tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73154102038101187532024-03-06T01:37:18.632-07:00Catholic Culture and SocietyThis blog is about : <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2011/01/organic-catholicism-its-not-just-about.html">Organic Catholicism</a>. . . . . Organic Catholicism is at human scale. It's eminently practical, and simple. . . . . It's back to nature, as in back to our nature. It looks at the world around us according to our nature, which in turn is to look at the world simply . . . . . . . . . . . . . Warning to those who are easily offended, perhaps this blog is not for youlove the girlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086068884134493993noreply@blogger.comBlogger75125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315410203810118753.post-50504622000457147962018-09-02T12:54:00.002-06:002018-09-02T12:54:49.739-06:00Please Pray for my Daughter Lucy.She's been diagnosed with ovarian cancer.<br />
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She's 27 years old. A mother with a two year old daughter and a Christendom graduate.love the girlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086068884134493993noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315410203810118753.post-91261382765580845682014-03-12T08:28:00.000-06:002015-11-06T08:28:41.958-07:00NFP is harmful to a marriage.But NFP can, and sometimes should, be used to prevent a greater harm to a marriage.<br />
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Like with other medicinal devices, NFP is a necessary evil that can be used to prevent a greater harm to the marriage from occurring. Similarly, chemotherapy is harmful to the body, but it too is a necessary evil that can be used to prevent a greater harm to the body from occurring.<br />
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NFP is not natural to the daily life of marriage, just as chemotherapy is not natural to daily nutrition. And just as chemotherapy is understood and treated as medicinal, so likewise should NFP be promoted and treated the same as any other medicinal device. We thank God we have these medicinal devices to use because they can save us from a worse fate, but nevertheless, they are not natural to daily life, but instead natural as medicinal.<br />
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The medicinal is natural as medicinal and should be treated as natural according to its actual nature. <br />
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NFP is harmful to marriage when used properly as medicinal even though it is natural as medicinal, but at least it serves to prevent a greater evil. On the other hand using NFP when it is not medicinal can be destructive to a marriage such as when it is used improperly to reduce family size to a tiny family.<br />
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The error typically made is to treat NFP as if it was intended as natural for the daily life of marriage because using it as if was intended for natural daily life is to use it for a purpose it was not intended for. And when we use a device for a purpose other than how God intended, we can harm ourselves beyond even the harm that comes from using it as a necessary evil.<br />
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<a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2012/05/supersized-catholic-families-are-not.html">Super sized families are not only not a mark of the Faith</a> they can be harmful, and thus the need for using NFP as a last resort. Likewise tiny families can can cause harm when the method of causing them is using NFP as a daily part of marriage.<br />
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In modern american society it can happen that NFP is required to be used in the daily life of the marriage, but the reason for its use remains medicinal and is because american culture for whatever reason makes natural child spacing virtually non existent.<br />
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NFP is natural as medicinal child spacing, but it is not natural as daily life marriage child spacing. It is not natural to the daily life of marriage to use NFP. <br />
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In contrast to NFP, Ecological breastfeeding is ordinary to daily married life child spacing. Ecological breastfeeding is helpful to marriage because it is natural to the daily life of marriage. <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2012/03/extended-breastfeeding-its-natural-and.html">Extended breastfeeding</a>, like the family bed and other aspects of attachment parenting, bond the family into a solidarity.<br />
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In contrast, NFP does not cause this same solidarity, but in contrast to attachment parenting <a href="http://thomism.wordpress.com/2013/05/18/a-catholics-view-on-contraception-and-solidarity/">causes a further breakdown of this same solidarity.</a> Artificial birth control is of course far more destructive to marriage than NFP, but the difference is variation of degree, not a difference of kind. And so while the argument in the linked to article above is not a good one for proving the intrinsic evil of A.B.C. it is a good at explaining why NFP is an evil, albeit a sometimes necessary evil.<br />
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It likewise is a good argument for why what needs to be done is not using NFP which simply masks the error, but instead changing our culture to preclude the need of NFP. <br />
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It should be noted that it's proper to the medicinal that the evil caused by use of the medicinal is of the same nature as the greater evil prevented. And that causing an evil which is not of the same nature as the evil intended to be prevented is not morally licit. From which it follows that unlike artificial birth control which causes some form of barrier, NFP is licit because it does not change the nature of the act.<br />
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More to come. And as always, this article like all my others is a work in progress, read it at your own risk.<br />
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This is of course a Catholic blog and so it goes without saying that artificial birth control is simply evil and not even a consideration. <br />
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But if A.B.C. is considered by some, it should be noted that A.B.C. causes far greater harm than NFP. NFP. is natural to us, A.B.C. is not. <a href="http://catholiccultureandsocietymusings.blogspot.com/2013/03/which-of-ten-commandments-does.html">The harmfulness of A.B.C. may not be apparent</a>, but God gives us what we need, i.e. NFP, and through his Church protects us from our wandering into greater harm to ourselves by giving us guidelines that are natural to us.<br />
love the girlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086068884134493993noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315410203810118753.post-54418272714098457432014-02-19T15:14:00.000-07:002019-04-29T16:29:46.664-06:00Mathematical symbols are not a description of the concrete, but are instead in an intrinsic symbol of a property inherent in the concrete.<br />
Atoms really do look like Styrofoam balls joined together with sticks. Atoms also really do look like the drawings that appear to look a lot like the solar system. And atoms really do look like all the other drawings and models that have been produced over the years. Atoms look like all of them. <br />
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Because all of the above models and drawings and other images are visual representations of properties that do exist in matter. We need images for the same reason we need mathematics, because both explain the properties of the material world about us. Because it is by images and mathematics that we are able to more fully know, and more importantly work with and manipulate, the material world about us. <br />
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Mathematical explanations do explain a hidden reality, but the reality explained is a property, not concrete substance. For instance, mathematics, i.e. number exists in a rock much the same as number exists in an ellipse. Mathematical formula can explain an ellipse but an ellipse is not the mathematical formula any more than a cake is its recipe.<br />
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Most modern scientific explanations are discoveries of a an intrinsic symbol because most modern scientific explanations are mathematical, that is, what is discovered and explained is a hidden mathematical property that exists in the substance being examined. They're intrinsic symbol because what is explained is not the concrete existence of the object, a concrete existence that is first and best knowable through our senses because God created a world that is not only knowable, but knowable through our unaided senses of sight, and touch, and hearing. <br />
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When I draw a structural steel plan, I'm abstracting and using these properties of number that exist in steel beams. My eyes and hands give me true knowledge of the steel while the abstracted mathematical properties in the steel beams give me the capacity to engineer a structure because the mathematical properties can be transformed into formulas allowing us to design with expected results. And so it goes with all of mathematical explanations, they are abstracted mathematical properties that help us understand a hidden reality.<br />
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As example, the 3d models of molecules or what have you are mathematical models that explain the mathematical properties, just the same as 3d mathematical model of lines can explain the properties of a steel beam. The lines explain certain properties of the steel beam so that those properties can be put into a formula for practical application, the same with molecules or what have you that we cannot see. <br />
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As it stands, there is a disconnect between the modern scientific explanations of nature and our '<i>unaided</i>' observations explaining nature. When I touch and sit in a chair I understand it as solid, and I use it as solid. <br />
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But modern scientific explanations say that the chair is not only not solid, but that it is virtually not even there and nothing solid about it because what takes up almost all of the space the chair occupies is immense void between energy particles. And even those energy particles are are not solid but some kind of force which is in place without breadth or width like a euclidean point or line.<br />
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Modern science understands the world not according to what is prior known according to our senses and intellect, but instead according to what it considers is prior known according to technology and numbers. The first act of modern science is to reduce any observation to a quantifiable product capable of being placed into some kind of equation because modern science solely claims to know according to quantity. A red rose only has meaning to science insofar as redness or some other observation can be quantified, which is a very different method of knowing that is done by men. <br />
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I should be noted that modern science likewise says that men can also only know by some method of quantification, and thus what modern science is doing is a more perfect way of understanding observation, even though this quantification is not how we see the red rose where we see loveliness or or some sign or some other aspect of none are capable of quantification. <br />
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In In other words, modern science says that what we experience through our senses is an illusion and the opposite of what actually does exist. Modern science says our senses deceive us into thinking the world is one way, when it is in reality the contrary and the exact opposite of what we perceive by our senses.<br />
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But in actuality it is modern science that is deceived by deceiving itself by its placing number as prior known to our sense and as concrete explanation of what doe exists. Because number is not a concrete explanation, but is instead a tool, a poetical allegory of actual concrete existence. <br />
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As an architect I design spaces that can be reduced down to mathematical formulas and equations. That is,they can be explained quantitatively.<br />
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All my projects are designed and produced on computer which means that all my documents are in computer language which is mathematical. <br />
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All my designs are also engineered, and all engineering is finally reducible to mathematical formula and equation.<br />
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Because men are by nature most comfortable in euclidean space, all my designs are <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2012/02/human-scale-is-euclidian.html">euclidean</a>, and euclidean space is reducible to mathematical formula and equation.<br />
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The ordering of space according to rhythmic diminution, or one point perspective, or additive and subtractive, or plan to section, or repetitive to unique, or unit to whole, or symmetry and balance and similar can all be reduced in differing manners to mathematical formula.<br />
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Any well designed project will contain all of the above and more, with many of the design aspects designed into a project intuitively. In fact the better design is intuitive versus intentional ordering of space.<br />
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But what matters here is that even though design can be reduced down to mathematical formula and equations, and thus in turn the build structures can likewise be reduced down to mathematical formula and equations, the mathematical formula and equations is not what concretely exists. What exists are wood, concrete, and similar ordered to human life lived.<br />
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(or look at it this way, pie reduces circular motion to straight line motion by changing a circle into a polygon. What exists is the circle, but it must be transformed into a polygon to be manipulated mathematically.)<br />
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We use mathematics, and can better manipulate nature by means of mathematics, but human life is not mathematical formula or equations. The mathematical formula and equations are allegorical. They have existence in the design and in the built structure, but the built structure is not the mathematical formula and equations.<br />
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Mathematics is a tool created for us and used by us for our benefit, God created us and the world about us so that we could reduce the environment around us down to mathematics. But we are no more finally reduced down to mathematics than love and rational thought can be reduced down to mathematics.<br />
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The error the modern scientific explanation makes is mistaking the mathematics for the built structure.<br />
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<a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2011/01/modern-physics-science-of-mad-but.html">According to modern science</a> we see solid where there is actually only void. We think of ourselves as having some kind of substantial existence when we are actually nothing but tiny bits one dimensional force in a void. <br />
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But the modern scientific explanation does not have a cause for common occurrences of human life because the cause must be in the effect. We know that we live in relation with others, falling in love, and into sin. We also know that void and bits of tiny energy cannot anymore fall in love or sin than a light bulb can.<br />
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What we have are two explanations that are in contradiction with each other. How can the contradiction be resolved?<br />
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God designed the world to be understood on a multitude of levels including much of which is poetic or allegorical.<br />
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The mistake commonly made is to think that most modern scientific explanations reflect concrete existence even when those explanations contradict our common perceptions and senses.<br />
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The correct understanding is to recognize that our senses reflect concrete existence, and modern scientific explanations reflect some other type of explanation of existence.<br />
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So what I propose is that the atomic theory is allegorical, and our perception of the solidity of matter is concrete existence. The concept of energy particles in a void is allegorical because what actually exists is concrete matter, not energy particles.<br />
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(It could be that what I'm proposing is rather commonly understood, but I've never ran across it. What I typically find are Catholics trying to explain both contradictory systems as concrete existence.)<br />
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Because God is the creator of matter, the relation between the allegorical and actual existence is a perfect melding of the two where the allegorical gives us real insight into the nature of matter. We can "split atoms" not because atoms as energy particles exist, but because the allegorical is sufficiently reflective of what does exist so that we can manipulate what does actually exist through the use of the allegorical.<br />
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This understanding explains all the empirical evidence, and not just part of the empirical evidence as happens when the atomic theory is held as reflecting concrete existence. <br />
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Second, as Catholics we understand that substantial change is true, with transubstantiation being understood through our understanding of substantial change. That is, if substantial change is not true, then neither is transubstantiation as defined by Trent. The conflict is that the atomic theory as reflecting concrete existence denies substantial change by making all change accidental. But, if the atomic theory is allegorical, this conflict with the Faith ceases to exist. <br />
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By making the atomic theory allegorical all conflicts cease to exist. <br />
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Or take for instance light theory. Light theory is allegorical, and our perception of rose as actually red is concrete existence. The concept that color exists in our imagination as interpretation of light waves is allegorical because the color actually exists in the object. For instance the color red actually exists in the rose, what we hold in our imagination is what we actually see, not an interpretation of what we see.<br />
