When Consumerism Subs for Experience

I made it down to the Go club the other night, something which I don't manage to do nearly as often as I'd like. Playing in person is a very different experience than playing online -- it tends to make you stop and think about your moves longer before playing, and it's much easier to get friendly feedback, which I need as a beginner.

The meetings are held at a game store, which has an awesome selection of books and equipment for classic games such as Go and Chess as well as numerous modern strategy/wargames. So after playing I wandered over to the shelf of Go books and looked through to see if there was anything I couldn't live without.

I was on the point of buying one when I stopped myself: I've got three Go books that I'm kind of in the middle of and a couple others that I haven't read. Sure it's "only seven dollars" but what the heck do I need with another book (however good) when I haven't read the ones I've already got?

There is, I think, a particular temptation as your income climbs and your amount of free time decreases to buy things instead of (or as an excuse for not) doing things. I only get around to playing 2-3 games of Go a week, but having books around makes it feel like I'm serious about learning -- even if the fact is that I simply don't have the time to get particularly good at it at the moment.

Similarly, I found myself recently trying to justify buying the iPod Nano that I've been wanting for ages by telling myself: "You really need to get back to running so you'll stay in shape. But running can be boring, so you don't go. Now, if you bought the iPod you'd go running all the time."

Yeah right. For about a week. Then I'd simply listen to the iPod at work and still not go running. How about first building up the discipline to exercise more regularly and then shelling out $150 for the iPod?

There are simply so many possessions that are available to us in the modern, middle-class USA that it often seems easy to convince yourself you're getting something accomplished simply by buying something, even without taking the time to use it.

The Whirl of Fame

Notice our fun new badge on the sidebar? Some kind soul has nominated us for Best Religion Blog in the Blogger's Choice Awards. I attribute this directly to Jen's plea for more Catholic blog nominations.

Jen has also received a richly-deserved nomination and is currently trouncing us with her five votes to our three. It's on, girlfriend...

UPDATE: In the interests of getting some good Catholic guys in play, I've nominated Fr. Fox, Pro Ecclesia and Rich Leonari. Go campaign, gents. Let's get these atheists off the top slots. And the Caveman is already up.

--Darwin

Speaking of culture

So the next time you're walking through a crowded subway station in Washington D.C. and you hear a fabulous violinist playing his heart out for donations, stop and listen. Because it might just be JOSHUA BELL, you philistine!

Three minutes went by before something happened. Sixty-three people had already passed when, finally, there was a breakthrough of sorts. A middle-age man altered his gait for a split second, turning his head to notice that there seemed to be some guy playing music. Yes, the man kept walking, but it was something.

A half-minute later, Bell got his first donation. A woman threw in a buck and scooted off. It was not until six minutes into the performance that someone actually stood against a wall, and listened.

Things never got much better. In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run -- for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look.

Heartbreaking.

H/T Patrick, who's off his Lenten blog-fast.

Archaeology/Classics Bleg

Do any of our classically/archeologically informed readers know whether Charles Pellegrino's Unearthing Atlantis is remotely worth reading? It wandered its way home from the library and MrsDarwin has been skimming it.

On the one hand, we'd be interested to read something solid about the Minoan excavations on Thera/Santorini, and I'd heard the book mentioned somewhere, which was why I picked it up. However, some of the bits MrsDarwin has been reading aloud to me covering other historical periods (he provides a whirlwind tour of medieval and classical history which is so ignorant as to be comical) suggest to me that he doesn't know what he's talking about. And I gather he signs on to the theory that the explosion of Thera was the source of the plagues of Egypt in Exodus -- a theory which fits neither Biblical nor archeological chronologies, and indeed is off by 200-400 years from the dates I've seen for Exodus.

Given all that, I'm deeply skeptical of his apparent claim (not having finished the book) that Minoan civilization was centered on Thera rather than Crete, and that it fell as a direct result of the Thera irruption.

Is there indeed any reason to think Thera was the center of Minoan civilization? Or is this guy simply smoking History Channel crack?

Prayer request for the Leonardis

Please remember Rich Leonardi's wife in your prayers.

