Whoa

The new Kansas City, KS office of vocations page is up. Worth checking out!

http://www.kckvocations.com

The Dark Knight Spawns Controversy?

If I can offer some follow-up to my original review of Dark Knight, I would suggest you read two other views that give us some point-counterpoint to ponder. If you've read what I have to say about this film, you'll find me decidedly in favor of one of these two, and quite surprised at the blindness of the other. You can find them at

http://www.nypress.com/21/29/film/ArmondWhite.cfm

and

http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=1130

Please post your comments on the original review, if you please ...

The Dark Knight Runs Because We Have To Chase Him

I’d promised a review of WALL*E about a week ago but I made the mistake of going out to see Batman this afternoon. Sorry little guy, but you just got bumped. The Dark Knight brooks no competition.

This movie provoked some incredible discussion afterwards that I’d like to put up here, but most of that will contain spoilers so it might be nice to put some preliminary thoughts down first. Let me just say that I have not enjoyed a movie like this for a long time—Children of Men was probably the last film to give me such a high as this one. The filmmakers were able to build on the foundations laid in Batman Begins, and there is no question that Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker takes the character to new heights (and/or depths). What a phenomenal film to have as one’s last.

As of today, the whole Batman world has taken on a more distinguished hue. The word “epic” has been applied to the film, and I myself had the feeling that what I was viewing was at least was striving to operate on the level of something like Greek drama. About three quarters of the way through the movie, I realized why this comic book figure has fascinated us for almost a generation now: it is a modern myth. It is the same sort of myth the ancients recounted as they circled around the fire and reminisced about their godlike heroes late into the night, perhaps only dimly aware they were telling stories about themselves. It is what their poets worked and reworked, fleshing the tales out over time, embellishing them with their own narrative inclinations and truncating what did not grip the imagination or fortify the soul. Where else in our age can we find this storytelling than in our more enduring popular literature and film?

Now, I am no reader of comic books. I’m sure there are plenty of deviations in the movie from who Batman is in those original comics. Most of what I have to say will have no awareness of the prior fieldwork that has produced this fruit; I judge the film on its own terms. As long as what is presented stands in basic continuity with its prior forms, there is room for legitimate reinterpretation of this heroic figure and his attendant nemeses. There are no copyrights on myths.

READER BEWARE!

I should also note that I am chronically incapable of enjoying stories for stories’ sake. It’s like I have a compulsion to launch into abstraction without taking the time to delight much in characterization, scenery, or storytelling. This is nothing to boast about and is probably the reason why I could never write good stories (I mean stories with a plot and not just things that happened to me). Most of what follows is going to fall into this, so if that annoys you, bear with me.

[SPOILERS FOLLOW]

Dark Knight is about the meaning of the unrequited suffering of innocents. (There’s a thesis statement for you.) Most crime heroes are concerned with one question—justice—and its corollary, the gratifying application of it to the deserving. Innocent suffering falls within this category, but the writers are doing more with it than just using it to demonstrate the bad guy’s lack of compunction. What snapped it all together for me was a friend’s observation of a significant fact about the Joker: each time he tells the story of his disfigurement, it always changes, and it always places him in a state of innocent suffering. The Joker, though he has no backstory (and is therefore all the more menacing—a great move by the filmmaker, framing him as a sort of absolute), in some way sees himself as embodying the unjustly wounded innocent and puts into the practice the only response possible to one who has despaired of healing. The Joker is the agony of unrequited (and unrequitable) suffering, run amok.

I should say the Joker is one of two erroneous responses to unrequitable suffering: the other villain of the film, Two-Face, constitutes the other, which I’ll get into later. In a way, these two are the twin spawn of this grief-stricken mother. Bruce Wayne refuses either of these and chooses a third way, which in a remarkable ending gave his character the shadowy depth that caused him to assume the mythical proportions I spoke of already.

So, the Joker. It is no stretch to see him as aggressive despair cloaked in violence. A world in which there is unrequitable suffering is devoid of justice and therefore is a world in chaos. There are no rules. He is driven by no motive, operates according to no plan, and as such, cannot be placated or intimidated. The fear with which Batman weakens his enemies is useless against this creature, and so this villain, in his immunity, is the Batman’s supreme enemy.