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Light waves do exist, but they don't move information as light theory says they do. <br />
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Mathematical explanations of motion are allegorical. Mathematical explanations are an abstraction of motion into signs. The reduction to mathematical formula, is a allegorical or poetic aspect of creation. Those signs reflect concrete reality not directly, but figuratively.<br />
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In other words, God created a world at human scale. A scale where even the most simple among us can know and understand it. Romans 1 : 19-20<br />
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Similarly, the created world's virtually unending complexity is also at human scale, designed for those with the capacity to plumb its depths.<br />
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As a comparison, St. Augustine writes that the bible is written so that even the most simple can understand the Faith, but yet also written with unlimited intended levels of allegory and other modes of understand for those with the capacity to plumb it's depths <br />
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God created a world knowable in the same manner as we come to know. A method of coming to know where we are not deceived by our immediate understanding of our observations which is the most universal human scale. We come to know simply and afterward with greater complexity.<br />
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Similarly, the sense of touch is to the most simple, as the sense of sight is to the most complex. The sense is at human scale that which gives us greatest certitude while likewise being the least precise of the senses. So likewise is it that the world is created so that the most simple understanding has the greatest certitude while being the least informative.<br />
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The most simple understanding of a red rose is that the color red is in the rose. That understanding is at human scale according to the most simple understanding. It's an understanding that reflects the basic concrete reality. It is an understanding which reflects what does actually exist. <br />
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It is not an understanding that plumbs the depth of being, or the nature of light and color which are to understand the nature as it likewise actually exists. Nor is it an understanding that that plumbs the depth of the allegorical as modern color theory does that holds color to exist solely in the imagination.<br />
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We live in an age that dismisses the allegorical, the poetic as a good virtually devoid of worth in explaining God's creation, where as we should look at it as another means of perfecting our understanding. <br />
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Catholics do look for the poetic and allegorical aspect of creation as sign signified in the capacity of matter such as water in baptism, but the poetic extends far beyond this to where most of creation is better understood as sign.<br />
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Upon walking into a basilica style plan church we are moved by a the concrete materials where most of what we perceive is allegorical. We interpret the interplay of light and shadow. We interpret the interplay of spaces and the interplay of the elements in the space. We interpret them to signify a movement from the earthy world outside toward the divine. <br />
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We are interpreting what does actually exist, but the existence is not concrete but allegorical or poetic. Which makes them not any the less real for their being allegorical. What we interpret has true existence, but its existence is not concrete but abstracted from the concrete. <br />
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The substance of an object fully exists, but we know it and understand it not with our senses, but with our intellect. <br />
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Atoms likewise fully exist but they exist as an interpretation of the concrete. That is, they exists as an allegory of what does concretely exist, i.e. <a href="http://www.saintaquinas.com/primer.html">prime matter and form.</a> The interpretation of the interplay of light and shadow in a basilica moves us to understand the movement from earth to divine. They are a tool to move us to understand God's creation. Similarly, the atomic theory is an interpretation that is a tool that lets us understand God's creation.love the girlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086068884134493993noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315410203810118753.post-83901113333308105012014-01-01T21:57:00.000-07:002015-11-04T05:59:14.963-07:00Women in Art / as window into the soul of a culture.A few years back there was a jury which concluded that Matisse, Van Gogh and Hopper are exemplars of artists whose art approaches the objectively beautiful. A verdict which says far more about the jury, and the culture that jury is part of, than it says about the artists in question.<br />
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Compare these three artist's paintings of women :<br />
<a href="http://www.mcs.csueastbay.edu/~malek/Matisse/Matisse19.html">Matisse’s “Carmelina 1903"</a>, <br />
<a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Van_Gogh_Nude_Woman_on_a_Bed.jpg">Van Gogh's Nude Woman on Bed</a> <br />
or <a href="http://whitney.org/Collection/EdwardHopper/8431">Hopper’s “A Woman in the Sun”</a><br />
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With three other artist's paintings of women :<br />
<a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leighton-The_Fisherman_and_the_Syren-c._1856-1858.jpg">Leighton’s "The Fisherman and the Syren"</a>, <br />
<a href="http://www.artofeurope.com/waterhouse/wat5.htm">Waterhouse’s “Hylas and the Nymphs”</a> <br />
or <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William-Adolphe_Bouguereau_(1825-1905)_-_Nymphs_and_Satyr_(1873).jpg">Bouguereau’s “Nymphs and Satyre’s”.</a><br />
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Leighton, Waterhouse and Bouguereau all use women as visible images of an inward struggle in men against their soul's disordered passions. But yet all three in turn treat the figure of the women with dignity and grace and beauty according to her nature while using women as an image of disorder. <br />
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Leighton, for instance, uses the figure of a women as a outward sign of the inward struggle in the fisherman where the combat with corruption actually exists, but in so doing Leighton does not disfigure the women and by disfiguring reduce the natural dignity due to all women.<br />
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Similarly, Eve, the first femme fatale is both beautiful in her own right, but also a sign of fallen nature, but not the inward cause. That cause was solely Adam's fault.<br />
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In contrast, the women portrayed by Matisse, Van Gogh and Hopper are grotesque. The women are portrayed with all the dignity found in <a href="http://labsinthedegas.blogspot.com/">Degas’ L’Absinthe.</a> And far more dignity than <a href="http://www.vangoghgallery.com/catalog/Drawing/1185/Nude-Woman-Squatting-Over-a-Basin.html">Van Gogh's Nude Woman Squatting Over a Basin.</a><br />
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Fornication is ‘ugly’ and well as ‘disordered’, and so while Leighton and co. could have reason to portray women as ugly as visible signs of sin, they don’t do so. While Matisse, Van Gogh and Hopper in contrast and without cause portray women as ugly where they would be expected to be portrayed as naturally beautiful. <br />
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Just as the eyes are the window to the soul of a man, so likewise is the portrayal of women in art the window to the soul of a culture, from which it follows in turn that Jury's choices of exemplars in art say much about the soul of their own culture.<br />
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If the classical period portrayed women’s platonic perfection, and medieval art portrayed women’s transcendent beauty, what do Matisse, Van Gogh and Hopper portray? Certainly not an objective good, but perhaps a disordered ugliness mistaken for objective goodness.<br />
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Further related musings:<br />
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Just as nature acts for an end with each particular nature acting for what it sees as best for itself, so likewise does art act for a particular good, that is, art acts for the greatest good according to art qua art.<br />
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And with that in mind, the art of poetry is most perfectly directed to man’s incorporeal nature, as is signified in it use of signs which are intelligible only to the intellect. This incorporeal nature is directed to God as man’s proper end, as well as directs man’s life on this earth as is proper to man’s human nature of incorporeal soul informing matter.<br />
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In this above regard, the myths are a perfection of poetry because they symbolize the inner actions of man’s will in combat with his concupiscible appetite. As St. Paul implores us to run the good race, so does he in essence implore our will to overcome the concupiscible appetite. With the concupiscible appetite being to the earthly city, what the will is to the heavenly city.<br />
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The concupiscible appetite desires the particular material good, while the will desires that which is good for the whole man, with the final good of the whole man being unity of man with God in heaven. In mythology, the siren, the femme fatale, most perfectly symbolizes the concupscible appetite. The siren’s most voluptuous flesh presses itself against man, and with charming sweet nothings slowly and alluringly draws man below the surface of the water. The concupiscible appetite seeks the allure of fleshy matter, and in its fallen nature draws the will to forsake its final good and what is best for man. It causes man to will for a what is in effect, a bowl of pottage. Inheritance is sacrificed for a temporal material good.<br />
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Water, is the material sign in baptism, it signifies life, and cleansing. Through baptism man receives the breath of life, i.e. sanctifying grace and is brought into the visible body of the Church. And so just as water is a good when used properly according to its nature, so likewise is the concupiscible appetite a good in itself. But just as fallen nature has loosed the concupiscible appetite from control of the will, and in being loosed contrary to the proper ordering of man, so likewise can water also signify a disordering of man’s material life by strangulation of life giving breath when the lungs of a drowning man are filled with a more gros matter.. The will ceases to be filled by sanctifying grace, but is in turn filled with a lust according to the concupiscible appetite. And under the glistening surface of the water of the femme fatales supple alluring flesh lies the muck of decayed life which shall be the resting place of he who succumbs. He is drawn into the depthless warm water of the femme fatales flesh and passes into the cold depthless ice of Dante’s hell.<br />
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In the imitation of nature through the medium of the painted canvas, none surpasses Leighton’s The Fisherman and the Siren, ( a painting of Goethe’s ballad ), in signifying Man’s will in combat with his concupiscible appetite. The siren’s curved form unnaturally melds into the fisherman’s signifying the unnatural entangling of the concupiscible appetite into the proper desire of the will. The concupiscible appetite attempts to make the will it own by assimilation. The siren’s body rests in the fisherman, but also pulls with enveloping arms and downward pressing breasts. Just as gravity draws that which is most gross in linear motion towards the center of the earth where hell is most solidified and freezing blackness, so likewise does the siren press her weight against the fisherman drawing him from life giving breath into and below the surface of the disordered water from which she has come unwelcomed. Unwelcomed as signified by the fisherman’s open arms in juxtaposition to the siren’s enveloping form, just as the will does not welcome the entangling and alluring delights of the concupiscible appetite.love the girlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086068884134493993noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315410203810118753.post-89926570573262370402013-11-30T17:33:00.001-07:002017-11-20T23:40:52.484-07:00The FSSP is not only forging new frontiers in architecture,<a name='more'></a>but is likewise leading the way in the implementation of <a href="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium">Pope Francis' latest exhortation to bring the modern world into the Church</a> to wit : <br />
<blockquote>I exhort . . . a generous openness which, rather than fearing the loss of local identity, will prove capable of creating new forms of cultural synthesis. How beautiful are those cities which overcome paralysing mistrust, integrate those who are different and make this very integration a new factor of development! How attractive are those cities which, even in their architectural design, are full of spaces which connect, relate and favour the recognition of others!</blockquote>True, the passage is directed towards exhorting established societies at large to open their borders to strangers thereby eschewing their own cultural identity in preference for the culture of strangers. But the same exhortation can also be embraced by the more local society within the society at large.<br />
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And it's in this regard that the recently constructed local FSSP parish church,<a href="https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/t1.0-9/s720x720/1510875_633944420000786_304284137_n.jpg"> (note the accentuated arcade sans columns among other modernists influences), </a>which broke new grounds by being the first ever wreckovation style church designed by traditionalists for a traditionalist liturgy is a clear and paradigm example of eschewing one's own established cultural, i.e. architectural identity in preference for the vanguard architectural type of a stranger.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4IEt8Jjeh625Ktf8NJRr2jjx5Z_B1q5HPHc4qkXJ-lpuzn6u3y6CHCUki2IHG8wS71HvubzhnGguHtnGfbv1qlgKkTUpCjiAfAWrnqZlXzNE5rejCuUxYOAJlXdKqJplJ9yltpv4xPUE/s1600/Wreckovation+Nave.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4IEt8Jjeh625Ktf8NJRr2jjx5Z_B1q5HPHc4qkXJ-lpuzn6u3y6CHCUki2IHG8wS71HvubzhnGguHtnGfbv1qlgKkTUpCjiAfAWrnqZlXzNE5rejCuUxYOAJlXdKqJplJ9yltpv4xPUE/s320/Wreckovation+Nave.jpg" /></a></div><br />
The FSSP's preference for strange architectural type is not done weakly, or marginally, but as Pope Francis exhorts us is done generously and fearlessly fully eviscerating the parishioner's own cultural patterns and symbolic identity by designing a church fully deconstructionist postmodernist romanesque. It's a church fully comfortable in the modern world. The deconstructionism exists in the form of the romanesque as subject, not unlike any other privation, and that privation in turn gives form to the church such as where the placement of the alter is almost an afterthought and the placement of the side alters are afterthoughts in the overall scheme of the design.<br />
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The juxtapositioning of the alters in relation to the new church structure could not be better done. The new church is overdone pastiche at every turn ignoring as best it can the imported alters that signify the sacramental church. The new church housing the people is of hollow gypsum walls with pastiche appliques, where as the alters are of marble carved by true artisans with an aedicula housing God.<br />
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The plethora of changes in scale throughout the church is both disconcertingly surreal and dazzling, not unlike a Disney theme park where the scale is close enough to the natural to be unnoticed, while being far enough off to cause unbalance or sense of separation from common life. The church design is actually quite a marvel especially if the surreal and dazzle was intended because it is not an easy design to accomplish because the scaling and ordering of the church has all the appearances of having been done by someone completely incompetent and lacking the muse of the art. And thus just as it is difficult to imitate a young child's drawing, so likewise is it difficult to imitate the immature and incompetent in other arts. <br />
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It's a design fully in keeping with Pope Francis's unsubtle regard for the traditionalists,<br />
<a href="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium_en.html">(see secs. 93-97)</a>, as well as a cutting edge design <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2013/09/my-marketing-strategy-for-designing.html">I've looked to as inspiration in my quest to market myself in Church Architecture</a><br />
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Please note, this post is all in fun because the FSSP and its parishioner are not eschewing their own architectural type for that of a stranger because modern architectural type is their their own. The actual strange architectural type would be traditional architectural. Traditionalist Catholics simply don't know they are tribal modernists grasping for traditional type not from a cultural inclination, but are instead grabbing hold as they would an overcoat which is in turn a grasping that is more akin to fashion than nature or nurture. <br />
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Which in turn is why traditionalist Catholics can walk through the recently constructed FSSP Church and not see how at every turn, at every angle, at every surface and at every detail it is fully modern, with the church design having about as much in common with gothic architecture as a goth girl at an art party has with gothic design. What Catholic traditionalists see is an object pleasing to their eyes which they would not see as pleasing if they were not fully modern inured to the scale of modern architecture.<br />
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Now some may see my note as even more damning than the eschewing of one's own, but it is not, not even close. The eschewing of one's own is one of the virulent disorders of modern society where as in comparison modern architecture is not disordered because it's grounded in human scale, or at the least can be so grounded, (deconstructionist design is by nature disordered). For instance, Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water is fully modern and fully at human scale. In fact not only is Falling Water fully modern but is paradigm in its transformation of modern design. <br />
