Friday, July 31, 2009
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Coffee: the poor man's delicacy.
Coffee is the prudent man's problem. For everyone else, it's either a delicacy, or a morning pick me up. For me, it's a delicate problem, especially when its a late evening pick up.
Faith
Faith is a way of knowing. This is not a definition. But I believe that this statement is true. Some thing's cannot be known through any material faculties we may possess as human beings. An example being our faculty for conceptual thinking, abstract thinking, as well as sense reception. Some things enter our conscience only by revelation. And though it may appear to be a rational thought, it may not fit within any rational schema that we've adopted, not to say that it cannot be rationalized, but at what risk?
Rationalizing a thought that's realm of knowing is faith is like eating soup with fork. It's not a tool incapable of performing the task, but is highly inadequate. Perhaps there are things that we can't understand by neither by the senses, nor any other material faculty. What's scary is that we seem to have the propensity as people to make ourselves believe that an explanation is true as long is its logical. And even though we all freely admit that logical does not equal true, we never entertain the idea that illogical does sometime mean true. Of course as I have left that statement, it is not true. But that's because we've eliminated a third category. Something that is illogical cannot be true. But something that is not logical may not be illogical, it may be something that logic cannot contain. This does not necessarily mean that this knowledge is inaccessible, it means simply that logic is not the door to that knowledge. I would say that faith is. Faith is response to revelation. Revelation is pre-logical, or "alogical", God reserves the right to blow up our categories, which if we're honest, is what the whole realm of logic is, a human, thus finite category. How else do we explain the righteousness of Abraham in sacrificing his son, God sacrificing his son, election? God asks Abraham to do something that if any of us asked our friends to do, they would cease to be our friend. He treats his own son in a matter that would get us as parents put away for life, but yet he is righteous. We cannot believe this using human reason. We can rationalize it, justify it, but even after all this we cannot escape the simple fact that God sanctioned the brutal death of his own son, and demanded the blood of the son of promise from Abraham.
Maybe our ability to reason falls short,. Maybe it's not that God is irrational, maybe the problem is our finiteness, but if we're so unable to know everything, how do we know what we can know? I assert that we can know all there is to know, but not all things through our material faculties. We must also appeal to faith, which may at times conflict what our reason,instincts, or faculties tell us, and when this happens... Faith wins, and if you're wrong, well if you have faith this is obviously an impossibility, but what is faith without the risk?
Rationalizing a thought that's realm of knowing is faith is like eating soup with fork. It's not a tool incapable of performing the task, but is highly inadequate. Perhaps there are things that we can't understand by neither by the senses, nor any other material faculty. What's scary is that we seem to have the propensity as people to make ourselves believe that an explanation is true as long is its logical. And even though we all freely admit that logical does not equal true, we never entertain the idea that illogical does sometime mean true. Of course as I have left that statement, it is not true. But that's because we've eliminated a third category. Something that is illogical cannot be true. But something that is not logical may not be illogical, it may be something that logic cannot contain. This does not necessarily mean that this knowledge is inaccessible, it means simply that logic is not the door to that knowledge. I would say that faith is. Faith is response to revelation. Revelation is pre-logical, or "alogical", God reserves the right to blow up our categories, which if we're honest, is what the whole realm of logic is, a human, thus finite category. How else do we explain the righteousness of Abraham in sacrificing his son, God sacrificing his son, election? God asks Abraham to do something that if any of us asked our friends to do, they would cease to be our friend. He treats his own son in a matter that would get us as parents put away for life, but yet he is righteous. We cannot believe this using human reason. We can rationalize it, justify it, but even after all this we cannot escape the simple fact that God sanctioned the brutal death of his own son, and demanded the blood of the son of promise from Abraham.
Maybe our ability to reason falls short,. Maybe it's not that God is irrational, maybe the problem is our finiteness, but if we're so unable to know everything, how do we know what we can know? I assert that we can know all there is to know, but not all things through our material faculties. We must also appeal to faith, which may at times conflict what our reason,instincts, or faculties tell us, and when this happens... Faith wins, and if you're wrong, well if you have faith this is obviously an impossibility, but what is faith without the risk?
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Doing Better
I must do better. I want to start being more serious about this than I have been. I love writing. I want people to read my writing. I think that people enjoy reading it. But there are too many stupid, silly errors. And I don't write enough. So expect to see stuff everyday. I am pretentious enough to think that you care about what I have to say about anything, because I can think about anything, and as such I will write about anything. Some days however, I can think of nothing blog worthy. No matter, I will write. I will proofread, and you my audience will read.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Why Did They Write?
I got a letter in the mail the other day from my sister. I thought: "Why can't she just call me?" I usually think this when I get letters. I sometimes think this when I get text messages, but that depends on the nature of the text. I also sometimes think this when I get messages on facebook. Sometimes I get a call from somebody who lives a few blocks from me, and they want to talk or visit, and I think; "Why not just come over?" But all of this is jabber because my real question is: "Why read a book when you got film?" And why write a novel? Ever. One reason may because books are better since they leave room for the imagination of the reader, and in film you're stuck with the vision of the director. But, before film, did novelists write to stir the imagination, or did they write because they had something to say? To a large degree, it's both. And the novels I am thinking of are the classics, and not just novels perhaps but all classic literature from Homer to Fight Club. My roommate started me thinking on this train, and I must say that it's quite the train to be aboard. I assume that film's emergence as a story telling art form is partly due to the technological age, and that film will continue to expand, both artistically, and commercially as long as technological expansion continues. But something that I think goes along with all that is that film is uniquely suitable for the modern person's visual sensibilities. In other words, what novels used to artistically accomplish, film now does. We were talking about imagination before, and we view broad imaginings as being a good thing, but when reading a "classic" it seems that the author was either not trying to get you to imagine anything concretely, or that he wanted to describe it so thoroughly that little was left to the imagination. An author is trying to say something. Whether that something is specific or open to interpretation. Whether it is abstract or concrete. No matter what the medium is, how creative he or she may be in the medium, whether it is poetry, theatre, novel, short story, philosophy, or some kind of non-fiction the author wants you to hear him, see him, and understand something, even if he wants you to be a part of the interpretation, the author wants the reader to interpret. He writes to communicate. It seems obvious because it is. But I am just wondering, with the emergence of film, and the endless amount of options one has with film artistically, could not one communicate a story, more effectively in a film than with a novel? Is it possible that storytelling as writing is obsolete? Will film do to the novel tradition what writing did to the oral tradition? In other words, why write me a story, when you can show me one?
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Transformers
These movies are terrible. I see three possible appeals. 1) Megan Fox 2) Shia Labeouf 3) Action and special effects. As far as a plot or meaning is concerned, it is so unnecessary for this movie to have one that they don't and the only thing that makes this movie not worse than terrible is the fact they don't try to have a plot. They're smart enough to know when a plot will kill their profit. And viewers are stupid enough to be dooped. Call me arrogant, bitter, and self-righteous but transformers is truly the worst thing in all of film ever. Please do not go to the theater a second time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