Yet, it should be noted, he is not Batman’s correlative (as it's often said). Joker insists “they’ll go on and on like this forever,” but that is a lie—not only is this the voice of despair at the cycles of violence and retribution, but in stark contrast to the Joker, Batman is a response to the parasitic presence of evil. His particular brand of vigilantism only came about through the rise of criminality (into which he was drawn, interestingly enough, by the unrequitable suffering of his parents), and it would cease if it achieved its purpose. Yes, the day may never come when criminals do not hold the populace at its mercy, but that does not mean good needs evil. Quite the opposite.

The Joker’s mandate for chaos requires him to inflict suffering on others. In his more personal encounters, he draws his victims into pity for him by telling a false story of his suffering to make them more vulnerable to his final blow. In the wide angle, he creates a number of dilemmas for his victims in which they are forced to choose between two equally abhorrent situations involving innocent suffering.

The most interesting of these is the ferry dilemma, in which an element of culpability is introduced with the boat full of convicts. Innocent citizens of Gotham are confronted with the possibility of saving themselves by electing to blow up this ferry full of convicts. Each ferry has the detonator to explosives in the other ferry, and will be spared if they are the first to use it. If neither use it, both ferries will explode and all will die. Thus, these people are given the semblance of control and freedom in a situation manufactured to inflict pain no matter what.

The citizens insist that “those men have made their choice.” The felons’ character has been unimpeachably established as unworthy. The citizens’ protests are fueled by an awareness of the injustice of the situation smashed up against their conviction of their own innocence. Compared to the men on the prison ferry, these people are clearly less “killable,” and they seem to intuitively recognize the reasonable course of action: blow up the other boat. We simply can’t be killed instead of them. We don’t deserve this—therefore, they do!

Note the modus operandi of evil here: it dehumanizes its prospective victims. The citizens see a crowd of mothers, children, elderly, and identify with them; that other ferry is full of felons and lowlifes. The antidote to this dehumanization comes from an unexpected quarter. The convicts' boat is the first to recognize good in the situation—one guard points out, minutes before their deadline, that “we’re still here; they haven’t killed us yet.”

That observation expands the space to surround both ferries, and it snowballs into one convict’s demand for the detonator to the other ferry. This con recognizes the guards can’t make the choice because they do not know what it means to kill. In a stunning and cathartic move, he chucks the detonator overboard and refuses to engage evil on its own terms, demonstrating the revulsion for doing evil that overpowers the visceral urge to live at any cost. To capitulate to the dilemma is to surrender to chaos concealed beneath a respectable veneer of the lesser of two evils. The businessman who attempts to take responsibility, however, fails to see any way out other than injustice because he has never felt the life of another run through his hands. A split-second intuition preserves him from doing what he does not understand. Only those who have done evil and experienced its meaning have the clarity to short-circuit the dilemma.

This is the only proper human response to unrequitable suffering (this side of heaven). Director Christopher Nolan insists that “the Joker's form of evil is a very human form of evil and I think it is very important you believe in him as a human being as well as a monster.” This lends credence to my intuition that what drives the Joker is not just insanity but something human gone into meltdown. This gives rise to a the common characteristic between these villains: facial disfigurement. What else but the face can sum up the whole of the person? Inflict pain in the foot and you will see it reflected in the face. Analogously, so too with the soul.

Now for Two-Face. He, too, finds his pathological genesis in truly unrequitable suffering. He, too, seeks satisfaction by inflicting injustice on others. “I did not deserve to suffer this loss, to be deprived of this promise of happiness, and there is nothing that can heal my wound. Others deserve nothing like this, either, but they don’t suffer, whereas I do—is there not injustice here? Would it not be just for all to suffer unfairly, then? Is this not my only hope for justice?” Such is the reasoned interior monologue of the bereaved Harvey Dent. With no hope to soften his own loss, he must inflict the same loss on others—and he does so by forcing Commissioner Gordon to “lie to his son and tell him everything’s going to be all right,” flipping a coin to decide the boy’s sentence.