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love the girlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086068884134493993noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315410203810118753.post-87712011615525797622013-11-27T14:19:00.000-07:002015-11-04T06:08:25.533-07:00Noblesse oblige, the Catholic foundation of economic lifeNoblesse oblige is grounded in the understanding that society is by nature hierarchical and ordered to the good of man both here on earth as well as to his final end. Noblesse oblige is grounded in the same principle as subsidiarity, i.e. an understanding that society is natural to man, and man finds his perfection in society.<br />
<a name='more'></a><blockquote>19. The great mistake made in regard to the matter now under consideration is to take up with the notion that class is naturally hostile to class, and that the wealthy and the working men are intended by nature to live in mutual conflict. So irrational and so false is this view that the direct contrary is the truth. Just as the symmetry of the human frame is the result of the suitable arrangement of the different parts of the body, so in a State is it ordained by nature that these two classes should dwell in harmony and agreement, so as to maintain the balance of the body politic. Each needs the other: capital cannot do without labor, nor labor without capital. Mutual agreement results in the beauty of good order, while perpetual conflict necessarily produces confusion and savage barbarity. Now, in preventing such strife as this, and in uprooting it, the efficacy of Christian institutions is marvellous and manifold. First of all, there is no intermediary more powerful than religion (whereof the Church is the interpreter and guardian) in drawing the rich and the working class together, by reminding each of its duties to the other, and especially of the obligations of justice. / Rerum Novarum</blockquote>That this hierarchical ordering permeates society is apparent from simple observation where we have, state government, county government, city government, zoning boards, school boards, neighborhood associations, condominium associations, parents ruling over their children and similar.<br />
<br />
As with much of life, God created a world sufficient for our needs where the simple solution that men typically gravitate toward is typically the best because men typically gravitate toward common sense solutions that are at human scale and natural to us. <br />
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Even in modern america with its unnatural ruling principle of equality, authority is delegated to some type of overseeing body because men tend to do what is natural disregarding unnatural worldviews that conflict with the natural. And so it is with the principle of equality where men typically organize themselves with the few ruling over the many.<br />
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Of course, there are numerous exceptions to modern society's hierarchical ordering, but these exceptions no more disprove that hierarchy is proper to society than blindness disproves that sight is proper to man, because these exceptions are invariably disordered. <br />
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Whether it be the leviathan state, multiculturalism, stay-at-home fathers, or affirmative action, many of our modern social condition have the same wellspring of the unnatural ruling principle of equality. So while<a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2011/12/contrary-to-common-belief-us-as.html"> modern society's virtually universal unboundedness</a> is common to us it can also be seen as unnatural and peculiar to modern society becuase it goes against <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2011/01/all-of-gods-creation-seeks-stability.html">the natural stability of society when it is at human scale.</a><br />
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What we observe is that society through the ages is both civilly and privately ordered hierarchically. And as Catholics we know the above both by observation as well as by Faith because we also know the ordering of the family with the father as the head of the family. And the ordering of the Faithful within the visible Church with the Bishop as head of the local Church.<br />
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The Faithful require the Church and cannot be perfected outside of it, and likewise children require their parents and cannot be perfected without them, and so likewise is it with all of society with subsidiarity permeating society. <br />
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Economic transactions of selling goods and services is likewise natural to man and society; and according to subsidiarity because those in a position of authority such as owning a business with employees have a duty to care for those beneath them because we are our brother's keeper. <br />
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This relation of owner and employee is true Catholic solidarity because it's a solidarity grounded in subsidiarity.<br />
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Leftist Catholics commonly appeal to solidarity, but their's is grounded in divisiveness where owners are regarded as strangers and enemies to be overcome. They mistake the current disorder in society falsely assuming it to be a disorder intrinsic to hierarchical society; and so in turn develop their understanding of solidarity as a reaction to their mistaken understanding.<br />
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But as noted, a true understanding of solidarity is grounded in subsidiarity because some men are naturally ruled by other men because men have different capacities and different temperaments. In fact, most men prefer to be ruled by other men as evidenced by most men when given the choice choose the security of employment at an already formed company in preference to the risk of working for themselves.<br />
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Economically, men do not naturally come together to form a distributist ordered manufacturing company, but instead a single man or a partnership will form a company that hires workers. In other words, distributist businesses do not form organically, but instead occur when an existing business intentionally changes its existing method of operation.<br />
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And it's not as if there is a current economic disadvantage to a group of men coming together to form a business, to the contrary it should be easier than a single man taking on the full burden, but yet it's virtually never done. And when a group of men do form a business, it's typically as a professional partnership, but these are not distributist with workers owning the means of production because all workers other than the partners are employees of the partnership.<br />
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Leftist Catholics ignore how businesses actually form by the taking of risk which is very much the opposite of the security of employment; and instead write how distributism, (an economic system grounded in the principle of equality), offers the security of ownership of the means of production. And while the ownership is secure, as a practical matter distributist ownership of the means of production has the same character as ownership of the roses at the local public park. The ownership is actually a communal ownership because the control is communal. <br />
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No one thinks of himself as owning the roses at the public park because a person cannot in any manner interact with the roses as is commonly understood to be proper to ownership.<br />
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Similarly, at the private level, no one who owns a condominium thinks of himself as likewise owning the condominium association parking lot. Or, no one who belongs to member owned private tennis club thinks of himself as owning the courts. What they do think is that parking lot or tennis court is ruled by a private governing board dictating rules they must follow.<br />
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The same holds for distributist ownership of the means of production, worker ownership of the means of production is an illusion. What distributism offers is communal ownership.<br />
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In contrast to the communal illusory ownership of the means of production leftist Catholic distributists offer, hierarchically ordered society allows for actual ownership of the means of production because small proprietary businesses are by their very nature worker owned because the worker is the owner.<br />
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Distributists hold that <a href="http://catholiccultureandsocietymusings.blogspot.com/2011/12/do-distributists-realize-how-absurd.html">working for a business gives the worker claim of ownership</a> because for them a rightly ordered society disallow's'(sic) the ownership of the means of production that another person labors at."<br />
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But if this were true, then hiring a man by the hour or the day as was done in the parable of the winegrower would a parable grounded in injustice no matter how the wage was divided up.<br />
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In contrast to the distributist understanding of required employee ownership of the means of production, businesses within a hierarchically ordered society are not required to give employees ownership of the means of production for the same reason a homeowner is not required to give ownership of his house to the carpenter who builds his door. The carpenter builds the door according to his trade, and is due a just compensation for his work of building. His work does not give him permanent claim to the door.<br />
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And when a small proprietary business grows and hires employees, a rightly ordered hierarchical society offers the noblesse oblige true solidarity and subsidiarity of the owner caring for the good of his employees.<br />
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Distributism is a reactionary utopianism of the intellectual class who have zero experience in practical matters, but who would gladly foist their dystopian idiocy on the common man.<br />
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Distributism is a type of western Catholic gnosticism of the intellectual class who think they have answers when what they really have is not a clue.<br />
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Distributism is an economic system that makes me appreciate the miserable system grounded in usury we currently suffer under, because it could be far worse, we could live under distributism<br />
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Other posts of mine on distributism:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://catholiccultureandsocietymusings.blogspot.com/2011/11/i-would-rather-be-ruled-by-illiterate.html">I would rather be ruled by the illiterate carpenters I've known<br />
Than be ruled by the Catholic intellectual class who are infatuated with their notions of distributism.</a><br />
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<a href="http://catholiccultureandsocietymusings.blogspot.com/2012/01/hand-to-mouth-survival-working-3-times.html">With the economy now gone to hell and life an extreme struggle trying to support a family, is there anything more annoying during these difficult times than the academia types who think of themselves as economic guiding lights when all they have to offer is the most inane and horrific advice possible? </a><br />
__________<br />
__________<br />
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<a href="http://catholiccultureandsocietymusings.blogspot.com/2011/11/will-real-distributists-please-stand-up.html">Will the Real Distributists Please Stand Up</a><br />
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__________<br />
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<a href="http://catholiccultureandsocietymusings.blogspot.com/2011/11/is-edward-bellamys-looking-backward.html">Is Edward Bellamy's book, Looking Backward, a 21st century distributist manifesto? Because whenever I read the current writings by distributists the dystopian Looking Backward is invariably what comes to mind.</a><br />
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<a href="http://catholiccultureandsocietymusings.blogspot.com/2011/10/occupy-american-distributism-with.html">Occupy american distributism with foreign writers. I just did a search at the Distributist Review for Huey Long and for Fr. Charles E. Coughlin and received "No results". And so just for the interest of it, I tried instead Chesterton or Belloc and recieved pages ad infinitum.</a><br />
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<a href="http://catholiccultureandsocietymusings.blogspot.com/2011/12/do-distributists-realize-how-absurd.html">Do distributists realize how absurd they sound?</a><br />
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<a href="http://catholiccultureandsocietymusings.blogspot.com/2011/11/when-ever-i-read-some-advocacy-for.html">When ever I read some advocacy for distributism<br />
I’m invariably reminded of this passage in P.G. Wodehouse :<br />
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“Bingo,” I cried deeply moved, “you must act. You must assert yourself. You must put your foot down. You must take a strong stand. You must be master in the home.”<br />
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He looked at me a long strange look.<br />
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“You aren’t married, are you , Bertie?”<br />
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“You know I’m not.”<br />
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“ I should have guessed it anyway”</a><br />
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more to come . . . . .<br />
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* Modern economic society is grounded in theft because usury is a type of theft, it's the selling of that which does not exist. Or as some have put it, the making fruitful of that which is by nature not fruitful.<br />
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** Distributism is not grounded in subsidiarity, but is instead grounded solely in solidarity, i.e. grounded in the modernist concept of equality. Distributism is a modernist creature because the type society needed to support it is a <a href="http://catholiccultureandsocietymusings.blogspot.com/2011/11/is-edward-bellamys-looking-backward.html">highly structured modern managerial state.</a><br />
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*** Individualistic libertarianism is grounded in the unnatural principle that man is not by nature social, and thus both subsidiarity as well as solidarity are contrary to it. Libertarianism really is grounded in Ayn Rand's principle of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Virtue_of_Selfishness">selfishness is a virtue</a> because all goods are only understood as good insofar as they are good to the individual.<br />
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As with much of lifelove the girlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086068884134493993noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315410203810118753.post-8845881697581377602013-11-25T21:34:00.000-07:002015-11-04T06:08:53.005-07:00The Ecclesial Movements and New Communities are a Poor Substitute for an Organically Formed Society.As the title suggests, the reason the Ecclesial Movements and New Communities exist are for natural social reasons. To be sure, the Movements and Communities have a spiritual character, but as the name New Community evinces, the nature of these entities is primarily that of a substitute society to compensate for a defect in modern society.<br />
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American society is an amorphous limitless creature where Catholics are not at home. Men in general by nature seek stability, and Catholics in particular seek stability within a Catholic environment. And so as a reaction to american society, Catholics seek out stability and limit and localism in these Theocratic New Communities. <br />
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“...the Ecclesial Movements and New Communities which blossomed after the Second Vatican Council, constitute a unique gift of the Lord and a precious resource for the life of the Church." <a href="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2008/october/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20081031_carismatici_en.html">an excerpt from an address </a>of his holiness Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI<br />
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Unfortunately,Pope Benedict's thought is wishful thinking making the most of a dreadful situation because while these New Communities are shelter from amorphous limitless american society, they are a poor substitute, not a precious resource.<br />
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While we may be glad for the substitute because they are far better than the even worse alternatives, nevertheless we do not do ourselves a favor by pretending they're more than what they actually are.<br />
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The destruction of society and social bonds caused the New Communities to come into existence, not because these New Communities are a good in themselves, but because they're a substitute for the natural bonds of civil society.<br />
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The FSSP drive to personal parish my family has belonged to since the FSSP arrived here in Colorado is not a precious resource, but a poor substitute for the organically formed local parish that no longer exists.<br />
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When men are unable to obtain what is most natural to them, they will seek out a substitute that can be made due with, and like all substitutes they are deficient. They're deficient because they are not an actual solution to the societal ailment, having more the character of a band-aid.<br />
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Band-aids are not part of our flesh, but are instead a covering. In contrast, a properly ordered society is inseparable from our flesh. A properly ordered society is kith and kin, our native land and our people. A properly ordered society isn't chosen from a list of choices, we are instead by nature grafted into the society by birth or by some other similar means.<br />
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The concept of society as something akin to an overcoat is modern and not according to our nature. True, our modern society has been reduced to social compacts, where society is now little more than some kind of quasi social natural compact. But as Catholics we should see those quasi natural compacts for what they are. <br />
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Distance is not accidental to properly formed community whether that distance be measured in transcending of cultures intermixed or transcending of miles traversed.<br />
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When Aristotle writes that to all things there is a limit, including the size of the organically formed society, he speaks only of measured distance, and while that measured distance is violated by these New communities, more unnatural yet is the traversing of cultures.<br />