"Red Herring." That's what the neurosurgeon called the six herniated discs. "They're not causing the symptoms." Blood tests today, CT scan Thursday.

She and the family are in our prayers.

Engaging the Culture

Matthew Lickona (who, we're glad to see, is back blogging after his Lenten hiatus) links to a few of his movie reviews for a Catholic website -- specifically, Black Snake Moan and Million Dollar Baby. He and his fellow reviewer hold a thoughtful discussion of the viewability, truthfulness, and imagery of the films, and find that they cannot recommend either to Catholic viewers. Their commenters engage in this dialogue about art, truth, and beauty:

"What is this movie review column is doing on an orothodx Catholic site? Why are these movies being reviewed at all? If anyone really wanted to watch these movies, there are plenty of secular sites that could give us the low down. Do you seriously think Catholics striving for holiness are going to waste time viewing such trash? Also, why should we be giving money to Hollywood to make more garbage? Secondly, why are these two Catholic men watching such movies? Couldn't they be occasions of sin? What kind of images are being stored in your subconscious? Is it for the sake of "art" - kind of like "I read Playboy for the articles" Really, I think most Catholics who visit your site would like to see something that is not morally objectionable reviewed. Something countercultural."

"Perhaps Brother Grimm has stumbled upon a jewel of wisdom while searching for treasure at the bottom of the outhouse he claims he was visiting in a noble effort to disinfect todays society ."Somebody's got to clean them, right?" Mr Grimm proclaims meaning he and Lostello. Perhaps he has found a calling to his life his writing skills and crumpet crowd do not fulfill. Janitorial work is a vital occupation that civilization needs in order to run smoothly. Since he and his partner in slime have already become the Ralph Cramden and Ed Norton of film critics, it is time to redirect their time to more earthly pursuits."

"I don't see what good is going to come about by reviewing these movies. What do you hope to accomplish? A serious Catholic wouldn't think of watching them anyway, even if there was a smidgen of good contained. Only the most naive would think most movies don't come with an agenda hostile to the culture of life. Your movie reviews so far are a "No duh..." I gave up on movies a long time ago. It is a waste of precious time. Reading, cooking, playing with the kids, gardening, praying, playing music, singing, performing corporal works of mercy are a far better use of time."

"I think your review should have read something like " I walked into the movie, they started playing sinful trash, I walked out. Don't see the movie." End of review. However, you could have saved some money by reading the review on the USCCB, or simply looking at its rating. How can you see any redeeming qualities in a movie full of "too much copulation", that would require you to go to confession after seeing it?

Here's an upfront admission to stave off indignation: I myself don't intend to see either of these movies -- mostly because I read several reviews that convinced me that I wouldn't like either of them. But as Catholics it is our job to engage the culture and transform it -- and that means at least being familiar with moral and cultural and religious issues raised (however erroneously) by popular forms of entertainment. How many Catholics familiarized themselves with the plot and talking points of The DaVinci Code in order to contradict the vapid theology underlying that opus?

Here at Chez Darwin, we don't get to see many current movies, and when we try to get out to the theater we're often thwarted in our attempts (as testified to by the complete failure two weekends ago of our plans to see Blades of Glory). We do, however, stay abreast of the latest book and movie reviews so that when we are presented with an opportunity to view or read something, we'll be able to make informed choices. (I'm just now reading Ian McEwan's Atonement, for which I saw a review years ago.) I'm grateful to reviewers like Matthew Lickona who can view a movie through my eyes, as it were, and give me an honest Catholic perspective on the issues and images involved. Engaging and transforming the culture requires artistic assessment that's a bit more cogent than " I walked into the movie, they started playing sinful trash, I walked out. Don't see the movie."

An Issue Held Hostage

The other day I stumbled onto a somewhat stridently liberal Catholic blog. He quoted with relish a brief passage from Pope Benedict's Easter message, in which as part of a discussion of the current problems in the world the pope said, "In the Middle East, besides some signs of hope in the dialogue between Israel and the Palestine Authority, nothing positive comes from Iraq, torn apart by continual slaughter as the civil population flees."

