter 1 says that we can look at the world around us and know that God exists and that he is very, very powerful. In my backyard are chickens, ducks, swans, sandhill cranes and moose. All of this points to the glory of God. If there is a painting, there must be a painter. If there is a building, there must be a builder. If there is a creation, there must be a creator.

If God exists (and he does), has he spoken? Yes! God has spoken to you and me through the Bible. Unfortunately, there are many wrong attitudes toward the Bible. One wrong attitude toward the Bible is rationalism. Rationalism says that the mind is supreme. People say, I think or, The Bible doesnt make sense to me. Extreme Rationalism is atheism or agnosticism. Gods Word is supreme.

Another wrong attitude is mysticism. Mysticism says that experience is supreme. Mysticism claims that experience is the final authority. A mystic says, If it fits my experience, it is correct and valid but if it doesnt fit my experience, it is invalid. No. The Bible is the final authority and all our experiences must be judged by Scripture. Experience is not the final authority for determining what is true and what is false.

Another wrong attitude toward the Bible is that of the cults. The cults teach that the Bible plus some other writing is supreme. The key mark of a cult is that while they affirm that the Bible is the Word of God they also affirm another writing as having equal inspiration.

The right attitude is the orthodox attitude. The Bible alone is the final authority and must be obeyed. Why do we believe the Bible? We believe the Bible based upon evidence. There is both internal and external evidence that the Bible is supernatural. The internal evidence is that the Bible claims to be inspired by God. 2 Timothy 3:16 says, All Scripture is inspired by God. Inspired means God breathed. Scripture is the product of the breath of God. He is the source of the very words themselves.

Jesus said in Matthew 5:18, For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the law until all is fulfilled. Jesus said, The entire universe can go out of existence before the smallest letter or stroke of the Old Testament will fail. It is permanent. It is unchanging. It is unwavering. It is eternal. It has authority. It is forever relevant and forever authoritative.

We also believe the Bible because of external evidence. God used forty different authors over sixteen hundred years in three different languages in six different parts of the world to write the Bible and yet there are no errors and no contradictions. Take any other subject, such as science, and choose forty authors who wrote over sixteen hundred years. Would there be any real unity? Of course not! The Koran was written by only one author- Mohammed. The continuity of the Bible is evidence of its supernatural origin.

No other book contains fulfilled prophecy like the Bible. The Bible predicted the birth of the messiah in Bethlehem six hundred years before his birth (Micah 5). The Bible predicted the death of the messiah by crucifixion one thousand years before his death (Psalm 22). The Bible predicted the messiah, Jesus, would come from the tribe of Judah seventeen hundred years before he came (Genesis 49).

One person said, The Bible is not a book we could write if we would, nor is the Bible a book man would write if he could. Best of all, the Bible points to Jesus. Only the Bible spells out sin for what it really is- rebellion against God. Only the Bible presents a cure that truly and honestly works- the substitutionary atonement of Jesus. Many, many people have experienced the supernatural working of Scripture in their lives. Charles Spurgeon said, The Word of God is like a lion. You dont have to defend a lion. All you have to do is let the lion loose, and the lion will defend itself. Read the Bible, obey the Bible and watch the power of God flow through your life!

Ethan Hansen is the pastor of Faith Bible Fellowship in Big Lake.

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God has spoken through the Bible | Faith | frontiersman.com - Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman

Education lobby group Equal Education says they are concerned the departments of education and transport are failing to plan for pupils when rationalising schools.

The NGO said education was failing to carry out proper consultations in some areas, while transport openly admitted their budget would not meet the increased need for scholar transport.

The education lobby group yesterday hosted a seminar aimed at reflecting on the progress made on the school rationalisation and realignment programme in the province.

The seminar which saw discussions around the progress of rationalisation with the focus on provision of school infrastructure and scholar transport was held in King Williams Town.

The department is in the process of closing 1902 schools with fewer than 135 pupils and merging them with more viable schools that have more pupils. The department earlier this year announced plans to close 136 schools by the end of this year.

Attending the seminar was a representative from the National Treasurys government technical assistant centre (GTAC), Phaphama Mfenyana, EE and community members.

EE deputy head Masixole Booi said they supported the provinces school rationalism and realignment if it was done in a consultative, democratic manner and was aimed at fixing schools and realising the deadlines outlined by the norms and standards for school infrastructure.

According to the South African Schools Act, the MEC must complete a proper consultation process before closing a public school.

After a school is closed, all assets and liabilities of the school owned by the state must go back to the department of public works to serve other purposes.

The lobby group said community members had complained about a lack of consultation in this process. Early this year, community members, parents and teachers in different areas where their schools are rationalised have complained about the lack of consultation and community engagement from the department.

There is no clear plan about things such as scholar transport, which means pupils are forced to walk long distances from home to their new schools, said Booi.

The Dispatch last week reported about parents from Mhala Public School in Tsholomnqa, who said their children were dropped by the system when the education department closed their school and merged it with a school 7km away without providing them with transport.

Some pupils had no choice but to walk to their new school after the old one closed at the end of May.

The parents from Mhala said that even though they were aware the school was listed for closure, they were not informed when the school would close.