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What binds together a drive to FSSP parish is less than what bonds together a natural locally organized parish because the locally organized parish is formed as part of the local social fabric.<br />
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Unfortunately, as time has passed since Vatican II the Church has kept on applying more and more band-aids to where now, that's all there is, lots and lots and lots of New Community band-aids. <br />
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Here in Colorado, the Church does not even attempt to restore the natural social bonds, but has instead abandoned the concept of the local parish. All parishes are now drive to personal parishes. An example of this is when we sent our children to our local geographical parish school we were regarded as outside the parish even though we lived within the physical boundaries of the parish, because our membership in the FSSP personal parish made us members exclusively in that parish.<br />
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Our geographical parish no longer considered geography as relevant to being a parishioner, but instead looked solely at the history of recorded money contributions. And so as a result, all geographical parishes in the Archdiocese are now for all practical purposes likewise New Communities. With each geographical parish having its own charism drawing parishioners from all other the city because of the charism associated with that parish.<br />
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And to make matters worse, the Church not only fostered these New Communities, but for a generation and more used the pope like a rock star hanging its hat on the cult of personality of JPII. As opposed to formation into the Faith within the organic local parish, what we have instead is emotional commitment which is seeds dropped on hard soil. The depth of soil and commitment is part and parcel to the consumerist society the members live in, where the New Communities are little more than a "lifestyle choice"<br />
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As it stands today, the Church is composed of Catholics belonging to a plethora of sects with each one claiming its charism is essential to being fully Catholic. They're insular seeing themselves not as part of the larger Church, but as the embodiment of the Church.<br />
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Locally, the Denver Archdiocese doesn't even make a distinction between its own seminary and the Neocat seminary, a failure of distinction they will some day rue. Because the worst of the New Communities are the Neocats with their secret catechism and rituals that denigrate the Faith. The Neocats are a schism waiting to happen. <br />
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As a friend of mine said recently upon completion of reading a history of Opus Dei, JPII didn't canonize its founder but instead a fiction, because the founder is in hell. And the founder of TFP was a mess, and the Legionaires go without saying, and so it goes down the list. <br />
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What is most missing is <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2010/12/trolley-cars-and-neighbors-we-never-see.html">the simple casual interaction of daily life</a> proper to the organically formed society. Not only are these New Communities detached from common daily life, but they're overly regimented and regulated. And if they're not detached because the New Community does attempt to regulate family life, that attempt is worst of all, because the regulations are a burden because they lack discretion.<br />
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Organically formed societies do have laws, of course, but much of what is regulated is cultural and unsaid but understood because the formation into the society is not like a platonic overcoat, but holistic in nature.<br />
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Some will point out guilds of the past as proving these new Ecclesial Movements and New Communities have always been with us, but the difference is that those guilds of the past did not attempt to substitute for society, but were instead woven into the fabric of society. Where as today, <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2012/05/religious-freedom-in-society-is.html">what we have are thousands of different societies</a> where the only common bond is consumerism and egalitarianism.<br />
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Pope Benedict's wishful thinking is all too common.<br />
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Similar to the Ecclesial Movements and New Communities, homeschooling came into existence because of societal breakdown and dysfunction where parents were forced to homeschool because all other preferred traditional options were closed to them. Home schooling has become <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2011/01/home-schooling-medicinal-choice.html">"the ruggedly individualistic . . . option that hinders rather than helps Catholic community."</a><br />
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Or take the <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2011/01/cult-of-nfp.html">Cult of NFP</a> which has transformed NFP from the medicinal into a good in itself where marriage is now argued to be defective without the use of NFP. NFP is medicinal in the same manner as liquid opium is medicinal. NFP may be vital as medicinal for spacing children when the more natural ecological breastfeeding is insufficient, but to substitute <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2012/03/extended-breastfeeding-its-natural-and.html">ecological breastfeeding</a> in favor of the medicinal NFP is in principle the same as daily consumption of opium. It's a substitution of the proper for the medicinal whose function is handmaiden to the proper. <br />
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More to come . . . . . love the girlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086068884134493993noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315410203810118753.post-84455615762094403122013-11-24T13:12:00.002-07:002021-09-02T09:26:56.729-06:00Openness to life.<a name='more'></a><blockquote>Basically, “openness to life” means the potency of the act has to be respected. If the potential for procreation is, through natural causes, not present, one is not hindering procreation by engaging in sexual intercourse, nor is one frustrating the act in any way. If the potency is present, then to hinder it is to frustrate the act. One simply may not frustrate the primary purpose of the sexual act on account of its dignity. This doesn’t mean that one may not engage in the sexual act for secondary reasons — mutual love, cure for concupiscence, etc. But it means that one may not pursue a secondary end while frustrating the primary end. <a href="http://caelumetterra.wordpress.com/2011/07/17/is-natural-family-planning-really-natural/#comment-18104">Christopher Zehnder</a></blockquote>While this is a really nice explanation, the problem is that it won't convince anyone in the pews because it's cryptic to the modern mind.<br />
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As I've : <a href="http://catholiccultureandsocietymusings.blogspot.com/2013/03/which-of-ten-commandments-does.html"> noted elsewhere</a> We live in a society where tools and chemicals are constantly used to manipulate our daily lives, and where ABC (artificial birth control), not unlike NFP, is to all appearances just another benign mechanical or chemical device. And because ABC does appear benign, what is needed is a very clear explanation of why in this particular circumstance using an artificial means of family planning is sinful when using a natural means is not sinful. Unfortunately as it stands, the explanations and examples given by the visible Church are very much neither clear or helpful.<br />
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Speaking of potency and frustrating an act may be exactly why ABC is immoral and in turn why NPF is not, but in our modern egalitarian protestantized society were every man is his own theologian, what is needed is clear language that speaks to the modern mind.<br />
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I happen to really like Christopher Zehnder's explanation, and could not ask for more, but in a modern world where the <a href="http://catholiccultureandsocietymusings.blogspot.com/2012/05/stressing-unitive-aspect-of-marriage.html">unitive aspect of marriage</a> is now often pushed as preeminent over the procreative, we need more clear and precise guidance. <br />
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I wonder if Christopher Zehnder is up to the challenge? I'm not convinced many would listen anyway, but perhaps a few would <br />
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Although, on the other hand perhaps it's better to let sleeping dog lie so to speak, there is something to be said for the secret strategy of Catholic colleges in america to make peace with the world while also saving souls by sowing invincible ignorance one student at a time.<br />
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And <a href="http://caelumetterra.wordpress.com/2011/07/17/is-natural-family-planning-really-natural/#comment-18113">this is a really nice follow up by Christopher Zehnder on the meaning of nature or natural</a>, as in Natural Family Planning. Which of course, <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2013/06/nfp-is-harmful-to-marriage.html">as I've written means that NFP is natural medicinally.</a><br />
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I find it strange how people who in other respects are holistic in outlook, i.e . the appeal to aggrariansim and similar, really have little understanding of themselves and their position, and when given an explanation of what it means to be holistic sexually and why in turn contraception is wrong simply walk over the issue siding with modernist occultism.<br />
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Perhaps occultism is the wrong term, but the modernist use of tools for unnatural purposes, whatever the proper term for that might be. <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/contraception-and-spiritual-struggle/This is nice article on artificial birth control is modernist occultism.html"> love the girlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086068884134493993noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315410203810118753.post-52425956593310947902013-09-30T21:23:00.001-06:002015-11-04T22:14:17.885-07:00My marketing strategy for designing Catholic church architectureI've decided to aggressively expand my design into church architecture.<br />
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Because, as others may have noticed, while secular architecture is often very good, the same cannot be said of Catholic church architecture. In fact, the field of Catholic church architecture is so abysmally poor as to be simply beyond pathetic. And so I've decided to help out the cause by throwing my hat into the sanctuary, so to speak.<br />
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But my problem is : how do I advertise so as to let traditionalists know I'm hip on the new movements in Traditionalist Church Design?<br />
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How do I get my name out there in a way so as to let everyone know that I don't intend to design the same trite nonsense that is now being built. And yes, this is a commentary on the local FSSP parish church which broke new grounds recently by building the first ever <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/wreckovation">wreckovation style church</a> designed by traditionalists for a traditionalist liturgy.<br />
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Well, anyway, the problem is how to get my name out there in a way to attract traditionalists so as to persuade them to let me be the one to design their churches? As you will note, I didn't design our local FSSP parish church. And given the cutting edge wreckovation style design they did build, it's rather apparent that I was overlooked because they just didn't think I was edgy enough. <br />
<br />
Well truth be told, I am the edge. <br />
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For example :<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKoZv0coW1vJI30RvFMNwsZ6aG89hyFflrLlQ2-hbCks1VmyD006J0oEdNCvIV0RdHmnCbNKV78GqpLpEQ3ad6UAtUtScN-3MVg_n_Y8O63MHdHk3f6KgWlDEqL40GfMJf-NtzB2FViVw/s1600/White+Front+Elevation-Model.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKoZv0coW1vJI30RvFMNwsZ6aG89hyFflrLlQ2-hbCks1VmyD006J0oEdNCvIV0RdHmnCbNKV78GqpLpEQ3ad6UAtUtScN-3MVg_n_Y8O63MHdHk3f6KgWlDEqL40GfMJf-NtzB2FViVw/s320/White+Front+Elevation-Model.png" /></a>LoHi townhouse front elevation</div><br />
But how to let traditionalists know?<br />
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And so what I've decided to do is to look to the my local parish FSSP for inspiration and have decided as a result to follow their postmodernist lead into the brave new world of <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/07/21/japanese-girls-rent-out-thighs-adverts-tokyo_n_3632117.html">babe body advertising</a> But with a twist, as opposed to using secular school girls to market my product to get my name out, I'm going to instead use Catholic school girls in uniforms, because what says traditionalist wreckovation style architecture better than having one's name printed just above the knee of a Catholic coed in a school uniform?<br />
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It's traditionalist edgy with just a hint of scandal. Perfect. <br />
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I think I have a solution, but I would very much welcome others to comment on my new marketing strategy, and if you think it will be successful.<br />
love the girlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086068884134493993noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315410203810118753.post-21004040581123025832013-09-12T08:17:00.000-06:002013-09-13T00:07:07.372-06:00Life is wonderful and I wouldn't change even a small speck of itfor no other reason than I fear to loose what I cherish most.<br />
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love the girlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086068884134493993noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315410203810118753.post-30945085601126677252013-06-04T22:37:00.005-06:002024-01-07T07:00:00.826-07:00Musings on what is a living wage?An employer can't know what to pay his worker unless he knows what he's actually expected to pay for. And so the question is : what is included, or not included in the living wage? <br />
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Given that a living wage is, that which is sufficient to enable a man to <a href="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum_en.html">comfortably to support himself, his wife, and his children,</a> with comfortable understood to mean that which is the common, as well as ordered, standard of living of a given culture.<br />
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What must be done is to determine what is properly ordered to the family, as well as what is not properly ordered to the family. And thus if we wish to know what a living wage is for those who live within a disordered society, we must know not only what should be covered, but likewise what should not be covered.<br />
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In fact, it is probably more difficult to know what should not be covered than it is to know what should be covered given that consumerist expectations are often mistaken for what is proper to a well ordered life.<br />
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An employer does not have a duty to pay for the disorder of consumerism because it is a disorder. An employer's duty to pay a living wage does not include a duty to pay for a disorder.<br />
For example, an employer does not have a duty to pay for an employee's use of contraception, because contraception is contrary to the proper ordering of the family.<br />
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Further examples are:<br />
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An employer does not have a duty to pay for the disordered common american cultural norm of a bedroom for every child. While in turn a employer does have a duty to pay a wage sufficient for the natural order of sharing bedrooms even though shared bedrooms is not culturally american.<br />
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An employer does not have a duty to pay for <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2012/05/supersized-catholic-families-are-not.html?showComment=13624061715">the disorder of a supersized Catholic family</a> when the reason for the use is a disorder in the marriage the could be prevented by ecologically breastfeeding.<br />
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Nor does an employer have a duty to pay for an employee's use of NFP when the reason for the use is a disorder in the marriage the could likewise have been prevented by ecologically breastfeeding.<br />
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In other words, the owner of the private business that employs a man, or <a href="http://evergreencooperatives.com/">the subsidized cooperative</a> that employs the same man, has a duty to pay a living wage of a properly ordered family.<br />
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Please note, the post is currently being written, read at your own risk.<br />
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But what does 'comfortable' or 'common standard of living' mean? <br />
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Does it mean paying for piano lessons, or ballet lessons, or sports teams that in turn typically means paying for two cars. And if cars, how nice of cars? And what type of clothing? Or what food? What of paying for College, or schooling?<br />
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It's pretty easy to come up with $80,000 in expenses or more. Where as a man with fewer children would not need nearly so much. Where do we draw the line of where the employer's duty ends?<br />
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Further, since supersized Catholic families are disordered, even though the disorder is intended as a good in keeping with the Faith as is typical of most supersized Catholic families, nevertheless, why should an employer have the burden of duty to pay for a disorder?<br />
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A man's life is improved the more he is paid, and what is being looked at here is a wage for living.
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It should be noted, that while a living wage does not include paying for disorder, it should also be noted that a living wage is the minimum that can be paid. Paying less when able to is theft.
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I often find discussions online and elsewhere is tend to focus on the least that can be paid, as if the least is what should be paid. Whereas instead, what should be looked for is how to pay as much as possible to the wage earner.
