Obama is not a brown-skinned anti-war socialist who helps the poor and gives away free healthcare.
You're thinking of Jesus.
Friday, March 30, 2012
Obama Bumper Sticker
Obama is not a brown-skinned anti-war socialist who helps the poor and gives away free healthcare.
NASA's "Perpetual Ocean" Animation
NASA’S ‘PERPETUAL OCEAN’ ANIMATION SHOWS ALL THE OCEAN CURRENTS IN ACTION AT ONCE
This is fantastic and I’ve always wanted someone to do a visualization of ocean currents like this. It’s like Van Gogh… from space. The Scientific Visualization Studio at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center created this mesmerizing animation called Perpetual Ocean which visualizes the ocean’s surface currents over a 30-month period between June 2005 and December 2007.
Proposed Cross-Border Charter School: Half year in the U.S., the other half in Mexico
Dear Josie,
The following New York Times' article borrows its title from a phrase Dave pointed out several years ago.
Timothy Egan's portrayal of the "hermetic seal" between Americans and "the natural world" spotlights the shortcomings of existing educational methods, methods that systematically damage children.
The following New York Times' article borrows its title from a phrase Dave pointed out several years ago.
Timothy Egan's portrayal of the "hermetic seal" between Americans and "the natural world" spotlights the shortcomings of existing educational methods, methods that systematically damage children.
It is also true that Life is a "mixed bag" and that the quest for "perfection" often provokes detrimental blowback.
Truth be told, the nation's schools do a great deal of good.
The essential problem is that American schooling provides "incremental goods" in a context of "enveloping impairment."
As increasingly happens with Uncle Sam's swashbuckling, we win many battles but lose the war.
Even as a child I knew there was too much schooling - not too little.
No matter how elevated the quality of "instruction," "education" gets short shrift.
"Instruction," from the Latin "in struire," means "to build into."
"Education," from the Latin "ex ducare," means to "lead out of."
Essentially, "instruction" imparts skills that enable individuals to make their "self-seeking" way in the world.
"Education" on the other hand imparts social responsibility and community collaboration.
Mitt Romney is well-instructed and therefore admired as a vulture capitalist.
Obama is well-educated and disdained as a community organizer.
The underlying orientation of "instruction" (when given primacy) contradicts the underlying orientation of "education."
This topsy-turvy inversion occurs because "properly ordered" instruction derives from education, whereas education is always truncated when the instructional "cart" is placed before the educational "horse."
In consequence, we Americans are highly-instructed, poorly-educated people for whom rugged individualism is primary while The Common Good is construed as an existential threat to self-interest.
"Education" And "Instruction" Are Antipodal Enterprises
School (as we now know it) is a "low torque exercise" in which students take up their daily position in the trenches, immediately hunkering down for a tedious, unnecessarily prolonged "school day" that seldom contacts Real Life and rarely provides deep learning down to the root of things.
If, as I believe, "the medium IS the message" -- which is to say "comprehensive context is more important than fragmented content" -- then the meta-level purpose of schooling (as currently manifest) is to teach students to "sit, listen and endure the imposition of vested/putative authority."
If, as I believe, "the medium IS the message" -- which is to say "comprehensive context is more important than fragmented content" -- then the meta-level purpose of schooling (as currently manifest) is to teach students to "sit, listen and endure the imposition of vested/putative authority."
In brief, the prime directive of "schooling" is to "get in line."
Another fundamental purpose of American schooling is to teach the twin skills of punctuality and "showing up," two closely related practices that comprise "90% of success" - or, at least, what we call "success."
By God... "Sit in those seats for 20 years and you will, "as night follows day," occupy your very own treasured place in The Middle Class."
Your work may be meaningless.
Your work may corrode culture.
Your work may undermine any clear sense of shared responsibility.
You may take far more than you give - a practice now normalized by American financiers - http://vimeo.com/23086688 /// http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/opinion/why-i-am-leaving-goldman-sachs.html?pagewanted=all).
But you will have "succeeded!"
