Having spent time among shamans and magicians in Nepal and Indonesia, David Abram ( The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World ) concluded that magicians are marginal figures, but in a different sense than is usually understood. Rather than standing at the . . . . Continue Reading »
Faustus doesn’t believe that the Old Testament provides testimonies of Christ, and Augustine sets out to prove him wrong: “The ark was three hundred cubits long so that, all told, it was six times fifty cubits, just as all the time of this world is stretched out over six ages, in all of . . . . Continue Reading »
INTRODUCTION No family exists in isolation from the rest of the world. Our children have friends, many go to school; eventually they will leave home for good. We should train them so that when they leave, they are led out by the Spirit. THE TEXT “There is therefore now no . . . . Continue Reading »
Romans 8:10-11: If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit . . . . Continue Reading »
What makes for better health and longer life expectancy in the advanced world in the last century? Not improvements in medicine, Illich argues. Rates of tuberculosis, scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping cough, and measles indicate that “nearly 90 percent of the total decline in . . . . Continue Reading »
Ivan Illich ( Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis, the Expropriation of Health ) writes about the unintended effects of insecticides in Borneo: “Insecticides used in villages to control malaria vectors also accumulated in cockroaches, most of which are resistant. Geckoes fed on these, . . . . Continue Reading »
Phillip Blond ( Red Tory: How Left and Right Have Broken Britain and How We Can Fix it ) offers a succinct summary of why liberal political order descends to tyranny. Liberalism is, on Blond’s definition, a political order erected on the assumption that human beings are fundamentally . . . . Continue Reading »
In an intriguing chapter on modern agriculture in Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (The Institution for Social and Policy St) , James C. Scott notes that the isolation of a few variables is “a key tenet of experimental science” and . . . . Continue Reading »
Philip Blond calls the family “a deeply radical and indeed feminist institution” because it “binds men to women and offers a cultural account of how they should behave towards one another.” On the other hand, progressive demolition of the family has left unmarried women . . . . Continue Reading »
Jameson Graber responds to my post yesterday on the individualism of the Tea Party movement: “This quote in your post caught my attention: ‘Today, populist rhetoric “fires up emotions by appealing to individual opinion, individual autonomy, and individual choice, all in the service . . . . Continue Reading »
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