Clearly, the ideal of this justice is not pure chaos (the Joker) or the restoration of balance between right and wrong (Raz al Gul, in Batman Begins), but blind chance. It is impersonal and requires no one to act responsibly, and therefore is an abdication of human freedom and the projection of it onto the cosmos. The law of chance is always watching and always acting. Nothing escapes its jurisdiction, and therefore it has appeal for this man who can find no tribunal to hear his claim. I would not be the first to point out the clear parallel to Anton’s coin-flipping discipline in No Country For Old Men, though Two-Face has been making his own luck for much longer.

How, then, does Batman himself fit in to all of this? We pick up in Dark Knight as Bruce Wayne is stepping out of the honeymoon phase of being a hero. We can sense his awareness of the grind of his double life and the relentlessly encroaching intensification of evil. We see a shot of the numerous scars across his back and arms from untold encounters with unscrupulous evildoers. Alfred, in perennially wise tones, informs Bruce he is still only a man, with limits. Something tells us we are going to witness a transformation in the Batman.

Indeed, it proves to be a transformation from symbol and executor of justice to despised bearer of secret truth. The Joker maintains the upper hand on Batman by playing on his reputation—only a weakling and a coward would allow a psychopath to continue to kill people rather than reveal his true identity (so goes the Joker's story). Batman’s ethics require him to rise to this challenge, and he does. It is here he discovers his limit—Commissioner Gordon saves his life when the Joker gets the best of the Batman. In Harvey Dent, Bruce recognizes the man who can do what Batman can never do: bring justice to the daylight. Dent is the White Knight; Batman only comes out at night.

It is this recognition that requires the “noble lie” following Two-Face’s death. This lie is required, we are told, because the people need an image of hope, and that “their faith deserves a reward.” This reward must be of the waking world, or not at all; shadowy vigilantes are no basis for a system of government, after all! (Nor are watery tarts distributing scimitars, but that’s another argument altogether.)

And so Batman assumes the role of the scapegoat. Like Plato’s just man, he is most truly just when he does right even when opprobrium and abuse is heaped upon him, even from the very ones he protects. A common enemy diffuses the rising tension and allows it to expend itself on a victim equally repulsive to all. Bruce Wayne has been thereby invited into a new way of being—one in which unjust suffering is its very condition. Yet he does so with alacrity. As we see him run from the scene, a new weight is upon him, which he bears willingly and secretly. Not only does Gotham’s order hang on his shoulders, but its sanity as well. In his acceptance of unjust suffering lies the rescue of Gotham.

[END SPOILER ALERT]

Whew! Where does all this leave us? Unrequited suffering of innocents is a real question, and so we ought to expect faith to have something to say about it. It’s not exactly peripheral to Christianity, after all. I will not attempt a thorough answer to it at this point, but I do want to emphasize again how this film carries a portrayal of the longing for ultimate justice. It is the cry of the suffering innocent from beneath the altar in the Book of Revelation, where they cried out with a loud voice,

O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before thou wilt judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell upon the earth?

Revelation 6:9

It is this cry that nourishes Christian hope. In this case, God's judgment is good news! Not without reason did the Holy Father Benedict write his latest encyclical on this most fundamental of virtues. In a short hat-tip to the atheistic philosopher Theodor Adorno, Benedict addresses the longing for justice cast in dramatic terms in our film (and in so many films today). The answer to this longing is not to be found in ever more spectacular retribution against those who perpetrate violence and evil. Rather, it is only to be found in the final judgment. Adorno insists that the horrible injustices of history should not have the final word. There must finally be true justice. But that, in the words the Pope quotes from Adorno, would require a world “where not only present suffering would be wiped out, but also that which is irrevocably past would be undone.” In other words, there can be no such thing as unrequitable suffering, and therefore it is never justified to inflict it on others in order to preserve ourselves from it. Yet this would mean, as the Holy Father points out, something foreign to the thought of Adorno: the resurrection of the dead.

Behold my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my Spirit upon him,
he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not fail or be discouraged
till he has established justice in the earth.

Isaiah 42:1-5

If we are to evangelize this culture, we need to find ways to unearth its deep longings and show what truly satisfies them. And if that means I have to go watch Batman again, then I think I’m up for it.

