Simon notes the enormous popularity of Faustian fables in the nineteenth century, characterized by something new: “the possibility of people being victorious against the cloven-hoofed one, of being more talented in the skills of wit and duplicity.” …
Today… We’re all Faustians now. These days, Simon argues, in an excoriating, eloquent final chapter, we write our contracts not in blood but in silicon—both figuratively, insofar as we sign away our identities and privacies for all the short-term benefits of material ease, and literally, whenever we scroll rapidly through one of those unreadable online contracts, eager only to assent. Somewhere out there in the ether, the ghost in the machine hears our weak little mouse clicks and pricks up his horns.
Currently Reading: Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching by Ursula K. Le Guin 📚; and also: Walter Brueggemann’s Prophetic Imagination by Conrad L. Kanagy 📚
They’ve been standing next to each other on the queue shelf for months, and I’m curious what they’ve been talking about 🤓
The sacrificial Joker
Image from Steve Robinson
Also this:
This hand learned to print, color inside the lines, bathe a dead man, draw outside the lines, build houses, churches, high-rise offices and coffins, write cursive, wipe a tear, change the diapers of a child and a parent, pour a beer (both into a glass and down the drain), dig a grave, knead a loaf of bread dough, type a Master’s thesis, a blog post and a book manuscript, put a Band-aid on a boo-boo, cook for dozens and for one, turn a page, pull a trigger, bait a hook, clean a toilet, pet a mean dog, sew a button, point in the wrong direction, flip off an idiot, shake hands, beat an adversary, dress a bishop, caress a beloved, anoint the dead, wave goodbye, build a bobber motorcycle and twist its throttle, make a bar-chord and play the blues, torque a bolt, snap a picture, cleanse a chalice, handle a snake, slap my forehead, hang on too long and let go too soon….
“Whatsoever thine hand shall find to do, do with all thy might…” Ecclesiastes 9:10, and I have done so.
And there’s much more from Robinson’s “Free Pithless Thought.” That was a lovely gift in the inbox this morning. I’m going to feel like a glutton reading anything else today.
Flipping through Berry’s A Timbered Choir. I do think you can see the love and even the cheerfulness that Andrew Peterson has seen in Berry’s personality and hospitality.
Russel Moore’s tribute to Wendell Berry here is lovely.
I was at a medical conference at some mega church — and I do mean mega — in Louisville 6 or 7 years ago. This church had an enormous lobby, complete with its own giant escalator and substantial bookstore. I remember one of lecturers (half?) joking that if you wanted to know what was wrong with the church today, just go down to the bookstore in the lobby. “One of the best living writers lives 50 miles from here and there isn’t one of his books on the shelves.” He added that he’d asked the people who ran it about Wendell Berry. They said they’d never heard of him.
Conversations stopper of the day:
“Have you seen that trend on TickTock…?”
Even in soporific Canada, which always lagged behind, a leading television commentator lectured me that I presumed to judge the experience of the world from the viewpoint of my limited Soviet and prison camp experience,” Solzhenitsyn recalled. “Indeed, how true! Life and death, imprisonment and hunger, the cultivation of the soul despite the captivity of the body: how very limited this is compared to the bright world of political parties, yesterday’s numbers on the stock exchange, amusements without end, and exotic foreign travel!
Looking forward to adding We Have Ceased to See the Purpose to the bookshelf.
Anne Fadiman:
In San Diego, the manager of an electronics plant was so enthusiastic about one Hmong assembly worker that he tried to promote him to supervisor. The man quit, ashamed to accept a job that would place him above his Hmong coworkers.
For the many Hmong who live in high-unemployment areas, questions of advancement are often moot. They have no jobs at all. This is the reason the Hmong are routinely called this country’s “least successful refugees.” It is worth noting that the standard American tests of success that they have flunked are almost exclusively economic. If one applied social indices instead—such as rates of crime, child abuse, illegitimacy, and divorce—the Hmong would probably score better than most refugee groups (and also better than most Americans), but those are not the forms of success to which our culture assigns its highest priority. Instead, we have trained the spotlight on our best-loved index of failure, the welfare rolls.