Booi said that at a meeting on education district configuration that was held in Port Elizabeth earlier this year, MEC Mandla Makupula had acknowledged that in some areas the process was not communicated well to affected parties.

This is particularly worrisome, given the immediate challenge of not only school infrastructure in the province but also scholar transport, said Booi.

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Worry over no clear plan for closing schools - Daily dispatch

A call for moral toughness in an age of amoral niceness MercatorNet (blog) And while such threats have always been with us, our age seems to be entering a new realm, where both paganism and terrorism are aided and abetted by the uncontrollable fruits of man's rationalism. Compassion is the dominant ethos of our age, and the ...

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A call for moral toughness in an age of amoral niceness - MercatorNet (blog)

A decline in English majors at universities demonstrates that the field is losing popularity amongst students. This decline might be the result of a perceived impracticality of literature, but it should be considered whether its the field itself that is erring. An example that illustrates how the teaching of literature is failing short comes from one of its most important constituents poetry.

Poetry is a paradox. It is the most complex and inimitable expression of thought and consciousness, but it is also the most natural and ancient. Although a form of oral and written tradition that has persisted throughout the years, poetry is dismissed as unnecessary and impractical in literary education. The problem with teaching poetry is not that the language is too difficult; it is that the questions that poetry explores are no longer considered valid. Literary critic Harold Bloom described poetry as the crown of literature because it is a prophetic mode. To be prophetic, however, poetry needs to contain a wise understanding of truths about man in order to provide a glimpse into the future. Perhaps a decline in the popularity of poetry in classrooms is related to an increasing rejection of universal truths as a guiding principle for undertaking studies in literature.

Whenever an English teacher or student is asked to defend the value of their (seemingly) leisurely field, the argument tends to turn into a defense of literature as a way to teach effective communication. Effect, however, is synonymous with persuasion rather than formation. Literature, then, is a means for a tactic acquired rather than an exercise of thought and inquiry, and all that poetry is within the field of literature is merely complicated and flowery language for what could otherwise be stated directly. Instead of teaching students that, through poetry, they can inquire about the world and their place in it, they are taught that through poetry they can convince others about their individualized truths and feelings. These feelings become the authority in a classroom that denies objective truth and universal human experience as a product of poetry.

In 1833, John Stuart Mill stated that the object of poetry is to act upon the emotions, which is what distinguishes it from fact and science. While math and science does its work by convincing or persuading, poetry does so by moving. But students are no longer being moved by poetry because its aim in classrooms seems to be more in line with Mills understanding of science. In other words, poetry no longer moves the soul, it persuades the mind. The postmodern rendering of literary analysis has made poetry a practice in understanding subjectivity, and now poetry is dismissed because we no longer view it as a serious mode of study: we use it either as a test for our level of literary comprehension, or as a medium for our own exaltation. Yet the inquiring nature of poetry geared towards understanding life is what results in the moving of our soul because it is what allows us to connect with a strangers sentiments on a personal level. Poetry acts upon our emotions, but it achieves this in no small part by searching for a truth and understanding that we all share that truth.

Still, Mill was right to mark the distinction between poetry and science. Poetry is a form of inquiry and corroboration for what we call true beyond what can be scientifically proven. But much like math and science, good inquiry ought to lead us to gaze outwards, not inwards. While we do not use poetry to question the chemical composition of a flower and the seasonal changes that affect its growth and withering, we do use it to contemplate beauty and death. To say that there are universal truths to humans is to say that forms of art and self-expression are ultimately attempts at discovering and understanding what we cannot unveil through epistemological means. By believing that there is a right and a real that we can discern, forms of art such as poetry become a universal language to relate commonalities in our experiences. But when right and real are rendered subjective, so is poetry. Poetry, then, loses its legitimacy as a form of philosophical inquiry about the soul to which all of us can relate, and instead becomes an amateur form of life sharing to which only some of us can relate.

Now that truth has been declared a myth in education, the methods for teaching the liberal artsof which poetry is a parthave naturally been pulled towards two ends: either a scientific method form of explanation of human phenomena, or an inane outpouring of sentiments to express how we feel regardless of facts or reality. Neither of these ends, however, makes for a proper reading and creation of poetry. The rationalist, who thinks that we can know everything through reason alone, and therefore do not need tradition, invalidates art as a serious form of inquisition for knowledge about the world. The post-modern absurdist, who thinks there is nothing that can be known universally, renders poetry and art at large into a subjective form of expression where anything goes and nothing is true because its contents are swayed by irrevocable culture, class, race, and gender politics.

Needless to say, literature has moved more towards the postmodern end, which is why it is being taken less and less seriously as a field of study. If or when poetry is taught for emotional effect, it is taught in a form that makes the reading and writing of poetry seem like a sentimental exercise, the academic equivalent of a visit to a therapist for which you didnt sign up: A poem is displayed on paper as one would place a strange lab animal on a tray, ready to be dissected with a knife until it is broken up and broken down into analyzed, rationalized bits and pieces about the author and his intention for writing the poem rather than what the work is actually saying. At least Derrida gave the process an honest name.

