Category Archives: Nihilism

Every day billions of people devote a significant amount of time to worshiping an imaginary being. More precisely, they praise, exalt, and pray to the God of the major Abrahamic religions. They put their hopes inand they feara transcendent, supernatural deity that, they believe, created the world and now exercises providence over it.

In the prophetic writings of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, this God appears endowed with familiar psychological and moral characteristics. Hethe Abrahamic God is typically conceived as masculinehas knowledge, perception, intention, volition, and desire, and He experiences emotions such as jealousy, disappointment, pleasure, and sadness. God is powerful and free, unconstrained in His omnipotence. He issues commandments that He expects to be fulfilled, and He exercises harsh judgment over those who fail to obey them. God is also good, benevolent, and merciful, and the providential plan conceived and pursued by God is grounded in wisdom and justice.

This all-too-human God does not exist, or so argues the seventeenth-century philosopher Bento de Spinoza.1 Such a divinity is a superstitious fiction, he claims, grounded in the irrational passions of human beings who daily suffer the vicissitudes of nature. Feeling lost and abandoned in an insecure world that does not cater to their wishes and yet, at the same time, finding in that world an order and convenience that seems more than accidental, they imagine a governing Spirit that, on the model of human agency, directs all things toward certain ends. Here is how Spinoza describes the common psychological process:

They findboth in themselves and outside themselvesmany means that are very helpful in seeking their own advantage, e.g., eyes for seeing, teeth for chewing, plants and animals for food, the sun for light, the sea for supporting fish. Hence, they consider all natural things as means to their own advantage. And knowing that they had found these means, not provided them for themselves, they had reason to believe that there was someone else who had prepared those means for their use. For after they considered things as means, they could not believe that the things had made themselves; but from the means they were accustomed to prepare for themselves, they had to infer that there was a ruler, or a number of rulers of nature, endowed with human freedom, who had taken care of all things for them, and made all things for their use.2

A comforting thought indeed, but no more true for the consolation it brings. Such people who feign a God like man...wander far from the true knowledge of God. There is no transcendent deity; there is no supernatural being, no being who is separate or different from or beyond Nature. There was no creation; there will be no final judgment. There is only Nature and what belongs to Nature.

The word God is still available, even useful, particularly as it captures certain essential features of Nature that constitute (at least among philosophers in Spinozas time) the definition of God: Nature is an eternal, infinite, necessarily existing substance, the most real and self-caused cause of whatever else is real. (Spinoza defines substance, the basic category of his metaphysics, as what is in itself and conceived through itself, that is, what has true ontological and epistemological independence.) Thus, God is nothing distinct from Nature itself. God is Nature, and Nature is all there is. This is why Spinoza prefers the phrase Deus sive Natura (God or Nature).

Early in his philosophical masterpiece, the Ethics, Spinoza says that whatever is, is in God, and from the necessity of the divine nature there must follow infinitely many things in infinitely many ways.3 All things, without exception, are in and a part of Nature; they are governed by the principles of Nature and brought about by other natural causes. Spinoza can be read either as a pantheistand historically this seems to be far and away the most common interpretationor as an atheist, as some of his most vehement critics (and fans) have done. Either way, what is non-negotiable is the denial of the personal, anthropomorphic Abrahamic God.4

It follows that there is, and can be, no such thing as divine providence, at least as this is typically understood. Everything that happens in Nature and by Natures laws happens with blind, absolute necessity. Every thing and every state of affairs is causally determined to be as it is. Neither Nature itself nor anything in Nature could have been otherwise. As Spinoza puts it, In nature there is nothing contingent, but all things have been determined from the necessity of the divine nature to exist and produce an effect in a certain way.5 In Spinozas view, this is not the best of all possible worlds; it is not even one among many possible worlds. This is the only possible world. Things could have been produced by God in no other way, and in no other order than they have been produced. 6

Needless to say, there are not, and cannot be, miracles, understood as divinely caused exceptions to the laws of nature. It is not just that miracles are highly unlikely or difficult to detectthey are metaphysically impossible. Nature cannot possibly contravene its own necessary ways. Events we take to be miraculous are simply those of whose natural causal explanation we are ignorant. Nothing happens in nature which is contrary to its universal laws....The term miracle cannot be understood except in relation to mens opinions, and means nothing but a work whose natural cause we cannot explain by the example of another familiar thing, or at least which cannot be so explained by the one who writes or relates the miracle.7

Teleology, too, is a fiction.8 There are no purposes for Nature and no purposes in Nature. Nature itself does not exist for the sake of anything else, and nothing is directed by Nature toward any end. Whatever is, just is; whatever happens, just happens (and had to happen). Neither the universe itself nor anything in the universe was created to achieve some goal.

What is true for teleology is also true of moral and aesthetic values. Nothing is good or bad or beautiful or ugly in itself. As far as good and evil are concerned, they also indicate nothing positive in things, considered in themselves, nor are they anything other than modes of thinking, or notions we form because we compare things to one another.9 God did not create the world because it was good; nor is the world good because God created it. Again, whatever is, just is and had to be as it is, period.

Such is the universe that Spinoza describes and establishes through the geometrical methoda series of definitions, axioms, demonstrated propositions, corollaries, and scholiain the metaphysical parts of the Ethics. It seems, on the face of it, a rather bleak picture, one worthy of the most radical form of nihilism.

But there is more.