When asked to write a chapter for a book entitled "Secrets of Success," Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, had this to say: "If it so happened that I had once written a best-seller (a reference to Merton's "Seven Story Mountain"), this was a pure accident, due to inattention and naivete, and I would take very good care never to do the same again. If I had a message for my contemporaries, I said, it was surely this: Be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success."
When asked to write a chapter for a book entitled "Secrets of Success," Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, had this to say: "If it so happened that I had once written a best-seller (a reference to Merton's "Seven Story Mountain"), this was a pure accident, due to inattention and naivete, and I would take very good care never to do the same again. If I had a message for my contemporaries, I said, it was surely this: Be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success."
William James - the brilliant 19th century psychologist who wrote "The Varieties of Religious Experience" -- provides a "bookend" to Merton's reflection: "The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess Success. That - with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word "success" - is our national disease." William James (You may also enjoy the following essay, written in Februrary, 2000, as the "anchor" of my "legacy" website, "Apokatastasis." http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/03/pseudo-success-and-undoing-of-america.html)
What can we do about our educational muddle?
Since meaningful re-orientation benefits from knowledge of the past, note that from the beginning of "schooling" peripateticism was an honored educational method in ancient Greece. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripatetic_school
Although there is considerable debate concerning the "mythic" component of peripateticism, it is said that the ancients -- particularly those in Aristotle's lineage -- believed that learning was optimized by conversation that took place while teachers and students "walked about." (Similarly, symposia were relaxed gatherings at which people drank wine and discussed ideas.)
It is time to stop thinking of "the Grecian walk about" as a quaint anachronism and to start focusing -- as you first taught me -- the bedrock importance of "sauntering."
Here is the splendid excerpt you passed along from Thoreau's reflection on "Walking."
It is time to stop thinking of "the Grecian walk about" as a quaint anachronism and to start focusing -- as you first taught me -- the bedrock importance of "sauntering."
Here is the splendid excerpt you passed along from Thoreau's reflection on "Walking."
I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as contrasted with a Freedom and Culture merely civil,—to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make a emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization; the minister, and the school-committee, and every one of you will take care of that.
I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering; which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the country, in the middle ages, and asked charity, under pretence of going à la Sainte Terre"—to the holy land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer", a saunterer—a holy-lander. They who never go to the holy land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds, but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all, but the Saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the first, which indeed is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this holy land from the hands of the Infidels.
It is true, we are but faint hearted crusaders, even the walkers, now-a-days, who undertake no persevering never ending enterprises. Our expeditions are but tours and come round again at evening to the old hearth side from which we set out. Half the walk is but retracing our steps. We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return; prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only, as relics to our desolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again; if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man; then you are ready for a walk. (The rest of Thoreau's fine essay is at
I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering; which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the country, in the middle ages, and asked charity, under pretence of going à la Sainte Terre"—to the holy land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer", a saunterer—a holy-lander. They who never go to the holy land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds, but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all, but the Saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the first, which indeed is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this holy land from the hands of the Infidels.
It is true, we are but faint hearted crusaders, even the walkers, now-a-days, who undertake no persevering never ending enterprises. Our expeditions are but tours and come round again at evening to the old hearth side from which we set out. Half the walk is but retracing our steps. We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return; prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only, as relics to our desolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again; if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man; then you are ready for a walk. (The rest of Thoreau's fine essay is at
I have long envisioned a charter school operating across the U.S. - Mexico border.
In broad outline (and here I expand on my original concept of a "boarding" charter school in Mexico) there would be a state-side component much like the "outdoor" school we planned for Camp Chestnut Ridge... until the board of directors nixed the notion.
The "sequence" would be something like this: a half year's participation in an "outdoor school" in The Triangle would alternate with a half year in the Yucatan where students will enter into the warp and weft of daily life, learning what makes Mexico "tick" -- its history, politics, economics, religion, sociology and culture -- and what made Mexico tick from pre-Colombian times onward.
