It takes a dire event on a Saturday for the pond to brush aside prattling Polonius, but when it comes to millennialism, nattering "Ned" always takes precedence, and this day's musing is a ripper ...
There's nothing like a nattering "Ned" standing outside the wedding feast, stopping one of three to harass them with his astonishing insights, to bring the pond to a grinding halt ...
Now before we get truly underway, the pond would like to suggest a countervailing notion - in Australia at least, there is one politician and a bunch of supporting reptiles who have done more to undermine trust in the political system than a huge bunch of aetheists, secularists and "no religion-ists" ...
So much anger, so much bile, so much a thirst for revenge, and so much nattering negativity ... ostensibly in the guise of an Xian ...and yet the pond will allow that others might get equally agitated by the pious and righteous hymn-singing former Chairman ...
Internationally, there's Tony Blair, his crusader comrade George W., and perhaps worst of all recent examples, the way that fundamentalist evangelicals flocked to the Donald and helped him into power ...
But there's no point in having a discussion with a righteous prophet of doom ... because when nattering "Ned" gets into full flow, let no one stand in his way ...
Now when nattering "Ned" gets to quoting David Brooks in a solemn, po-faced way, the pond has only one option ... a cartoon ... not as a riposte, but simply to provide a distraction ...
Whenever nattering "Ned" gets wound up, it turns into a long haul ...
Narcissism is a new invention? Narcissism has been around since the ancient Greeks produced the original Narcissus, and it's difficult to imagine a more narcissist, self-promoting, self-worshipping culture than that of imperial Britain the nineteenth century, where self-worship was conflated with religion in a most unseemly way ...
Anybody wanting to do a bit of hero worship can find Carlyle at the Internet Archive here, and here, but the pond cannot tarry, because the dyspeptic nattering "Ned" calls and soon enough there might be ...
Enough saucy doubts and fears and hesitations, on with the gobbet ...
Man, not god and certainly not complimentary woman, was enshrined at the centre of the universe?
What, no existentialism, no Hannah Arendt?
Our universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
In all of the directions it can whiz;
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth;
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!
... or even worse a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon ...
Or even more cartoons ... anything but that grim prophet's text, the nattering of "Ned"
But time and the world moves on, and there's no time for other matters ...
... instead it's time for the last nattering "Ned" gobbet ...
Now some might suggest that senility is a terrible thing to see, but the pond approaches it with a kind of tranquil acceptance ...
Stupidity is its own reward, and thanks to the enormous stupidity of evangelical America, they have elected a new redeemer ...
That story here at The Atlantic, but of course, it doesn't suit the Brooks/nattering "Ned" story to see Christianity at work ...
Anyway, it's a fair argument that the pond cynically concluded that way just so it could run a couple of splendid Rowes, with more splendid Rowe here ... (who is that startled, distant figure at the end of the table? Talk about specks of dust ...)
How could "the Aristotelean framework that made the West a success" possibly have had a Christian basis?
ReplyDelete:)³ (though it goes without saying that the ancient Greeks were in fact closet Christians and just didn't know it).
DeleteWell you know that the 'New Testament' was mostly written down in Koine Greek, DP
Delete[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_of_the_New_Testament ]
And the ancient Greeks were really good at thinking of things first.
I seem to recall Aristotle saying this...
ReplyDelete“Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form, but with regard to their mode of life.”
“All persons ought to endeavor to follow what is right, and not what is established.”
:)³, though this veers dangerously close to actual sense ...
DeleteSo many words, so little sense. Buried in all that verbiage is a rather naive belief, that religious observance leads to better social outcomes. My own experience suggests rather the opposite, that better outcomes coincide with less religiosity. Apart from some lurches to the right (read Abbott), we are generally a more caring and tolerant society than the one of my youth. This is a proposition that can be checked https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10504/64409/2005-11.pdf but the reptile rely on anecdote & the usual range of obscure right-wing sources rather than look at data.
ReplyDeleteIt really takes a lot of re-framing and convoluted reasoning to hold these beliefs, however it seems to be a common bias among older people that we are all going to be rooned if the world changes.
:)³ - a handy link, but then the pond only runs the likes of Ned to get sensible comments and decent links!
DeleteAnyone who quotes Weigel as an "authority" on religion and culture has obviously got his head up his butt.
ReplyDeleteNever mind too that Weigel is closely associated with opus dei and all of the usual barking mad right-wing think(stink) tanks - e.g. the AEI and the Heritage (lies and more lies) Foundation, and the Ethics & Public Policy Center which is an opus dei propaganda factory. He sometimes gives lectures at the IPA and the CIS here in Australia.
Wait, the "Greatest Generation", armed with their Xian values defeated Germany and Japan? Maybe Ned should open a history book and reflect on the roles played by the godless Communist Soviets and the heathen Chinese respectively.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that the USSR and China weren't huge on individualism might lend some weight to Ned's thesis on narcissism, were it not for the fact that victors and vanquished alike valued the collective over the individual.
Sssh, FrankD, the pond is astonished anyone might dare to mention that the godless Ruskis helped defeat the "Gott Mit Uns" Nazi crowd ...
Delete