“Nothing can be clearer than that we require a story to explain to ourselves why we are here and what our future is to be, and many other things, including where authority resides.”
Neil Postman Building a Bridge to the 18th Century
“I refer to those who have fallen under the devilish spell of what is vaguely called ‘postmodernism,’ and in particular a subdivision of it sometimes called ‘deconstructionism.’… in this way of understanding things, language is under deep suspicion and is even thought to be delusional. Jean Baudrillard, a Frenchman, of all things, tells us that not only does language falsely represent reality, but there is no reality to represent. (Perhaps this explains, at long last, the indifferent French resistance to the German invasion of their country in World War II: They didn’t believe it was real.) In an earlier time, the idea that language is incapable of mapping reality would have been considered nonsense, if not a form of mental illness. In fact, it is a form of mental illness. Nonetheless, in our own time the ideas has become an organizing principle of prestigious academic departments. You can get a Ph.D. in this sort of thing.”
Neil Postman Building a Bridge to the 18th Century
“Pessimism insists on the shortness of human life in order to show that life is valueless. Religion insists on the shortness of human life in order to show that life is frightfully valuable – is almost horribly valuable. Pessimism says that life is so short that it gives nobody a chance; religion says that life is so short that it gives everybody his final chance.”
G.K. Chesterton, “Nicholas Nickleby”, in Appreciations and Criticisms of Charles Dickens, quoted in “Chesterton’s Mail Bag” in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 10 #4 (Jan.-Feb. 2007)
Here’s a video from the past. It’s a talk I gave at the Augustine College Summer Seminar in June 2019 so I’m tardy making it available. And it’s about the Middle Ages which were, far too many people think, necessarily awful because they were long ago and old is bad and new is good. In fact there are a great many modern horrors that would have appalled people in the Middle Ages and one of them is widespread ignorance about the period.
Sorry to take so long to get around to editing and posting it. Life got in the way.
“When the knight came upon the dragon, did he estimate whether the dragon could be overcome in his lifetime? No. He stood up and fought.”
J. Budziszewski in “Underground Thomist” email Feb. 25, 2019
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”
Henry David Thoreau, quoted on www.hound-dog-media.com
“pessimist: a person who thinks everything is bad except himself.”
G.K. Chesterton in “The Flag of the World” in Orthodoxy, quoted in “Chesternitions” in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 7 # 7 (June 2004)
“the present era, by and large since the end of the First World War, has returned to the practice and theory of radical hedonism.... We are a society of notoriously unhappy people: lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive, dependent - people who are glad when we have killed the time we are trying so hard to save.”
Erich Fromm To Have and To Be p. xxvii.