In particular, I envision archaeological digs, historian-guided field trips, full-sun field work alongside campesinos, daily gardening, poultry-raising, fishing from small commercial boats, hammock-weaving, basket-weaving, ceramics, snorkeling, marine-biology, open-air marketing, cooking instruction provided by Mexican amas de casa, ecological work, participation in the art, music and drama of las posadas, La Purisima, la Pascua y los dias del santo patron, participation in church-and-state-sponsored social service agencies, theater production, daily "out loud" reading, designated hours for Spanish language immersion, and on it goes...
(I should mention that the Yucatan is one of the safest places in the world. Its rural areas, small towns and cities are always safer than corresponding areas in the United States - http://www.r-bloggers.com/wp-
As you probably know, I am not suited to "bureaucratic process" and therefore seek collaboration with people who have this gift.
Interested?
Pax vobiscum
Alan
PS My decade-long work as guide and service coordinator for American Waldorf Schools has already taken me through the necessary learning curve. The plan outlined above is immediately implementable through the agency of my own guidance and that of my trusted Yucatec staff. http://yucatan.homestead.com/
Interested?
Pax vobiscum
Alan
PS My decade-long work as guide and service coordinator for American Waldorf Schools has already taken me through the necessary learning curve. The plan outlined above is immediately implementable through the agency of my own guidance and that of my trusted Yucatec staff. http://yucatan.homestead.com/
PPS Perhaps River Dave will be interested in this proposal as well.
Nature-Deficit Disorder
By TIMOTHY EGAN
TUCSON — Your day breaks, your mind aches for something stimulating to match the stirrings of the season. The gate at the urban edge is open, here to the Santa Catalina Mountains, and yet you turn inward, to pixels and particle-board vistas.
Something’s amiss. A third of all American adults — check, it just went up to 35.7 percent — are obese. The French don’t even have a word for fat, Paul Rudnick mused in a mock-Parisian tone in The New Yorker last week. “If a woman is obese,” he wrote, “we simply call her American.”
And, of course, our national branding comes with a host of deadly side effects: heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes, certain kinds of cancer. Medical costs associated with obesity and inactivity are nearly $150 billion a year.
This grim toll is well known. Cripes: maybe surgery is the answer, or a menu of energy drinks and vodka (the Ann Coulter diet?). Count the calories. Lay off the muffins. Atkins one week, Slim-Fast the next. We spend more than $50 billion on the diet-industrial complex and have little to show for it (or too much).
This grim toll is well known. Cripes: maybe surgery is the answer, or a menu of energy drinks and vodka (the Ann Coulter diet?). Count the calories. Lay off the muffins. Atkins one week, Slim-Fast the next. We spend more than $50 billion on the diet-industrial complex and have little to show for it (or too much).
But there is an obvious solution — just outside the window. For most of human history, people chased things or were chased themselves. They turned dirt over and planted seeds and saplings. They took in Vitamin D from the sun, and learned to tell a crow from a raven (ravens are larger; crows have a more nasal call; so say the birders). And then, in less than a generation’s time, millions of people completely decoupled themselves from nature.
There’s a term for the consequences of this divorce between human and habitat — nature deficit disorder, coined by the writer Richard Louv in a 2005 book, “Last Child in the Woods.” It sounds trendy, a bit of sociological shorthand, but give the man and his point a listen.
Louv argued that certain behavioral problems could be caused by the sharp decline in how little time children now spend outdoors, a trend updated in the latest Recreation Participation Report. The number of boys ages 6 to 12 who engage in some kind of outdoor activity, in particular, continues to slide.
Kids who do play outside are less likely to get sick, to be stressed or become aggressive, and are more adaptable to life’s unpredictable turns, Louv said. Since his book came out, things have gotten worse.
“The average young American now spends practically every minute — except for the time in school – using a smartphone, computer, television or electronic device,” my colleague Tamar Lewin reported in 2010, from a Kaiser Family Foundation study.
You can blame technology, but behind every screen-dominant upbringing is an overly cautious parent. Understandably, we want to protect our kids from “out there” variables. But it’s better not just to play in dirt, but to eat it. Studies show exposure to the randomness of nature may actually boost the immune system.
