Giddy Full Grown Men

Nerds get excited over what will seem to most people trivial things. Our Star Wars fans seem overly obsessive from time to time. But when a nerdy guy meets a nerdy girl who finds his Chewbacca imitation endearing, he knows he's found the one. Today i discovered a word that has troubled me for a long time, though i could not express it, for i did not know it. And in the same way our Star Wars guy gets giddy and bellows in the tongues of men and aliens, so i too now am at last bellowing the word diachronic.

My Greek friends will doubtless notice the distinguishable "dia" and "chronic." What excites me is the combination, and by extension, that the word expresses something not often regarded in much of my readings. So far as the word is used in English dia means 'through' or 'during' and chronic means 'time.' Fortunately, in my reading today, it was applied to an Aristotelian spiel concerning another Greek word 'akrosia,' which deals with whether a person errs regardless of having a right judgment. You've heard of 'know one errs knowingly.' Well yeah...

But my interest in diachronic as a word at present is tied immediately to the activity of the psyche. In particular, with the sporadic psychological activity of an author of literature. I want an account of what goes on in an authors mind diachronically, during the time that he writes during a particular sitting, or, at the various times he sits. Can we study this scientifically or is it forever bound to the subjective realm?

I have read nothing on this subject, nor have i heard it addressed in hermeneutical discussions. It's almost like our ignorance of the subject renders a hush upon the academic community. I partially think the cause a fear of what would result if we discovered any serious implications of diachronic activity. For example, authorial consciousness toward particular ends, or toward aesthetic accomplishments within a given text might fall to the wayside--and with them centuries of shoddy secondary criticism.

We would, after many years of its absence, have to formulate criteria for why we can say an author is or isn't conscious of what he writes, or whether he was conscious at one moment and lost consciousness later, or whether for that matter he was conscious at all. Critics say "this is what this author intended" without ever having asked the question "did he intend this at all" in the first place. It's a classic cart in front of the horse scenario. We need a universally applicable methodology for determining authorial consciousness, and i have the gut feeling that we can, with the help of psychology and philosophy of language, come up with a scientifically verifiable model.

I'm not proposing an alternative to authorial intent, saying that all authors write willy-nilly. Obviously, that's ridiculous. But why to the contrary have people not discussed the equally willy-nilly conception that authors are overtly intentional?

We've all experienced the sensation where a few years ago we said something and only now we would say that we are beginning to understand what we meant. As a point of analogy, i can't see why what happens when speaking might not also happen when writing.

Maybe i'm wrong. Or maybe i'm reading all the wrong books. In any case, somebody's gotta start saying something.

That's all i have to say about that...

the K.H.

Renfrew and Story Telling

I promised several people that i would communicate what i was learning insofar as time permitted and particularly in terms understandable to a broader audience than, say, just we inhabitants of nerdedom.

According to my sources, Colin Renfrew sits comfortably among the archaeological elite. After reading "Prehistory," i see why. He has either invented or clarified a little something called "cognitive archaeology." Along with the broader stream of recent scholarship, he uses the recent discoveries in the philosophy of language--particularly semiotics--to begin making cultural inferences based solely on empirical, archaeological data.

Historically, attempts at telling stories of prehistoric man demonstrated themselves altogether ridiculous. Chesterton says some pretty funny stuff concerning scholarship some 100 years ago, and his common sense has proved useful in my analysis of Renfrew. "Sometimes the professor with his bone becomes almost as dangerous as a dog with his bone."

Prehistory, by the way, refers to the era of time preceding written historical accounts. In the Judeo-Christian story, this used to mean the Genesis account--though now this seems more Modern than historical. For the Greeks it meant Herodotus in his work "The Histories," the very root of where we have our word history. In short, if we have no written account, we have no history.

Renfrew borrows some rather complex work in philosophy of language--including names like Wittgenstein who is probably the most important philosopher of the 20th century and Charles Pierce the constructor of modern logic and semiotics. Man as we now understand him spends the majority of his time manipulating and interacting with symbols. Words like 'love' represent real concepts as they appear to an individual's conscious experience with the world. Christian books like to separate the word 'love' into the four categories of ancient Greece because the symbol love can nowadays apply to a hotdog as well as a hot-wife. The former is a matter of taste, and the latter a matter of eros/agape. The further you distinguish, the less the symbol can inherently mean because it ascribes itself to narrower and narrower concepts. As Heidegger once wrote "Language is the house of being." The use of the symbol determines the level of consciousness toward reality, toward ontological significance. So much for abstract, intangible symbols.