The inviolable necessity of Nature governs not only the world of physical bodieswhere apples fall from trees and rocks roll down hillsbut also the domain of human activity, including whatever happens in the human mind. Thoughts, ideas, intentions, feelings, judgments, desires, even volitionsour everyday acts of willing and choosingare all as strictly necessitated by the laws of thought as bodies in motion are by the laws of physics. Indeed, Spinoza boldly proclaims in the beginning of Part Three of the Ethics, where he turns to human psychology, I will treat the nature and powers of the emotions, and the power of the mind over them, by the same method by which, in the preceding parts, I treated God and the mind, and I shall consider human actions and appetites as if it were a question of lines, planes and bodies.10 One mental act or psychological event follows another with the same necessity and deductive certainty with which it follows from the nature of the triangle that its interior angles add up to 180 degrees. In the mind, no less than among bodies, a strict causal determinism rules, and nothing could have been otherwise than as it is.

This means that there is no such thing as freedom of the will. The idea that what one wills or desires or chooses is a kind of spontaneous act of mindpossibly influenced by other mental items, such as beliefs or emotions, or states of the body, but by no means absolutely determined by themis an illusion. All men are born ignorant of the causes of things....[They] think themselves free because they are conscious of their volitions and their appetite, and do not think even in their dreams, of the causes by which they are disposed to wanting and willing, because they are ignorant of those causes.11 There is, to be sure, a kind of freedom available to human beings, and it is in our best interest to strive to attain it; this is what the Ethics is all about. But human freedom does not, and cannot, consist in the classic capacity to have chosen or willed or acted otherwise than as one did. In the mind, there is no absolute, or free, will, but the mind is determined to will this or that by a cause which is also determined by another, and this again by another, and so to infinity.12

There is no point in lamenting any of thisthe demise of a providential God, the emptying of the world of all meanings and values, our loss of free willor wishing things were different (since they could not possibly be different). To spend ones life in a state of passive resignation or bewailing ones fate and cursing Nature for the hand one has been dealt is not only a waste of time, but irrational and harmful. It is, in effect, to suffer, and to be (in Spinozas word) a slave to the passions.

But what is the alternative? Is there, within that eternal, infinite, necessary, deterministic, and meaningless world, a way for finite, mortal beings such as we are, subject to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, to flourish? When there is no wise, just, and providential God directing things to some end, when everything is governed by an inviolable, lawlike necessity and nothing could have been otherwise, can we nevertheless hope to achieve, through our own resources and effort, a life of well-being, even blessedness and salvation?

It is precisely this question that moved Spinoza, around the time of his herem (ban or excommunication) from the Amsterdam Portuguese-Jewish community, to abandon the life of a merchant and begin investigating that deepest and most important of moral inquiries: what is human happiness and how can it be achieved?

This is an excerpt from Think Least of Death:Spinoza on How to Live and How to Die bySteven Nadler.

Steven Nadleris Vilas Research Professor and the William H. Hay II Professor of Philosophy at the University of WisconsinMadison. His many books includeRembrandts Jews, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize,Spinoza: A Life, and (with Lawrence Shapiro)When Bad Thinking Happens to Good People: How Philosophy Can Save Us from Ourselves(Princeton).

1. Bento was Spinozas given name in the Portuguese-Jewish community of Amsterdam. Baruch was the Hebrew name used in the synagogue, and Benedictus is the Latin version of his name that appears in his published writings. All three names mean blessed.

2. Ethics I, Appendix, G II.7879/C I.44041.

3. Ethics Ip15 and Ip16.

4. For pantheistic readings, see Bennett (1984) and Curley (1988). For an atheistic reading, see Nadler (2008).

5. Ethics Ip29.

6. Ethics Ip33.

7. TTP VI, G III.8384/C II.15455.

8. The place of teleology in Spinozas philosophy is a topic of much discussion. For attempts to find a role for it in his system, see Garrett (1999) and Lin (2006b).

9. Ethics IV, Preface, G II.208/C I.545.

10. Ethics III, Preface, G II.138/C I.492.

11. Ethics, Appendix, G II.78/C I.440.

12. Ethics IIp48.

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A new way of life - Princeton University Press

2022 already has a Film of the Year nominee and thats the acclaimed sci-fi action-drama Everything, Everywhere at the Same Time.

Directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (known artistically as Daniels), the narrative starts from a simple premise already seen in several other productions on the film circuit the multiverse. The plot centers on Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh in Career Best Performance), a Chinese woman who is about to be audited and lose the washing powder she owns next to her husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan). However, Evelyn discovers the endless facets of a multiverse that is about to collide and sees her as a rallying point to prevent everything she knows from collapsing in the blink of an eye. . And, unlike similar works, such as the recent Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the production dives headlong into the aesthetics of the absurd and offers a journey full of incredible fight sequences, fantastic performances and impeccable dialogues that range from existentialism to philosophical nihilism.

Despite the films many themes, one plays a central role in building the arcs and, because its presented so subtly, goes unnoticed by the audience: language.

The concept of language is not rigid and is a subject of analysis by several linguists, historians and philosophers. The Russian thinker Mikhail Bakhtin, for example, discriminates language as the system of language, the substance of which is constituted by the social phenomenon of verbal interaction, realized through utterances; in this way, the construction between interlocutors is essential for language and language to exist and, in this way, there is dialogism between one person and another.

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And what is the relationship with Everything, everywhere at the same time?

Even though Evelyn has huge problems on her hands, one of the obstacles she faces along her journey is the constant conflict between her Asian roots and all the characters around her even her own, who struggle to build an identity that is bombarded by the social roles it has to play. This is how the clashes between Evelyn and her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu), her father Gong Gong (James Hong) and even IRS employee Deirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis) come to life in a metaphysical explosion that explores the language barriers in an original and thoughtful way. way, leading us to understand what is shown on the big screen instead of just teaching us from coercive didacticism.

