Monthly Archives: May 2022

Our contemporary decadence can be exhilarating. While life is faster, more hectic, more oversaturated than probably ever before, there are upsidesplaying games with friends across the world, instantly having tchotchkes delivered to your door, and so on. Of course, many decry the modern world's moral decadence and with cause. Like a sort of Potemkin village, humans have built a castle of technology on a foundation of sand, failing to plan ahead or account for ourselves as part of the muck from which we sprung.

Xenoglyph is keenly aware of this extremely tenuous existence. On their new LP Spiritfraud, the mysterious black metallers have crafted a Byzantine monstrosity. While much of black metal is fixated on some distant Nordic past warped by unhealthy nostalgia, Xenoglyph traces a meandering path from the recent past to the doomed future. Buoyed by currents of psychedelic synthesizers and propelled by eerie and unsettling black metal riffage, Spiritfraud is exploration of humans' inability to get out of our own way. This album asks whether or not we should've locked ourselves in a panopticon of our own makingXenoglyph plays a sort of Ian Malcolm role here, warning the worst is to follow.

From the hallucinatory squalls of "Mainframe Equilibrium" to the nihilistic whorl of "Acclamations of Emptiness," Xenoglyph uses a digital palette to paint a maximalist epic. There are moments adjacent to symphonic black metal and passages of pure dissonance, but the album feels wired together by melodic throughlines and deep sorrow. Spiritfraud feels like the work of a group genuinely interested in how we got here. This is no meandering philosophic screed, but an earnest effort to deal with the consequences of the unchecked pursuit of growth for its own sake.

The title track embodies all of this. From unconventional melody to blast beat-powered waves of terror, the melancholy is palpable. Unlike other dissonant, swirling black metal of this ilk, there's a surprising tenderness herehowever, that tenderness is couched in a dazzling, spiked carapace.

Says the group:

The track "Spiritfraud" is about reflecting back to simpler times, before our lives were fragmented by the abomination that is technology and the misery that comes with realizing our very spirit was counterfeited by our own inventions. Its like technology is a game of chess with yourself, except by merely playing the game, you inevitably put yourself in checkmate.

Stream "Spiritfraud" below. The full album will infect the musical mainframe on July 15, 2022 courtesy of Translation Loss Records.

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Xenoglyph Plugs into the Mainframe of Nihilism on Spiritfraud (Early Track Premiere) - Invisible Oranges

Writer Wendy Syfret had never been a believer in 'Aha' moments before she experienced one herself a few years ago.

Walking home from work one night, and feeling somewhat disillusioned with her lot in life, she came to the realisation that it just didn't matter.

One day she'll be dead and no one will remember anyway. Welcome to generation burnout.

Australian writer Wendy Syfret's new book is titled Photo: Supplied

Nihilism has existed in one form or another for hundreds of years, and it's back in fashion, especially with Millennials who have become known as the burnout generation.

Syfret joins the show to discuss her new book, The Sunny Nihilist: How a Meaningless Life Can Make You Truly Happy, and how nihilism can be used as a weapon against our obsession with meaning.

Life has no meaning, nothing matters, everything is just chaos and it just exists, Syfret tells Jim Mora.

But rather than that being a huge bummer, it can be liberating, she says.

Nihilism can be a weapon against our obsession with meaning in modern day life, and particularly the way that our very human and very understandable desire to find meaning in our life can be commodified and sold to us and used as a way to manipulate us and tell us what our lives are supposed to look like and how we're supposed to be happy, she says.

Her aha moment came as a noisy anxiety began to swell in her, she says.

I was obsessed with my job, put everything into it. It was a complete definer of my life, I've been told that my work was important, that I was important because of the work I did, that everything was so vital and you know, you're changing the world.

And it became a way to exploit me, you don't need to pay someone as much when you tell them that they're important, meaning becomes this very thin currency that you can pass over to people that distracts them from actually saying, wait a second, like, why am I working 14 hours a day and only earning as much as a waitress?

One day she was walking home and her stress levels were next level, she says.

I wasn't sleeping, I could barely eat, I was so miserable, at a level of stress that you would think would be associated to someone who was very important, which I really have to stress,I was not.

And I was walking home one day, just literally on the edge of panic attack, thinking I've got to get through the door before I actually collapse, like I can't breathe.

And this thought popped into my head, oh my God, who cares? One day, you're going to be dead,no one is going to remember any of the things you're supposed to complete today. No one's gonna remember you. No one's gonna remember this presentation, or this article or this assignment. This is all just going to disappear one day, and none of it matters. And as I said, it sounds like it's grim but I was shocked to be just completely overwhelmed by a sense of calm and freedom and peace.

We have become fixated on meaning, she believes.

We get meaning and value confused. And something I say is, I think things are meaningless, but I do believe things have value.

Your job has value, someone is paying you for it, you should respect them, you have made an agreement to do a job for a certain amount of time. You come to it with, again, a level of respect and kind of commitment. And then you expect from your employer to give you back, again, that level of support, commitment, and hopefully a livable wage.