Nature may eventually come to those who shun it, and not in a pretty way. We stay indoors. We burn fossil fuels. The CO2 buildup adds to global warming. Suburbs of Denver are aflame this week, and much of the United States is getting ready for the tantrums of hurricane and tornado season, boosted by atmospheric instability.
Last week, an Australian mountaineer named Lincoln Hall died at the age of 56, and in the drama of that life cut short is a parable of sorts. Hall is best known for surviving a night at more than 28,000 feet on Mount Everest, in 2006. He’d become disoriented near the summit, and couldn’t move — to the peril of his sherpas. They left him for dead. And Hall’s death was announced to his family.
But the next day, a group of climbers found Hall sitting up, jacket unzipped, mumbling, badly frostbitten — but alive. He later wrote a book, “Dead Lucky: Life After Death on Mount Everest.”
Still, having survived perhaps the most inhospitable, dangerous and life-killing perch on the planet, Hall died in middle age of a human-caused malady from urban life — mesothelioma, attributed to childhood exposure to asbestos.
Various groups, from the outdoor co-op REI to the Trust for Public Land, have been working to ensure that kids have more contact with the alpine world than one lined with asbestos. And they don’t even have to haul children off to a distant mountain to get some benefit. An urban park would do.
This week, Michelle Obama appeared in the glow of spring’s optimism to kick off the fourth year of the White House Kitchen Garden, a component of her campaign to curb childhood obesity. If she is successful, it will be because people learned by their own initiative — perhaps at her prompting. A worm at work can be a wonderful discovery if you’ve never seen one outside of a flat-screen. But so are endorphins, the narcotic byproduct of exercise.
“Hope is the thing with feathers,” wrote Emily Dickinson. The First Lady supplied her own variation on the theme, with two powerful words that can go a long way to battling nature deficit disorder: “Let’s plant!”
We have "multiplied and filled the earth." What now for Natural Law?
Dear Patrick,
Thanks for your email.
I do not have any “zingers” to relay.
Basically, I think the Vatican is comprised of conservative old men who are disproportionately involved in the repression of sex - which is not to say celibacy isn’t a real virtue for those “with the gift.”
For one thing, celibacy exempts a person from the “corrupting” influence of Shakespeare’s dictum: “He who hath wife and child has given hostages to fortune.”
Clearly the “religiously celibate” can be singularly courageous people precisely because they surrendered no hostages and therefore need not worry about surviving family members if their struggles on behalf of peace and justice result in their murder.
On a very deep level – a level to which the Vatican’s old conservatives may have no conscious access -- I think Natural Law, as narrowly defined, is nearing the end of its run.
For example...
“By nature,” the primary purpose of sex is procreation.
But now that we have complied with the biblical mandate to “multiply and fill the earth,” universal adherence to the prime directive of unimpeded procreation – even big families are a great blessing for many people – we cannot continue to posit the primacy of uncontrolled multiplication and still be responsible stewards of the earth.
Nor can we impose widespread celibacy without devising a “cure” worse than “the disease.”
It is often said that 98% of American Catholic women have used contraception.
I do not see how the Church can continue to enforce hypocrisy on so many practicing Catholics without sowing such cognitive dissonance in the minds of “the faithful” that they simply “break” under stress and either 1.) stop practicing Catholicism altogether, 2.) shift allegiance to a sect that does not force them to live a lie, 3.) live a lie that becomes increasingly repugnant, or, 4.) normalize their “lived lives” with a lie residing at their center.
As you know, “arguing from Natural Law” is central to the scholastic world-view, the same world view that the magisterium has relied on since Aquinas made his masterful presentation in the early 13th century.
Although wisdom and knowledge often lead to different “valuations” – and although there is much to recommend Natural Law – changing circumstances (sometimes changes that are as mundane as “quantitative changes”) also result in qualitative shifts.
Hence, H2O has three qualitatively different properties as a direct result of ambient (circumstantial) temperature.
