So here’s an article by ME on Solzhentisyn, technology, purpose, and our future. A taste:
People are more concerned than ever with doing what’s required to stay alive, even as they do everything they can to divert themselves from real thoughts about love and death. They’re increasingly convinced they’re stuck with securing their free or contingent beings on their own. So they’re sure to be increasingly anxious consumers of the biotechnology that aims to break ever more completely the natural life cycle, to achieve indefinite longevity for each particular individual. Those who claim we should do as nature intends and not make a big effort to keep people alive beyond a certain age–say, 75 or 80–aren’t facing the fact that there’s no natural limit that free individuals can’t challenge with considerable success….We’re going to end up living as long as we can….
Being so death-haunted explains our birth dearth to some extent; we get little solace from thinking about the children who live after us. Nor do we get much satisfaction from producing any accomplishments that will stand the test of time much better than we can as biological beings, and that’s why there’s so little building or writing for the ages these days. Being so death-haunted also helps to explain the extreme measures taken by the old to look young, not to remind us that they’re dying. It’s one reason why the old are increasingly separated from the rest of society, and their care turned over to workers. It might even have something to do with why physicians have less time for their dying patients, and why the best and the brightest medical students are choosing dermatology–which, as medical specialties go, has very little to do with either birth or death….
August 8th, 2009 | 2:15 am
Does anything in this post contradict the notion of self interest, if so why? … I believe that both Solzhenitsyn as well as your adaptation show clearly and concisely that there is indeed more than one perspective without having to eliminate the notion of self interest. The current Government blatently disregards the real power of self interest by failing to delieneate perspectives in order to locate where the potential of self interest resides. I have learned to accept what you believe to be the responsible first person perspective, however, can true republicans in good faith of their excellent first person perspective keep the seperation?
August 8th, 2009 | 8:37 am
I don’t know why there hasn’t been any comments re: this blog. I think it’s your best one, at least recently.
The essay is copied for the beloved first wife to read and it reminds me just how much of a porcher you really are.
Yes, we are “death haunted” but only those who are secularists by choice or inclination. Christians, I should think, face death in much the same manner as Edith Stein, in peace, in anticipation.
So, from me, hooray for this blog and especial for the essay, and here’s a quote from Voegelin:
“The theme of judgment, it appears, is no more specific to Hellenic or Christian experiences than the symbols of alienation, sickness, imprisonment, and so forth; it rather is like the others, a constant in the whole class of experiences from which the symbolism of immortality emerges.”
….but then, judgment and immortality are bound together by design.
August 8th, 2009 | 11:04 am
Bob, well, thanks. The lack of comments probably correlates with the lack of controversy for our readership. And thanks for reminding us that this dispute with the porchers isn’t mostly a disagreement over anything all that important.
August 9th, 2009 | 2:21 am
This journal–The City–out of Houston Baptist University has some of the best writing on religion, theology, politics, and culture–including Peter Lawler whom I’m guessing we all love (or hate–no indifference here). You should all check it out. There are articles about youth and “evangelical” Christianity that I’m not hip to (as a Catholic). Nonetheless, it prints some of the best writing I’ve read (outside of First Things of course) on questions of politics and theology. McClay and and Knippenberg are writers who appear–as well as choice selections from Chesterton and St. John Chrysostom.
Regarding Lawler’s article– it is excellent. I think it picks up on and expands his lecture that you can see online at ISI (even if the lips don’t match the sound)–which gives you the sense of the man’s matter of fact sense of humor.
I should shut up. I sound like a “cyber stalker.” I’m not. While I’m a Lawler admirer, I’m not a fan as in “fanatic.” It’s just that Lawler speaks in an endearing yet beguiling manner–with an element of the caustic judgment tempered by the Socratic question. There is much that one could disagree with because it is spoken so forthrightly, but it is always a pleasure to hear a mind speak candidly (and with wit).
August 9th, 2009 | 4:27 am
The dermatology remark reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where Jerry criticized the dermatologist doctor he was dating for being a pimple popper doctor even as she said she saved lives. Jerry thought–dermatology? Dermatology is hardly the cutting edge of life and death. George had one better when he said that she was merely a step above a Clinique salesperson.
Then it hits Jerry–on his revenge date–that she dealt with skin cancer. It was a joke, but skin cancer is a reality, and melanoma is a killer. So dermatology is not simply about zits.
That being said, dermatology is merely aesthetic–I can attest as one of those poor unfortunates with full body acne. I took acutane (probably illegal nowadays) and as long as I stayed out of the sun while I was taking it (for only a month or so) I was fine. I haven’t had acne since–and when I say I had acne I mean it. It was awful–painful and pervasive over my body. Acutane saved me!
So I was young and not desiring have red welts all over my body. Far from some old lothario desiring to live up the old days with a little Botox here. My acne prevented me from being the young lothario.
Now this is an exagerration, I had noone to blame but myself–but you live with pizza face/blind man eating with a fork jokes throughout your teens. Old men who want to relive the salad days are pathetic. Young men (and women) who do not wish to be cursed with bad skin like Job have a better case.
So dermatology is not as dumb as it seems–except for older people. Then it is the worst case of undignified maturity there is.
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