And I think when you actually take meaning out of it, it can make that exchange feel a lot clearer and a lot more respectful.

Photo: Allen and Unwin

Nihilism makes the world smaller and bigger for her, she says.

It kind of returns you to yourself. So, it lets you think in the moment what right now is making me happy, what is valuable? What do I need to protect and cherish and spend time thinking about; and that might be managing to drink this cup of coffee before it gets cold. It might be spending time with someone you love, it might be eating the perfect peach on a summer's day.

It is not about endlessly validating your ego, she says.

What else has value to me, what else might not be meaningful in this very romantic sense of the word, but is something that I want to protect and treasure?

For me, I'm very interested in environmental activism, the protection of the planet, community engagement around those issues. That's something where I'm like this is bigger than myself, it's more important than myself. I can focus on this beyond myself.

She is respectful of people with faith and herself comes from a religious family, she says.

I think a lot of these things give you this sense of, again, whether it's a horoscope or a biblical scripture, this sense of a second life, or a second world or we're just moving through this thing.

And this present moment is just something we need to endure and kind of fix. So, we can get to the next better thing.

And I think where nihilism comes in and sits opposite that is it can say to you stop looking at the grass being greener on the other side, and actually pause in this moment and be like what is beautiful and special and nourishing.

She hopes people will take one simple message from her book.

It's just a way to recognise the things in your life that truly make you happy, and to hold them like clearly in your hand and not let all this noise and all this dogma coming from other people clutter that away.

Wendy Syfret is a journalist based in Melbourne, she's currently editor in chief of Rise, an online sustainable magazine. She used to be the managing editor of Vice Asia and she's written for The Guardian, the ABC, British Vogue, the Boston Globe.

Continue reading here:

How nihilism can be used as a weapon - RNZ

Alexis Rodriguez, of Buffalo, lights candles as people gather at the scene of a racist mass shooting at Tops Friendly Market in a historically Black neighborhood of Buffalo, N.Y., on May 16, 2022.

Photo: Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Imag

Before he walked into the Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo, New York, on a mission to murder as many innocent Black shoppers as he could, 18-year-old Payton Gendron posted a rambling manifesto online outlining his motives.

His reasoning was familiar from other far-right shooters: This country isnt going to be resource-rich enough for everyone in the future, so a race war over what is left is necessary today. However heinous, this vision of a bleak, impoverished future,in which there is not enough wealth to go around and the environment is near collapse, is motivating an ever-growing number of young men like him to carry out racist massacres across the West.

Addressing this violence requires considering the role of scarcity not a conspiracy theory, but a very real system of extreme inequality and ecological destruction.

People who commit acts of terrorism tend to act for more than one reason. The racist hatred of Gendron toward Black Americans, Jews, and immigrants was ultimately what made his murders possible. For that, many are to blame, including far-right politicians and talking heads who have continued to wink at the great replacement as being the true source of white Westerners troubles.

Addressing this violence, though, also requires considering the role of scarcity not a conspiracy theory, but a very real system of extreme inequality and ecological destruction. It is a systemin which the most wealthy and powerful continue to see their wealth and power grow at the expense of the masses. Faced with actual strained resources and environmental calamity, some of these forsaken people are turning to dark fantasies like the great replacement theory to make sense of it all.

This is not just about a toxic media ecosystem, but the larger way we have organized our lives in the West. This organizational structure could go by many names neoliberalism, consumer capitalism, exploitation but there can be little doubt that the pessimism it engenders is leading many young people into nihilism.

Faced with a shrinking economic pie and disastrous climate situation, many young people are now convinced that the world they become adults in will be poorer, more polluted, and less hopeful than that enjoyed by their parents and grandparents. It should not be surprising, then, that the appeal of apocalyptic ideologies is taking hold. The problems of economics and the environment are real, but the scapegoating is where the conspiracies come in: It doesnt take much to convince those already gloomy about their futures that the real culprits are immigrants and minorities.

That Gendron is a racist barely needs stating. His manifesto shows no concern for the humanity of nonwhite people, describing them as a pestilence to be eradicated from Western countries. He even advocates killing nonwhite children, arguing that if they are allowed to live, they will simply spawn more replacers a nod to the great replacement theory of demographic change promoted by other far-right shooters, which claims that white people are being inflicted with a genocide caused by low birthrates and immigration.

If there is a major theme besides racism that runs through Gendrons manifesto, it is simple pessimism about the future. In his writings, he concluded that the future of the U.S. will be one of economic decay and environmental collapse. With such a dire perspective, along with a belief that other races and ethnic groupsare both inferior to whitepeople and their natural enemies, his actions followed naturally from his worldview.

We should all be disturbed that he is clearly not alone in believing what he does.

Bullet holes are seen in the window of Tops Friendly Market at Jefferson Avenue and Riley Street, as federal investigators work the scene of a mass shooting on May 16, 2022 in Buffalo, NY..

Photo: Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

People who would never dream of carrying out such a crime and who have no sense of hatred for other races feel similarly bleak about the future. A recent study by UNICEF found that a majority of 15- to 24-year-olds in high-income countries had concluded that with wage stagnation, they will be worse off economically than their parents were.