Where Renfrew comes in is with what he calls "material engagement." The difference here is one of physical symbolism. He suggests, rightly, that physical objects carry meaning. To explain himself he uses the example of weight. One could not make-up the meaning of weight without the experience of lifting light or heavy objects. Experience with physical objects thus offers a level of consciousness not previously possible. The existence of weights, therefore, i.e. of particular weight distributions, say, 10 lbs, demonstrates that though the measurement is itself arbitrary, it is at least consistent.

His example, however, comes under the prefix of evolutionary biological and geographical assumptions. Carbon dating and DNA analysis are both pointing toward an old cosmos. Immediately, then, my Christian sentimentality piques, wondering just how far he's going to take his Darwinianism into the story telling process. After all, he is telling a story: it's just a pre-story.

Not to my surprise, he makes some rather hasty remarks and poor inferences when it comes to ideas of intrinsic value, art, and, of course, religious practice. Sadly enough, and for all his precocity, he has fallen into the same swamp Chesterton warned against. Here's the run of it: he infers intrinsic value on, to use his example, gold because it proved institutionally useful for the economy; he says candidly and calmly that the paintings on cave walls are always art; and he infers deity from apotheosis i.e. heavily adorned and well treated individuals were soon infused into divine categories.

I will get to these examples shortly, but before that, a word on how Renfrew may be right. Cognitive archaeology, if applicable, may produce some fascinating results. If, for example, carbon dating really is reliable, it would positively demonstrate that the 70,000 years old weights show a consciousness interacting with symbols (remember material engagement), and we would have, to whatever degree, something akin to a homo sapien. Of course, Renfrew tells much of his story to this very end. The only trouble, the only question to ask, is how far to take this principle.

I return now to criticisms. The mental activity of the archaeologist occurs within the creative and imaginative as much as it does the geographic. This is not a bad thing: it is probably it's greatest asset. The trouble comes when they get impatient by trying to infer too much from too little.

As far as value goes, Renfrew, not being a philosopher, confuses the difference between intrinsic value and utility. If a hammer sits on a desk, it can be said to be valuable, particularly on the Judeo-Christian model, simply because it exists. Man's creation of the hammer is a derivative of God's creation of man's ability to make a hammer, and it's value would rest entirely in being, not use. In other words, something is valuable because God created it. Doubtless, more value can be ascribed to it through use, but it is not necessary, nor, for that matter, would that new value be intrinsic to the hammer. Renfrew is conflating inherent usefulness with inherent value. A hammer is not useful for baking a cake, because it doesn't have the inherent properties for cookery, but it does have the inherent qualities of medal and handle, both of which are great for smashing a cake. Now, this doesn't mean that the early makers of gold were conscious of this schema, all it means is that there is the possibility that utility was not part of the equation at all, and therefore, we cannot make reliable, scientific inferences from it concerning value systems of pre-historic or early civilization.

The same principle of "other possibilities" transfers over into the artistic realm. A cave painting does not NECESSARILY mean art. It might mean a game of pin the tale on the donkey. It might mean, indeed, a school-master teaching what a donkey is, and therefore be a picture for use. Whatever the case, inferences to be made for formulating a story that is pre-historical must depend on their logical necessity. Renfrew is telling a non sequitur story; non sequitur being an illogical, un-necessitated inference.

Finally, one of his more elaborate stories derives from a non sequitur in reference to material engagement. He wants to say that vast amounts of wealth, burial arrangements--such as we find in Egypt's pyramids--, power, and the like proffer deity status upon individuals. He writes, "By this sumptuous treatment the burial did, in a sense, establish and document that quality. Here we see the material engagement process at its most sublime: in apotheosis, the very creation of divinity"!

Poor silly man. I will not presently bother with the more complex arguments involving the Numinous, or with the difference between personified divinity within the ancient mind. Why can't we simply say that men adorned what they already thought to be divine? Material engagement is only appropriate where the antecedent is necessitated the predicate. We have no evidence to say which came first. To quote Chesterton, "To say that religion came from reverencing a chief or sacrificing at a harvest is to put a highly elaborate cart before a really primitive horse."

His story may or may not be accurate , but that's just the trouble. May or may not developed into a story does not create history, it creates something much more akin to a myth. Presently, my concerns lie with the Darwinian mythos, with extracting what is true and discarding the rest. Christians today, or so i like to think, have the task of balancing their Judeo-Christian mythos with its apparent rival, the Darwinian.

the K.H.

Prophet as Poet

Here’s some good ol’ fashion down to earth pith.

The theologians say I’m just a myth:

Isaiah without his destination,

A prophet without the incantation.

But believe you me,

Plain as I can see,

You’re soon to wish I’d hush, and plead the fifth.

the K.H.