The point (at least to judge from some of the authors comments on other blogs to the effect of "what do you say to that, huh?") appears to be one of: When will you conservatives admit what a mess you've made of Iraq? Even the pope is against you.

I'm not sure exactly what the reaction to this is supposed to be. "Gosh, you're right. Things were so much better when there was a single brutal dictator to keep all these factions from indulging in their desire to try to wipe each other out. We should have left him in charge." Really?

There is certainly a huge amount of trouble and suffering in Iraq right now. (Though the impression is to an extent exacerbated by a media which has latched onto a simple theme "Iraq is a disaster" and only searches for stories that fit that theme.) With the clear vision of hindsight, if we had known the level of civil strife that the country would sink into (and to a great extent involve us in) we might well not have gone there, or we might have prosecuted the war very differently.

Yet in another sense, blaming the liberation of Iraq for the current chaos is like blaming the fall of communism for the civil wars in the Balkans. The dangerous thing about freedom (or at least lack of tyranny -- freedom may still be a bit too strong of a word) is that it allows people to do what they want. And if a small but significant faction of them want very much to try to slaughter each other, they will. Welcome to human history -- we've been slaughtering each other for millenia.

There seems to me to be a certain irony in on the one hand fuming about the suffering in Iraq, and on the other demanding to know why we don't "do something" about Darfur and other areas of genocide and suffering around the world. Don't get me wrong, I wish we would do something about Sudan. But understand, if we send people (either humanitarian workers, soldiers, or perhaps inevitably both) into Darfur we will (as we did in the Balkans, as we did in Somalia, as we inevitably will when inserting ourselves into a disastrous civil war or genocide situation) find ourselves in the middle of a civil war. "Doing something" does not mean that the suffering of the innocent will immediately evaporate.

In that sense, while there are certainly a number of mistakes which could (at least in hindsight) have been avoided, I hesitate to say that the suffering in Iraq is "all Bush's fault" any more than the suffering in Somalia and the Balkans were "all Clinton's fault". In all those cases, our interventions could have been managed better -- but the suffering is primarily the result of those factions in the area bent on slaughtering their fellow human beings.

Similarly, I don't exactly get the "because there is so much suffering of 'born children' in the world, you people clearly are just hiding from the issue by claiming to be 'pro-life' and helping only pre-born children" kind of attitude that one gets out of a certain stripe of thinking.

If the day ever comes that these Pharisees ever care about born children dying, or preventable death in this world at any age as much as they care about the unborn - I will be the first in line at the next anti-abortion march. Until then my friends - do not call yourself "pro-life". You are simply "anti-abortion".

Yes, the innocent, especially children, suffer terribly in areas of war, drought, famine, and the like. However it seems no more just to me to insist that war and famine be eliminated before fighting against abortion than it does to insist that abortion be eliminated before trying to alleviate all other kinds of suffering. Clearly, some people feel a calling to focus their personal energies on the abortion issue, while others feel a call to focus primarily on helping the hungry, the poor, the homeless, etc. All of these activities are good. And for all the "conservatives don't care about the born" talk, I suspect that our family is not alone among conservative families in donating more to causes like Food For The Poor than the specifically pro-life causes (that we also support).

However, it's very hard to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless and clothe the naked if they are killed before they see the light of day.

What has church done for me lately?

Along our route from the house to our parish church, a billboard was recently put up for one of the regions large bible churches. It shows a bunch of kids (probably ages 7-10) watching raptly as several loudly costumed people perform a skit, with a cross in the background. The tagline is "When was the last time your kids dragged you to church?"

A couple things stuck me about this. First is the basic awkwardness of touting a church's resemblance to entertainment as it's big selling point. It seems like the basic message there is "Your kids hate church and like entertainment, but we make church so entertaining, that they'll like it in spite of themselves." Now, if sitting in a church building for an hour or two each week were somehow an end unto itself, this might be just fine. Maybe from a certain point of view it is. But if (as I would) you think that it is what happens at church that is important to experience, than ditching that in favor of something more "kid friendly" seems off base. Not only are you not training children to appreciate the liturgy that in theory is their reason for being there -- but you're training them to appreciate something else instead.

Now, I think a certain amount of this may have to do with the differences between an American Protestant way of looking at religion and its place in one's life vs. a more Catholic view. The other day at work I was listening in as a couple of guys who are very active in their (bible church style Protestant) churches were comparing notes. One said, "We're pretty satisfied with the church we found. They've got a good men's and women's bible study, good kids program, good preaching and fellowship. The big problem is with the teen program. We have our daughter go to First Baptist instead because our church doesn't even have a full time youth minister."

And I'm sitting there thinking: Sheesh, I like our parish because the liturgies are according to GIRM, the choir at the mass we go to is pretty good, and our pastor and assistant pastor don't go in for loopy theology or liturgy. It wouldn't even occur to me to look for nearly the number of specialization of ministries that my Protestant friends seem to consider essential in a church. Sure, it'd be nice if our parish had a good bible study or lecture series, but that'd be strictly gravy. I don't think I'm totally out of the norm in that to me, extra-liturgical groups at church are things like St. Vincent de Paul drives, parish grounds cleanup day, and occasional projects/snacks/beer with the Knights of Columbus.

I'm not clear in my mind where there differences come from, or if there's a right answer to them. Another area of difference I notice every so often is that noun pressed into service as a verb as well: fellowship, to fellowship, and even fellowshipping. I once read a "secret worshipper report" by a Protestant visiting a Catholic church where the author complained: "There was no one to greet me as I entered. After the service, no one welcomed me as a stranger visiting for the first time and I was not invited to any sort of coffee and fellowship hour."

My first thought was: With at least five masses every weekend and 2500 families in the parish, I recognize at best 10-20% of the people who usually attend at the same times as we do, much less the people who always go at other times. I'd have no way of knowing if someone was a stranger. And I don't think I've ever gone to the parish coffee hour.

My second thought was: It would kind of creep me out and annoy me if I attended mass at another parish or in another city and someone immediately came up to me and said, "I see you're new here. Welcome to the parish. Let me take you under my wing..." I may not quite be one of the "don't offer me the sign of peace" kind of people, but I do still very much consider the mass to be communal time in private with God. We're there for the liturgy, so being overwhelmed with all sorts of community seems more a distraction than a benefit.

Every so often I read someone talking about how much better a job Evangelicals do of providing "extras" to their congregants, and how Catholics are starving for this stuff. I don't know if I've simply found ways to appreciate that lack because that's how things are, or if there's actually a different set of priorities which we rightly should have as Catholics. But there's clearly something very different going on.

The Liturgical Peanut Gallery

The Lair of the Catholic Cavemen has up a thought-provoking post on why some traditional and orthodox priests don't like saying the Tridentine mass.

Easter Meditations on Purgatorio: The Saved

I've been debating back and forth with myself whether to go on with the Divine Comedy at all, but I think at this point that I will, but at a more leisurely pace, and trying very hard to keep the posts down to a reasonable length. As such, I'll be trying to stick to main themes and avoid getting bogged down in quoting at length every interesting exchange of incident.

To race for safer waters, the small ship
Of my poetic powers now hoists sail,
Leaving in her wake that cruel sea.

And I shall sing this second kingdom where
The human spirit purifies itself,
Becoming fit to mount up into heaven. ...

Soft coloring of oriental sapphire,
Collecting in the calm face of the sky,
Clear right up to the edge of the horizon,

Brought back delight again into my eyes
As soon as I stepped out from the dead air
Which overburdened both my sight and breast.
(Purg. I, 1-6; 12-18)

The Purgatorio opens with quietly beautiful imagery. Both the reader and Dante the character are exhausted and mentally bruised from the harrowing sights of the pit of hell. At the end of Inferno, Dante and Virgil emerged from the underground passage leading up from Hell into the starlit night, and compared to the sights they had but recently seen even the dim starlight gave the impression of coming out into the light after a long, dark journey.