Its not that there arent enough resources to go around in the U.S., but it feels that way to many when a relatively small number of people have been hoarding the wealth. At this point, its almost clich to point out that in the U.S. the 1st percentile of earners have seentheirwealth explode over the past several decades, while that of the bottom 50 percent of the country has remained completely stagnant.

Then theres the alarming state of the natural environment. The total failure of political elites and the wealthy to combat the climatecrisis is fueling despair among the young about whether they will even have a future at all. Although environmentalism is usually associated with the left today, the right has a long history of using concerns about ecological destruction as a recruiting tool. The politics of fear could easily leverage this as a major issue again, making it into a mass appeal to the disaffected; in the mass shooters, we are already seeing it happen on the fringes.

If we really want to see fewer tragedies like the racist murders in Buffalo, we need to combat the nihilism at the core of the shooters worldview.

A recent global survey found that over three-quarters of young people felt that the future would be frightening because of climate change, while fully 56 percent said that they thought humanity was doomed. The conviction that our political choices have doomed us to a future apocalypse is leading to a mental health crisis among young people in the U.S. and beyond.

At the same time, even liberal politicians who pay lip service to the issue seem unwilling or unable to do anything to deliver a plausible picture of a better environmental future. In his manifesto, Gendron went on about the continued destruction of the natural environment while concluding that racist murder was an acceptable way to help stop it.

If we really want to see fewer tragedies like the racist murders in Buffalo, we need to combat the nihilism at the core of the shooters worldview. Fighting racism itself is going to be a part of that effort. If wealth was not so concentrated, however, or if politicians acted as though the climatecrisis really mattered, there would be a smaller reservoir of nihilistic youths for right-wing extremists to recruit from in the first place.

The people with power in the U.S. today whose wealth has skyrocketed even as their fellow citizens prospects darken have the power to do a lot to change that mindset. An end to the class warfare that has enriched the wealthiest sliver of Americans while the rest suffer the ravages of stagnant wages, addiction, and family breakdown would be a good start. If the outlook for the future for young people doesnt get brighter, with more wealth to share and a climate capable of supporting life, we are going to see many more acts of mass murder in the future accompanied by the release of pitiful, imitative manifestos like that Gendron posted before wasting his life to take others.

See the rest here:

Real Scarcity Informed Buffalo Shooter's Racist Conspiracy - The Intercept

Everything Everywhere All at Once sure lives up to its title. The sci-fi comedy takes the red-pill mind-screw of The Matrix and multiplies it by infinity, writes Variety.

The feature stars Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn, a lowly laundromat owner who discovers that she can experience endless dimensions simultaneously. In the internal logic of the film, somewhere there is a universe in which anything that could have happened to Evelyn actually did happen. That means there is a timeline where she is living a parallel life as a huge Hong Kong action star, and an opera singer, and a maid, and a teppanyaki-style chef ad infinitum.

To infinity and beyond

Writers and co-directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert wanted that sense of infinity of all of the possible worlds, the depthless rabbit holes, and all of the tiny moving pieces underneath it to remain top-of-mind for the audience. Even if that meant fraying their minds.

The approach was to throw out the rules of traditional filmmaking and just whatever works then it works, says editor Paul Rogers. Dan and Daniel wanted to make a film, and then to break that film, and then we want it to rebuild itself.

Rogers previously worked with the filmmakers (collectively known as the Daniels) to make the equally absurd Swiss Army Man, which featured Daniel Radcliffe playing a flatulent corpse.

We wanted people to be overwhelmed and as confused as Evelyn is but not frustrated. More confused and curious. Theres a fine line between overwhelmed, curious and excited and overwhelmed and I cant take it any more. We trod that line carefully.

Theyd been working on Everything Everywhere for 6 or 7 years and although it seems like there was a lot of experimentation and there was almost all of it was already in their minds by the time we shot.

In prep, the Daniels spent an hour and a half acting out the movie scene by scene to Rogers. There was a big giant whiteboard on the wall with diagrams and sketches of all these universes marked- hotdog finger or Alphaverse or rock world. It was all nonsense at the beginning but it slowly became clear that we were telling a very emotional story.

A world of boundless choice

The script originally centred on a father and his attempt at reconciliation with his teen daughter. With Yeoh on board, the story remains a family drama at heart, which is why it has resonated with audiences, becoming a major hit for indie studio A24 and taking over $50 million worldwide.

You can also read it as an attempt to capture the staggering burden of trying to exist in a world of boundless choice.

If there was a bare bones unengaging story at the centre then the whole project would not work, says Rogers. Once wed established the emotion of a mother struggling to reconnect with her daughter then we could really go to town on all the other flights of fancy.

These are deliberately overcomplicated metaphors for the generational gaps, communication errors and ideological differences that might happen within any family. Critics say the unhinged imagination on display will leave viewers exhausted, but that could be intentional.

We wanted people to be overwhelmed and as confused as Evelyn is but not frustrated. More confused and curious. Theres a fine line between overwhelmed, curious and excited and overwhelmed and I cant take it any more. We trod that line carefully.