The first layer to examine is the almost belligerent relationship between Evelyn and Joy. As a child, Evelyn was all but disowned by her family for choosing to marry Waymond, transferring the traumas of needing to be the perfect girl to Joy who was already shunning the heteronormative, Asian construct Evelyn had cultivated since her youth. But Joy refuses to be someone other than what she is, which fuels the clash of generations and foreshadows future events. In this respect, it is language that serves as a support for reiterating the conflict: Evelyn unfolds in several personalities to respond to the request that is asked of her, both from the father and from the daughter. It is for this reason that the protagonists lines waver between Mandarin and English, as if searching for common ground to converse with the two and regain the long-lost concept of family. Joy, on the other hand, seems to be moving away from the cultural roots of her father and mother by refusing, albeit unconsciously, to learn Mandarin: if the linguistic distance between her and her mother was already perceptible, the chasm between her and his grandfather is screaming.

The second layer, although less explored, rises between Evelyn and Gong Gong. Even after starting a family and establishing her own business, she still bows her head to her fathers sense of superiority, as if seeking approval lost for decades. In that same desperate tumult, she also cant shake off destructive thoughts about what her life might have been like had she not married Waymond and followed her dream of being an actress a glimpse we see in one dimensions of the multiverse. However, the weight of dishonor, so to speak, is even greater when Evelyn cannot resort to the linguistic evasion of English to express her feelings for her father, returning, in a gesture obliged, to the Cantonese dialect the roots of which still extend to permeate your mind and leave you locked in a bind.

Now even Evelyn and Deirdres relationship faces similar obstacles: the character played by Curtis is the ultimate representation of American predatory neo-imperialism, whose lack of empathy with Evelyns daily struggle (in this case , Asian immigrants) is reinforced by the way you speak. The dialogism between the two is nil; what exists is a one-dimensional rhetoric through which Deirdre touches on condescension and uses Evelyns lack of language skills to put her in her place and make her tremble for fear of losing the last shred of independence she has. .

The intersection of these structural issues is Waymond: even shunned by the more humble background and lack of ambition, the character is tasked with enabling Evelyn to be who she is, serving as the intangible and tangible support that keeps her from to commit madness. . After all, as can be seen in the films acclaimed conclusion, the variables of the multiverse are out of control but Waymond remains there as the only constant, metaphysical and linguistic.

Everything, Everywhere at the Same Time goes beyond what the eye can see and, for that reason, it establishes itself as a dense, complex film that reveals its deepest layers every time we look at it. lets see again. And, when we stop to analyze it, the impulses of language function as a link between the endless subplots, allowing us to create a bridge between the reality of the film and our own.

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After the wreckage of Watergate, the conventional wisdom embraced the clich that the coverup was worse than the crime. Actually, thats still true. But we need to upgrade our hierarchy of horribles.

Politicians will always commit crimes, and some will try to engineer elaborate schemes of concealment. The sins of the powerful are with us always; their essential untrustworthiness was baked into our system of checks and balances.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary, James Madison would have tweeted. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.

This, of course, is the tricky part, because it assumes that the institutional and political restraints would hold, and that the American people would want them to.

But what if they didnt?

What if we had a coup and a coverup, and nobody (by which I mean the GOP) cared?

In 2022, the real danger isnt just the crime or the coverup, its the acceptance.

We know that the nation can survive insurrections and even attempts at obstruction of justice. But can it survive a shrug?

Polls continue to show that the majority of Republican voters still believe the Big Lie, and support Trump.

So what happens if one of the nations two dominant political parties decides that it doesnt care? And is rewarded by the voters for its cynicism and moral nihilism?

This seems like a good time to point out something else: The real threat to democracy is not the Big Lie. Its something worse.

This is not to suggest that election denialism or conspiracy theories are not dangerous; they are, of course. But the House January 6th Committee has reminded us of something important: The whole Big Lie thing is ludicrous, risible, inane bullshit. It is an entire political belief system based on demented theories about Italian satellites, Venezuelan voting machines, and the hallucinations of Mike Lindell.

But thats not the point.

You may have noticed how the various claims from Rudy/Dinesh/[Insert name of insane Republican] are ever-shifting. A bogus charge is made, it is debunked, and it is quickly replaced with the next fabrication, and so on. Its an endless morphing chain of guano-soaked nonsense. But despite the parade of absurdities, no factual refutation ever seems to stick.

Why? Because the lies dont matter. Only the outcome counts.

In other words, millions of Americans dont necessarily believe something crazy and bogus. They believe something much worse.

The Big Lie is the pretext for the refusal to accept the peaceful transfer of power to political opponents who are seen as evil and dangerous.

Forget about the dropboxes, mules, and rigged voting machines; nobody really cares about the votes or the counting of votes. Its not about that; its about winning or to be more precise, defeating the enemy.

A subtext of right-wing politics now is that the other side simply cannot be allowed to win. They hate America, they hate God, and they will destroy everything you hold dear.

Its the Flight 93 election forever. Its Jan. 6th . . . forever.

So we get increasingly brazen attempts to rig elections, including the notion that gerrymandered majorities in state legislatures can overturn the popular vote.

And because the stakes are apocalyptic, we are hearing threats of secession and nullification, and seeing polls like this:

More than one quarter of US residents feel so estranged from their government that they feel it might soon be necessary to take up arms against it, a poll released on Thursday claimed.

And if you doubt that partisans would simply ignore the results of an election, I give you this tale from my home state: Wisconsin Court Validates a Republican Strategy to Preserve Power.

Via the NYT: Trump Group Pays for Jan. 6 Lawyers, Raising Concerns of Witness Pressure.

WASHINGTON Former President Donald J. Trump's political organization and his allies have paid for or promised to finance the legal fees of more than a dozen witnesses called in the congressional investigation into the Jan. 6 attack, raising legal and ethical questions about whether the former president may be influencing testimony with a direct bearing on him.

The arrangement drew new scrutiny this week after Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide in his White House, made an explosive appearance before the House panel, providing damning new details about Mr. Trumps actions and statements on the day of the deadly riot.

She did so after firing a lawyer who had been recommended to her by two of Mr. Trumps former aides and paid for by his political action committee, and hiring new counsel. Under the representation of the new lawyer, Jody Hunt, Ms. Hutchinson sat for a fourth interview with the committee in which she divulged more revelations and agreed to come forward publicly to testify to them.

Must, must, must read from Tim Miller:

They all had internalized what they thought were the lessons of the previous decade. The political reality meant that the base of voters in the Breitbart comment section must be appeased and managed. A groupthink emerged whereby this reality came to be treated as if it were delivered from on high. And the Truth mustnt be reflected upon without the whole game being jeopardized.

When I dug deeper beneath this cozy conventional wisdom, what I found were real choices made by individuals who all fell back on a few phyla of rationalization that reveal why they did what they did.

They fit into different categories, some of which reflect universal, human failings replicated across industries and societies and ideologies. Others are unique to the creatures of Washington or the contaminated right-wing political ecosystem that sustained the Mango Monstrosity.

They all turned out to be much more powerful than I had anticipated.

I divide them into these buckets:

Messiahs and Junior Messiahs Demonizers LOL Nothing Matters Republicans Tribalist Trolls Strivers Little Mixes Peter Principle Disprovers Nerd Revengers The Inert Team Players The Compartmentalizers Cartel Cashers

Heres a field guide, my taxonomy of enablers, so you can identify them in the wild.

Bill Lueders in this mornings Bulwark writes that governors promising clemency and prosecutors vowing non-prosecution wont keep abortion providers open in states with bans.

The day after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers made a public pledge to cut a break to anyone convicted of violating the states 1849 law banning abortion.

I will provide clemency to any physician that is charged under that law, Evers said during a rally preceding the state Democratic Party convention in La Crosse. During his convention speech, he said: I dont think that a law that was written before the Civil War, or before women secured the right to vote, should be used to dictate these intimate decisions on reproductive health.

Wisconsins Democratic attorney general, Josh Kaul, has also said he will not use to resources of his office to prosecute abortion providers. So have the district attorneys for the states two largest counties, Milwaukee and Dane.

These statements naturally elicit a question: Is there any talk about using these pledges of protection to continue to offer abortion services?

The quick answer to your question is no, writes Lisa Boyce, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, in an email. She continues:

We appreciate the Governors support and commend AG Kauls stance on access to safe and legal abortion in WI. Unfortunately, the attorney generals office does not handle most criminal prosecutions in the state. There are 71 county district attorneys who would be free to try and enforce the criminal statute against providers. There is also a 6-year statute of limitations on felonies in Wisconsin, which means even if someone doesnt prosecute a provider now, a DA office would have 6 years to decide to prosecute.

Jeffrey Isaac, writing in the Bulwark:

We should hope that Tuesdays testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson, along with the other evidence made public by the Jan. 6th Committee, will lead to criminal liability forand prosecution ofeveryone involved in planning and executing the Trumpist coup attemptup to and including Trump himself.

But this is secondary business.

The primary business is not criminal but political. The Republican party which aided, abetted, and participated in this crisis must be held responsible by voters for its ongoing efforts to undermine constitutional democracy. It must be fought from top to bottom in the upcoming November election and in the one to follow in 2024.

And it must be defeated.

David Brooks asks an exceedingly good question: Why on Earth Is Pelosi Supporting the Trumpists?

The Democratic Party is behaving recklessly and unpatriotically. So far, Democrats have spent tens of millions to help Trumpist candidates in Republican primaries.

In Illinois alone, the Democratic Governors Association and Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker spent at least $30 million to attack a Trumpists moderate gubernatorial opponent. In Pennsylvania, a Democratic campaign spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads intended to help a Trumpist candidate win the G.O.P. gubernatorial primary. A political action committee affiliated with Nancy Pelosi worked to boost far-right Republican House candidates in California and Colorado.

They are doing it because they think far-right Trumpist candidates will be easier to beat in the general elections than more moderate candidates.

Because WTF could go wrong?

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The Big Lie Is Just the Pretext - by Charlie Sykes - The Bulwark

By Christine Flowers

Theyre fire-bombing pro-life pregnancy clinics. Theyre defacing churches. Theyre disrupting pro-life marches with threats of violence. And this is their reasoning: If abortion isn't safe, you aren't either.

Those are the exact words written on the outside of a counseling center for pregnant women in Asheville, N.C., last month. Earlier, a Christian ministry in Buffalo, N.Y., was vandalized and before that, the headquarters of a pro-life organization in Madison, Wis., was bombed.

This is just the beginning, according to the group Janes Revenge, a pro-abortion organization that has a history of violence. So far, theyve limited that violence to buildings, but its very easy to imagine that this group which allegedly cares about the safety of women will endanger the safety of pro-life women. Theyve already threatened the lives of Supreme Court justices, including death threats issued against Brett Kavanaugh. A man armed with a gun was found outside of the justices Maryland home. Its only by a miracle that Kavanaugh, his wife and children were not hurt.

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In some ways, Im glad these violent folk exist, and are showing their true faces. There is this false perception of the pro-life movement as religious and ideological zealots who are engaged in guerilla warfare against women. While it cant be denied that anti-abortion activists have used violence to advance their goals in some very high-profile cases, these are by far the exception and not the rule. Its for that reason, and that reason alone, that I wont tar the entire abortion-rights movement with the crimes of Janes Revenge and similar groups around the country.

But I will call out the so-called mainstream supporters of abortion for their silence in the face of the carnage. This version of protest is more immediate and has the capacity to cause harm to those who are simply exercising their constitutional rights to freedom of speech, assembly and expression. Because nothing that these pro-life clinics are doing is illegal, and the attacks on their mission are an attempt to violate their First Amendment birthright (pun intended).

