I’ll start with a digression to the question, “What is paganism, really?” In a simple comparison of paganism vs Christianity (in the sense of comparison and not of combat), I’ll be able to better define the “world” from the Christian viewpoint but for modern sensibilities. I’ll write of higher paganism. To a pagan, the world … [Read more…]
For nearly 30 years, I’ve been writing novels and nonfiction, having sacrificed much of a chance of a good life of the normal sort, largely while deluding myself that some modest, or even substantial, financial rewards were coming in six months or, at worst, a year. Though I had personal problems and inclinations that led … [Read more…]
Over the past few centuries or more, Western Christians have retreated from a proper engagement with God’s Creation. Many modern scientists and philosophers now work actively to sequester religious beliefs in the most general sense. Sometimes this is as crude and as juvenile as claiming that the success of the equations of modern physics prove … [Read more…]
For years, I’ve been doing what might be called “deep analysis” about the decay of the Western Mind, an inseparable part of the decay of Western Civilization, that is—Western Christian Civilization. Along with this, at times inseparable from this, I’ve been doing “deeper analysis” of Creation and its relationship to the Creator. Much of what … [Read more…]
Fred Reed is still working away at his vocation of recent years: speaking to a mostly deaf American public about the more serious and fundamental problems confronting Americans or all of mankind in these early decades of the 21st century. That he takes himself, and his writing, less seriously than do many of our sages … [Read more…]
I’m writing this essay to set up my responses to Claes Ryn’s essay describing how the moral teachings and traditions of the West could re-establish some sort of peace in our world: The Moral Path to Peace. I’m planning for now to finish the set-up in this essay, following up on what I wrote in … [Read more…]
Shortly after I published my essay, Mathematical Models of Human History: Are They Plausible?, on the use of mathematical models in history, I saw an article by Stephanie Pappas summarizing some results of work done by Simon Powers, “a postdoctoral researcher in ecology and evolution at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.” Powers is working … [Read more…]
In this essay, I’ll sometimes write about the West as a whole and sometimes try to be more particular, especially in giving examples, by writing from the American viewpoint. In fact, it’s at least arguable that the current moral and social disorders of the West began in the United States. Henry James is said to … [Read more…]
I realize there are a multitude of good books out there I’ll never so much as open but sometimes I feel an urge to re-read a particularly good book. So it is that I’ve picked up The House of Intellect copyrighted by Jacques Barzun in 1959. In the first essay, he makes a nice distinction … [Read more…]
In an earlier posting, The Liberal Mind: What is politics?, I addressed the obvious question, “What is Politics?”. I covered a lot of ground to start off a line of reasoning tightly tied to my current goal of enriching our store of words and concepts for discussing our moral and social lives. While it’s true … [Read more…]