Now the first rays of sunrise are breaking of the island of Purgatory. It is Easter morning, 1300 -- a jubilee year declared by the pope, and on the morning of Christ's triumph over sin and death, Dante escapes the realm of sin and eternal death into the land of those who suffer cheerfully, in the knowledge that they are preparing themselves for eternal bliss.

Soon they are confronted by Cato, the guardian of Purgatory. Cato is an interesting figure in Dante's imagery because he is both a pagan and a suicide. Living in the last days of the Roman Republic, as civil war tore the empire apart and Julius Caesar rose to prominence, Cato had the reputation of being an "old Roman" who cared first and foremost about law and virtue. When Caesar seized control of the empire and Cato was ordered to submit to him, he committed suicide instead. As someone who valued virtue and freedom more than life, Dante makes him the guard at the entrance to Purgatory, one of the few pagans not confined to Limbo.

Cato asks the poets the nature of their journey, and once satisfied that it is ordained by Heaven, allows them to continue, but commands Dante to cleanse his face of the dust and tears of Hell. Dante does so, washing his face with the fresh dew on the grass. Then, in the distance, he and Virgil see a boat approaching with great speed.

The opposite of the boat in which Charon which transports the damned into Hell across the river Acheron, this boat is piloted by a radiant angel, who sends the boat skimming over the water by the flapping of his wings. The souls in the boat cheerfully sing out Psalm 113, which tells of Israel's delivery from Egypt. Dante and Virgil fall on their knees at the site of the angel, and do not rise until he has discharged the joyful souls upon the shore.

Among these newest among the saved, Dante meets a friend of his, Casella, a musician and singer who set several of Dante's poems to music. The old friends talk, and sing several of Casella's songs, until Cato comes upon the group of newly disembarked souls milling on the shores and chastises them for wasting time. At this the souls head off for the mountain at a run, leaving Dante and Virgil to follow at a slower pace.

As they circle the mountain, looking for a place where they can start on the path they see spiraling around its steep sides, the poets come upon a large group of souls walking slowly along the shore. These, they discover, are the late repentant: souls who persisted in grave sin until the very moment of their death, and then repented, commending their souls to God. Now they must circle Mt. Purgatory for thirty times as long as they persisted in sin -- unless the prayers of those still living help to shorten their time of waiting.

Among these souls, Dante meets King Manfred, a political hero of Dante's.

Then added with a smile, "I am Manfred,
The grandson of the glorious Empress Constance,
And so I plead that you on your return

"Visit my lovely daughter, mother of
The crowns of Sicily and Aragon,
And whatever else is said, tell her the truth:

"After I had my body riven through
By two mortal thrusts, I gave up my soul
Weeping to Him who pardons willingly.

"Horrible was the depth of my transgressing,
But infinite goodness has its arms so wide
That it embraces all who turn to it.
(Purg. III, 112-123)

After telling how he was buried in unconsecrated ground because he died while fighting in a civil war that put him on the opposite side of Italian politics from the pope, Manfred begs that Dante tell his relatives of his place in purgatory and ask them for their prayers. This will be a continuing theme through the Purgatorio. While the souls of the damned sometimes asked for fame, and other times asked to avoid it, the souls in purgatory at interested primarily in the prayers that will aid their swift ascension to the heavenly spheres, rather than any sort of earthly fame.

Another thing to note here is that Dante shows even those souls whose repentance was truly at the moment of their deaths -- without the chance to receive absolution. The middle ages are at times accused of a magic-like understanding of confession, which failed to take into account heartfelt repentance unaided by the sacraments. However Dante, certain the high point and summation of medieval thought on matters of salvation from an artistic point of view, definitely understands that even such personal contrition directly to God can save. Nonetheless, he holds these late repenting souls accountable for not having repented earlier and sought sacramental absolution, which would have allowed them to avoid this thirty-fold period of waiting.

---

Thanks to:

The translation and notes of James Finn Cotter

The translation, original text, and notes provided by Allen Mandelbaum

And most especially the translation and extensive commentary by Dorothy Sayers, which Penguin keeps appearing to drop, but never quite has.