You might recognize the language Im using here, and the way that Im framing it. The pro-choice, abortion-rights or pro-abortion movement is all about the lexicon of rights. They push for the right to privacy, the right to use birth control and the right to become unpregnant. They demand the right to have free access to abortion clinics, the right to fund Planned Parenthood with tax dollars, the right to call a baby a clump of cells. Freedom of speech, of assembly, of bodily autonomy, all of these are the fundamental sacraments of the abortion-rights movement.

But I scoured the internet for some examples of those same organizations like NARAL, Planned Parenthood, NOW and Emilys List condemning the violence against pro-life organizations and buildings, and I came up with this:

When I googled condemnation of firebombings from abortion activists, one of the first titles that popped up was an article from the New York Times with this headline: A Brief History of the Deadly Attacks on Abortion Providers. I looked on Twitter and elsewhere to see if President Biden had said anything and there were some statements about how great it was that baby formula was getting to the children, but nothing about the violence. The governor of New York, a strong supporter of choice, issued a generic comment condemning all violence. I reached out to our local Planned Parenthood for a comment and got nothing.

I have no patience for these hypocrites. They wail in anguish at the thought of having to actually take responsibility for their sexual activity, and abandon abortion as a form of birth control. They seethe with anger at the prospect of not being able to decide that a Masters degree in Womens Studies should take precedence over the birth of an unexpected son or daughter. They reject science, much like the creationists who oppose evolution. They actually dont believe in evolution, because they dont think that human beings stem from human matter.

And they point fingers at other people who use violent tactics, tactics that have been disavowed by the vast majority of pro-life advocates. They try and conflate James Kopp and Scott Roeder (the men who killed, respectively, Barnett Slepian and George Tiller) with grandmothers who pray the rosary outside of abortion clinics. Or Catholic Supreme Court justices.

Its time for these women and the men who support them to come out and condemn the nihilism and terrorism of these abortion rights activists. Its time for Merrick Garland to open an investigation into their felonious behavior, instead of stalking parents at school board meetings. Its time for Planned Parenthood and the sister groups to issue full-throated condemnation of the violence that is being done in their name.

I know theyve spent a half-century condoning violence against the unborn, so that might be hard. But even a small effort would be appreciated, at a time when silence can kill.

Flowers, an attorney, is a columnist for the Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

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Flowers: Condemn the nihilism of abortion-rights activists - Roanoke Times

The four-person cast is putting its final touches on the production and say they can't wait to be back in front of a live audience.

LEWISTON, Maine The common theme this year at The Public Theatre in Lewiston is laughter.

"Be Here Now" is the latest production to hit the stage there. It's a four-person show that takes the audience through a rollercoaster of emotions and begs the question: Am I an optimist or a pessimist?

The show is about a "pessimistic professor of nihilism [who] develops a medical condition with a side effect that turns her into a happy, hopeful, believer in love. But what if curing her condition will return her to misery? This wise and quirky comedy asks is happiness a choice or a pre-existing condition?" according to a release from The Public Theatre.

The cast is looking forward to getting back in front of a live audience.

"We so need to connect and laugh," Janet Mitchko said.

Mitchko plays the leading role of Bari in the production.

"We've all been stuck in our houses, and to actually be able to come to the theatre and see people, the connection is something that is irreplaceable and we so desperately need."

For ticket information, click here.

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'Be Here Now' at The Public Theatre in Lewiston - NewsCenterMaine.com WCSH-WLBZ

In the wake of the Uvalde, Texas, school shootings, Fathers Day feels different this year. As the national conversation has again turned to the intersection of gun access and troubled young men, we are wondering what is driving this streak of nihilism. Are boys and men in crisis? Is there something uniquely worrisome about American masculinity?

These were some of the questions bouncing around my mind when I spoke with scholar and author Warren Farrell about masculinity. Before his foray into boys and mens issues, Farrell, 78, was the only man elected to the board of the National Organization for Women three times. His commitment to feminist issues earlier in his career informed his passion to understand the experiences of men later in life.

Farrells 2018 book The Boy Crisis, which he co-wrote with John Gray, looks at why boys are falling behind girls, with an eye on the impact that absent fathers and male role models have. His work has been featured on the Dr. Phil show and Andrew Yangs podcast, and he has been a repeat guest on Jordan Petersons podcast, most recently on June 13.

We originally met months ago in his neighborhood in Mill Valley, California, just north of San Francisco, across the Golden Gate Bridge. On a balmy February afternoon, we walked alongside a meandering stream which cuts through the residential hillside bordering Muir Woods National Monument and the Pacific Ocean. Farrell took me to his church, the forest where he does some of his best thinking, and we walked under the canopy of 100-foot-tall redwoods. Here we discussed what issues are plaguing boys today and what can be done to help them.

This Q&A is a synthesis of that conversation and a recent phone interview. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Ari Blaff: Im curious to get your reaction to the recent mass shootings committed by young men. Are they connected to what you have called the boy crisis?

Warren Farrell: Weve been blaming access to guns, violence in the media, violence and video games, family values, replacement theory-style hatred (for mass shootings). And yet our daughters are exposed in the same homes with the same family values, the same access to the same guns, the same violence and the same media, the same violence and the same video games. They have similar mental illnesses, and our daughters have not been doing the killings.

Whats happening with boys is that there is a global boy crisis: boys committing suicide far more often than girls five times more often in their 20s dropping out of high school, dropping out of college more, dying from opioid overdose. All these are more than the 70 different ways that boys without fathers mostly do worse.

The difficulty is not just with boys. When boys dont do well, girls cant find good fathers (for their children) and that leads to children being raised by single mothers or divorcees.

The boy crisis resides where dads do not reside. There are about 10 causes of the boy crisis but fatherlessness, or dad deprivation, is the single biggest cause of it.