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Paying a wage earner the minimum possible is treating men as a means of production, which is the primary evil of capitalism.The intrinsic dignity and worth of the wage earner is not looked at beyond the very bare minimum. This is the sinful act of parsimony.
love the girlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086068884134493993noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315410203810118753.post-78838879023620863182013-05-11T23:04:00.001-06:002013-05-13T15:06:07.484-06:00Our Daughter Lucy was graduated from Christendom College todaylove the girlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086068884134493993noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315410203810118753.post-20076577629791393582013-01-31T23:00:00.000-07:002015-11-04T13:34:06.060-07:00Extended Breastfeeding. It's natural, and the way God intended.And it's time for american Catholics to get over their prudishness and get with the program.<br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX_3UuS2pSY">The worldwide average for weaning is past the fourth birthday</a> Extended breastfeeding is natural, and it's beautiful, and it should be the norm in any Catholic public setting.<br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdEN8nKWA4E">A nice video on the subject,</a> and even better with the sound turned way down.<br />
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Much of what goes on about us and in society we can't do anything about. We can only watch in horror as it's slowly ground into oblivion. But we can raise our children as God intended creating a patch of The Garden in this wasteland.<br />
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I don't expect to ever find mothers at my FSSP parish with breasts exposed nursing their 4 year olds. But if I did, I would know we have finally started to become a holistically Catholic parish.<br />
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Addendum May 10, 2012<br />
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the child is only three, but given the over the top prudishness of Americans <a href="http://moms.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/10/11640864-times-breast-feeding-toddler-cover-spurs-shock-talk">this is actually another step in the right direction.</a> And any time Dr. Sears gets press is good.<br />
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Also read :<a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2010/12/blog-post.html">Nursing babies. It's not sexual, but why do most women act like it is?</a><br />
love the girlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086068884134493993noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315410203810118753.post-9019991520430034512013-01-28T10:30:00.001-07:002013-02-04T07:34:05.890-07:00Today the Gregorian calendar hanging on the kitchen wall commemorates my oldest daughter's birthday.While the liturgical calendar commemorates St. Thomas Aquinas.<br />
A connection perhaps? She is after all a senior and philosophy major at Christendom College.<br />
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I love you my wonderful.<br />
Philosophy is barren without children and family.love the girlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086068884134493993noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315410203810118753.post-48757120744417257002013-01-03T08:33:00.002-07:002013-02-03T09:13:27.456-07:00I never understood the incarnation until I had childrenbecause I never understood, not the willingness to sacrifice, but the longing to sacrifice without any reward but the good of those who are my own. <br />
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Christ making us his own is not accidental to his sacrifice, but essential to the act.<br />
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love the girlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086068884134493993noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315410203810118753.post-76772235793481317592012-12-30T15:27:00.001-07:002013-05-09T11:20:08.920-06:00God created us to see the beautiful subjectively.I have the muse, and it is through the muse that I intuitively know my art of architecture. Others, who do not have the muse, also likewise possess an appetite to know the beautiful of the art, but they know the art less well.<br />
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The muse is not a different kind of appetite, but the same appetite perfected or at the least more sensitive to its properly ordered object. But what is of importance here is that just as the artist finally knows his art intuitively, so likewise is it with all men that they too finally know the art intuitively. The difference is that the artist senses his appetite and its proper object while others are notably less sensitive.<br />
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This intuitive appetite has both the character of the immaterial as well as the character of the material because the intuitive appetite is an appreciation of the existence of both immaterial and material as they exist in the world about us. And as is natural to their difference as material and immaterial appetites, the material is concerned with the particular and the immaterial is concerned with the universal. Much the same as the concupiscible appetite is concerned with the particular and the Will with the universal.<br />
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Unlike the concupiscible appetite and the Will, the intuitive appetite, (or appetites), are not concerned with a moral good requiring the rule of the Will, but with a very different good ordered to the particular requiring the rule of the lower appetite.<br />
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What I mean by "the beautiful" is the general appeal to our senses. For instance, architecture, or paintings or flowers are not beautiful in the common parlance of the term, but they can visually please or displease us according to their nature. <br />
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Common parlance is important because <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2012/08/seeing-world-simply.html">God made the world about us sufficient for the common man to live in.</a> What I mean by sufficient is that what the common man considers beautiful, is in truth, beautiful. Of course to all things there is a natural limit, but within that natural limit what the common man considers beautiful, is beautiful and not a pretense of the beautiful or a shadow of the beautiful, but truly beautiful.<br />
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The reason that what the common man considers beautiful is truly beautiful is because all the arts are essentially practical. That is, the arts exist to be used.<br />
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And if the arts exist to be used, then they must in turn be usable, and thus obtainable by men. Which is not to say that there is not a hierarchy of the beautiful, but it is to say that the truly beautiful is obtainable by the common man living commonly.<br />
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Because the beautiful is subjectively known, it in turn means that we can form our appetites to more perfectly know the beautiful in relation to the universal. In other words, to know the beautiful most perfectly, i.e. most in conformity with the universal, we must understand ourselves and form the subjective to the universal. <br />
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As with all material appetites, the appetite (or appetites) whose object is the beautiful can be deformed or in some manner corrupted so that it's incapable of knowing the beautiful for what it is. And this deformity can exist across an entire society, but such deformity is abnormal because God knew we would fall and form societies where error is common, and so to compensate God created the world to compensate for and overcome our errors. <br />
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Or at the least, to compensate for and overcome them as long as our errors are not to great.<br />
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In other words, God created a world that was at human scale in paradise, and more importantly to us remains at human scale after the Fall. It's a world created to <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2011/08/living-according-to-human-scale.html">the scale we actually live at</a> with our fallen nature and other defects. <br />
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An example of the created world compensating for and overcoming our error is the mechanists, (i.e. modern chemists and physicists), who mistake number, (i.e. characteristic), for substance and in turn postulate insubstantial scattered force-bits in a void that explains number but leaves substantial change unexplained. <br />
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God knew we would error greatly <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2012/05/god-created-world-sufficient-to-over.html">getting the ordering of creation ass backwards,</a> so in turn God created a world where we just had to <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2011/01/modern-physics-science-of-mad-but.html">get it close enough to overcome our errors.</a> We're able to perform metallurgy and similar arts because the calculations and formulas work even when what underlies them is completely misunderstood by the mechanists. <br />
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Similarly, God created us so that despite our fallen nature and other defects our appetites can know the beautiful. God created a world that overcomes our propensity to corrupt our environment, as long as we do not corrupt beyond a limit.<br />
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And so as a result, the common man despite the fall and despite his propensity to corrupt his environment remains capable of truly knowing the beautiful and not a pretense of the beautiful or a shadow of the beautiful, but the truly beautiful. A beautiful that is known subjectively, because the subjectively known beautiful is at human scale. <br />
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Let me explain:<br />
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We observe that different societies will each have a different senses of what is beautiful, and we further observe that the cause of the difference is a difference in cultural memory of each society because the difference between what each society considers to be beautiful reflects the cultural memory differences between those compared societies.<br />
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By cultural memory, I mean that societal memory that inculcates the members of the society. This memory includes not only customs and folk traditions but formation of the appetites.<br />
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For example, we observe this difference between societies when there's a notable marked difference in the visible appearance of the women of one society in comparison to the women in a different society, with each society considering their own to be beautiful in comparison to the women in a another society. <br />
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Take the example of apparitions of Mary. Our Lady of Akita is visually different from Our Lady of Guadalupe according to cultural difference of what is considered attractive in the female form. She appears to each, not as she is bodily in heaven, but according cultural notions of beauty in each society.<br />
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God moves us by the subjectively perfect female form to contemplate the unseen infinite.<br />
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Cultural memory should be distinguished from false cultural memory, such as what is commonly found among traditionalist type Catholics whose cultural memory is a platonic overcoat of what they think their culture should be. It's a false cultural memory not grounded in inculcation, but is instead reactionary seeds sowed on hard earth against the modern culture.<br />
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Each society inculcates their members to see their own as most beautiful.<br />
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It's an inculcation which is natural to us for the same reason as it's natural for a father to first protect his own children. The natural bond of family, and by extension society encompasses not only duties, but also affections. And since we are material, those affections will have a material characteristic.<br />
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As a rule, <a href="http://catholiccultureandsocietymusings.blogspot.com/2011/10/beauty-is-indeed-in-eye-of-beholder.html">beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder</a> because in some manner the beautiful is an image of our society. We love our own because it is our own, and in like manner we see our own as most beautiful.<br />
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Or to put it at a more personal level, what we see as beautiful is an image of ourselves. Similarly, We love our children, our family, or culture, or patria because each is our own, and an image our ourselves.<br />
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The first words a mother says upon first holding her newborn is either "I love you" or "you are so beautiful" or some such. They are true words that also tell us much about ourselves. They are true words that tell us of the nature of the bond between mother and child including that we by nature see our own as beautiful.<br />
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I remember looking at my oldest, now a senior at Christendom College, when she was three and wondering why others did not see her as the most beautiful little girl they had ever seen, because when I looked at her, what I saw was extraordinary loveliness. And to be sure, she was a lovely three year old girl, but I can now look at her photograph with a bit more objectivity. <br />
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We also observe that while different societies will differ on what is beautiful in the particular they will at the same time be in general agreement in some manner on what is beautiful in the universal. But even in the universal, the beautiful is in regard to a specific entity such as women, or architecture or flowers and similar. <br />
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The universal beautiful of women, or architecture and similar, is not in relation to the particular beautiful in the same manner as circle is in relation to a particular circular object. Because both circle and the circular object can be visualized and grasped by the imagination. A perfect circle may not have concrete existence, but it can nevertheless be visualized in the abstract.<br />
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When we draw an imperfect circle with a compass we visualize it as perfect, but we cannot do the same with women, the material paradigm of womanly perfection doesn't exist. <br />
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In contrast to circle, the universal beautiful of women or architecture and similar. does not exist in a subject that can be visualized or abstracted, but instead exists more akin to an underlying principles that can be used as guidelines because the beautiful is complex and not simple in the manner that a circle is simple. <br />
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These guidelines etc are not the beautiful, just as the principles of <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=GryqqV58cXcC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">form space and order</a> are not architecture. Just as with architecture, the beautiful doesn't exist in the intellect, but solely exists in a material subject. Architecture can only be visualized as a particular building designed for a particular environment, such as when Frank Lloyd Wright held Falling Water in his imagination where his first rendering was also the final built form.<br />
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Architecture can only exist in a material context because it's a complexity of various principles and solved practical problems, similarly the beautiful can only exist in a material context because it too is a complexity, what can exist immaterially and universally are the underlying principles. <br />
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The appetite of the soul that has the beautiful as its object has both a universal sense of the beautiful as well as a particular sense of the beautiful because the appetite is also informed by its environment, so that in some manner, that which is beautiful is both particular to a person's appetite while somehow also participating in the universal. The appetite is informed by the universal, and also informed by particular matter to see this or that particular object as beautiful.<br />
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The universal guiding principles limit that part of the soul ordered to the particular so that while the beautiful actually is in the eye of the beholder, the particular beautiful is within a limit informed by the universal.<br />
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This duel formation has the practical consequence of us not requiring a universal (and thus unobtainable) perfection of the beautiful to satisfy our appetite, but instead we require a subjective (and thus obtainable) perfection ordered to our particular appetite.<br />
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It's a practical consequence because the common man living commonly can obtain the truly beautiful according to the appetites, capacities resources actually available to him.<br />
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This concept of the beautiful as subjective, where the arts are by nature practical and usable because they are at our fallen human scale stands in stark contrast to Catholic utopianism; the all to common disembodied platonic disposition to <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-perfect-is-enemy-of-good-thread-of.html">make the perfect the enemy of the good</a><br />
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Catholic utopianism, in its various manifestations removes the natural human scale limits that not only bind us but likewise <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2011/01/all-of-gods-creation-seeks-stability.html">give us stability.</a> What Catholic utopians do is they take a natural good to an unnatural extreme seeing the extreme as the proper good. Catholic utopianism is an error against moderation.<br />
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Using <a href="http://catholiccultureandsocietymusings.blogspot.com/2011/10/mental-reservation-is-deception.html">deception, i.e. intentional lies as example</a> in contrast to the Catholic utopians who make the perfect the enemy of the good by saying that all lies are evil, the proof of a right ordered society is <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2012/04/proof-of-catholic-social-theory-is-does.html"> does it work at a practical level?</a> Does it fit with how the common man commonly lives. Does it fit with intentional lies we commonly say but never consider confessing and would never resolve not to do again. Lies such as our folk tradition of telling our children about the tooth fairy, the sandman, Santa Claus down the chimney, Huguenots coming in the dead of night to carry away and eat naughty children and similar.<br />
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Or does it fit with the other common intentional lies that make up everyday life and common courtesy? Such as when a mother says to her toddler hiding her face with her hands, “where’s Mary, I can’t find her”; or the guest who says to his host that he enjoyed the dinner when he did no such thing?<br />
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And it's not so much that Catholic utopians mistake the problems we face, as it is that their equally disembodied platonic understanding of man simply doesn't work, or make sense, at a practical level because men are not disembodied spirits, but flesh and blood with fallen nature. God created a world sufficient for us to live in, but it's world rough around the edges. It's a world created for imperfect individual men living imperfect individual lives. <br />
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And because life is rough around the edges, our understanding of man and his arts must in turn reflect those same imperfections of life. <br />