Surreal and comic imagery

In an era of information overload, the filmmakers arent afraid to overload the experience. Rogers uses split screens and blurry overlay effects. There are rapidly shifting light sources and dizzying flashing lights that disorient the viewer.

The shift between universes is often accompanied by a change in aspect ratio. Surreal and comic imagery includes an entire scene involving sentient rocks, a persons head explodes into confetti, a naked man flies in slow-motion toward the camera.

We did a lot of little split screens in the footage that youll never even notice, of just combining two takes or retiming a wide shot so that everyone is moving in symphony with each other.

Ive always loved making music videos where the budgets are so low it gives you an insane freedom to experiment. You get to stretch and push and massage that footage and reshape it with any tricks you can whether thats something as simple as sound design or colour or taking it into After Effects and tweaking things, changing out a background or a prop or an extra in the background.

We did a lot of little split screens in the footage that youll never even notice, of just combining two takes or retiming a wide shot so that everyone is moving in symphony with each other.

When Evelyns husband Waymond becomes Alpha Waymond in the Alpha universe of the film, Rogers devised a scraping metal Terminator like sound to coincide with when the character takes his glasses off. When a reversed bell sound rings, its another trigger to take the audience into another universe.

Stress after stress after stress

We were in post for a year. We had a three-hour cut which was too exhausting and frustrating. It took a lot of trims to get it that sweet spot. In retrospect, once youve seen the movie, the opening seems pretty chilled. But if you go back and watch it, its stress after stress after stress in the laundromat and then we kick it into second gear once the Alphaverse enters. Then it doesnt stop until the Rock universe.

The film squashes and stretches the conventional three-act dramatic structure to extremes, as if the movie itself were jumping through a fracturing multiverse.

We worked hard to make sure the Rock universe didnt arrive when the viewer was past the point of no return. We hit them with the Rock universe when theyre saying: I dont know if I can take any more! And we give them that pause for breath and then theyre hopefully prepared for the big final frantic push at the end of the film.

Much of Everything Everywhere was shot in a warehouse in Southern California. It was big enough that we could wreck one part of the building, then walk away and just go somewhere else in the complex to continue filming while our team restored the initial part of the building, says production designer Jason Kisvarday.

Jumping through a fractured multiverse

The film appears to satirise Marvels ever-expanding universe and arrives almost day and day with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, but Rogers says this is coincidental.

Dan and Daniel have been working on the idea of the multiverse long before it became a theme in blockbuster movies.

That said there are dozens of cinematic references in Everything Everywhere from The Matrix and 2001: A Space Odyssey to In the Mood For Love and Ratatouille.

Woven into the fabric of this film are a lot of Dan and Daniels favourite movies, Rogers says. One of them is Holy Motors, the 2012 fantasy drama film written and directed by Leos Carax.

We screened this film before starting as the type of film you can make if you disregard the rules, Rogers says. In Holy Motors you have no idea minute to minute even second to second whats going to happen next and thats a really exciting place to be as an audience member.

For me, Everything Everywheres core idea is embodied in Waymonds speech when he conveys the idea that we can overcome nihilism by embracing kindness. That is such a beautiful concept for me that I hoped audiences would response the same way.

Moviegoers with limber imaginations may well appreciate the lunatic ambition and nutso execution of this high-concept hurricane, says Variety, which ricochets like a live-action cartoon.

Less versatile viewers it warns, will emerge frazzled, like Wile E. Coyote after swallowing a stick of dynamite: their heads charred, blinking blankly as smoke wafts from their ears.

See more here:

Behind The Scenes: Everything Everywhere All At Once - IBC365

Letter to the Editor

May 17, 2022

Dear Editor:

We all have a right to be wrong. Laura Elliss article, Why I am a Pro-Choice Christian and Believe You Should Be Too while carefully constructed simply fails basic litmus tests for critical theological and biblical reflection. This letter will push back against some of the biases in Ellis opinion piece and will present a more rooted, realistic and traditionally Baptist response to the current abortion debate.

My basic thesis is that Christian Realism tempers reckless rhetoric regarding abortion and provides a necessary corrective to the biases of Ellis article. Christian Realism may be defined as the rejection of both idealism and nihilism in favor of a more biblically rooted, common-sense perspective on an individuals participation in everyday relationships. It is a third way, if you will, that frees us from the two most promoted sides of divisive issues in contemporary Western society: fundamentalistic legalism and humanistic liberalism. Christian Realism helps one to balance the possibilities of progress with the limitations of human nature.

In a nutshell, Christian Realism invites us to deal with what is, not with what should be. Ellis article deals more with shoulds than actualities and unsurprisingly comes across as substantively pretentious. Let us carefully consider, therefore, how we may temper the ideologically humanistic propensities of pretentiousness as well as the more conservative bent toward legalism. In doing so, we may better converse with those who either agree or disagree with Ellis to cooperate more fully for a greater good.

I offer four responses to Ellis here that highlight the need for Baptists to embrace Christian Realism when it comes to abortion.

