Easter eggs costs rise as climate change hits cropsBBC
As a young man, I thought philosophical questions of immense importance: for how could one know anything at all without knowing how or what it was to know? During this phase of my life, I read and was much excited by J.L. Austin’s work. His ordinary language philosophy undermined completely the assertion of the logical positivists that language had meaning only if what was said was true by definition or was empirically verifiable or falsifiable. Actually, this belief was self-refuting, for the principle itself was neither true by definition nor empirically verifiable. It could be falsified but certainly not verified.
In fact, Austin falsified it. He analyzed performative sentences—such as “I take thee to be my wedded wife” or “I name this ship the Enterprise”—that could be well performed according to laid-down rules, or invalid because those rules had not been followed; but they were neither true nor false by definition, nor true nor false empirically in the sense that “Paris is the capital of France” is true and “Paris is the capital of Germany” is false. Yet such performative sentences were clearly not meaningless or arbitrary.
CHIPPING AWAY BY THEODORE DALRYMPLE J.L. Austin: Philosopher and D-Day Intelligence Officer
Sorry, folks, but God’s not saying you must condescend to eat with sinners. No: you are the sinner. He condescends to eat with you.
You’re Not Jesus
... thankfully!
I once met a theologian who was extremely pious, but who had the habit of speaking to the secular people around him in a very blunt manner. His method penetrated so deeply that it shook them very severely. He told me once: “During a gathering, I said such-and-such a thing to a lady.” But the way that he said it, crushed her. “Look”, I said to him, “you may be tossing golden crowns studded with diamonds to other people, but the way that you throw them can smash heads. And not only the sensitive ones, but the sound ones also.”
— Saint Paisios of Mount Athos
Speaking of niceness (cough cough), a certain right-wing Christian website recently ran an article called “Preach the Gospel Always, Use Insults if Necessary.” I don’t want to name the site, because it doesn’t matter. Sufficeth to say it’s is popular with conservative Catholics, and the post currently the #1 most-read.
The author points out that insults are sometimes useful for snapping people out of their sinful slumber. He uses the example of Saint Monica, who, as a girl, had taken to sneaking wine from her parents’ cellar. Blessed Augustine discusses this episode in his Confessions, a passage which the author of the article quotes (I’m blending translations):
Did you not out of another woman’s soul evoke a hard and bitter insult, as a surgeon’s knife from your secret store, and with one thrust remove all that putrefaction? For the maidservant who used to accompany her to the cellar, falling out, as it happens, with her little mistress, when she was alone with her, cast in her teeth this vice, with very bitter insult, calling her a boozer. Stung by this taunt, she reflected on her own foul addiction, at once condemned it, and stopped the habit. Just as flattering friends corrupt, so quarrelsome enemies often bring us correction.
All true! But now read the next paragraph. Augustine clearly condemns the maidservant. He uses this as an example of how God can use even our sins to achieve His ends:
Yet you render not unto them what you do by them, but what was proposed by them. For she, being angry, desired to irritate her young mistress, not to cure her; and did it in secret, either because the time and place of the dispute found them thus, or perhaps lest she herself should be exposed to danger for disclosing it so late. But you, Lord, Governor of heavenly and earthly things, who convertest to your purposes the deepest torrents, and disposest the turbulent current of the ages, healest one soul by the unsoundness of another; lest any man, when he remarks this, should attribute it unto his own power if another, whom he wishes to be reformed, is so through a word of his.
Boeing union wants board seat to ‘save company from itself’ – report Seeking Alpha
Why Is Boeing Such a Crappy Company? Robert Reich, LA Progressive
Addicted to Losing The Anarchist Library