AB: You wrote an op-ed a couple of weeks back reflecting on the mass shooting in Uvalde. Is there something happening with American boys in particular? Obviously, there are instances of mass violence in Europe and even in Canada, but it doesnt seem to be the same rate or at the same frequency. Is there something about American masculinity, or a broader social crisis in American society, which is impacting boys?

WF: Well, I think theres two big things. One is the fatherlessness issue is the biggest here and in the United Kingdom. But the mass shootings are not as much in the U.K. as they are here. So it has to be more than just a fatherlessness issue. I believe that in the United States we have an addiction, and that addiction is to guns.

We also have very lax laws that a boy on his 18th birthday, without having any type of background check, was able to pick up a gun, despite having put threats on social media and showing many worrying signs of having significant problems, and none of that was detected or checked for.We have more guns in the United States than we have people. We dont have mass stabbings. We have mass shootings. The more powerful the gun, the more the boy has an ability to express his anger, and behind almost all anger is vulnerability. What we need to understand is that boys who hurt us are almost always boys who hurt.

When youre talking guns, you alienate the conservative community. However, when youre talking dads and fathers, the liberals are not very responsive. Were caught between a liberal and a conservative rock and a hard place. Very few peoples minds are opened to both issues.

Girls are not doing the mass shootings. And not all boys are the problem. It is more frequently the fatherless boys more than any other group of boys.

We need to pay attention to to three things. One is the boy crisis. No. 2 is the fatherlessness issue. And No. 3 is guns as the magnifying issue.

AB: How do you find your message is being received?

WF: Well, the people that interview me, if they are conservative, they want me to either minimize or leave out the gun issue. They are OK with my saying that guns are the third thing down the list and serve as a the magnifier for underlying issues. But if I start to talk about it in a more in-depth way, then they begin to get nervous. They get me back to families and fathers.

With liberals, I went out to interview the Democratic presidential candidates (in 2019) and there were a few people, like Andrew Yang and John Hickenlooper, who really understood. The campaign managers were not interested in having the candidates make boys and mens issues a feature of the campaign because they were afraid of alienating their feminist bases. They were also afraid that saying the father is important would alienate and offend single mothers.

AB: With Fathers Day upon us, what message do you have for parents?

WF: We really need to understand what I discussed in The Boy Crisis about the nine differences between dad-style parenting and mom-style parenting. Children do best when they have what I call checks-and-balance parenting which recognizes both mother and father communicating in a loving and respectful way.

Both mother and father bring unique parenting styles. Mom-style parenting focuses on protecting the child and being sensitive to the childs needs. The importance of the dad-style parenting is enforcing boundaries. From that, children learn to postpone gratification, to fulfill their dreams.

AB: I find it fascinating that your background complements the journey of gender equality. You began as an advocate for feminist issues in the 50s and 60s when it wasnt popular by any means and then expanded to mens rights and the importance of fathers. But for that, you get a lot of flak. Unlike feminist activism, mens rights activism appears to be a thankless pursuit. Does that surprise you?

WF: When I started speaking at colleges and universities, Id hand out these yellow pads throughout the audience. This was before computers and people would sign up to see whether they would want to join either a mens group or a womens group. I would get together with all the people that were interested, often until 1 in the morning. Id teach them how to run mens groups and womens groups and then keep in contact with them afterwards.

As I started paying attention to both of the mens group in New York, and then also to the feedback from the other mens groups and womens groups, I began to incorporate some of their insights into my presentations. It was at that point that my standing ovations became mixed standing and sitting. Then they became not mixed at all. Just sitting.

At the beginning, when I was just speaking from a feminist perspective, I got about four or five speaking engagements in referrals per event. Whereas after I started incorporating the male point of view, I would get one or zero referrals. I started to see that if I spoke about the male experience, or what was happening with boys, that I would soon be more and more unpopular.

AB: Fatherlessness is a big issue but does flow downstream from our cultural values. How would you reverse that trend?

WF: First, it involves getting women to understand that were all in the same family boat; when you focus on only one sex winning, both sexes lose. As parents, we want our daughters to have a man who is worthy of her love and respect. Someone who is able to have his act together enough to be able to take care of her and do his part in taking care of the children.

Historically speaking, every generation has had its wars, and during those wars, if Uncle Sam said, We need you. You are necessary to kill off Nazis, men signed up and came forward when they were told they were needed.

We have had to tell males now that they are no longer needed so much to kill and be killed, but to love and be loved. Women need their support, their skills, their checks, their balances to help with protecting and raising children. We need them to be father warriors now. The real warriors in the future are the ones who share the responsibilities and joys of raising children.

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What does fatherlessness, boy crisis have to do with mass shootings? - Deseret News

Artist Mary O'Malley uses a series of sculptures to recount her emotions and experiences during the early months of the COVID pandemic in New York.

MACON, Ga. The McEachern Art Center (The Mac)has a new exhibit featuring an artist processing the COVID pandemic through sculpture.

The exhibit is titled Reliquary. Artist Mary O'Malley uses a series of sculptures to recount her emotions and experiences during the early months of the pandemic in New York.

Her work began during her 18-month residency at Wesleyan College, and her focus is on doing that emotional work through nature and memories of her religious childhood.

"My generation is almost either agnostic or atheist, so these tools that we were raised with through Irish Catholicism, we don't really have anymore to [process] big life events or traumas or celebrations... events like the pandemic kind of brought to life the void that's been left by not having those tools anymore," she said.

One wall of the exhibit at The Mac features what O'Malley calls 'Nihilism Tiles.' When she hit a creative wall, she used the tiles to get back into the rhythm of making her other pieces and continuing the process.