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Each art, no different than our folk traditions, is by nature proportionate to our human scale as fallen man. A human scale in some manner according to the universal, but more so according to the particular. So in turn, if we want to understand the nature of a given art, we must first understand ourselves and what our scale actually is, because each given art's nature is our nature.<br />
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Architecture, perhaps more than anything is the art of designing at human scale because human scale is relevant to most every problem requiring a solution. <br />
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As an architect, I spend my days transforming the sublime into concrete practical reality, because at the end of the day the art must produce a product that's both buildable and afterward usable.<br />
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Human life is lived in three dimensional Euclidean space with architecture needing to answer a plethora of different requirements. With every requirement having its own standards to satisfy. Which in turn makes architecture the art of hierarchical compromise because conflicts between requirements require solutions.<br />
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Architecture is three dimensional puzzle problem solving where the solution is finally ordered to human life lived at a practical level. It's problem solving where the subjective is ordered to the universal, but where the final authority is the subjective.<br />
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A relation which appears at first blush to be a contradiction, but in reality expresses the balanced relation between the particular and the universal. The final authority of "is this woman beautiful?" is this man beholding this woman. But yet at the same time the beautiful in regard to women is within a natural universal limit. <br />
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The final end of architecture, the solution to the problem is each particular built form. Architecture follows universal principles and guidelines, but the final end of the art is this final built form for this particular environment according to a particular cultural memory. <br />
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Whether a built architectural form is visually pleasing is most properly subject to the cultural memory of those who use it because architecture is by nature used. And only secondly subject to those who observe it from afar.<br />
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I've been commonly told that my built forms, in contrast to others in my field, are significantly more attractive than my elevations drawn on paper. But then, my intention has never been to draw pretty pictures nor even to design buildings seen from afar because architecture is built form whose reason to exist is to be lived in.<br />
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It's in the living in it that the merit of this or that built form stands or falls. A meriting that like the beautiful is subjective because those who live in and their needs are subjective, so in turn how well the particular problem given to the architect is solved will be equally subjective.<br />
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And of course, the merit of a given built form is likewise subject to the universal and somewhat objective principles and guidelines of architecture because while the solution may be subjective, nevertheless we are by nature moved similarly by light and shadow in movement through space, or gradients of intimacy and all the other innumerable aspects that form the universal principles and guidelines of architecture.<br />
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And thus architecture, like some other of the fine arts is measured by two different, but related standards, where I have often found myself judging this or that architecture by the more universal standard finding it deficient when I should have been judging it by the more subjective and more authoritative standard.<br />
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Because architecture is the art of hierarchical compromise of a program that often compromises the universal principles and guidelines, it's often unfair to judge architecture on any merit other than on how well the problem actually given the architect was solved.<br />
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I've more than once looked in horror at some project I designed where the final product is ghastly according to universal principles of good architecture, but in the particular solved the problem as well as it could be solved. Fortunately, we are a resilient lot where for the most part bad architecture according to universal principles has little affect upon us.<br />
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Take for example the longitudinally designed church. An architect can be incompetent and still get it close enough because the shape alone naturally directs us. And if his scaling of the various elements such as columns and similar are just plain awful most people will not look beyond that there are columns. <br />
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As with making movies, subtlety is good as long as it's obvious because the common man is not capable of seeing the truly subtle. Which is good, because like the beautiful architecture just has to get it close enough for those who use it to be able to use it according to the use intended.<br />
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If greater perfection was required most architecture would not be able to serve the needs of men, so like with the other practical arts, the end of architecture is obtainable by the common man living commonly because his appetite is not overly sensitive to the universal.<br />
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And as for those like myself who have the muse, as someone once advised me when I was complaining about some Mass,"just close your eyes". Advice I've since used more than a few times.<br />
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Let me clarify that while we see the beautiful subjectively, nevertheless the subjectiveness is within the natural limit of the art so that some art is not art but is instead only gibberish masquerading as art. <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2012/02/no-one-in-his-right-mind-pays-for.html">This is particularly evident in the fine arts.</a><br />
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Take Jackson Pollock as example, all fine art is to some extent an abstraction. Even the realists abstract. But what those like Jackson Pollock did is not abstraction of the visible world about us, their paintings are nothing more than disordered paint splotches masquerading as art.<br />
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Of course some will argue that Pollock does have some kind of method, and that his method and technique is the art. But the same could be said of someone who writes letters on a sheet of paper without intent to form words, let alone form sentences. The letter writer can likewise have method and technique, but he is not doing what a writer does which is form coherent thought conveyed by letters.<br />
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The writing is disordered because it's not ordered to the proper final end of writing. Similarly, Pollock is disordered because he too does not order his painting within the natural limit of the fine arts. Or if he did order his painting to with the natural limit, then in turn what is most noteworthy of his paintings is his utter incompetency to perform his art.<br />
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This post is unfinished read at your own risk <br />
love the girlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086068884134493993noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315410203810118753.post-16530789768304868922012-11-14T06:53:00.001-07:002013-07-25T22:00:58.178-06:00I could not care less what the Pope says from day to daybecause what he says from day to day does not have relevance to my day to day life.<br />
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Catholic blogs are commonly discussing the latest papal pronouncement, but why do it?<br />
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The Church does not change<a name='more'></a>, and what I and most Catholics who blog online need to know, we already do know. I already do know the Church's teachings on salvation, the sacraments, and the moral issues I have some control over such as usury, contraception and similar. Those teachings will never change.<br />
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The Pope's pronouncements are typically on world events or issues that do not effect me, or teach me what I need to know. In the scheme of life, his pronouncements and such are little more than trivia. Or worse, those pronouncements can cause us to loose a sense of proportion.<br />
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<i><b>Please note</b>, the post is being written, read at your own risk.</i><br />
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The Pope's pronouncements are often at a scale completely out of proportion to our own which can in turn have the effect of causing Catholics to loose a sense of their own scale in relation to the world about us. For instance, the other day I read a blog comment where it was argued that <a href="http://caelumetterra.wordpress.com/2012/10/31/the-aftermath/#comment-13073">we as Catholics have solidarity with billions of complete strangers in the same manner and extent as we have solidarity with our own neighbors.</a> <br />
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Of course the concept of us having equal solidarity with complete strangers as we do with our neighbors is obviously disproportionate, but the extremeness of the argument demonstrates just how far off we can drift from a common sense of proportion by taking universal pronouncements as if they should be incorporated at the local level.<br />
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Which makes it the same problem that plagues us politically where the national government is now incorporated into the local level to the extent where the local is virtually not even a consideration. <br />
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In contrast, <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2011/01/think-locally-act-locally.html">as with politics</a>, I could not care less about national events, let alone world events, for the same reason that voyeurism has zero appeal to me, I much prefer to live my own life because I can live it as more than a spectator.<br />
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One of my favorite passages in Aristotle is where he says a sovereign state should not be larger than a man can see across, or walk across in a day because to all things there is a limit. Perhaps it's one of my favorites because as an a architect I spend my days intentionally designing to human scale in all its various aspects.<br />
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I don't design entire societies, but I do spend my days designing small social environments and so over the years I have not only become acutely aware of human scale, but have likewise a fair amount of experience of how to actually construct an environment that is at human scale.<br />
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Those in mass media advertisement, and those who design shopping malls and similar are also very knowledgeable of human scale, but as opposed to designing to human scale, they use their knowledge to frustrate our stability so as to agitate us to seek stability in consumerism. They subvert their knowledge for an improper end not unlike the doctor who uses his knowledge of the human body to create toxins to kill.<br />
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Mass media, mass marketing and similar are toxins because as opposed to causing stability, they cause instability which is in turn contrary to our nature because <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2011/01/all-of-gods-creation-seeks-stability.html">like all of nature we too seek stability and rest.</a><br />
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Papal pronouncements are of course not designed to cause instability, but they too can have that effect especially because they too become incorporated into and part of the overall social direction. <br />
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Men by nature desire to leave an everlasting mark on the world.<br />
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But even more locally, I don't leave footprints on the city concrete sidewalks, my passage goes unmarked.<br />
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I do have a few houses I've designed that will last a few years, and there is a certain pleasure in that, but for the most part it is through my children that I leave my mark.<br />
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God created us so that every man can leave his mark by raising children who are immortal and who will spend their eternity in blissful heaven. In his mercy he created a world where we can leave an everlasting mark.<br />
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The Church's teaching will never change, and what we need to know to raise our children is simple.<br />
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More to come . . . love the girlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086068884134493993noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315410203810118753.post-23237377540616456672012-11-10T12:40:00.000-07:002015-12-15T05:21:13.392-07:00The guide for boys wanting to be accepted into the all girls college because that's where the babes are. In other words, how to take advantage of the <a href="http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/19615/">new changes</a> in society.<br />
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When I was in highschool I wanted to either go to an all girls college or the top party school in the country because what was college for if not the babes?<br />
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So I ended up in Boulder, which was ok. But not nearly as good as the all girls college would have been, but since they didn't accept boys back then, I settled for what I could get.<br />
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But times have changed and there is a way to now be accepted into an all girls college.<br />
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The problem : <br />
Only transgender boys are being accepted, and transgender boys are supposed to be attracted to other boys.<br />
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The solution : <br />
All you have to do is claim to be a transgender cross-dressing lesbian and you can have all the babes you want because you're a biological boy who thinks he is a girl who thinks she is a boy and dresses like a boy, which in turn makes you indistinguishable from any other guy in looks and attraction, which is what you want to be, only better because now you're in the midst of babe land. <br />
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--<br />
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Addendum,<br />
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After reading this some may wonder why I left Boulder for Thomas Aquinas College. I was following a babe. <br />
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And I had also read, Christopher Derricks short book <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=w8iWuhJbpr8C&pg=PA156&dq="Escape+From+Scepticism"+derrick&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwib_ObN7N3JAhXEOSYKHYWoChUQ6AEIJTAA#v=onepag"><u> Escape From Scepticism : Liberal Arts as if Truth Mattered</u></a> and I wanted what the book said I could find.love the girlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086068884134493993noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315410203810118753.post-84507362072239061472012-11-06T12:49:00.000-07:002015-11-06T08:27:38.302-07:00Saving souls by sowing invincible ignoranceSaving souls by sowing invincible ignorance one student at a time is not only the secret strategy of Catholic colleges in america to make peace with the world while also saving souls.<br />
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love the girlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086068884134493993noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315410203810118753.post-21190259269484123392012-09-24T11:10:00.000-06:002013-10-29T07:23:18.797-06:00Making the perfect the enemy of the good : . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the common thread of error running through today's Catholic thought.<blockquote>“Sometimes Frank sighed, thinking he had caught a tropic bird, all flame and jewel color, when a wren would have served him just as well. In fact, much better.”<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/295117-sometimes-frank-sighed-thinking-he-had-caught-a-tropic-bird"> <i>Gone With the Wind</i></a></blockquote><a name='more'></a><br />
Catholic utopianism, is the grasping for the perfect tropic bird, all flame and jewel color, when a wren serves just as well. In fact, much better. It's the error of turning the perfect into the enemy of the good, and can be found to some extent lurking in virtually all of the Catholic writings found online that speculate on some aspect of Catholic social theory. There are of course exceptions with the best and most obvious exception being the paleo-conservatives whose flagship magazine is <a href="http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/">Chronicles.</a><br />
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Catholic utopianism in its various manifestations removes the natural human scale limits that not only bind us, but likewise <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2011/01/all-of-gods-creation-seeks-stability.html">give us stability.</a> It's an error against moderation by taking a natural good to an unnatural extreme seeing the extreme as the proper good. <br />
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It's an error that mostly exists because those who typically speculate on issues of Catholic social theory also happen to be academia types lacking practical experience in the field of discussion. In other words, <a href="http://catholiccultureandsocietymusings.blogspot.com/2012/01/hand-to-mouth-survival-working-3-times.html">those most likely to speculate on Catholic social theory lack the requisite prudence that comes by experience</a>, as well as being in the professional habit of making broad generalizations when what is called for is knowledge of the particular in its application to the more universal art.<br />
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The error is particularly pervasive among the Catholic paleo-libertarians, distributists, agrarians and others who are predisposed to romanticist solutions. And is likewise pervasive among <a href="http://coalitionforclarity.blogspot.com/">the hot button issue blogs</a> where scrupulosity <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2011/01/vice-of-being-overly-cautious.html">makes an enemy of the practical, the realistic, and the human scale.</a><br />
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The theocons, (including those found at my alma mater, TAC), also suffer from the error of making the perfect the enemy of the good, but do so according to their own <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2011/12/contrary-to-common-belief-us-as.html">unnatural</a> and <a href="http://takimag.com/article/the_limits_of_lincoln_bashing/print#axzz27yAALpBF">gnostic</a> misconceptions. <br />
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In contrast to those who make the perfect the enemy of the good, the proof of Catholic social theory is :<a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2012/04/proof-of-catholic-social-theory-is-does.html"> Does it work at a practical level?</a> In other words, does it work for those who are not suffering from scrupulosity or <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2012/03/irish-step-dancing-fitting-dance-style.html">some other error</a> that makes the perfect the enemy of the good.<br />
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When ever I get into discussions with Catholic intellectual types I'm invariably struck by their disembodied notions of man. And it's not so much they mistake the problems we face, as it is that their equally disembodied solutions simply don't work, or make sense, at a practical level because men are not disembodied spirits, but flesh and blood with fallen nature. <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2012/08/seeing-world-simply.html">God created a world sufficient for us to live in</a>, but it's world rough around the edges.<br />