First, the thesis that the United States Constitution protects a womans right to choose to have an abortion is more of an assumption than it is a realistic fact. We can argue effectively that Roe v. Wade turned the concept of a womans right to choose an abortion into law. Yet, making a concept into the law of the land hardly turns such a law into a fundamental human right. Shall we Baptists consider human rights, therefore, from a more biblical perspective rather than a conceptual one? In fact, this is an opportunistic season for asking ourselves, What is a basic human right, anyway?

I commend here the work of Baptist ethicist T.B. Maston, who rightly notes three such basic rights that free us from both the liberal and conservative rhetoric of our day: the right of worship or conscience, the right of the individual from dominance and control by the community, and the right of the individual to keep the rights and responsibilities of both the individual and community in proper balance.

If we take into account Mastons biblically based list of human rights, then we can rise above concepts and get into the realm of reality. For example, we can now conclude that a fetus is an autonomous individual, particularly following maternal-to-zygotic transition. In fact, if science was not so beholden to contemporary politics, concepts would be much less likely to be mistaken as basic human rights. It is therefore more realistic, scientific and biblical to say that a womans right becomes secondary to her responsibility to care for an autonomous being. The ability to terminate the autonomous fetus gives women more power than natural law allows, especially if we consider that all people (even those in the womb) are created in the image of God. Can we not conclude then that abortion is more realistically to be considered a symptom of matriarchy in Western culture than it is a fundamental human right?

But what about the mother in-and-of herself? What about her rights? Her rights must be balanced with responsibilities, especially if we accept Mastons conclusions. Sexual intercourse between a male and female not only involves a free choice, but it also comes with inherent risks that must be assumed by the choosers, namely the risk of conceiving a child.

Ellis argues that not all people have access to contraception as if this situation justifies abortions. Lets recall, however, that contraception may not work, even if one does have access to it. Consider that men who have had vasectomies (which are virtually 99.9% effective) must sign releases that they will not take legal action against their urologist should they conceive a child with a partner after the procedure. Access to contraception, or lack thereof, does not negate the inherent risks taken when a man and woman decide to have sex.

Second, the insinuation in Ellis article that mostly male lawmakers and clergy have no idea about what women go through in their menstrual cycles and pregnancies is not only unrealistic but also borders on ridiculous. Consider those men, like me, who have stood by and with their partners during excruciating difficult seasons of failed conceptions and miscarriages. It is, of course, physically and biologically impossible for a man to understand pregnancy fully, but this does not mean that men are incapable of making ethical, biblically informed decisions about the life of his child, at any stage of the childs life. If a woman appoints herself as the sole expert on gender, then we see taking shape a form of matriarchy that is just as cold and calculating as mansplaining. We may do well at this point to remember the rebuke of Reinhold Niebuhr, that we become evil at precisely the point at which we pretend not to be.

Third, the article posits some rather unrealistic and biased misconceptions about the Religious Right. As one who lived through the days in which the Religious Right thrived, I can argue that the organization or movement no longer exists as it once did. In reality, most Christians today at least the ones I have pastored for nearly 20 years mainly consider themselves politically homeless. The strawman argument which suggests all American evangelical Christians wear red MAGA hats and decorate the crosses in sanctuaries with American flags is largely a political stereotype used for drumming up money and votes by leftist political action groups.

Before attacking people on the Right or Left, would we be wiser to reconsider the more realistic approach to politics we find in the example of Jesus? Jesus seemed more indifferent than anything else to the politics of the Roman Empire. Obedience to God was not conditional upon any political group in power and certainly did not require a revolution or Christ forming a new government. When we drone on about either the Religious Right or the Left, it illustrates more about our desire to shame a group for refusing to fall in lockstep with us more than it does with our loving or praying for an enemy. Isnt it interesting how the oppressed generally take on the characteristics of the oppressor if ones focus is more on the self than it is on our Lord?

Fourth, lets consider more critical, realistic Christian responses to the white-hot abortion debate. Ellis shares a number of seemingly unrelatable quotes from clergy in her article that do little to enact desired change among readers. Take the Barnhart quote, for example. I know of no Christian who advocates for the unborn because it is a convenient practice. I can name numerous people whom I have pastored over the years who have given countless hours to counseling with pregnant women and confused fathers who are often quite scared and in dire need of encouragement.

Instead of sharing confusing quotes, shall we allow for a more robust biblically rooted analysis with regard to abortion? Time does not allow here for as rigorous a biblical treatment as is necessary, but a few examples will suffice. Paul the Apostle asked in 1 Corinthians 6:19, Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? Ones body therefore belongs to the Lord. This line of thinking basically dismantles the argument of My body, my choice. Maston bluntly offers: Your body is not your own business. Its Gods business. What would Jesus have us to do with our bodies?

Consider also that sexual intercourse makes a man and woman one flesh (Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:5). We consequently ask uncomfortable questions about why so many babies are conceived these days and then aborted. It is because humans are more apt to use sexuality in lustful ways than not (1 Corinthians 6:13)? Christian Realists agree then with Jesus that when significant death of the ego takes place and makes room for a more meaningful expression of sexuality, then male and female participants in a sexual union will find fulfillment by dying to self.

