I map the world with words.
Founding Fellow,
The Servi Institute ( @ServiOKC ).
Oct 8, 2024 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
OK, so I have long loved the movie Shadowlands (yes, my favorite is the Hopkins/Winger version), something which has oddly grown as my familiarity with Lewis's biography, correspondence, and journals has given me more insight into the considerable liberties it takes. BUT ...
I chanced to watch it again, today, intending just some nostalgia.
Then that horrible moment with the broken-twig "snap!" sound effect as Winger's Joy Gresham suddenly falls in pain, her cancer sprung on her "in the middle of life."
We found my 2020 cancer because of hip pain.
Oct 7, 2024 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Lawless violence must be met with lawful force.
This is a basic principle of the natural law, the foundational principle of human government.
It is ignored by those who make foolish talk of the kind Jeremiah condemned, "saying, 'Peace, peace,' when there is no peace."
If you are confronted with lawless violence, with hordes who cross borders to rape and murder, with aggressors who level cities to aggrandize their tyrants, then you must either use lawful force--if you have it--or constitute it--if you don't.
To do so *is* political legitimacy.
Sep 26, 2024 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
(from work in progress)
'The imagination plays a part in writing a poem, but only insofar as reading and writing and conversation have habituated the intellect to the many ways in which words affect readers and hearers, ...
'to the conventions an audience will respond to (and those they may find repugnant, or miss utterly), and only insofar as hands can write, ink stains paper, pages are cut and bound. ...
Mar 4, 2023 • 31 tweets • 6 min read
OK, so--objective and subjective.
In colloquial usage, today, including a lot of scholarly usage, these terms basically mean "true of things regardless of one's conscious self-awareness" and "true of one's conscious self-awareness."
This usage has crystallized since about the time of Kant, whose Critical writings effectively set the baseline for post-Enlightenment thought, as they gave discipline to a number of strands of Romantic and Empiricist thought. (when we use "critical," we might say "Kantian")
Sep 27, 2022 • 12 tweets • 1 min read
O Lord GOD, destroy not thy people and thy heritage,
whom thou hast redeemed through thy greatness.
From your shepherds, O Lord, deliver your sheep
As when Hophni and Phineas were slaughtered,
The glory of the Lord has departed.
From your shepherds, O Lord, deliver your sheep
Sep 4, 2021 • 33 tweets • 6 min read
Thoughts on being outspoken, and on not being outspoken.
I've done both, and argue the wisdom in both, depending on general and particular circumstances.
I was simply argumentative as an adolescent, because I felt the need to fight out the gaps between what I'd been taught and what I could understand. That's pretty normal for a bookish youngster from a narrow subculture. I got better in my 20s.
Aug 25, 2021 • 24 tweets • 5 min read
People consistently forget that hierarchy is a leash on power.
That is, acknowledging that every group organized for every endeavor has its own formal principles, the reasons and methods that fit it to its purpose, requires us to limit the power for individuals within each group and over the group as a whole.
This *is* hierarchy.
Aug 22, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
All the nervousness about it is really funny if you actually check out how the Greek text is put together.
It's pretty mild stuff, really.
(hint: what clause actually *has* the verb in it? which *inherits* it?)
OK, so let's talk about social etiquette, social construction, and "sociological reality."
Specifically, let's talk about how they relate to sex and gender.
Sex is biological. It is a fact, measurable and describable and too well-known to be a proper subject of debate.
If you're controverting the given that humans are essentially "male" and "female" as organisms, well--that's just complex delusional architecture to avoid reality.
Jun 15, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
@MeetEdgar -- can't remember whether this is scheduled downtime, but it would be a pretty obvious thing to post on social media so users can find out. downforeveryoneorjustme.com/meetedgar.com@MeetEdgar Been down a long while, now. Sure could use some information, because I've had enough bad experiences that this kind of thing has me wondering whether I should be cutting off payment authorization soonest. downforeveryoneorjustme.com/meetedgar.com
Jun 9, 2021 • 77 tweets • 12 min read
OK, so "schole" and contemplation. Need a whole set of related concepts here, and *every term* marks a contested distinction, most since pagan antiquity.
So rule one is "beware simplifications with salespitches attached." Sure, even mine. :-)
Second, yes, I'm skipping accent marks because they're hard to type on mobile. So sue me!
Jun 9, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Terrified is a useless thing. Angry can be useful, if you have a reasonable course of action it can kickstart. Doggedness, though, will give the lie to the tragic view of history every time. But only in the long run.
Terrified of what "they" might do to your kids? Start here: don't push for "them" to keep your kids in school. Don't invite "them" to program your kids with TV & apps & social media. Think it's hard to stay balanced as adults? Now do it with a brain half-baked.
May 28, 2021 • 17 tweets • 3 min read
A theory or a movement is not more vital, nor more supernaturally grounded, because it is more atavistic or primal.
This is especially true where there is a self-conscious adoption of such irrationalisms over against existing rational structures.
Yes, sometimes we need to "reject the premise" because we have begun an argument from a false or muddled position.
I'm actually a huge advocate of doing just this, in fact.
BUT appealling to some sort of inchoate force acting across history? Nah.
May 26, 2021 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Loyalty to *expressed principles that are true* and to *every principle within its scope* are what keep the unavoidable variety and even contrariety of particular judgments from turning into sheer self-asserting chaos.
But the idea that principles are *neutral* is a delusion.
Principles are heuristic. When we reason by analogy (as we necessarily do, for there is no other way for reason to bear fruit) from a well-known to a partially-known, we gain information about the principle they share or about the less well-known.
