My lofty hope in writing this essay is to shed light on the confrontation between traditional Christianity and progressive homosexuality in the American context. Ultimately, I wish to suggest that perhaps these two embattled communities need one another more than they need the cultural positions of power for which they vociferously vie, amidst gnashing of…
Amused to Death Part 2: Postman Post-Postman on Posting
Following my brief synopsis of Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, my intent with this post is to extrapolate some of his thinking into modern media practices, specifically social media within the internet age. These thoughts are reflective, not researched, so I certainly welcome any feedback. The nature of social media, though often utilizing the written…
Amused to Death Part 1: A Post-Postman Postman Post
I finally got around to reading Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, about three decades too late. It is easy to see why the premise of the book continues to raise contention today. To the modern reader, it may momentarily feel dated; in its conclusion, it focuses on the ravaging of the television on our…
A Struggle with Identity
To my mind, the key controversy of our time revolves around the notion of identity. Identity politics seems to be the rule of the day. But what is meant by identity? How does one define himself? In the existential sense, this is the familiar confrontation of the self with the self. This confrontation manifests itself…
The Matter with Black Lives
“It's an universal law-- intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.” ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn A popular “hashtag” battle has achieved a symbolic primacy in the contemporary racial debate. Both the “Black Lives Matter” and “All Lives Matter” positions have…
A Metaphor of Monkeys
Often I have heard a metaphorical story employed to show the silliness in continuing with long supposed dead traditions and customs. It involves monkeys (always so nearly an equivalent for humans), and goes something like the following. Several scientists, studying the behavior of a certain species of prime-ape, place three monkeys in a metal cage,…
The Pursuit of Thought 