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And because life is rough around the edges, our solutions in turn must reflect those same imperfections of life. Because when solutions do not reflect those rough edges and imperfections we in turn end up with very damaging solutions such as <a href="http://catholiccultureandsocietymusings.blogspot.com/2012/07/never-trust-priest-to-help-you-solve.html">the separation and annulment scandal</a> which exists because a disembodied perfection, an unobtainable level of perfection, has become the romanticist standard by which marriage contracts are judged by Catholic marriage tribunals.<br />
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Not only do the Catholic marriage tribunals make the perfect the enemy of the good, but so likewise do those in the marriage market: the romanticist notion of finding the perfect spouse is an <a href="http://blog.adw.org/2012/09/on-delayed-marriage-and-when-the-perfect-is-the-enemy-of-the-good/">unrealistic expectation that breeds resentment when reality doesn't measure up.</a> Unrealistic expectations are premeditated resentments. Resentments that inevitably follow when <a href="http://catholiccultureandsocietymusings.blogspot.com/2012/05/stressing-unitive-aspect-of-marriage.html">the unitive aspect of marriage is unnaturally separated from the procreative,</a> <br />
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Not that Catholics are unique in their making the perfect the enemy of the good. Quite the opposite, because it's also a common thread running through modern american society. Which in turn is probably why it's so commonly found in Catholic thought because most Catholics online are likewise creatures of modern society.<br />
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The aphorism, "The perfect is the enemy of the good", can be seen in and takes on the characteristics of each part of modern society. It's an error of unrealistic expectation and can be most easily spotted by looking for that error. <br />
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It's likewise an error that manifests itself differently depending on circumstance. For instance, <a href="http://lightondarkwater.typepad.com/lodw/2012/09/sunday-night-journal-september-16-2012.html">consumerism </a> reflects the error by the insatiable desire for the next gadget, article of clothing or what not with the expectation that the next purchase will finally satisfy the yearning for an unfound happiness.<br />
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Consumerism is a market driven by the unrealistic expectation that happiness can be found in the better than currently owned material possession, when what is instead missing is not the next and better possession but satisfaction in the satisfactory that is currently possessed.<br />
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Or take <a href="http://catholiccultureandsocietymusings.blogspot.com/2011/11/i-would-rather-be-ruled-by-illiterate.html">the type of market the distributists yearn for:</a> as opposed to accepting an imperfect but <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2012/08/nobleese-oblige-catholic-foundation-of.html">natural market grounded in the nobleese oblige of subsidiarity</a>, the distributists make their utopian desire for the perfect the enemy of the good, (i.e. the enemy of the natural market men naturally gravitate toward), by their advocating instead a solution that is not only unrealistic but an unforgiving dystopia.<br />
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The distributists, and their kindred spirits the luddites and agrarian Catholics, particularly suffer from the error of Catholic utopianism because not only are they predisposed to romanticist solutions, but those attracted to these notions invariably lack any practical experience in the fields where they would impose their solutions. They lack a practical experience that is necessary in order to know the level of precision each field requires. With precision understood to mean not only how close to the ideal does the practical art needs to be, but more importantly how far from the ideal a realistic level of precision should be. <br />
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Not that practical experience is a guarantee that someone will know the required level of precision, for instance, this past Spring I read some framing plans dimensioned to the 1/16" of an inch where as good precise framing is to the 1/8". But for the most part practical experience in the field does teach that framing to the 1/16" is not only unrealistic but makes an enemy of good framing to 1/8". Prudence is knowing the required level of precision.<br />
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When I was 18 and up among the rafters framing a house, a carpenter a couple of years older than me who at a difficult angle had just nailed a board close to the mark but not dead on the line, looked over at me and said : "good enough for the girls I go out with". The comment stuck with me not only because it was humorous, but because it signified in a humorous way the concept of not making the perfect the enemy of the good.<br />
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<a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2011/05/extreme-sport-of-oxen-powered-family.html">The luddite and agrarian Catholics</a> make their enthusiasm an enemy of farming or an enemy of construction, or an enemy of what have you, because they shun the practical experience of those who make a living in the field <a href="http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2012/08/not-in-my-back-yard-but-pass-me-the-good-life-please/">in preference for some aesthetic which they see as perfecting the art.</a><br />
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Catholic social theory speculation on the hot button issues such as <a href="http://catholiccultureandsocietymusings.blogspot.com/2011/12/torture-what-it-is-and-what-it-is-not.html">torture</a>, or modesty in dress, or <a href="http://catholiccultureandsocietymusings.blogspot.com/2011/10/executing-criminals.html">capital punishment</a> and similar are invariably arguments of <i>the perfect</i> against <i>the good</i> where those who argue from a practical good solution, <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2011/10/where-is-veronica-i-cant-find-her.html">a prudent solution at the required level of precision</a>, are commonly portrayed as purveyors of either inhumane or of slatternly behavior.<br />
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The theocons, paleo-libertarians and those who argue for open borders suffer from the error of making the perfect the enemy of the good because they see natural human scale limits as an evil that should be displaced by some perceived limitless perfection. <br />
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The open border types <a href="http://marylandsdreamact.blogspot.com/">sell out their fellow Catholic neighbors for the good of strangers</a> while in the same breath excommunicating those same fellow Catholic neighbors <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2012/04/immigrant-residential-construction.html">when they object to being sold down the river,</a><br />
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<b>Please note</b>, as with all my other writings, this work is an unfinished work in progress. love the girlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086068884134493993noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315410203810118753.post-26110277603861811702012-08-18T11:31:00.001-06:002012-09-10T09:33:01.622-06:00Modern design in a traditional Catholic home.I buy mass produced standardized 4'x8' sheets of .75" birch veneer plywood and rip them down to 9.5" wide lengths, and run one long edge of each through a shaper for an ogee shaped edge. I cut them to length, (5) at 27",(2) at 28.5", and (2) at 69", and assemble them with 2.5" deck screws, and I'm done.<br />
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The book shelves meet all the qualifications of modern design, which is a type of design that developed out of a progressive world view. The books that sit upon them are not modern, as in not progressive. They're the kind of books progressives delight in burning. <br />
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The book shelves as well as the books are both used by us <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2012/08/my-childrens-formation.html">to form our children.</a> The books are chosen to teach a multitude of lessons. The book shelves teach <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2012/08/seeing-world-simply.html">the loveliness of simplicity.</a><br />
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What I do is look at the design itself and see the good that can be found in the design because some aspects of modern design are at human scale, while other aspects are not.<br />
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornament_and_Crime">the axiom, "Ornament is a crime",</a> may be wrong in principle, but modern design's movement away from dressing up architecture the way the lower orders dress up their little girls for first holy communion in boundless yards of cheap synthetic lace was correct in direction. That the modern movement went too far reducing buildings to inhospitable sterile sheets of steel, concrete, and glass is an error common to all enthusiasts, and does not mean that human scale cannot be found when using modern design in moderation.<br />
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_to_materials">"Truth to materials",</a> another axiom of modern architecture coming out of the Arts and Crafts movement which advocated methods of construction and materials not be disguised was likewise correct in direction. A direction we would be well served by if our food and fabrics along with construction materials were held to this standard.<br />
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GMO seeds and synthetic food additives and highly processed foods have more of the appearance of food than they do of being actual food. And fabrics made of synthetics are not only nasty to wear or even touch, but their fibers fill our air and eventually our lungs. <br />
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Is it any wonder that children's allergies are rampant when we inundate their bodies with synthetic foods, synthetic toiletries and synthetic clothing? We poison their environment and their bodies react in defense. With poison, moderation is complete avoidance, and complete truth to materials. <br />
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As for architecture, dress styles, and similar, moderation is not complete avoidance or complete truth to materials, because the ordering is to the beautiful. Ornament is not a crime, but moderate ornament is a good.<br />
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And when I do look around my house, at it and all our possessions, I can see that virtually all of them do to some extent follow those two modern design axioms. Our clothing, for instance, is not only modern in style, it is without doubt both typically lacking excess ornament as well manufactured of natural materials used according to their nature.<br />
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Of course some will argue that a <a href="http://www.dl.ket.org/latin1/things/romanlife/greekdress.htm">peplos</a> is likewise lacking in ornament and with materials used according to their nature and so that what I am discussing is not modern design per se, but as with much of life <a href="http://www.drbo.org/chapter/23001.htm"><i>there is nothing new under the sun</i>.</a> Ecclesiastes 1:9, and thus while much of the materials and methods of construction associated with modern design are new, much of the axioms associated with it are not.<br />
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Those axioms may have not been expressed before, but much of what we do is not named until names are needed. <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2011/01/organic-catholicism-its-not-just-about.html">Attachment parenting</a> and <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2012/03/extended-breastfeeding-its-natural-and.html">extended breastfeeding</a> are recently coined terms of how people have traditionally raised their children. And only became coined terms when it became necessary to explain these methods of child raising in comparison to the modern unnatural methods americans now suffer from using.<br />
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These modern design axioms likewise needed naming so as to likewise distinguish them from the prevailing methods of design.<br />
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Attachment parenting is seen as cutting edge modern for the same reason home birth is seen as cutting edge modern, when they are actually natural methods of living we no longer use. Similarly, much of modern dress and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arts_and_Crafts_movement">modern architectural design</a> is in actuality going back to older methods of construction and design because they too are a better way to live.<br />
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My book shelves, like my children's clothing are mass produced, and in many other ways modern, but they too are in actuality going back to older methods. They are a moderate use of what is new by using new methods of manufacturing using natural materials. <br />
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My wife decorates our house the same way as <a href="http://www.hannaandersson.com/home.asp">we dress our children</a>: moderately, and modestly with an appreciation of the beautiful and the fun, (as well as capable of taking abuse while still retaining its character), because our environment is <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2012/08/my-childrens-formation.html?spref=fb">formative</a> and should reflect human life lived.<br />
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How we dress our children forms their taste because it <a href="http://catholiccultureandsocietymusings.blogspot.com/2011/10/beauty-is-indeed-in-eye-of-beholder.html">forms the appetite of the soul to know the beautiful in the particular,</a> as opposed to knowing the beautiful according to the universal. <br />
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And just as it is true that our children's tastes are formed by how we dress them, so likewise is it true that our children's tastes are formed by the rest of their environment; and so we in turn surround our children with natural textures and colours and other objects that will form their appetites. Because just as we intend to form culturally Catholic children in opposition to the culturally materialist environment that surrounds us, so likewise do we also intend to form our children to know the simple beauty of nature in opposition to the consumerist mass media sensory saturated environment that surrounds us.<br />
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Our home's interior design, as well as our exterior landscape design are likewise used to surround our children and form them to know the simple beauty of nature. A simple beauty that does not mean sterile, but does mean quietly aesthetically pleasing to the senses.<br />
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For example, manicured lawns of thick carpets of grass stretching over vast expanses are an aesthetic sterile desert inhospitable to life. Whereas in contrast, our yard is haphazard plum tree forests with large tree stumps scattered about in an irregular circular pattern on a lawn with 30 varieties of uneven grass intermixed with wild flowers and rough framed play structures with plenty of room to dig forts into the earth and similar - - all designed to form our children to know the simple beauty of nature. <br />
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Each environment should be designed according to its nature and its use. Outside our house is the unbounded world, while inside is sheltering civilization.<br />
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Like my bookshelves, our smooth painted walls constructed of gypsum wallboard are simple as well as perfect for tacking up our children's art, or maps and similar. Art decorations that would be out of place in a fussy victorian motif, but which make for a very fitting decor in the modern foamcore model box style of our house.<br />
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<a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2012/02/house-is-machine-for-living-in-paradigm.html">T"he house is a machine for living in",</a> another axiom of modern architecture finds its expression, albeit moderated and lacking the underlying progressivism, in our bathrooms, laundry room and kitchen with table area. These rooms are dedicated to machines designed for efficiency. <br />
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Our kitchen table is modular steel and plastic with modular steel and plastic chairs from <a href="http://www.dwr.com/">D.R.W.</a> The floors in these rooms are fun patterns of <a href="http://www.armstrong.com/commflooringna/products/vct"> VCT</a>. And if it wasn't VCT it would be linoleum manufactured from linseed oil, but either way the tiles would be according to the modern design axiom of the kitchen is a machine for living in, albeit arranged in a fun pattern. Our kitchen cabinets are modular with durable modular ceramic tiled countertop, and if I was to do it over, I would install commercial grade <a href="http://www.granitifiandre.com/">Fiandre</a> modular 2ft square porcelain tiles.<br />
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The refrigerator is modern machinery, but the food inside is manufactured using natural materials. The washing machine is modern machinery, but the laundry soap and clothing are manufactured using natural materials. <br />
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What we do is mix and match the modern where it serves us well. When my wife has had waterbirths we have used a rubbermaid livestock watering tank supplied by the midwife because it likewise was a good mixture of the modern with the older more natural. Modern hospitals have their use and their place, but giving birth is not one of them. <br />
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And so it is with much of our life, we choose to use <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2010/12/candle-light-in-praise-of-natural.html">candles on our Christmas tree because of the wonderful aesthetic of natural light,</a> but we use mass produced candles and candle holders. My wife knits sweaters for the children, but most of our clothing is mass produced. We choose not to have a television in preference to walls with books, but we do have computers. <br />
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Modern design is not by nature harmful, but it can be intemperately and enthusiastically used so as to become harmful, which makes modern design the same as most of our environment where moderation is required. Modern design and modern methods have their uses and their place, and it is up to us to use our prudence to know where and when to use them, and where and when not to.<br />
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<i>[ The posts below have been moved. Click <a href="http://catholiccultureandsocietymusings.blogspot.com/2012/08/my-reply-to-post-over-at-front-porch.html">here </a> for the continuation of the <a href="http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2012/08/the-anti-tradition-of-modern-art/">discussion over at Front Porch Republic</a> ]</i>love the girlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086068884134493993noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315410203810118753.post-61201583365173384712012-08-16T17:52:00.002-06:002012-08-25T22:12:00.344-06:00My children's formation.I knew a girl in college at TAC who had a sense of the beautiful that was different from any anyone I had ever known before. It was subtle, but unmistakably there and I used to wonder what it was I was looking at.<br />
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Years later after I had some experience with Waldorf, and in turn later found out the girl in college had gone through Waldorf, I had my answer. Waldorf forms children to a sense of the beautiful like nowhere else.<br />
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I have never been able to afford Waldorf,(self employed architecture is long hours for poverty per hour wages), my oldest was in one of the schools for a while when she was young, but this year my 6 year old son, 9 year old daughter, and 12 year old daughter will be attending a charter Waldorf school.<br />