This point is where the rape argument can be considered. What if a woman was denied her choice to have sexual intercourse and a child was conceived? I would commend that one review the works of Kerry Baldwin on this matter. Baldwin argues that one victim (the mother who was raped) should not be allowed to do violence to a second victim (the autonomous fetus). More justice would be done if intense care was given over to bring the rapist to justice by forcing him at least to pay restitution or to be castrated. Perhaps both the government and churches have paid less attention to the injustice of rape rather than they have toward using both women and the unborn as pawns in their debates.

Lets get real. Being told that we should either be pro-choice or pro-life is too limiting for biblically based Christians, especially Baptists. Baptists are not ones who traditionally respond well to being told that they should or should not do something due to violations of our autonomy.

The same regard we have for our own congregational autonomy should be applied to the autonomy of the unborn. More realism and less politicized rhetoric may result in short-term pain, but we can be assured of long-term gain.

James Hassell, Austin, Texas

See original here:

Letter to the Editor: A response to Laura Ellis on abortion and Christian Realism - Baptist News Global

I was a little bit apprehensive going into On The Count Of Threea pitch-black comedy-drama from writers Ari Katcher (Ramy) and Ryan Welch (also Ramy) and first-time director (and co-lead here), comedian Jerrod Carmichaelwhich at its most basic is a story about two depressed friends who, after both coming to the conclusion that things really cannot get any better, make a pact to kill each other. The film opens with the pair in a strip club parking lot in the cold light of day, each pointing a handgun point-blank at the others head. Pretty dark stuff. But the darkness itself is not why I was apprehensive. I love black comedies. Seeing someone mine the darkest depths of human experience for laughs can be a vivifying, electric experienceif its done well. Its those times that it doesnt work, thats when things can get real cringe-worthy, real quickly. And its not easy to avoid that trap. Black comedies can be some of the hardest things to pull off.

Luckily, On The Count Of Three dances around the cringe chasm with surprising skill, avoiding for the most part the pitfalls that usually come with the subject matter: fourteen-year-old edgelordism, cheap nihilism, and insensitivity to a very real, very serious issue. Suicide is a major public health concern in many parts of the world. In the US, numbers from 2019 show that rates of taking ones own life have been rising steadily since at least 1999, becoming by then the tenth leading cause of death overall in the country. For people aged between 10 and 34, it was the second leading cause of death. Among those aged between 35 and 44, it was the fourth leading cause. In addition, suicide rates in 2019 among men were roughly 3.7 times higher than among women. It is this latter dramatic statistic that informs On The Count Of Three, which weaves into its narrative fabric other features of the lethally toxic patriarchy that harm those who identify as male as well as those who do not. The men in this story have suffered greatly at the hands of this structural violence, as it manifested itself through individuals in the form of physical, verbal, and sexual abuse. That combined with the hopelessness of the current economic climate has led them to a point of no return, which is where we meet them, in that desolate strip club parking lot, the cold light of day glinting off their handguns.

That sounds like a lot. And it is. Any story that attempts to tackle heavy issues like these has to pass one basic test first: Is its heart in the right place? Does it treat its characters with empathy and the issues at hand with the gravity they deserve? If not, if its going for something more twisted, does it pull off the comedic sleight of hand and tonal juggling act well enough to justify its existence? The latter is a very particular high wire act that usually requires a dash of heightened reality and a deft writing hand indeedand not everyone can be as good as the team behind Its Always Sunny In Philadelphia. On The Count Of Three doesnt go for that approach. It is fundamentally a comedy, but it is a relatively grounded one. The laughs dont come particularly big here; and while there probably could have been more, and better ones, it succeeds more than it fails at mixing in what seems like a genuine concern and love for its characters with the lighter moments that provide some dynamic shading to the story.

That story follows one of my favourite narrative templates: Condensed, almost-real time. Whether its films that take place over the course of one night, or over a few conversations, Im a big fan of the emotional zooming-in that such structural devices allow. On The Count Of Three film revolves around the central pair of Val (Jerrod Carmichael) and Kevin (Christopher Abbott), late-twenty-something (or thereabouts) lifelong friends, who decide to have one final day together before ending things once and for all. Its here that we can see the films strongest aspects, as well as its most apparent weaknesses. Carmichael and Abbott do good work and ground the story in humanity, but the script lets them down. While the necessary affection and empathy for them is present, the heavy lifting that the writing should doto let us really know them as individuals, and to feel the bond between themnever quite materializes. We are repeatedly told that Val and Kevin are the tightest of friends, but only once in a while does that actually come across. Similarly, we are almost always kept at a slight distance, with the glimpses into their interior lives shown here not proving quite enough. The two central characters are supported by a talented cast of guest players over the course of the films 1 hour 26 minutesincluding Tiffany Haddish, J.B. Smoove, Lavell Crawford, and Henry Winkler, all effortlessly capablebut its undeniable that more development would have elevated proceedings.

