Book Share: Between God and Man by Abraham Heschel.
Awe is a sense for the transcendence, for the reference everywhere to Him who is beyond all things. It is an insight better conveyed in attitudes than in words. The more eager we are to express it, the less remains of it.
The meaning of awe is to realize that life takes place under wide horizons, horizons that range beyond the span of an individual life or even the life of a nation, a generation, or an era. Awe enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.
In analyzing or evaluating an object, we think and judge from a particular point of view. The psychologist, economist, and chemist pay attention to different aspects of the same object. such is the limitation of the mind that it can never see three sides of a building at the same time. The danger begins when, completely caught in one perspective, we attempt to consider a part as the whole. In the twilight of such perspectivism, even the sight of the part is distorted. What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe. When we “stand still and consider,” we face and witness what is immune to anaylsis.
Knowledge is fostered by curiosity; wisdom is fostered by awe.
Book Share: Between God and Man by Abraham Heschel.
“The Greeks learned in order to comprehend. The Hebrews learned in order to revere. The modern man learns in order to use. To Bacon we owe the formulation, “Knowledge is power.” This is how people are urged to study: knowledge means success. We do not know any more how to justify any value except in terms of expediency. Man is willing to define himself as “a seeker after the maximum degree of comfort for the minimum expenditure of energy.” He equates value with that which avails. He feels, acts, and thinks as if the sole purpose of the universe were to satisfy his needs. To the modern man everything seems calculable; everything reducible to a figure. He has the supreme faith in statistics and abhors the idea of a mystery. He is sure of his ability to explain all mystery away.
Book Share: The Big Switch by Nicholas Carr.
“Cheap elecricity, cheap cars, and cheap gas, combined with the rising incomes of a growing middle class, prompted an exodus from cities to suburbs and a shift from the public entertainment offered by theaters, amusement parks, and urban streets to the private diversions served up by televisions, radios, and hi-fi sets. Broadcast media, also made possible by electricity, brought the Great White Way of the city into the living room – and, thanks to advertising, you didn’t even have to buy a ticket. The spectacle came to you, conveniently and for free. The mass culture remained, and in fact was further strengthened by popular radio and television programs and hit records, but its products were increasingly consumed in private.” – excerpted from The Big Switch by Nicholas Carr
Book Share: The Politics of Heaven by Earl Shorris.
Excerpted from The Politics of Heaven: American In Fearful Times by Earl Shorris
I’ve never been a huge Sigmund Freud fan. In fact, I think he’s a bit of a loon. But he actually sounds rather succint here.
The individual in any given nation has in this war a terrible opportunity to convince himself of what should occassionally strike him in peacetime – that the state has forbidden to the individual the practice of wrongdoing, not because it desired to abolish it, but because it desires to monopolize it, like salt and tobacco. The warring state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act of violence, as would disgrace the individual man. It practices not only the accepted stratagems, but also deliberate lying and deception against the enemy; and this, too, in a measure which appears to surpass the usage of former wars. The state exacts the utmost degree of obedience and sacrifice from its citizens, but at the same time treats them as children by maintaining an excess of secrecy, and a censorship of news and expressions of opinion that renders the spirits of those thus intellectually oppressed defenseless against every unfathomable turn of events and every sinister rumor. It absolves itself from the guarantees and contracts it had formed with other states, and makes unabashed confession of it’s rapacity and lust for power, which the private individual is then called upon to sanction in the name of patriotism.
- Sigmund Freud quoted from “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death” (1915)
Book Share: The Pirate’s Dilemma by Matt Mason.
“I think the rebellion is that kids aren’t rebelling,” says Rana Reeves, creative director of PR Agency Shine Communications. “They aren’t rebelling against the marketers; they want to be the marketers. That’s the rebellion. Rebellion is there, but I think that MTV and culture and society have become so much more permissive, that there is a lot less to rebel against. The way people rebel is in a technological sense now. It’s that power of the remote or the power of the mouse that your parents probably don’t have. Also it’s down to things like health and age, people live longer, so the category of youth is longer. These are angry times. Kids are angry. But I don’t think they know what they are angry against.”
- From The Pirate’s Dilemma by Matt Mason