Happy Easter

Triduum Posting

Things will be getting pretty quiet around here on the blog front from today through Monday, as there will be many doing in the Darwin household, liturgical and familial.

I have ambitions of doing a couple of fairly brief posts on Dante's Purgatorio, but we'll see how that ambition meshes with reality.

Ode to a Drunken Ferret from a Trousered Ape

Bob the Ape, a poet and lyricist of great talent and wit, has graced us with a piece inspired by the breeding of drunken ferrets.

The Drunken Ferret Villanelle

No scion of the barren Left inherits
The rule of Earth - their power is but fleeting:
The future is to us, the drunken ferrets.

The angry columnists may curse and swear - it’s
Bootless to prevent their tide receding;
No scion of the barren Left inherits.

Our heedless reproduction richly merits
Their empty wrath and fearful fruitless bleating.
The future is to us, the drunken ferrets.

The world is ours - ungrudging we will share its
Estate with our descendents; heed, unheeding!
No scion of the barren Left inherits.

Ha, ha! With frolicsome and fecund spirits
We hasten to progenitive proceeding.
The future is to us, the drunken ferrets.

Look on our wombs, ye mighty, and despair! It’s
Within them that our victory is breeding!
No scion of the barren Left inherits.
The future is to us, the drunken ferrets.

Hallelujah!

Thanks to Rick Lugari and Paul for sending me some visual aids to help me out with learning the Hallelujah Chorus.

The First Cities

I've been spending a little spare time recently reading about the first large settlements, just as agriculture was starting to be used in the Fertile Crescent, Egypt and Anatolia. Perhaps the most interesting site in this regard is Çatalhöyük in modern day Turkey. The primary site was inhabited from about 7,400 to 6,000 BC, and a smaller secondary site was inhabited from 6,000 to 5,7000 BC.

Çatalhöyük's population averaged about 6,000 people at a given time, which is very small compared to modern towns, but for a mid neolithic settlement (at a time when most other settlements discovered numbered just a few hundred inhabitants) it is huge.

Despite the settlement's size, the nature of the buildings suggests a fairly fragmented society, with the extended family as the most important social unit. There are no public buildings (fortifications, temples, palaces, granaries) and most houses are basically the same size. Although houses (built of mud brick, plaster and timber) were built incredibly close together (sometimes only inches apart) they do not share walls, all buildings are free standing.

Houses were windowless and doorless, with access through a hole in the ceiling and a ladder. Since the settlement had no streets (the spaces between the houses were used for dumping rubbish) people must have got about by walking from roof to roof.

Members of the family were carefully buried under the floors of their houses, and when a house became old, it was disassembled until the walls stood 3-4 feet high, carefully filled with brick, rubble and dirt, and then used as the foundation to build a new house directly on top of it. This successive building eventually created a mount on which the settlement stood, with more than a dozen layers of successive building in many areas.

The inhabitants appear to have lived off a mixture of agriculture, domesticated animals, wild animals, and wild grains and vegetables -- suggesting that Çatalhöyük dates from a period when the transition to agriculture was still ongoing.

Sources:
Natural History Magazine
Science Magazine

Breeding Like Drunken Ferrets

Pro Ecclesia links to another high-larious opinion rant by SFGate columnist Mark Morford titled: "Stats say the GOP is dying. But red-staters are breeding like drunken ferrets. Who wins?"

Sometimes the title says it all, doesn't it. Morford is worked up over statistics that say social conservatives are significantly out-reproducing social liberals, while other stats show that children generally retain the political affiliation of their parents, and that this trend is accentuated among conservative religious groups. (He even hurls out, curse-like, the word "homeschooling" as one of the sources of all this trouble.)

From the horse's mouth (or some orifice of the horse at any rate):

According to another set of data, for the past 30 years or so, conservatives -- particularly those of the right-wing red-state Christian strain -- have been out-breeding liberals by a margin of at least 20 percent, if not far more.

It's true. The reason? Why, God loves babies, of course. White American babies, most especially. Also: issues of space, religion, sexual orientation and, of course, conscience. Or, you know, lack thereof.

One theory goes like this: Libs are generally more socially conscious and hence tend to actually give a modicum of thought to what it means to pop out a brood of children in this modern overstuffed age. Also, many other liberal bohos are (admittedly) happy selfish suckwads who want all the modern booty for themselves and won't want to give up the Ducati and the plasma and the biannual trip to Cinque Terre for the sake of a pod of rug rats and 15 grand a year (each) for private kindergarten. Translation: Libs just aren't procreating like they could/should be.

Conservative Christians, of course, have no such conscience. Among the right-wing God-lovin' set, there is often little real awareness of planetary health or resource abuse or the notion that birth control is actually a very, very good idea indeed, and therefore it's completely natural to worship at the altar of minivans and SUVs and megachurches and massive all-American entitlement and have little qualm about popping out six, seven, 19 gloopy tots to populate the world with frat boys and Ford F-150 buyers and food court managers.

Nice to know there's no classist prejudice involved, eh?

Now, if this were just another pathetic rant from a hateful person, it wouldn't really be worth commenting on (goodness knows the capacity of humans to hate is not news at this point in history) but it strikes me there's something a bit interesting about this in that the very absurdity of its excess underlines one of the persistant problems with the way that many of us in the modern world have come to think about ourselves.

Pick your starting point: the ancient Greeks, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Romanic Era -- whatever the starting point people have come to see themselves first and foremost as individuals. Now, this is not without truth. We are individuals, possessed of a unique and immortal soul as well as a unique set of DNA. But we are also and at the same time animals, members of class mammalia just like anything else warm blooded, furry and, in the case of females of the species, to one extent or another endowed.

To the extent that we are individual, intelectual, and spiritual creatures, we have purposes in life such as self realization, knowledge, wisdom and discerning and loving the truth. However, in that we are also a species of animals, we have the purpose (as a population, though not necessarily each one of us individually) of bearing and rearing children. This doesn't necessarily mean breeding like rats, but it does mean breeding -- at as an annoying necessity, the effects of which to be shoved off upon daycare workers, nannies and schools as soon as possible, but as one of the central purposes of our lives. Species exist to reproduce themselves, not to own nice condos, have ocean views, own expensive cars and foster bleeding-hearted but generally condescending political opinions.

Not only is an ideology or lifestyle which scorns reproduction doomed to extinction, it is also fundamentally at odds with what we are as members of the human species.


But all other things aside: Have you watched ferrets? Can you imagine drunken ferrets? If we conservatives are going to breed, let's definately do it like drunken ferrets.

Smart vs. Hard Working

Someone (I confess I can't remember who) had up a link to this New York Times Magazine article titled How Not to Talk to Your Kids, about the effects of different forms of praise on young (and also older) children.

Essentially, a number of studies have produced some pretty conclusive results that if children consistently receive praise that "You did great. You must be really smart." they tend to become risk averse and drop things which they don't immediately excel at, declairing "This is just something I'm not good at."

If, on the other hand, children receive praise along the lines of "Great job. You must have worked really hard on that." they tend to be more willing to accept difficult problems and work through them, even if they at first don't do very well. The explanation that the researchers suggest is that "You must have really worked hard" gives the recipient of the praise an implicit action plan for how to achieve similar results in a more difficult situation in the future. "You must be really smart" on the other hand, suggests that good performance is the result of innate ability, and there's little that the child can do about it, except try to preserve the appearance of intelligence by avoiding failure.

In a study with high school age students, a class of under performers in math were divided into two groups, each of which received identical drill in basic study habits, discipline, and math concepts. One group received an additional two 25 minute sessions on how intelligence is not innate, but can be built up through hard work. In subsequent instruction and testing ove the course of several months, the group which had received the sessions on the ability to improve intelligence and knowledge performed significantly better on average than the group which did not recieve those extra sessions. Classroom teachers (who did not know which students had fallen into which group) consistently were able to identify which ones had received the "intelligence can be improved" lessons based on how hard the students worked.

