April 29th, 2005 | Published in Art and Design, Quotes
How vain painting is, exciting admiration by its resemblance to things of which we do not admire the originals!
—Blaise Pascal, Pensées, in Christianity for Modern Pagans by Peter Kreeft, p. 73
April 29th, 2005 | Published in Culture, Technology
Last night I was reading Habits of the High-Tech Heart and read this paragraph:
One of the great problems within cyberculture is the constant motion that keeps us from fearfully contemplating our actual situation…. If we take the time to reflect on our situation, we might conclude that no amount of informational technology is going to repair the destruction in our own lives, let alone save the planet. (p. 105)
Who does that remind you of? If you said “Pascal” you get a gold star—unless you first looked down to the next paragraph and saw his name. Then you get a cheater award.
When I (was forced) to read Pascal in college, he amazed me with his ability to get to the heart of an issue. One of the best parts in his Pensées is when he talks about humanity’s capacity and desire for diversion, which is one of the few things I remember about what I read in college. So, I got my Pascal book out and looked through it until I found the quote I was looking for:
I have often said that the sole cause of a man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room…. The only good thing for men therefore is to be diverted from thinking of what they are, either by some occupation which takes their mind off it, or by some novel and agreeable passion which keeps them busy, like gambling, hunting, some absorbing show, in short by what is called diversion.
That is why gaming and feminine society, war and high office are so popular. It is not that they really bring happiness, nor that anyone imagines that true bliss comes from possessing the money to be won at gaming or the hare that is hunted: no one would take it as a gift. What people want is not the easy peaceful life that allows us to think of our unhappy condition, nor the dangers of war, nor the burdens of office, but the agitation that takes our mind off it and diverts us. That is why we prefer the hunt to the capture.
That is why men are so fond of the hustle and bustle; that is why prison is such a fearful punishment; that is why the pleasures of solitude are so incomprehensible. That, in fact, is the main joy of being a king, because people are continually trying to divert him and procure him every kind of pleasure. A king is surrounded by people whose only thought is to divert him and stop him thinking about himself, because, king though he is, he becomes unhappy as soon as he thinks about himself. (Pensées, in Christianity for Modern Pagans by Peter Kreeft, p. 172-173)
Think about that for a while. Let it sink in. Then read it again. Man really will do just about anything to avoid thinking about his unhappy condition. We need to repent from our constant desires to be distracted by surfing the web, reading emails, consuming news, watching TV and movies, listening to music, talking more than listening, avoiding silence, and the like. We need to remember the things that are important in life—like God, family, and community. I encourage you to take some time out to think about these things and decide what distractions you can remove from your daily life so we can focus on things that really matter.
April 29th, 2005 | Published in Technology
Want to know more about the new Mac OS X (10.4)? Here are two good reviews:
April 27th, 2005 | Published in Culture, Quotes, Technology
Informationalism places the highest value on contemporary culture, current events, and immediate action. In cyberculture, we are increasingly obsessed with documenting the present rather than understanding the human condition, particularly our moral situation. Uninterested in the hard work of nurturing virtuous character, we hope for technological solutions to our moral problems….
Cyberculture, for instance, obsessively documents current events, from business transactions and consumer profiles to personal schedules and news reports. Probably no culture has ever been more enchanted with its ability to collect and publish contemporaneous information, from the foods that Hollywood celebrities prefer to the sexual practices of politicians. Cyberculture also chases after the latest technological products, models, and upgrades—the endless whirlwind of test products and “beta” technologies that promise us immediate progress.
—Quentin J. Schultze, Habits of the High-Tech Heart, pp. 27, 29
That, my friends, is the best definition of “blogging” that I have ever read.
April 27th, 2005 | Published in Quotes
With little or no regard for the virtue of moderation, technophiles practically venerate digital bandwidth—the amount of information that can be transmitted within a fixed period. They so envy digital potency that they become indifferent to the ravages of informational excess. To avoid informational deficiency, they forsake any moral vision predicated on virtuous moderation.
[The] unbridled quest for greater messaging speed discards venerable moral practices that require patience and perseverance. Ironically, bandwidth envy essentially diminishes the value of time as an aspect of what it means to be a virtuous human being. Knowing—being intimate—inherently requires duration. We can come to know something or someone only by investing time in the practices of knowing. The so-called conquering of time with instantaneous messaging invariably retards our capacity to know anything of great importance. Increased bandwidth favors the knowing of truncated events and disconnected messages. As we commit more and more time to impersonal, unreflective, rapid-fire messaging, we have less and less time left to commune intimately with neighbor, God, and creation. Instead of limiting high-tech bandwidth to protect the kinds of virtuous relationships and practices that take time to cultivate, we dedicate more and more of our limited time to instrumental pursuits and amoral activities. We become machine-like creatures, uploading and downloading messages, organizing them into folders, burning them into new storage media, and printing them off to our heart’s content. While greater bandwidth promises to save us download time, it invariably leads to new informational endeavors that consume more of our “free” time for intrinsically moral practices…. Greater bandwidth is like a gift certificate; we feel we must buy something, regardless of whether we truly need it.
—Quentin J. Schultze, Habits of the High-Tech Heart, p. 57
April 21st, 2005 | Published in Art and Design, Religion
Justin Taylor and I have launched a new “informational portal” on John Owen. Some of it is still a work in progress (and before you tell me, yes I know it is only a modified design template!) but we will be adding new things here and there so if you like Owen—or want to find out more about him and his ideas—be sure to check back often!
From a technical standpoint, this was much harder than my Neil Postman site. With Postman’s, I just used a single static HTML page. John Owen’s is running off of Wordpress 1.5 which I have customized to make it work less like a blog and more like a real site using a CMS.
Feel free to let us know what you think can be improved!
April 19th, 2005 | Published in Quotes
Therefore, in reading profane authors, the admirable light of truth displayed in them should remind us, that the human mind, however much fallen and perverted from its original integrity, is still adorned and invested with admirable gifts from its Creator.
–John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion