Sunday, November 30, 2008

The Abolition of Man- Some semi-heavy stuff by C.S. Lewis but well worth reading.

It is a compilation of three essays. My favorite is entitled Men Without Chests. It is about the role of an educator and what their role is not. In the essay he is critiquing a text book by authors he named Gaius and Titus so that he would not embarrass them. A few quotes I really liked... "Parents would be annoyed if their son returned from the dentist with his teeth untouched and his head filled with the dentist's philosophies." "They conclude that the best thing they can do is to fortify the minds of young people against emotion. My own experience as a a teacher tells the opposite tale. For every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. For famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is not infallible protection against a soft head." "Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought."

Lewis' comments on the definition of the Tao... " It is in reality beyond all predicates. the abyss that was before the creator Himself. It is Nature, it is the Way, the Road. It is the way in which the universe goes on, the way in which things everlastingly emerge, stilly and tranquilly into space and time. It is also the Way which every man should tread in imitation of that cosmic progression, conforming all activities to that great exemplar." But what is common to them all, is something that we cannot neglect. It is the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of thing we are." He also says something that I struggle with from time to time... "The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should obey it." We are sometimes told to "just follow our heart" it is hard to know the times when the head or the heart should lead out.

"The head rules the belly through the chest- the seat of magnanimity, of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments. The Chest-Magnanimity-Sentiment- these are the indispensable liaison officers between cerebral man and visceral man. It may even be said that it is by this middle element that man is man: for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetites mere animal. And all the time- such is the tragi-comedy of our situation- we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our society needs is more 'drive' or dynamism., or self-sacrifice or 'creativity'. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the gelding be fruitful.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Fencing

Brock, Seth and I had a great time working on the fence last Saturday. This is one of the reasons I really like living on a little bit of land. Every little boy should grow up somewhere that he can pee in the back yard and play in the mud with his dog. We miss some of the ammenities of living next to a city. Great plays and restaurants, the krishna temple- where you can take your kids to something that is very different than their every day life. We miss the diversity and sometimes wonder if there is a happy medium. In the end we feel like being close to family and having enough room for goats so that Seth can drink out of thier water is more important than convenience.

Seth the Fencer

Friday, November 21, 2008




We went to Haiti again last week. We were a bit nervous to see Mackson again, we wondered if he would have forgot us or would be mad for us leaving him last time we went to Haiti. Within 1 minute he was hugging Becky and would not let her put him down. He is a sweet little boy and we are looking forward to bringing him home in a couple months. The only real hurdle we have left is finding his birth mother again. She has signed papers with the Haitian government saying she is giving Mackson up for adoption, but she needs to do it again for the US government. Her home was destroyed by the recent hurricanes and she was displaced. Hopefully they will be able to find her. If not, it could take us another 3-4 months to have him declaired "abandoned" We should have him home some time between the end of January and Easter.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Thomas Jefferson Biographay

I finished a book on Thomas Jefferson- after reading John Adams biography I saw Jefferson as a man who was into appearances was fickle in his opinions. This book helped me see another side of Jefferson and help me understand why he did some of the things he did.

A few things that Jefferson was accomplished at…

Speaking, writing, the law, farming, gardening, playing the violin, a voracious reader with thousands of books in his personal library, a natural philosopher, inventor, architect (designed the University of Virginia), created the plan for public education from elementary school through college (he did this during his retirement), An amazing problem solver and thinker.

Jefferson was a champion of states rights. This is one of the main arguments he and Adams had. Adams was a Federalist and believed in a strong federal government. Jefferson wanted decisions to be made as local as possible with states having the authority to make decisions on many issues that the federal government presides over today.

Jefferson believed in a “natural” aristocracy- an aristocracy of merit and ideas. Adams on the other hand still believed in an “artificial” aristocracy like England had. An aristocracy of money and family name.

“Throughout his life, one of Jefferson’s most cherished notions has been the creation of independent farmers, at once self-sufficient and mutually dependent. No other mode of living was as conductive to true democracy or the health of the state and the individual than an existence based on the soil. Jefferson took every opportunity to contrast the virtues of rural life with the vices of the city, the pleasant advantages of farming versus the cruel hardships of manufacturing.” He later stated that he had come to realize the importance of manufacturing on America remaining free and promoted the growth of manufacturing.

“Jefferson was always far less interested in the building than the planning. Build something and it is over and done; its tense is past. Create an idea, however and it is always becoming.

America is a land of contrasts…
1- A huge central government built by a people who inherently distrust big central governments
2- A massive military-industrial war machine raised in the name of peace.
3- Defenders of freedom of religion rushing to embrace federal subsidy of sectarian private schools.

Jefferson had many contrasts as well…
1- A lawyer who distrusted the law.
2- A man of peaceful rationality who relished revolution.
3- A lover of scholarly solitude who enacted his thoughts upon a nation and broadcast his philosophy to the world.
4- A hater of slavery that kept slaves.
5- A lover of ageless liberty who never quite saw beyond the racism of his day.
6- A radical modernist most comfortable among the heroes and architecture of ancient Greece and Rome.
7- An advocate of a presidency subordinated to the legislature who nevertheless assumed executive powers that even his high handed Federalist predecessors shied away from.

Fact is that these contrasts may be what made Jefferson MOST American.

A very interesting book that I am glad I read…