That feeling extends to the films exploration of its themes. While it should be applauded for daring to tackle such heavy issues as it does, it ends up feeling slighter than it should, andinterestinglylonger than it actually is. In addition, there are occasional moments throughoutespecially one right near the end, I wont spoil anythingthat seem to contradict its central message, or at least dilute it. Cinematically, too, proceedings are competent, if uninspired. This is not amateur cinematography by any means, but when measured against something like another recent debut, Emmanuel Marre and Julie Lecoustres fantastic and visually rich Zero F*cks Given, it cant help but suffer by comparison. Still, though, On The Count Of Three, is Carmichaels first film, and despite its shortcomings, it makes me curious to see what the filmmaker will do next.

On the Count of Three is available digitally via Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, Vudu, YouTube Red, Google Play, and Microsoft Store.

Suicide hotlines: (US: 1-800-273-8255; UK: +44 (0) 8457 90 90 90)

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Review: 'On The Count Of Three' Just About Pulls Off the Tonal High-Wire Act It Needs To - Pajiba Entertainment News

I time-traveled between two worlds on Sunday, the day before Politico released the leaked, in-your-face draft opinion by Republican-appointed Justice Samuel Alito that revealed that the Supreme Court will overturn Roe vs. Wade.

The first world I traveled to further fueled my fear that I might never escape from this Trumpist hell on earth before I die. That Sundays New York Times, starting on the front page and consuming six full pages inside, presented its readers with the first of a two-part turgid accounting of How Tucker Carlson Stoked White Fear to Conquer Cable News.

Labeled American Nationalist in the articles headline, the deeply researched NYT series describes what may be the most racist show in the history of cable news and also, by some measures, the most successful. That measure of success is the largest megaphone for Fox News in all of cable television with 3.385 million viewers for Tucker Carlson Tonight in January followed closely by Hannity with 3.168 million viewers.

Carlson and company are throwing carefully crafted cannisters of editorial gasoline on the anti-immigrant flames that surged in the wake of 9/11. Carlson, who claims to be an enemy of prejudice, has accused impoverished immigrants of making America dirty reports the Times. Night after night Carlson warns his viewers that they inhabit a civilization under siege by violent Black Lives Matter protesters, by diseased migrants from south of the border, by refugees importing alien cultures, and by tech companies and cultural elites who silence them, or label them racist. Carlson and Fox News are furiously fueling the flames of nationalistic nihilism in America. This was confirmed on Monday night when I made myself watch Hannity and companions enjoy and excoriate the liberal anguish in the crowds of protesters throughout America protesting the Alito Roe vs. Wade majority draft opinion. Alito writes that the Constitution does not include abortion in it. That the 55 Christian white men who crafted the document included nothing about women at all does not appear to concern him.

My personal dismay is the fact that millions of voters somehow dont get it. One of the reasons they dont get it is because we are all living in a world of manufactured disinformation blaring at us through digital megaphones.

My iPhones digital timer rescued me from reading more about Carlson with a reminder that it was time for me to travel to a life-affirming world outside the depressing news in my living room. That world, on that warm May Sunday, was a concert in the always uplifting embrace of music that is the Brick Church Music series in the First Church in old Deerfield. The concert, the last in this seasons series, featured Thomas Pousont on the churchs extraordinary Richards, Fowkes & Company Opus 13 tracker organ with Thomas Bergeron on the trumpet.

I have been a lover of organ music since my days in the mid-60s when I first heard South Philadelphia native Joey DeFrancesco on the Hammond B-3 organ with its Leslie Speaker. He led me to other jazz organists like Jimmy Smith and Garth Hudson.

Later in New York City in the early 70s, I was introduced to E. Power Biggs and his classic organ repertoire. I still have his recording of Johann Sebastian Bachs Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, (BWV 565), perhaps the best-known solo organ piece in the world. There is something about the floor shaking sub bass that can envelope body and soul, especially when Bach commands the keyboards, stops and foot pedals.

Pousont and Bergeron, colleagues in various music programs at Deerfield Academy, wrapped me in a sonic serendipity that transcended the printed words that had darkened my Sunday morning. Bergerons trumpet added a seamless upper voice to the range on First Churchs classic tracker organ. Pousont and Bergeron are brilliant collaborators.

Pousonts son Dorian, fresh out of Princeton University and on his way to medical school, supported his fathers performance of Harmonies by GyrgyLigeti. This 1967 composition required a second set of hands to push, pull and slide the many stops to evoke sounds rarely heard on any organ.

Ive run out of space. But I will long remember how Pousont demonstrated Bachs mastery of the organ once again by calling forth the full range of the instruments voices in his luminous performance of Bachs Fantasia & Fugue in G (BWV 542).

What, I keep asking myself, would it take for us all live in a world of harmony?

Connecting the Dots appears every other Saturday in the Recorder. Greenfield resident John Bos is a contributing writer for Green Energy Times and his essays about our climate crisis have appeared in many regional newspapers. Questions and comments are invited at john01370@gmail.com.

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The Recorder - Connecting the Dots: Worlds of difference - The Recorder

Its a tired clich to note that the movie industry is derivative. Anyone who owns both Deep Impact and Armageddon on DVD could speak from similar authority.