On another wall are similar tiles but they play on O'Malley's memories of participating in the Stations of the Cross. The tiles depict the eight major holidays in Ancient Celtic Paganism, and the center features images and texts from her family and friends during the pandemic.

When talking about the importance of reflecting on the pandemic, O'Malley says art is important in that process.

"We can all talk about it and ingest media and social media but visual communication and communication through the creative industries is a different part of the brain and sometimes it resonates just a little bit deeper," she said.

Her experiences in New York and then her move to Georgia were an important part of her processing. She says when she moved, she experienced what she calls a COVID culture shock.

"Feeling like, 'Wow our experience is completely different from everybody else's. Do they believe us even?' So I felt compelled to tell the story for that reason, as well like this is how it was for us... it was really hard," said O'Malley said.

You can see her work until Aug. 5 at the Mac.

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Artist processes pandemic experiences through sculpture in new exhibit at The Mac - 13WMAZ.com

In recent years it has become clear that there is a war going on: a war on the West, a cultural war, being waged remorselessly against all the roots of the Western tradition and against everything good that the Western tradition has produced.Douglas Murray

In his previous book, The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race, and Identity (2019), Murray compared himself to a machine that explodes landmines so that soldiers may follow more safely behind.

The British author, only 43, who has written for National Review and the Spectator, may be the most valuable and articulate critic of everything that ails Western society today. He bravely and forcefully takes on subjects that most of us are afraid to even bring up.

His The Strange Death of Europe (2018) details the impact of that continents welcoming in millions of Third World migrants. The Madness of Crowds exposes the destructive insanity of identity politics. Now Murray completes the trilogy with The War on the West (2022), an appropriately infuriating but ultimately moving and inspiring defense of Western civilization against the cultural vandals who seek to destroy it from within.

The book is divided into four sections: Race, History, Religion, and Culture. Murray marshals an army of facts against those who see nothing in the Judeo-Christian West but racism and oppression.

He traces this trend back to the 18th century, showing how Enlightenment self-criticism brought forth in the 20th century the poisonous flowers of nihilism and Marxism.

This was followed in the 21st by critical race theory and other movements that dismiss our civilization as evil and exploitive while celebrating everything non-Western as blameless and morally perfect.

Conservatives have long believed that the worst ideas of the Left, born in the academy, would stay there. Once students graduated, got jobs, and had families they would wise up. This hope turned out to be false.

Since the 1960s young people have carried the radical notions that they acquired in college into nearly every institution and corporation in America.

Patriotism, marriage, religion, and tradition became dirty words and several generations were taught to hate or at least be embarrassed by their country and the civilization that gave rise to it. (I remember a course, when I was in college, that boiled down American history to exactly four events: slavery, the Salem witch trials, segregation, and McCarthyism.)

Murray says that since every decent American knows and laments the history of slavery and racism in this country, decades ago racist became the worst thing one American could call another. Two years ago, when the George Floyd video shocked the nation, the Left jumped at the chance to seize power by weaponizing racial division.

Although no evidence was ever produced that Floyds killing by a rogue cop had anything to do with skin color, leftists were off to the races, denouncing everything and everyone who got in their way as racist and white supremacist.

Murray chronicles the resulting hysteria from the Black Lives Matter riots to the Journal of the American Medical Association encouraging doctors to level the playing field by letting more white people die. All this self-loathing has given the Chinese Communist Party the perfect excuse for Chinas miserable human rights record.

With even our current president declaring the United States a hotbed of systemic racism, a Chinese ambassador could confidently deny the United States the right to get on a high horse and tell other countries what to do.

This may all sound depressing, but Murrays dry sense of humor makes it hilarious as well. His conclusion is a ringing defense of the civilization that developed universal human rights and banned slavery, and that gave people of all races and nationalities modern science, medicine, and free markets, along with the cultural gifts bequeathed by Shakespeare, Beethoven, and Michelangelo.

While he never denies the Wests imperfect moral record, he asks why only its sins are dwelt upon, while all non-Western cultures are celebrated, and their sins glossed over or blamed on Western influence.

In his indispensable trio of books, Murray gives us the factual ammunition to see clearly where we are and how we got here, and to push back against malicious cancel culture. Through it all, he remains optimistic:

We in the West need to transform our societies from societies of resentment into societies of gratitude, to recognize that what we have is highly unusual, and to have some gratitude for that. [] And if we feel grateful for that, then to add to that inheritance as well.

The War on the WestBy Douglas MurrayBroadside Books (HarperCollins), April 2022Hardcover: 308 pages

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Book Review: 'The War on the West': Ringing Response to Denying a Positive Western Tradition - The Epoch Times

The Lazarus Project makes us question time (Picture: Sky UK Ltd)

Lets be honest, weve all wanted the chance to turn back time to take back that bitchy comment or undo that unwise snog, perhaps?

But what if the clock was turning back just without our knowledge? According to new sci-fi drama The Lazarus Project thats exactly whats been happening.

Until the first episode, our protagonist George (Paapa Essiedu) had been just as oblivious as the rest of us too busy enjoying life as a new dad and setting up his successful risk-management app.

Then he wakes up and discovers that the last six months of his life never happened and hes the only person who remembers it.

It turns out that thanks to some snazzy space tech (dont even bother trying to understand it, its really not the point), the world can be reset back to a checkpoint on July 1 every year, much like a very high-stakes video game.

George is a mutant and is one of the few people on the planet who can remember the old save.

Pressing the rewind button is The Lazarus Project, a multinational organisation of former spies and special ops agents turned time travellers headed up by Wes (Caroline Quentin doing her best M impression).

Their job is stopping extinction-level events from happening within that year, and when some despot does press the red button or a deadly plague wipes us out, they simply roll back the clock until we make it to next July.

Clearly, theyre playing in hard mode, because The Lazarus Project seem to be extremely busy, staving off dozens of doomsdays since 2018 alone.