Above 212 Fahrenheit, H2O is a gas.
Between 32 F and 212 F, H2O is a liquid.
Below 32 F, H20 is a gas.
Searching for “reinforcement,” contemporary Catholicism has allied itself with Christian fundamentalism, failing to realize that “at the end of this road,” they will need to renounce certain consensus findings of Science (which I can not imagine them doing) or, the church will need to re-embrace Science in a way that leads to a more fluid, dynamic, paradoxical – and even contingent --understanding of Universe.
In accordance with close scientific scrutiny – and careful study of “circumstances” -- moral theology will then change traditional moral teachings. (“Just War” theology is just such an accommodation of the teaching of Yeshua in which I find NO justification for war but bedrock justification for the acceptance of martyrdom.)
Notably, the Church DID change its moral teaching some centuries ago when The Capitalist Model won the day.
Until this transition, Usury was considered a grievous sin – to such an extent that Christendom surrendered the “banking” industry to Jews who were able to make the necessary “moral” rationalization. Today, the church operates el Banco Ambrosiano! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury
There is not a single nun or priest in America who does not carry a credit card bearing a usurious interest rate even though 500 years ago any such person would have been vociferously “damned to Hell.”
Notably, not one American priest or nun feels the slightest compunction about their routine, matter-of-fact collusion with a financial practice which, “in its time,” was taken more seriously than abortion. (I think this is a fair statement.)
Sure, the sinfulness of usury may still – technically -- be “on the books.”
But “something new under the sun” has emerged – which is to say we have already fulfilled God’s command in Genesis “to multiply and fill the earth.”
In light of this changing circumstance, it is time for the church to dispatch its moral teachings on contraception and “committed same-sex union” to the same dusty storage room where usury has been “retired.”
Pax on both houses
Alan
From: Patrick
Sent: Friday, March 30, 2012 9:52 AM
Subject: quote from you
Hi Alan - My editor (The Indy) is asking me to address the issue of why the Catholic Church feels a need to delve into the gay marriage debate when it appears to have no impact at all on the church's "sacramental" separate and distinct marriage ceremony. Can you give me your thoughts for my story. Thanks, Patrick
Pseudo-Success And The Undoing of America
"Success"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/02/success.html
TED Radio Hour: Success
A Great Lineup!
On this program I most recommend Alain de Botton's talk.
(The following essay is featured on the homepage of my legacy website, "Apokatastasis," launched February 14, 2000 - http://alanarchibald.homestead.com/)
Herbert Hoover would be proud. There's a chicken in every pot. We delight in our possessions --- homes, cottages, cars, boats, appliances, electronic gadgetry. We get and beget. We plan the future. We're confident "the economy" will produce an uninterrupted supply of creature comforts. No sooner did we achieve "Freedom from Want" than our determination to "acquire more" became a patriotic obligation. America specializes in the fabrication of want: we have made wantoness a cornerstone of culture. We are at ease with greed, gluttony, lust and anger, and no long question the re-classification of these vices as virtues. We strike religious poses but live by "bread alone," contemning visions that rattle the box of materialism.Driven by compulsory consumption, prosperity endangers survival. Another millenium is presumed possible. But at what cost?Climatological patterns shift. Ice shelves dwindle. Coastal waters surge. Aerial photos of Ganges' headwaters reveal negligible snow-fields where glaciers sprawled 40 years ago. At the turn of the 20th century, ocean-going ships sailed up the Rio Grande. By Spring, 2001, a sand bar blocked the river's egress to the Gulf of Mexico. Zoologists define the present era as "a blow-out extinction event." Field biologists refer to their work as "documenting the decline."Ultra-violet radiation scorches the collective psyche. Kids rarely "go out" to play: fretful parents see the sun as an enemy. Our retreat from "nature" is not complete, but we are oddly eager to enclose ourselves in "the air-conditioned nightmare," to insist on personal "comfort zones" hemmed in by increasingly stringent conditions."The fire next time..."Amidst the unexpected gaiety of slow-motion apocalypse, it's difficult to see the road