Look up enviable in the dictionary…
About a year ago, I saw a printed advertisement for The Point magazine (probably in The Hedgehog Review, but I don’t remember), and I subscribed. Not too long after that, Mana Afsari’s excellent piece there started being passed around and linked to, and I excitedly took this as confirmation that this was a great subscription to add to the quiver.
Since then I have done nothing but question the value of that subscription. Possibly every article that I have read in The Point has been distinctly onto something, yet, it seems to me, without really knowing what to do with it. (Afsari’s piece was, to my reading, not quite an exception to this.) Admittedly putting myself at risk of exaggeration: If there was a group of people who were quite gifted at recognizing the true and the beautiful, but who didn’t actually believe that the true or the beautiful really exists, well, that’s more or less who and what I’ve felt like I’ve been reading there over the past year. It’s excellent exposure, but solid ground it has not.
That’s almost certainly more harsh than they’d appreciate, but as far as I can tell, it isn’t necessarily antithetical to their goals, which adhere “to no specific political or social agenda” but instead would have their readers “participate in a dialogue between diverse intellectual traditions, personalities and points of view.” That makes it a (potentially) great medium through which to pass, but by itself might also make one more sympathetic with the why-liberalism-failed feelings of Patrick Deneen.
All that being said, this week I’m finally sitting down with their summer issue, and I’m certainly hooked, even ready to be proven wrong. (Although it was one of the articles in this summer issue that sparked the above description.) The entire issue is dedicated to the question What is violence for?
How to contextualize these snapshots of “real” events within an everyday experience characterized increasingly by a sense of disembodiment, disorder and drift? Was violence, too, destined to collapse into the endless slop of “content”? Or, if properly attended to, could it still hold the potential to resensitize us to the reality of the shared world we inhabit as finite, moral selves?
The note from the editors is certainly worth reading.
I’ll add that one of the nice things about The Point is that it’s very easy to purchase a single issue if you like. (Here’s a link to purchase the Summer Issue.) Another nice thing: It is absolutely my favorite one to hold in my hands and read. The font is excellent; the margins are great; the paper is book-like, not magazine-like — in fact, it’s more like reading a book than any other magazine I’ve ever held.
I’m not sure if this manages to be a recommendation at all because I’m still not sure I recommend the magazine in general. But I don’t think you’d go wrong in picking up this issue.
Marsh River calmly heading off to join Sherman Lake
Marilynne Robinson — Ever the soft, serious, smiling blessing. Many good words worth sharing.
“Cast out the authority of this bad passion.” — An ancient warning from Thebes.
Bill Burr on the-nuts-running-the-nuthouse masculinity and getting out of it, and a lot more. Good listen.
Jeffrey Foucault’s latest is probably the best thing you’ll read today. Seriously.
I have two tickets to see him play in October and I am waaay excited. Summer had some unexpected twists and turns, so I haven’t touched as much grass as I intended. But then, fall is infinitely more my jam anyway. And I did feel some good cold air this morning :)
So here’s to some good music and good lyrics, to visiting more rivers, maybe even a few mountain peaks, and throwing fewer dead pigeons around. (You’ll have to read Foucault to get it.)
Currently Reading: In Search of the Human Face by Luigi Giussani 📚
Nothing is as fascinating as the discovery of the true dimension of my I, nothing so rich in surprises as the discovery of my own human face.
Absolutely excellent so far. In comparison, today I was reading this review of Allison Pugh’s The Last Human Job and a few things stood out — the magic and grace of connective labor being increasingly “disenchanted and automated”; Wall Street and Silicon Valley being “epicenters of the toniest nihilism”; and there’s this lovely view from the top:
As one venture capitalist muses, people “are interchangeable and not very mysterious, with behavior reducible to sixty-five steps.” Indeed, one technologist envisions the brave new world of cyber-connection as one in which we fleshly plebeians will have to choose whether we want to be “pets or livestock.”
But the review ends with this:
The drive to automate even the most intimate of human connections reflects one of the more insidious currents of our day: the desire to enter a prosthetic sublime, shorn of all the ineptitude and mortality of our condition. If we continue to make the work of connection a matter of data and algorithms—from the arduous work of therapy to finding romance on dating apps—we would certainly make our lives more rational, streamlined, and efficient. But if Pugh and her connective workers are right, we would also forfeit moments of “magic,” communion, grace, and love—experiences that open us up to the boundless and the ineffable. Perhaps, as those terms suggest, we defend the human best when we recall what is divine about ourselves.
Giussani seems just such a defender of the human, and a powerful one. So much of the above is adressed (all of it, even?) just in this short excerpt from the introduction. I even think it would be worth downloading a sample from Kindle just read the ~7-page introduction. There was also an excellent review of the book in Comment.