But the most unique insights about our culture are found in such repetition. With apologies to Tipper Gore, our media doesnt shape us; rather, our societal neuroses craft media in our image. It might seem odd to close out the 1990s with two films about extinction via meteorite, but then again, a country that had recently learned more than necessary about its presidents proclivities might just long for sweet annihilation instead.

So, what do we make of the recent cultural takeover of the multiverse? For anyone who doesnt follow Neil deGrasse Tyson on Twitter, the multiverse is a theoretical concept that trades the conventional understanding of the universe with one where every single possible permutation exists simultaneously. For example, there could be a universe where your skin is blue, or where you are the fifth Beatle, or even one where you chose to do something more productive than read this.

Two films currently in theaters, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Everything Everywhere All at Once, have fun entertaining this theory. The popular animated TV show Rick & Morty has made it its bread and butter for years now. (If you dont know about Rick & Morty, ask the nearest 13-year-old boy you encounter. If none are available, simply insult the show on social media and they will find you.)

Then what societal longing are these media fulfilling, enough to justify enough elbow room for mutual coexistence? Quite simply, everything. The multiverse is modernitys fumbling grasp for meaning, transcendence cloaked in the guise of tolerable science. In a world thats in a hurry to abandon religion, the multiverse tries to fill the growing void left in its wake.

Doctor Strange, Everything Everywhere, and Rick and Morty all make feints at nihilism, if not absurdism. Nihilism in the multiverse does make some sense. Its hard enough to be alone in the universe, but when there are trillions of universes and thus trillions of versions of yourself, you lose even your authenticity. There is no lonelier place than a crowd.

Rick Sanchez in "Rick and Morty." (IMDB)

But interestingly, all three of these media ignore the implications and insist on their preeminence to a bored cosmos. Protagonist Rick Sanchez is consistently the smartest scientist in whatever world he enters. Michelle Yeohs lowly laundromat owner in Everything Everywhere All at Once is sought out across the multiverse because she alone possesses the skills to defeat a trans-universal evil. And the Doctor Strange from our universe proves to be the only version of himself that doesnt betray his friends.

Devotees of reincarnation are unfailingly convinced they were Charlemagne in a past life. None suspect that they cleaned his chamber pot, or perhaps were the pot itself. The same goes for proponents of the multiverse. They understand statistically that they are just a sprinkle on the galactic donut, but cant shake the notion that they are somehow the filling. A character in Everything Everywhere decries that ever since the emergence of the heliocentric theory, humanity has been in steady retreat from cosmic importance.

Christianity affirms that despite ones location, we are made in the image of God and can thus safely reconcile our conflicting significance. But the secular world cannot justify that innate self-worth. The world still requires a savior, and somehow the savior that rises is always the audience surrogate. Everyone else is merely a side character; they, and thus we, are the protagonists of reality.

The contradictions continue with morality. By the logic of the multiverse, moral relativism should be the name of the game. Yet oddly, none of the multiverses pursue this ethical freedom. Instead they opt for a more fuzzy framework. In the cinematic multiverse, a declawed Christian ethic becomes, quite literally, a universal moral code.

Look no further than one of the many climaxes of Everything Everywhere (it makes Return of the King look positively concise), where a character argues that we have to be kind, especially when we dont know whats going on.

Michelle Yeoh, center, in "Everything Everywhere All at Once." (IMDB)

This is a truly marvelous trick. It dissolves any demands to traditional strictures, reducing morality to a peacefully vague platitude. In a truly indifferent multiverse, true kindness has no real rationality besides not rocking the proverbial boat. In yet another climax of that film, Michelle Yeohs Evelyn uses her trans-universal knowledge to satisfy her various combatants with material or sexual satisfaction. But this isnt true benevolence, its more like pacification by satiation. In the morality of the multiverse, kindness is more sedative than love.

The real danger of the multiverse is that it replaces not only the fruits of religion, but even God itself. The main thesis of Everything Everywhere is that our lives are meaningless to the infinity of the cosmos, so whatever meaning can be found in creation lies in the material. But thats like saying we need to pretend oxygen exists in order to breathe.

Similarly, the message of Doctor Strange 2 is that if you cant be happy, you can at least find solace that a version of you out there is living your best life. Heaven does become our own earth. The multiverse provides a do-it-yourself solution to age-old questions of purpose and the afterlife. Perhaps most revealing is a quote late in Everything Everywhere, where our hero declares that the universe made me your mother. Rather than killing God, the multiverse subtly replaces it. God remains a Father, but a cool one that lets you drink in the house.

If this interpretation of the metaverse sounds like a freshman course in existentialism, thats because it ultimately is. The cinematic portrayal of the multiverse is fundamentally juvenile, allowing budding Sartres, too cowardly for Camus, to have their cake and eat it too. The multiverse is essentially the Netflix version of theology; when presented with thousands of options, it becomes far preferable to scroll instead of simply select.

As Chesterton said, the danger of losing God isnt that well believe in nothing, but rather anything. Even all at once.

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Think you can find meaning in the multiverse? Good luck. - Angelus News