A Different Tragedy

You'll notice i'm writing more than usual these days. Though the greater part of it has to do with needing the practice before school starts, you will be safe in assuming desire and boredom as part of the cauldron. For now, i'm going to skip over what i wildly suggested about the relationship between psychology and Orthodox, and save it for my next entry. A conversation yesterday reminded me of a theory on tragedy i've been harboring for a few years.

The short run of it goes as such: if we combine Murdoch's scandalous suggestion about tragedy to O'Conner's use of the grotesque, thus formulating an anti-thesis to Tolkien's eucatastrophe (‘good’ catastrophe), i think we may find a Christian aesthetic appropriate in an age where indifference rules. O'Conner's literary theory stands unequivocally at the top of modern Christian aesthetics. In her stories, reality barges in on our minds with violence, forcing and ravaging us with fact instead of distorted fantasy. She uses the grotesque as a tool to awaken us from distractions—Pascalan distractions (in my mind) taking the form of literary entertainment. She pummels her characters either by killing them or attaching some concrete aberration to our perception of them, and leaving things that way. The trouble with her story's characters, a trouble i think she would readily admit, is that we do not love them. The length of her stories inhibits character development. But what I like, what I especially want to keep, is the leftover tragedy. The cliff-hanger, non-redemptive end.

By 'love’ her characters, i mean something very specific. I mean what Murdoch says of love in general, and it's particular application to artistic tragedy. "Love," she writes, "is the extremely difficult realization that someone, other than oneself, is real." She insists, i forget where now, that only (or at least primarily) through tragedy can an external consciousness truly begin a process of literary empathy. It takes something very near what Kreeft calls an "empathetic imagination" toward alien philosophical positions to gather and feel and fear the object or person of pity Aristotle would say any drama needs to possess in order to remain tragic. Men and women do not identify with the ethereal, we identify with despondence. Three chapters read of Milton's Paradise Lost will positively demonstrate the point. On the sentimental level, we care nothing of Heaven; but of Hell, of Satan, and his pitiable condition, we squirm with familiarity. Oliver Twist has our sympathies, Frodo our admiration, Raskolnikov our affection because we get them. We are them. We love them. Art is a curious thing when broken down in the abstract. We find ourselves aligned with metaphysical pictures and events, and our sentiments attached to symbols.

And symbol, I would now contend along with Walker Percy, proves the engine behind the meaning in art. Naming, on his (and Noam Chomsky’s) view, means to be conscious of something, of a reality. You were not conscious of the “W” on your own keyboard until you read this sentence. Now that I’ve told you, you’ve had an expansion of consciousness—and it felt something very much like discovery. You did not ‘know’ it like you ‘know’ it now. Phenomenologists, Percy says, rightly point out that humans are not merely conscious, we are conscious of something.

This principle ties quickly and smoothly into Alexander Hamilton’s ‘Contemplated’ and ‘Enjoyed’ distinction that Lewis and Tolkien so appropriately applied to their aesthetics. To ‘Enjoy’ something in Hamilton’s terms is to engage a mode of consciousness distinguishable from the ‘Contemplative’ mode of consciousness. So we don’t have the normal unconscious and conscious dichotomy; we have the unconscious, Contemplated and Enjoyed. Take the “W” on the keyboard example again. While you were reading my sentence, there was a moment of conscious expansion; within that event, you were operating from within the ‘Enjoyed’ mode of consciousness. You were, for lack of better terms, unconscious of your consciousness. Now, however, at this very moment while you are looking back (via memory) into that same event (and only that event), you are Contemplating it. The object is not original, but a copy of the original experience out of which you abstract according to a specific set of questions (guided by your particular interests or hermeneutical preoccupations). For example, the second wave in the “W” is a property of that “W.” Again, you only have one object of concern, but the modes through which you attach your consciousness to them changes (with great rapidity) between the Enjoyed and Contemplated. It’s the difference between listening to your favorite song and talking about it.

Now back to aesthetics. Though I think Lewis’ concept of subconscious preparatorio evangelica is questionable—based on unempirical theories concerning the sub/unconscious, and the fact that semiotics may provide a better model for explaining our psyche’s interaction with art—I think he had the right idea. People can in fact receive elements of the gospel without knowing it. Hence his and Tolkien’s obsession with mythopoetics—by creating self-sustained, independent worlds. We can ‘Enjoy’ The Lord of the Rings without ‘Contemplating’ its meaning, like we can ‘Enjoy’ kissing without ‘Contemplating’ what kissing is or who its with. So either the subconscious manipulates the realities inherent to the text, letting them boil over into the conscious realm (i.e the pity of Bilbo or the goodness of TLOR are adopted into our own worldview without us choosing it), or “Hom- symbolificus” is influenced by symbols more than he knows. Either way, Tolkien and tragedy now come back to the forefront.