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All the parents of the children at the school are hip, just like those who attend every other Waldorf function I've ever also attended, so I have good hope it will be a good formative environment.<br />
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Until recently Waldorf leaned heavily on past Catholic cultural traditions to where Waldorf was more Catholic culturally than american Catholics are. And while Waldorf is starting to become multicultural, the Catholic vestiges should remain as most formative.<br />
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I like to think of <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2011/01/walls-with-books-suitable-for-all-ages.html">our home as hands-off Waldorf</a> where we form our children into a sense of the beautiful, so that just like the Faith its as natural to them as breathing the air. <br />
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The children for the last few years have been in Montessori where my oldest went to high school.<br />
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My oldest, a daily Mass going and very holy Colorado earth girl, is now a senior at Christendom College where she is likewise in formation. Christendom's motto is "Breath Catholic".<br />
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My oldest children were either homeschooled or in the local independent Catholic schools, with my oldest attending a charter Montessori high school.<br />
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My second oldest, who never really did go to school after 5th grade in so far as he never did anything at school other than show up and read some book from home he brought with him went through high school in ten weeks via one of the charter schools that does all school work online. When he turned 17 he decided he did need a high school diploma so he went to the school and did all the work sheets and tests as fast it was possible to do them and that was that. <br />
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My daughter is a philosophy major at Christendom. And my son has just enrolled at the local community college which is a very nice change for the better. Up until a few days ago he was adamant that college was a waste of time. <br />
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God gave him the ability to do almost anything he wants, for instance, when he was young he wanted to play the online computer game Rune Scape so he taught himself how to type at around 200 words a minute and worked himself up to 15th place in the world before quitting. And so it is with anything else he wants to do.<br />
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He started working at the local grocery store chain this summer and was last week promoted into management training, and now is at the local community college, and hopefully will progress in the next year or so to applying to Thomas Aquinas College where they could give him the foundation to see the world through scholastic eyes. So far so good, after all he just turned 18.<br />
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We always hope for what we think is best for our children, and do our best to provide it. <br />
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More to come - - - . . . . .<br />
love the girlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086068884134493993noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315410203810118753.post-16293248380247604172012-08-14T19:59:00.000-06:002014-03-18T17:57:14.760-06:00Seeing the world simply.Some would call it being simple minded, and I suppose in a way it is. Seeing the world simply is to grasp the world about us as it appears to us by simply standing still and quietly observing with our unaided senses. It's the rejection of the more complex when the more simple will suffice.<br />
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God created a world where the men of yesterday were not at a disadvantage to know what it was necessary for them to know. For instance, it was not necessary for men to know and understand metallurgy, but it was necessary for them have sufficient knowledge and understanding of what is the proper ordering of society. And thus God gave us from the beginning the necessary tools to live in harmony with one another in a virtuous society.<a name='more'></a><br />
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Obviously, men do suffer privations, similarly as a blind man does, and so we do end up with exceptions to what is proper such as the Aztecs where human sacrifice was a civic virtue. But the basic principle is <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2011/01/modern-physics-science-of-mad-but.html">God created a world, including ourselves, sufficient to allow for our error if we just get it close enough.</a> God knew we would err and err greatly, but yet designed our world so that we could live in it in spite of our errors.<br />
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God gives to each man what is necessary for him, just as he gives to each man sufficient grace to will heaven. What God gives to each man can come through society according to subsidiarity, but it does come to each man.<br />
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Thus a farmer in his field knows what he needs to know. He is capable of a sacramental wedding vow and he is capable of knowing the proper ordering of his family including his duty to care for it and defend it. Society likewise knows what it needs to know and is not in need of some knowledge it can never have because that knowledge will not exist for centuries in the future.<br />
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It's a common occurrence for moderns to impose their values on those who came before and to hold those who came before to be deficient of being able to have a properly ordered society, but to do so is to hold God incapable of creating a world sufficient for us to live in. God gave us the air to breath and water and plants and all else necessary for us from the beginning.<br />
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To see the world simply is to see the world according to simple explanations, such as lions have sharp teeth in order to eat meat, i.e. nature acts for an end, and thus in turn in paradise lions did eat meat. It's taking a simple path to a simple conclusion. As opposed to those who say lions did not eat meat in paradise and are thus in turn forced into a convoluted explanation on why lions had sharp teeth even though they would have been poorly suited for eating plants.<br />
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To see the world simply is to look for the simple and easily observable underlying<br />
<a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2011/01/all-of-gods-creation-seeks-stability.html">causes that move all of nature</a> such as all of God's creatures seek stability. For instance, water seeks stability by flowing downward, animals seek stability in propagation of their species and we seek stability in formation of community where we have our place.<br />
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To see the world simply is to raise our children to see <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2011/01/walls-with-books-suitable-for-all-ages.html">the poetic in God's creation</a>. Whether it be the appreciation of <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2010/12/candle-light-in-praise-of-natural.html">the difference of candle light versus electric light</a> by the use of candles on a Christmas tree, or the more everyday environment where we dress them in plant fiber cotton versus synthetics made from petroleum.<br />
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To see the world simply is for us to look for the poetic as a solution when others are all calling for a <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2012/05/god-created-world-sufficient-to-over.html">complex materialist solution</a>.<br />
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To see the world simply is <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2011/08/living-according-to-human-scale.html">to see the world according to human scale</a>, as opposed to imposing some other unnatural scale on human life lived.<br />
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To see the world simply is to look for the simple solutions such as natural child spacing though extended breastfeeding. As opposed <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2011/01/organic-catholicism-its-not-just-about.html">to looking first to use some medicinal gadget like NFP as a means of child spacing.</a><br />
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To see the world simply is the opposite of consumerism. It's where stores like Babies R-us would soon be out of business because raising a baby doesn't require more than a dozen cloth diapers, a few garments, and a couple of blankets.<br />
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To see the world simply includes <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2011/01/home-schooling-medicinal-choice.html">knowing what is actually simple versus what is actually complex or medicinal</a>. For instance schools with school teachers are the simple solution, versus homeschooling which is medicinal.<br />
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To see the world simply is to recognize that God created a world where our sense of touch and sight are sufficient to know it. Where our the simple explanations of our senses are the correct explanation. As opposed to modern physics explanation that matter is void and what our senses are telling us is an illusion.<br />
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As with much of life, God created a world sufficient for our needs where the simple solution that men typically gravitate toward is typically the best because men typically gravitate toward common sense solutions that are at human scale and natural to us.<br />
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Where it is at human scale and natural to us as social creatures to tell our children intentional lies such as our folk tradition of telling our children about the tooth fairy, the sandman, Santa Claus down the chimney, Huguenots coming in the dead of night to carry away and eat naughty children and similar.<br />
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Or where it is common sense and natural to tell the intentional lies that make up everyday life. Such as when a mother says to her toddler, “where’s Mary, I can’t find her”; or common courtesy the guest who says to his host that he enjoyed the dinner when he did no such thing? As opposed <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2012/04/proof-of-catholic-social-theory-is-does.html">to those who consider any deception an evil where society must conform to some disembodied platonic norm.</a><br />
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To see the world simply is to recognize that how societies organically develop is a sign of what is best and natural to men, and that societies naturally develop hierarchically including economically. As opposed <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2012/08/nobleese-oblige-catholic-foundation-of.html">to the unnatural solutions such distributism</a> because men do not naturally come together to form a distributist ordered manufacturing company, but instead a single man or a partnership will form a company that hires workers. In other words, distributist businesses do not form organically, but instead occur when an existing business intentionally changes its existing method of operation.<br />
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Luddite types do not see the world simply because they ignore human scale and common social life in favor of some disembodied platonic principle. They make perfection the enemy of the good by letting <a href="http://catholiccultureandsociety.blogspot.com/2011/05/extreme-sport-of-oxen-powered-family.html">their enthusiasm for pristine perfection of their pet issue overtake common sense.</a>*<br />
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Distributists do not see the world simply because <a href="http://catholiccultureandsocietymusings.blogspot.com/2011/11/i-would-rather-be-ruled-by-illiterate.html">their solution involves absurd complexity that only a naive corporate or institutional drone with zero practical experience could find reasonable</a>.**<br />
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For me, seeing the world simply is pretty easy. I spent my entire childhood in classes for those with learning disabilities. I have dyslexia which I think is what causes me to not be able to grasp except intellectually the mathematical conceptualizations of physics and other similar abstractions. The formulas are nothing more than algebraic magic tricks where solutions magically appear at the end of long equations. <br />
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In other words, I don't have much choice but to see the world simply.<br />
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*When building a house, an electric saw is at human scale, and a hand saw is not.<br />
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A push pedal sewing machine is not the more simple solution to an electric one because we live in an environment where electricity is at our disposal because every house is now electrified.<br />
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Similarly, horse drawn wagons in a mistaken understanding of subsidiarity are not simple because typically owning a horse in modern society is a complex process. And wagons for occasional use are an obvious luxury. As a child, we had a sulky that required it's own tack shed, most people don't have such luxuries. <br />
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**Distributism is the solution of institutional drones who can't figure out that their solution is the same as the problem their trying to solve. love the girlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086068884134493993noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315410203810118753.post-5128571317391661462012-06-17T14:11:00.000-06:002012-06-26T08:01:30.091-06:00How does a sleeping child know he is touching his parent?Last night my 6 years old son while sound asleep scooched up to me until he pressed the top of his head against me. He then stopped and fell into a deeper sleep breathing pattern.<br />
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It was the same deeper breathing that happens when I put my hand on them when they are sleeping alone where they will take a deep breath and settling into deeper sleep breathing.<br />
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Even when I put the back of my hand against their hair, or against their cloth covered chest they recognize the touch of another person. <br />
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How are they able to distinguish the touch of a parent from the touch of any other object?<br />
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<i><b>Please note </b>: this post is currently being written, read at your own risk</i><br />
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I've often wondered if more than a physical touch occurs. A mother is connected to her children, especially babies, by an unseen communication. Is the connection similar?<br />
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This capacity to communicate while sleeping, as well as our general awareness of those around us signifies that the family bed is natural to man.<br />
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In our house the sleeping patterns are fluid. Last night three of the children slept in the bed, where as on other nights there will be only our 2-year old daughter. But what is a fairly steady constant is the children want to sleep by someone until they are about 12 years old.<br />
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We have a sense when someone is present in a room with us, or when someone is watching us from across a room at a distance where we cannot see the direction of their eyes. <br />
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more to come.love the girlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086068884134493993noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315410203810118753.post-39748676135953365612012-05-31T09:09:00.001-06:002012-08-12T14:27:49.232-06:00Religious freedom in society is an illusion.Every society by nature has a dominant religion that governs society. <br />
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A society may tolerate a different religion because it sees that other religion as sufficiently benign, but it will not tolerate what it considers harmful to the common good of society.<br />
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A Catholic society would allow unbelievers to practice their religion, but it would not allow them to proselytize because conversion to a false religion is harmful to the primary reasons for society to exist.<br />
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Looking at america as a whole, a strange unnatural creature that is at the same time a consolidated leviathan as well as a mass of individuals: <br />
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A number of societies can exist in a confederacy that imitates society, but a confederacy is not a sovereign society, even if each of the sovereign societies that compose the confederacy bow to the dictates of the confederacy.<br />
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The authority remains in each sovereign society even if each does not recognize its own sovereignty.<br />
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Another imitation of society is a mutual agreement among men to live in a confederacy of individuals. This is what the democratic U.S. is. Each man is understood to be some kind of sovereign who is under obligation to the dictates of the whole under a social compact.<br />
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Of course, each man is not sovereign, and social compacts are an illusion. But because the social compact is thought to be true and acted on as if it was true, what has occurred in the U.S. as a result is a social structure which imitates a social compact where the preeminent governing principles are freedom and equality.<br />
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And because the governing principles are not ordered to forming a society, but are instead aimed at protecting individuals from intrusion by government, what has occurred is social arrangement with very little cohesiveness natural to society. <br />
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Because man is by nature social, men will naturally seek out society to live in, and so what has occurred in the US is that men have formed innumerable small quasi societies.<br />
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What is currently mistaken for religious oppression in society is really nothing more than an attempt by one quasi society to dominate other quasi societies and individuals in the confederacy. What we are observing is the natural impetus to form an actual existing society, What we are observing is not any different than the right to life movement pushing for laws against abortion because we too desire to form the confederacy into our image.<br />
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In an actual existing society there would not be the push and pull of competing disparate factions because a society is by nature an organic whole with understood right action where there is mutual agreement on the moral law and traditions.<br />
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In an actual existing society there would not be agitation for homosexual marriage because there would be instead a mutual agreement to what is proper to marriage. Which in turn doesn't mean that an actual existing society would have a correct understanding of marriage, but that there would be mutual agreement.<br />
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Some will say the US has traditions and a moral law, but what the US has are vestiges of what was common to western society intermixed with the enlightenment. Modern american moral law is don't run red lights and politely look the other way when our neighbor does some act we consider morally repugnant. Modern american tradition are mass media driven variations of consumerism.<br />
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Consumerism and simple agreements how to implement and use mechanical devises is not sufficient for the formation of society. Society is grounded not in religious freedom, but in religious uniformity.<br />
more to come.love the girlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086068884134493993noreply@blogger.com0