ahead. Surrounded by labor-saving devices, we lack leisure to examine our lives. How did we get here? Ultimately, history is an outgrowth of principle, and the principle we hold most dear is that "the business of America is business."Busy-ness pervades our lives. Obsessive accomplishment is the chief means by which humans secure personal validation in spiritually vapid cultures. We pride ourselves on "notable careers" and "professional achievement," but find our families in disarray, our friendships on "hold," a chorus of discomfiting voices whispering in the night. Meaningful communities have been replaced by jejune networks. We collude in the creation of atomizing structures, soborned by Systems that require depersonalization as a pre-requisite for employment.Our dedication to "busy-ness and accomplishment" starts early. K-12 schooling trains us to "stay on task," to focus minutely on our daily rounds, to assume that the unquestioned (and unquestionable) sub-systems we serve, "somehow" manage to further "the good." We are taught to be pliant agents of corporate/collectivist effort. Our "educational" structures devalue each individual's genius so we enter the world hollow people, ill-prepared to create our own work in the world. We are pressed into service by hapless institutional agendas and labor submissively at "shadow work" --- dedicating ourselves to sound and fury signifying precious little. We emphasize the transcendental importance of "choice," chthonically suspicious we've surrendered every meaningful choice to merchants, mercenaries and plutocrats.Always, the tide of busy-ness justifies our ignorance of collusion.Addressing the United Nations, Czech leader Vaclav Havel declared that "consciousness is prior to being." Whether Havel's assessment is accurate or not, his observation recalls the possibility that contemplative repose is -- "in the ordained scheme of things" -- prior to meaningful achievement. Philosophically, we subscribe to utilitarianism, a spiritless world view exacerbated by Yankee ingenuity, propelled by our self-justifying determination "to get the job done," "to subdue the wilderness," to achieve "manifest destiny" (recently re-christened "Globalization.") Often, our hyperactivity reduces to meddlesomeness. We pretend to do "good" while denying the mutual exclusivity of peace and compulsion. The upshot of our unsettling haste is permanent pre-occupation and the ubiquitous urge to go faster. We want things "done yesterday" --- a tautly-strung fixation that pre-empts meaningful relationship with the living moment. We cannot sit still. We fidget. We cling and grasp, refusing to let go. America has become the land of "stuff, more stuff and where the hell am I going to store the stuff?" In the end, salvation depends more on "undoing" than "doing," more on renunciation than acquisition. The greatest make do with least. It is becoming apparent that compulsive busyness is not the path to "salvation," but the cornerstone of personal dis-integration, social havoc and planetary despoliation.We have sacrificed the context of meaning for the content of consolation, and dote on the latter to stonewall the former. It is important -- perhaps urgent -- that we take time to meditate, deliberate, and articulate our "findings." Without mindfulness, the tyranny of the "Disjointed Moment" binds us to the daemons of fashion, fatuity and dispirited physicality. Burdened by the claustrophobic crush of materialist immediacy, we accumulate tokens of "success," slowly coming to believe (whether consciously or not) that "s/he who dies with the most toys wins."Apokatastasis explores alternatives to the existing "world order" aptly described by John Paul II as "a culture of death."
Apocatastasis
Wikipedia
"Pope Francis Links"
Pope Francis: Quotations On Finance, Economics, Capitalism And Inequality
Pope Francis: One Of The Most Powerful Critiques Of Capitalism You Will Ever Read
"Pope Francis Links"
Pope Francis: Quotations On Finance, Economics, Capitalism And Inequality
Pope Francis: "This Economy Kills"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/01/pope-francis-this-economy-kills.html
Catholic Social Teaching
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/01/catholic-social-teaching.html
Pope Francis: Moving The Moral Compass
From "The Individual" Toward "The Collective"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/01/pope-francis-moving-moral-judgment-from.html
Pro-Science Pontiff: Pope Francis On Climate Change, Evolution And The Big Bang
Pope Francis: What Christianity Looks Like When Believers Realize "God Is Love"
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