The eucatastrophe Tolkien talks about in “On Fairy Stories” stands in direct contrast to the disacatastrophe. As far as his history of middle earth is concerned, I do not think Tolkien could have been a moral author if his story did not end in the eucatastrophe. He is not presenting this world, he is presenting a world in and of itself. But if it is to have any relation to our world; if it is to include humans at all on the axiological or eschatological level, it must conclude with redemption; it must end Christian-like; there must be hope. Likewise, it must have a similar beginning: i.e. a creation myth. The same, I think, goes for Lewis’ Narnia. And notice that they both do. Both Aslan and the Ainur sing their respective worlds into existence, implying creation and harmony, and both Narnia and Middle Earth end in eucatastrophe. (I have in mind the end of the first age of Middle Earth.)

What of it then? I think a moral Christian story must end in eucatastrophe but I believe in and wish to defend the disacatastrophe? I wish to combine a non-redemptive O’Conner ending to a Murdochian tragedy to accomplish a disacatastrophe? Why?

I want to limit what stories must have eucatastropheis and which ones don’t need to. Tolkien’s Middle Earth must, on moral grounds, end in eucatastrophe because he is putting forward an entire world; he is writing a history. Redemption is inherent to his project because it is inherent to human dramatic categories, and thus the human condition. To exclude it is to exclude reality. O’Conner, however, succeeds morally in an arena Tolkien only touches on in doses—most successfully his “The Children of Hurin” –because she does not have to end in redemption. She is not creating a world; she’s working with an already existing one in which redemption is already inherent. She succeeds entirely within the grotesque by sticking to disacatastrophe, and it is morally laudable because of her success at shoving the consequences of evil and sin into our face. After all, how are we to be saved unless we know we are lost?

But where she fails in character development, Murdoch, if she were a Christian, would have succeeded—at least in theory. The closest examples I can think of are Greek, Roman, and Shakespearian tragedies. The trouble with these, of course, is that they are not thoroughly Christian. If we’re going to be sneaking truth and goodness into the readers mind, we may as well make them Christian. I am ultimately after invoking Aristotle’s fear and pity categories toward Christian axiological and eschatological interests. Image a character with whom I identify and love, who, through a series of poor choices (due to character flaws) systematically ruins himself and those he loves. Now imagine that his choices are poor because of his pride, and his pride leads him to kill his own wife, and then, upon discovering his wretched state, kills himself. Even this rough sketch in the abstract shows quite simply that we fear his pride and pity the consequences of his actions. Put it in a story, make us love him, and what follows are the kinds of sentiments toward pride we want all people to have. In this sense, we would certainly succeed in a preparatorio evangelica, or even, within the believer, an appropriate unconscious and involuntary response toward pride. Fiction, like a knife, is a neutral object that can be used either for good or evil. We cut into the heart either to kill or to surgically repair.

Of course, art as valuable because it is useful is the wrong idea, and a whole other subject. All I will say here is that the Christian artist must balance his tastes and talents with reality.

the K.H.

Tradition Meets Psychology and Says "Hello"

Creatures of the animal kingdom might think the airport experience something akin to an organized stampede. Everyone is heading to different places in the same direction, odors are myriad and unaccounted for, and the ultimate goal, particularly during the Christmas migration, is to hastily return to the safe and familiar. The family, however loving, represents all that hectic hullabaloo your independent self needed to leave behind for the sake of sanity. And the food, however delicious, whispers (at each savory bite) little reminders that you’re soon to regret the decision to have just one more piece of pie.

In short, Christmas break is a sham. Perhaps the elves secretly planned to exact revenge on our consumer culture for overworking them. Santa is no philanthropist; he is mercenary with an agenda, and happens to know how to chew a cookie while faking a smile. Perhaps, to be more realistic, popular culture has infiltrated, and technological advances manifested themselves to such a degree that we can no longer identify exactly what it means to relax and enjoy time off. Whatever the case, I’m tired.

But if there is anything to take away from Christmas aside from a few extra pounds it is the importance of tradition itself. Formality, though excruciating at times, reminds us of the important things. Our grandmother’s excessive exaggerations of any and all of our embarrassing moments, our parents over protectiveness, and our sibling rivalries reawake the fundamentals we were raised to believe—whatever those believes were.