It cannot be overstated that the use of poetry is collective, not individualist, which is why its use is vital for the preservation and understanding of our human history. Neither poetry nor its readers are apt to tear down the towers that humans have been building from a foundation of literary tradition as old as our very existence. If taught as a form of inquiry, poetry inculcates the importance of humility and tradition in knowledge: its verses invoke nature, mythology, history, literature, and other important facets of our human experience because we cannot know anything alone. We rely on our past to form an understanding of who we are, so although poetry is an individual practice, it becomes part of a communal form of inquiry directed towards discovering universal truths. Reading poetry can add another level to our tower of what has been said before. Poetry, then, should not be used against itself to throw spears at what weve built as a collective understanding, fortified throughout ages, of what it means to be human.

We are teaching poetry upside down by making students break down poems before they can appreciate them and grow with them. As a result, students become critics for a realm they have not yet explored to its fullest, because they have not yet lived long enough to do so. The use of poetry in a classroom should be neither overly practical nor overly sentimental. As poetry is a form of expression that is inquisitive and formative, it ought to be used for that very purpose: to form the minds of people who will likely ponder about the same things that people before them did. An appreciation for poetry is foundand it really requires seeking and effortin the space between the rationalism and postmodernism that is prevalent in our lives. If we continue to teach poetry from a utilitarian angle geared towards persuasion and analysis of our own subjectivity rather than as an inquisition for truth, it will lose its true effect as a medium that inspires us to look beyond ourselveswhat poet Dana Gioia accurately called poetry as enchantment.

Poetry appreciation is a nobler task than poetry analysis of criticism, and it is a seed that can be planted in our early years of education. Successful teaching of poetry where students walk away having their interests piqued and with a sense of inquiry about the nature of being is possible insofar as they understand that through reading someone else, they are reading themselves; through reading about another time, they are reading about their time. Students will only find a purpose in poetry if poetry is directed towards a sense of truth about existence that outweighs other forms of subjectivity. A proper teaching of poetry will motivate students to read and re-read poetry, since reading poetry over and over allows us to get something new every time: Truth reveals itself gradually through experience, after all. When we learn to read a poem for the questions that it raises and its effort at seeking a form of truth about the obscurities of life, we gain the virtue of patience to learn about the world and ourselves.

Nayeli Riano is a freelance writer, poet, and essayist from New Jersey. Her work has been featured on National Review Online and the blogs of the National Association of Scholars (NAS) and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA).

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Poetry? What for? | The American Conservative - The American Conservative

Nearly half a century after gay Marxist atheist Pier Paolo Pasolini shocked Italy by delivering a version of St. Matthew's Gospel that played the story relatively straight, director Joao Pedro Rodrigues offers a film about another saint, this time Anthony, though it's more in line with Derek Jarman's radically queer film about Saint Sebastian. Rodrigues takes key elements of Anthony's storyhe was born Fernando; he was shipwrecked on the way back from a mission; he held Jesus when he was an infant; "he had brought a young man back to life with a single magic breath"; and he had a "fascination with nature and animals"and irreverently reconfigures all of them into an erotic misadventure in which our hero is filled with the spirit groin-first.

Fernando (Paul Hamy), the titular ornithologist, is searching for black storks on a river when rapids send his kayak into some rocks around a nearby forest. Two Catholic pilgrims from China rescue him, but after he expresses doubts about malignant spirits in the forest and refuses to shepherd them through the evil, they decide to leave him tied to a tree, stripped to his underwear, bulging through the rope like a Gengoroh Tagame drawing. He escapes, but without a signal to reach his boyfriend back home, or anyone outside of the wooded hills, he descends further into limbo. Fernando's scientific rationalism, which at first treats his new surroundings and its inhabitants with a harried, anthropological remove, slowly gives way to a ramshackle spiritual immersion of grave historical import.

Director Rodrigues is contending with the lingering effects of Portuguese colonialism, pitting Fernando against the religious iconography his country once imprinted on its colonies. The story of Saint Anthony is thrust onto him, albeit in deliriously homoerotic fashion, whether it's getting urinated on by pagans or going skinny dipping with a deaf-mute goat herder named, you guessed it, Jesus. In a review of "Salo" and "Porcile," critic Jonathan Rosenbaum relays a friend's complaint that, "[t]he problem with Pasoliniis that he wants to be fucked by Jesus and Marx at the same time."

With "The Ornithologist," Rodrigues demonstrates how that's not a problem at all.

Directed by Joao Pedro Rodrigues, screening all week at the Parkway Theatre.

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"The Ornithologist," a groin-first film about Saint Anthony, at the Parkway this week - Baltimore City Paper

The Express Tribune (blog)

On the most delightfully strange match of this year's Champions Trophy The Express Tribune (blog) This was proper hostile bowling (think session 1 of a test match with overcast conditions at Headingley). The reason I say Pakistani is because the attack was so sudden and so unexpected (not in keeping with the scientific rationalism of modern day ... icc champions trophy: Latest News, Videos and Photos | Times of IndiaTimes of India all 844 news articles »

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On the most delightfully strange match of this year's Champions Trophy - The Express Tribune (blog)