However, the someone disturbing thing in light of all this is that there is actually a certain amount of evidence that intelligence (measured in absolute terms) cannot actually be increased, at least past the age of 10 or 12. This post on GeneExpression provides a summary of the work on g, which is taken to be the measure of general intelligence possessed by an individual. Research has generally shown that increased study can make only marginal measurable improvements in g in adults and teenagers.

I'm certainly not a neurologist or psychologist, but to the extent that I can get away with opining on such things (why not, I'm an amateur at pretty much everything else I write about) it seems to me that the truth of the matter is to an extent illuminated by these apparently contradictory results. I think most people degree of absolute intelligence/intellectual ability is probably pretty much set by some (have no idea what) combination of genetics and early rearing/environment up through age 7 or 8. However, even given that intelligence itself becomes essentially set after a certain period, the extent to which people successfully utilize their intelligence varies widely depending on dedication, study habits, quality of learning tools, cultural environment, opportunity, etc.

Given that most people are performing well below the maximum level allowed by the degree of intelligence that they possess, it makes sense that increased application would generally attain dramatic results. The question, it seems to me, is how wide the actual range of absolute of intelligence is for the middle 90% or so of the population. Is there enough of a range that the bottom 20-30% of performers really can't reproduce the results of the top 20-30%, or at least the middle 40-50%? I suspect that probably they can.

Scott Carson on Cardinal Schonborn

Scott Carson of Examined Life offers some thoughts on Cardinal Schonborn's latest on the evolution debate in First Things, and is not merely informative but a lot of fun as well.

(HT: John Farrell)

Fun with Handel

Having volunteered to help swell the ranks of the overworked choir for Easter, I suddenly find that I have one week to learn the alto line of the Hallelujah Chorus. I take it that everyone else has had a bit more time to learn, but as a latecomer I get two full practices (one of which was last night -- sightreading Handel's polyphony is very tricky, let me say) and a score to take home. I'm relying on the piano and the choir on my "Selections from Handel's Messiah" cd to get me up to speed fast.

The Hallelujah Chorus is one of those cultural chestnuts -- everyone knows the basic melody because it crops up in movies, commercials, and in the mall blaring at grumpy holiday shoppers. It's a shame that's it's become so ubiquitous as to be dismissable. Handel's intricate vocal weaving is sheer harmonic genius, and the wonder of it is that his music still sounds marvelous when sung by an amateur choir in rehearsals.

It will sound even better when I can nail that funky bit coming in right after the sopranos sing, "For the Lord God omnipotent".

Clubbing Wit' Jesus

As the DarwinVan pulled into its parking space yesterday, another young couple (with one small offspring) emerged from a large, glitteringly hubcapped pickup a few spaces over and headed towards the church.

"Ummmmm. Okay." said Darwin.
"Wow. Clubbing with Jesus," said MrsDarwin.

The source of these cryptic remarks was the dress worn by the female half of aforesaid couple. That it was rather tight, a little low cut, and came down only to mid thigh is perhaps not so unusual these days (even at a suburban Texas parish mass) as to elicit comment -- at least from the DarwinParents whose offspring were already starting to riot in the back of the van. Rather more out of the ordinary, however, was the fact that this particular dress featured a slit up the back of the skirt which went up basically to where the legs themselves divided from what came above. This might have elicited a great deal of attention in a situation where the wearer was going out clubbing, as such things always bring with them a certain curiosity as to whether the wearer is conscious enough of the limitations of her clothing to manage not to move in such a way as to amuse the masses, or not.

However, since the venue was Sunday mass, the outfit -- topped off (or should I say bottomed off?) with high, clear resin heels -- seemed simply to be out of place.

What this reminded me of, however, is the increasing degree to which people seem to have lost the idea of different standards of dress for different places. One's most expensive or exclusive outfit is not necessarily a appropriate for any given venue, even if "dressing up" is appropriate there.

I am reminded of an anecdote I heard somewhere or other in which a priest asked one of his parishoners why he had been so disrespectful as to show up to Sunday mass in a track suit and sneakers. The man replied, "What do you mean, father? This track suit cost me $700. This is the most expensive outfit I own!"