Monday

Miscellaneous Rambling

Well, now the holiday season is really over. Epiphany has come and gone. Marie is de-Christmasing the house today. A full work-week yawns in front of us. Oh well. Every season, whether of the calendar or our life, brings its blessings and curses. For me, I'm looking forward to desk time, whether at the office or in my home study.

The new podcast episode is up: "Pope Francis and Evelyn Waugh, Structuralism and Libertinism, Buddhist Emptiness, Hungover, Mongols with Nestorian Christians."

It was a tough episode for a couple of reasons. (1) I'm still new to podcasting, so it's hard for me to do "on the run." Ideally, I prepare drafts of a few segments the Sunday before during my leisure, then work on the podcast during the week, say, 10-15 minutes a night, then put it together on the following weekend. For this episode, I couldn't even start recording segments until Thursday evening. (2) I delve into postmodernism. It's a new area for me, so I don't understand the content as well as I do other areas I normally comment on, thereby forcing me to rely on notes and flat-out reading at points. Your indulgence is appreciated. The next podcast episode is already shaping up to be back to normal.

Show Notes:

Haters at Mass. Pope Francis' suggestion that hateful Catholics stay away from Mass makes sense, but there are three potential problems with it: When is a person good enough to go to Mass? Hasn't he been a bit, ahem, spiteful in his attacks on his political foes? Maybe Mass is keeping the hateful from becoming the murderous.

Structuralism. The foundations of post-modernism. My first podcast segment on this topic. Structuralists: words form the society; the society tells you how to think; thoughts don't come from inside of us. Deconstructionists: Okay, but you guys, the structuralists, aren't thinking for yourselves either. There is no truth period, in any form or fashion whatsoever. Leads to sexual libertinism.

Buddhist Emptiness. The Buddhist doctrine of Emptiness appears to reflect the basic insight of semiology, the science of signs, which was the foundation of the structuralists' insights. Both led to sexual libertinism: Tantric Buddhism on the one hand, free love of the 1960s on the other (and today's celebration of preference today).

Lightning Segments. Hangovers, exploding real estate prices in Detroit, TWE's improving Facebook page.

Nestorian Christians. Mongols respected Christians . . . of the Nestorian stripe. Who were they? In sum, Christians who denied Christ's full divinity. They were active in the far east and managed to convert an important Mongol tribe.