[Update: saw it again this past weekend. I stand by my interpretation.]

Question For You

Is it possible to receive a gift with such joy and gratitude that the very acceptance of it is all the response the giver could ever want?

John Brown Would Be Disgusted

The Kansas chapter of the National Right to Life Committee has just published an in-depth summary of the recent history of late-term abortion controversy in our state. If you are not aware of this controversy, I highly suggest you take a half hour to read this article and learn the details, regardless of your geographical origins. I assure you, there is no exaggeration in the reporting here. The press against Phill Kline is relentless and violent; every time I pick up a paper when I'm visiting my folks back home, the editors and journalists kick and spit on this "hayseed Torquemada," this "right-wing fanatical ideologue". No stick is too good to beat the man with. One begins to wonder, in the absence of any positive qualities whatsoever, how the man ever got elected to any office to begin with.

It is a struggle that parallels with startling precision the slavery controversy that played out so dramatically (and violently) in 19th-century Kansas. The principles in question pertain just as directly, if not more so, to the question of human rights; the derisive and bewildered gaze with which we look rightfully upon slavery proponents of yesterday will one day be turned upon us here and now, and just as rightfully. Let the thought of that piercing gaze shrivel and crush this willful corruption of justice.

[In case there is some ambiguity regarding the title of this post, I do not mean to advocate violent resistance of the abortion industry; in this regard, John Brown would most likely despise those of us who pursue justice through law rather than violent conflict. Nevertheless, he was a visionary willing to make tremendous sacrifices in order to snap out of complacency the people of his time who were perfectly fine with allowing millions of human beings to be subjected to the cruelest forms of abuse and oppression because it was simply the way things were. That Kansans cast the late-term abortion issue in terms of "justice" when a massive memorial of this man has been enshrined in our state capitol only indicates the inability of our citizens to learn the lessons of history. My guess is that each time Governor Sibelius thinks of that terrifying mural, she either runs her mind in circles trying to rationalize her conduct or resolves never to let it cross her mind again.]

Perk Up Your Ears

Out in theaters now is the latest digital wunderfilm, WALL*E, and though I've heard some interesting criticism, this quote from an interview with the director earned my $8.50.

I'll try to get some thoughts on the film up this weekend. Looking forward to your comments.

Boot to the Head

"The largest single recipient of Catholic clerical money is presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, a supporter of abortion rights."

-The Coloradoan

What the hell?

Crazy Mall Stunt, Or The Secret To Lasting Happiness?

All this crazy business with California and marriage laws, and then this pops up in the news.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not ready to make any bold statements about the wisdom of this couple. Who knows what really drives this marriage. But in a country where one out of every two marriages ends in divorce, they're doing something right.

It all sounds eerily familiar. A good friend of mine tried to arrange his own marriage while we were in college. Citing (among other things) the high success of marriage in cultures where it was customary for parents to arrange their children's nuptials, my bud decided love had very little to do with picking a spouse and everything to do with being married to one. Over Christmas break, he asked a marriageable girl he knew from high school to marry him on November 11th, 2011 (11/11/11). She agreed. We were all mightily entertained by the whole thing.

Some months later, they both thought better of it and called it off. None of us really believed it would last—I’m not sure my friend ever was completely sold on the idea, so obviously this wasn't the sort of arranged marriage you and I think of when we hear the phrase. Nonetheless it all came back to me after reading the above story.

This got me thinking. Why are arranged marriages so successful? One could argue pretty convincingly that couples in unions not of their own choosing expect much less from marriage than couples who spend most of their lives waiting for that perfect person to fulfill all their dreams of happiness. Lower expectations means higher likelihood of satisfaction. Sounds like a magic recipe for America's divorce rate to me.

Okay, so maybe that falls a little flat.

However, the example of the above couple should not be lost on Catholic Christians. Most of the rhetoric in response to the gay marriage question drives at how defining marriage in any way other than between one man and one woman undermines the dignity of marriage and reduces it to a legal arrangement between entities irrespective of the common good. Marriage loses its meaning and value, like a word with a meaning so broad that it can't be said to have any meaning at all.

Now, all this is true, so far as it goes, but is it possible that we're on the wrong track? Can it be that the problem is not expecting too little of marriage, but too much?

If human beings are only happy when they achieve social, emotional, psychological, and sexual satisfaction, where can this satisfaction be found? It seems to me (and to the culture at large) that all these can only be found in a relationship of intimacy. Normal people have a healthy desire to be united to another person, to love and be loved, to share their bodies, and to lose oneself in the gaze of another. Such ideals are presented repeatedly in the popular culture through romantic films and fiction, though with inevitable trivialization in order to make them marketable commodities. With few exceptions the conclusion is foregone: find a partner, and you will be happy. When that partner no longer makes you happy, find another one.

This creates all sorts of neuroses and dysfunction in a culture. Look at our hyperemphasis on dating, body image, and self-regard (bridezillas, mid-life crises, etc.). Our fondness for disposability in consumer goods stems from and reinforces our pursuit of the perfect relationship. Marketers harness and exploit this by capitalizing on the need to invent and reinvent oneself after each subsequent alliance is formed and abandoned. Got dumped by your boyfriend? Get a new hairdo. Wife left you? Buy a new car. Can’t get a date? Work harder to make more money so you can buy yourself more stuff to quiet your self-loathing. You'll forget all that heartache soon enough. In the meanwhile, treat yourself to something nice. The capacity for intimacy is deadened with each liason—certainly the one-night stands, but so too the sex between more committed couples who eventually part (see Dawn Eden's testimony in The Thrill of the Chaste). It builds and builds in a feedback loop, and the potential for real relationships of intimacy (that’s what this is about, remember?) grows more superficial with each lap through the boudoir. Those who long for authenticity see real culture not as the backdrop of real life but as a refusal to partake in the emptiness that surrounds and antagonizes it, and this continual act of resistance saps its vitality and spawns bitter progeny.

Sound familiar?

The issue rests in the relation between marriage and fulfillment. If the “perfect partner” doesn’t exist, then is the desire for happiness and satisfaction simply a dream?

Consider, now, the life of the celibate. As Catholics, we look to men and women who have given up the good of marriage in order to teach us a very important truth: there is only one relationship of intimacy that satisfies. In answer to the question, “Who is the perfect partner?” the consecrated answer:

GOD. God is the perfect partner. Intimacy with God is the answer to every human longing. To be lost in that gaze is to find everything. All desire, all emotion, all longing for union with another, all passion to know and secret hope to be utterly known finds its origin in God and, if ultimately prolonged, has Him as its object. To be happy, God must be your spouse.

What liberation this is. Far from ripping love from our hearts and hoarding it, this invitation to find satisfaction only in the infinite frees us to be at ease in our loves rather than wrenching them to yield a precious sap that flows, not from them, but through them.

All other love is merely a reflection of the heavens in the puddles of a muddy road. You will become sullied too if you allow yourself to sink into it. But if you always remember that it’s a reflection of the light from that other home, then you will rejoice at its beauty and take good care that you do not destroy it by churning up the mire at the bottom.

These words from Kristin Lavransdatter (spoken, by the way, to a married woman by her celibate brother-in-law) have turned up in similar fashion time and time again in Catholic fiction .... Brideshead, anyone? It's no fluke.

Nor is it an accident of the ancient Palestinian world that the messiah presented himself as the Bridegroom, the spouse of every soul and of the whole world. It is a divine response to the desire of every human heart.

As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.
Isaiah 62:5

Don't ignore it.

amdg

Id Quod Volo

(That Which I Desire)

It's been too long since I posted so I'd like to make an update . . . Currently I'm going through an Ignatian retreat / formation period in Omaha and will be here until the end of August. Thus far it's been classes, classes, classes, and an 8-day silent directed retreat that ended only this past weekend. It's been incredible.

