The Sublime & Beautiful vs. Reality

This blog is a record of one man's struggle to search for scientific, philosophical, and religious truth in the face of the limitations imposed on him by economics, psychology, and social conditioning; it is the philosophical outworking of everyday life in contrast to ideals and how it could have been.


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The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God
and which He revealed to us in the language of mathematics.
--Johannes Kepler

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Monday, June 23, 2008

Personal Update & Political Commentary

I've been busy cleaning my study and reorganizing my Shiite, so I've been offline for a few days. I'll post a picture later.

Meanwhile:


And here a picture to go with the following humorous account of an election in one of the episodic chapters of Charles Dickens' book, "The Pickwick Papers". I'll quote the passage here:

"It appears, then, that the Eatanswill people, like the people of many other small towns, considered themselves of the utmost and most mighty importance, and that every man in Eatanswill, conscious of the weight that attached to his example, felt himself bound to unite, heart and soul, with one of the two great parties that divided the town--the Blues and the Buffs. Now the Blues lost no opportunity of opposing the Buffs, and the Buffs lost no opportunity of opposing the Blues; and the consequence was, that whenever the Buffs and Blues met together at public meeting, Town-Hall, fair, or market, disputes and high words arose between them. With these dissensions it is almost superfluous to say that everything in Eatanswill was made a party question. If the Buffs proposed to new skylight the market-place, the Blues got up public meetings, and denounced the proceeding; if the Blues proposed the erection of an additional pump in the High Street, the Buffs rose as one man and stood aghast at the enormity. There were Blue shops and Buff shops, Blue inns, and Buff inns;--there was a Blue aisle and a Buff aisle, in the very church itself.
Of course it was essentially and indispensably necessary that each of these powerful parties should have its chosen organ and representative: and, accordingly, there were two newspapers in the town--the Eatanswill Gazette and the Eatanswill Independent; the former advocating Blue principles, and the latter conducted on grounds decidedly Buff. Fine newspapers they were. Such leading articles, and such spirited attacks!--"Our worthless contemporary, the Gazette"--"That disgraceful and dastardly journal, the Independent"--"That false and scurrilous print, the Independent"--"That vile and slanderous calumniator, the Gazette"; these, and other spirit-stirring denunciations were strewn plentifully over the columns of each, in every number, and excited feelings of the most intense delight and indignation in the bosoms of the townspeople."

End of Quote

This is the perfect universal metaphor of America's mindless political system. "Don't look behind the curtain"

Peter Leithart again:

"The way to political authority is not compromise, but faithfulness."

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