Mentored by the formidable Archie (Anjli Mohindra), George joins the gang on their mission. But when things get personal, George finds himself struggling with his newfound power.

It would be easy to write this off as a rehash of all the other time-bending, save the world, spy dramas (Heroes with a touch of Spooks comes to mind) and it seems that way at first youve got a nuke-pinching Russian villain (Tom Burke) making mischief, a couple of explosions and car chases, and a flurry of pointless side plots.

But amid the timey space hoo-hah, dramatic stunts and impressive CGI, writer Joe Barton is busy delving deep into the ethics of turning back time and the effect it has on the people experiencing it the sacrifices made, the loved ones lost, the ever-increasing nihilism caused by a world that just wont stop ending.

The Lazarus Project is not always easy viewing theres an early nod to Covid (too soon?) and all the gone-wrong scenarios are enough to make one nervous but wry humour and a fast-paced script help you along (and disguise some less than original sci-fi tropes).

Essiedus extremely compelling performance brings real depth to the likable everyman George and coupled with twists that not even a time traveller would see coming, its a watch thats worth the ride.

The Lazarus Project is out today on Sky Max.

MORE : The Lazarus Projects Paapa Essiedu: A story like this demands the cast that its got

MORE : The Umbrella Academy season 3 review: Another day, another apocalypse in tale with more layers than puff pastry

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The Lazarus Project review: 'A watch thats worth the ride' - Metro.co.uk

Rowan Williams argues that there are three approaches to theology: the celebratory, the communicative, and the critical.[i]

The celebratory is the attempt to draw out and display connections of thought and image so as to exhibit the fullest possible range of significance in the language used. It is typically the language of hymnody and preaching, but it can also be found in the work of Dante and Langland, Byzantine iconography, and some of the more intelligent modern choruses.[ii] Williams also notes that celebratory theology is the dominant mode of reflection in the Eastern Orthodox Church and, in some cases, in the work of western theologians, like that of Hans Urs von Balthasar.[iii]

Communicative theology is, by contrast, what Williams describes as theology experimenting with the rhetoric of its uncommitted environment.[iv] What Williams is referring to here might also be described as apologetic theology, as long as one hews fairly close to the classical definition given to that enterprise. It is the effort to persuade or comment, to witness to the gospels capacity for being at home in more than one cultural environment, and to display enough confidence to believe that this gospel can be rediscovered at the end of a long and exotic detour through strange idioms and structures of thought.[v]

Williams seems to imply that this task only becomes necessary or important when celebratory theology becomes so densely worked that the language is in danger of being sealed in on itself, but it is unclear why that would necessarily be the case. Described as a separate theological endeavor, communicative theology could easily be understood as a parallel and complementary effort. Widening the audience that the church has for its message and broadening the categories at its disposal, communicative theology vindicates the churchs claim to universality and embraces a wider world. Examples that Williams offers include the use made of Stoic and Platonic categories by the Apologists, Clement, and Origen or feminist theory, as used by Sarah Coakley.[vi]

The third endeavor that Williams describes is critical theology. Here again, he offers a somewhat linear description of the relationship between critical theology and the preceding theological endeavor. Arguing that communicative theology takes the theologian into a struggle with the question as to what is continuous with what has been believed and with what the fundamental categories really mean, the task becomes critical alert to its own inner tensions and irresolutions.[vii] Once the theologian embarks on this task, Williams notes it can go in a variety of shapes. But it runs in two fundamentally different directions: toward either agnosticism and even nihilism or towards a rediscovery of the celebratory.[viii]

As before, it is not clear that the strains in a communicative theology are the only occasion for critical theology. One might reasonably argue that the critical task is essential to the articulation of the Christian message as culture changes and time passes. The critical task in that sense is not tied to either the failure of Christian categories or questions about the necessity or coherence of those categories.

Ultimately, the way in which we navigate the theological task can be more or less life-giving. A celebratory theology that becomes moribund betrays the lively and lived connection with God that the church depends upon. Communicative theology that values the cultural assumptions of its surroundings over the native language of the faiths essential assumptions betrays its task. And, plainly, a critical theology that trends toward agnosticism and nihilism will undermine the churchs relationship with the Resurrected Christ.

As Williams notes, lively theology is never confined to one of the theological tasks to the exclusion of the others.[ix] Theology, he notes, is the product of an essential restlessness in the enterprise of Christian utterance that reflects the eschatological impulse at its heart; and it resists any attempt to picture the world as immanently ordered or finished.[x] But the restlessness that Williams describes is not native to theology per se and his description of its origin as eschatological though accurate masks a deeper reason for that restlessness. It is rooted in the experience of the Resurrected Christ, shaped by baptism into the body of Christ, and fed by the liturgy and the prayer life of the church.

Today, the failure to acknowledge the necessity of all three tasks and the tendency to emphasize one task to the exclusion of the other two presents the greatest theological challenge that the church faces. Those who do nothing but advocate for a lifeless reassertion of the churchs doctrine court one set of problems. Those who do nothing but advocate a critical theology unmoored in the churchs celebratory court another set.

But because the conversation about theology is always a conversation about Gods hope for the church and the world, this is not an abstract challenge. It is a lived, spiritual, and missional challenge as well. Attending conscientiously to all three tasks in an integrated fashion is the only solution.

[i] Rowan Williams, On Christian Theology, Challenges in Contemporary Theology, eds., Gareth Jones and Lewis Ayres (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000): xiii.

[ii] Ibid., xiii.

[iii] Ibid., xiii-xiv.

[iv] Ibid., xiv.

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Ibid., xiv-xv.

[viii] Ibid., xv.

[ix] Ibid.

[x] Ibid., xvi.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Originally posted here:

Theology and the Church | Frederick Schmidt - Patheos