The feeling is like driving by a little patch of woods on the way to work day after day after day without ever noticing what's there, or even having the thought cross one's mind to be interested. In the blur of racing by on some mission to stave off boredom, it was nothing more than more brush and bracken in need of development. And then one day you are led through it and shown a little glade where in the middle of a busy suburb there is quiet, stillness, beauty, and peace. But not peace as the world gives. Peace of the sort meant to satisfy the deepest longings of the human heart, needs that cry out to heaven for satisfaction. There, scales fall from the world's face and the face that lies behind it is there, to be looked upon. There, the fragmented and incomplete knowledge I labor to accumulate is united in a supremely glorious being-known. There, being known is nothing to be feared, for it is the knowledge of the one whose relentless love is more devoted to me than I am to myself; were it not for this love, I would not exist. It is not my lovableness that calls down this love upon me. I am lovable because I first am loved.

Needless to say I've soaked in a lot of idiom and jargon here that never appealed to me before, but I've had to take it up to speak of what's been happening in me. To me. There's a good humiliation in that. All the soft God-talk I've always found uninteresting (and perhaps I've even despised it) is now all too common on my own lips. Now, I realize is that all along I've been listening in on a conversation about things I've never experienced. What sounded like empty emotional tripe was the attempt to put into words, in whatever inadequate way was available, the infinite love of God.

I stand corrected.

Look for some more book reviews coming up, including Mark Twain's Joan of Arc and Stephen Barr on Modern Physics and Ancient Faith.

The Desk Chair Review of Books, Continued

The Hidden Wound
Wendell Berry

In order to provide a meaningful summary of this book, I need to fill you in on some details about my classwork, so please indulge a brief digression. The last ten weeks of classes were fairly typical for me—a few intense academic courses and a few that, while necessary for my education, didn’t seem to demand as much from me. One of these less important classes, “Pastoral Practice and Racism,” was in my schedule because one class I had initially enrolled in was intended to satisfy a cultural requirement but was obviously geared towards students of another background who came to the United States. “Racism” worked in my schedule, and so I took it, though it was the in the dreaded once-a-week time slot, from 1-4 p.m. on Wednesday afternoons.

My basic sense of the class was this: there is something to all this talk about racism, prejudice, and discrimination, but none of the prevailing explanations (power, politics, xenophobia, etc.) taken by themselves held any water. All the talk about “celebration of diversity” and “learning from non-white communities” sounded enlightened and welcoming, but no one could ever tell me outright what it was we can learn, or what they have to offer. There was plenty of call for dialogue (which was taken up with even greater vigor when the Reverend Wright began his crusade), but I wasn’t sure what we were supposed to be talking about as long as we made sure we were talking. Now, most of this was due to the fact that the class was being taught by a local priest who was committed to the civil rights movement but didn’t have a formal grounding in it. He also conducted his class in the interrogative mood, answering questions with questions; this certainly got us talking, but at a cost of accumulated frustration. I wanted something to chew on, but all this added up to a buffet of statistics and good intentions that spread about a heavy malaise as we sampled from it.

In one of our assigned readings, the author made a passing reference to the book I am reviewing now, and having read one of Berry’s books before, I set out to lay my hands on a copy to supplement the coursework. It was the best decision I made all quarter long, and saved me from personally writing off the class as unsalvageable. For the first time, I was reading an informed and reflective opinion about what white racism did to whites and what whites had to learn from blacks. He is a southern writer dealing in southern racism, and so not all of it was clearly applicable to our own situations of a primarily urban setting, but after the shadowboxing I’d been engaging in for weeks, I was delighted to have a sparring partner.

The first third or so comprises Berry’s reminiscences of growing up as a white child with black mentors. It’s not immediately appealing, but stick with it—much of the rest of the book will operate on this body of experience. Berry ranges wide as he catalogues the ramifications of racism. He takes up the effect slaveholding had on southern Christians and their leadership, insisting that the heavy emphasis on faith and the soul in southern varieties of Christianity was necessary to gloss over the contradictions inherent in attending church with one’s slaves. He discusses the American culture and its superficiality born of smoothing over the festering sore it must conceal. He points to Tolstoy, Twain, and Homer as offering exemplars for what is possible (and necessary) for contemporary relations between classes and races.

But by far the most compelling treatment is the way he ties the race question in with his passionate defense of the land and humanity’s relationship with it. The greatest loss the white race ever suffered from its slaveholding was the loss of contact with the land as a lived experience, substituting the capitalist’s abstract management for the sake of profit. Actually working the land was relegated to “nigger work” and hence was unworthy of the white man. While this did much to enrich whites, a corresponding impoverishment fell upon them (as is so often the case with sin—nobody wins).

Berry describes this impoverishment this way: “It seems to me that the black people developed the psychology, the emotional resilience and equilibrium, the philosophy, and the art necessary to endure and even enjoy the hard manual labor wholly aside from the dynamics of ambition. And from this stemmed an ability more complex than that of the white man to know and to bear life. What we should have learned willingly ourselves we forced the blacks to learn, and so prevented ourselves from learning it.” Interestingly enough, this is a perceptive investigation of the mechanisms and anthropological effects of social sin. In an age when we are only beginning to recognize and dismantle the structures that undermine human flourishing, these insights are valuable even thirty years after they were written.

In short, I found Berry’s insights to be unrecognized more than a quarter century after they were put into words. To his credit, he continues to be a vocal defender of the same ideals he puts forward here. Those of you who get through The Hidden Wound might want to pick up his 1996 book Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, which doesn’t deal directly with racism but articulates in greater detail the dehumanizing forces at work in the culture and economy of our own day. It is an equally informative (and pleasing) read.

The Desk Chair Review of Books

Orthodoxy
by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

After reading this cover-to-cover for the first time since high school, I was struck not only by Chesterton's delightful rhetoric but by just how relevant his insights are to contemporary discourse. I take this as a clear indication as to just how far off the mark our contemporary discourse has wandered, since so little progress has been made. There is very little outright philosophy in this book, or what we nowadays would call philosophy. (One might argue that this book is an instance of what contemporary philosophy has lost to its own demise.) Nonetheless, it is a systematic overview of decades of imaginative reverie thoroughly conditioned by a philosophical worldview. Strangely enough, it happens to be in direct contradiction to the prevailing attitudes among the educated in his time ... as well as in ours. While postmodernity can lack the sort of earnest optimism so prevalent among Chesterton's opponents, I sense a kinship between them that demands a real familiarity with the framework of his arguments, if not their rococo embellishments.

Remarkably, the Church finds itself doing precisely the opposite of what GK sets out to do in his chapter on the Maniac. Whereas Chesterton finds it necessary to undermine the rationalism of his era, our own age needs to hear the Church's defense and affirmation of reason (so felicitously articulated by the Holy Father at Regensburg. It is a testimony to Chesterton's trustworthiness that he himself takes up that defense in the very next chapter (the Suicide of Thought) and proceeds over the course of the book to explain, by way of his own intellectual journey, just what this nuanced reverence for rationality looks like.

Do yourself a favor and give this one a hoist.

Dawkins Speaks For Himself

Richard Dawkins recently published an editorial in the LA Times, accusing the makers of Expelled of twisting his words regarding his apparent belief that life on earth was "seeded" by highly developed extraterrestrials. You can find the story here. He claims elsewhere that the question he was answering with this statement was "under what conditions would 'Intelligent Design' be a valid theory?"

Honestly, I can't imagine any other explanation for why Dawkins would say such a thing as he did, on film, with prepared questions. If this is so, the filmmakers are guilty of grave dishonesty. This sort of conduct is not helpful for the ongoing public conversation about these issues, which the film claims to desire. Given the producer's juvenile behavior towards PZ Myers in the past (he told reporters he wanted Myers to have to pay to see the movie), regardless of how arrogant and condescending the man can be (he certainly can), it does not justify these sorts of moves.

Apart from the moral component, there is a rhetorical one as well. This strategy is known as the "straw man" argument, in which one sets up a weak summary of a position in order to demolish it utterly with one's own more carefully formulated argument. This would seem to be an effective strategy to convince the untutored and unreflective, but we should keep in mind the example of St. Thomas, who strengthened his own arguments by doing his utmost to formulate his opponent's position before refuting it. If what Dawkins and Myers claim is true (even if we take their perspectives with a grain of salt), I would not support the makers of this film in their actions. Such attacks only give those who disagree a license to be dismissive and flippant, something all too common already.

If we're not prepared to fight fair on this issue, there isn't much point in fighting at all.