The historical church swings with a similar stroke. We recite the Lord’s prayer and Orthodox creeds with monotone repetition for their effect. The proverbial Jesus died and rose again for my sins creates ambiance for the soul; it is the paint on the wall by which every piece of furniture is color-coordinated. Remember in the old testament (I can’t recall off hand where) when it says something about surrounding yourself with the law? I keep saying this, and will continue to, but we need to start including psychology in the theological discussion. Self imposed classical conditioning is not nonsense, it’s common sense--even scriptural in its appropriate application. Enacting a stimulus/response relationship by, say, treating a prayer with an attitude of obeisance results in believing that practice and its object sacred. That’s the real reason we bow our heads. Putting scripture around your house puts scripture in your heart. This is not theological, this is psychological. And the suggestion, i think, opens up interesting possibilities.

Under these new protocols, we bypass all the debate concerning—to continue the example—inerrancy and inspiration, while still treating scripture and our Lord with fear and love. In other words, let’s do what we already do, and practice beliefs which we have not come to understand (whether we know it or not), and try adding epistemic humility to the soup. “Ah love, let us be true to one another,” our individual systematic theology is shoddy at best. What you and I actually know, what beliefs we can actually formulate are so few that it takes a certain level of audacity to maintain our multitudinous positions. Our modern hierarchical protocols have proven altogether intangible to anyone who is not a theologian in a specific field.

If you ask me about the inerrancy of scripture I will say, “This is what my parents told me most of my life, this is what some other people have told me the past few years, and this is a subject with which I have no affiliation save authorities.” As you might well notice, i don't have a 'position.' If my best friend’s life depended on me answering the question, I will always go with the Orthodox position. (And of course I would; this is a post about tradition) But I couldn’t tell you why the church is right or wrong; I merely bank on it. I guess based on authority. And here is the terrifying fact: such is the nature of 99 percent of our cumulative knowledge.We guess based on what we're told.

Obviously, I’m talking about the difference between believing with action and knowing with reasons. The trouble is the relationship between an idea and a psyche. The majority of our parents and their parents joined under a system of beliefs because they found psychological security in epistemic certainty. But we, the children of post-modernism, know better. We are meek skeptics, more like a self-conscious girl than the modern know it all brute. But we too have our shortcomings, and they mirror that girl: we are hesitant and indecisive; we don’t know what to believe, and wallow and whine.

The solution, to our horror, is not certainty, or even the accumulation of knowledge. The first is impossible and the second so limited it isn’t worth the effort. The solution, rather, is what our church fathers said years ago, “Credo ut intelligum.” I believe in order to understand. I repeat that psychology needs to be included here. How does one believe in naked propositions without battling within the confines of attitude, feeling, stimulus, memory, and desire? He doesn’t.

There is more to be said here, especially of our psychological relationship to Orthodoxy, but I’ve jabbered on long enough. Maybe i'll continue in another post.

The K.H.

"That you are here--that life exists, and identity"

No fluid segway exists for saying what I came on here to say, so let me blurt it out and connect things later. I am both afraid of any internal propensity within myself toward elitism, and, in contrast, partially believe myself a flag-bearer for the everyday man. The confession is honest, the appellation relatively accurate, and the mental dichotomy confusing. I reprimand myself every time I lord over someone, and combat over-lorders with a near excessive vigor.

I like common sense as much as I like cheeseburgers. I like the common experience; I like habit more than interlude or interruption. Normal seems altogether abnormal compared with abnormalities. Jay Leno’s chin looks funny, but a chin on every face looks like a miracle. God did not make all men for metaphysics; He made all men, to one degree or another, learners. What greater act exists for the teacher than the cultivation of minds made in the image of God? A teacher peddles things greater and more terrible than himself. Ideas rule the world.

And by the way—to interject—degrees of intelligence make no difference in the kingdom of Heaven. I am half tempted to wish mediocrity on all of us. Littleness treated confidently completes us. Children and their admirers flood the rivers of paradise. I think naivety works to a child’s psychological advantage, and that, perhaps, our Lord was talking about a faith easier to maintain due to smaller ability. I can hear Jesus adding a new verse to Matthew 5 now, “Blessed are the numbskulls, for they shall inherit the truth”! If we lack the capacity for volumes of knowledge, we avoid self-satisfaction. Humility rules when we are satisfied in the negative. After all, it is what we are not that makes us who we are. A triangle with 4 sides is no triangle. We’ve forgotten to read our Augustine, leaving behind the principle that it is none other than the image of God in us which causes us to sin. A blind man cannot sin with his eyes, only with the instruments available to him.

But this is only half of the truth. Easy is the marriage of humility to littleness, but hard is the marriage of self-confidence to littleness. Satan’s fall reflects the feminine self-consciousness as much as the masculine arrogance. He lacks the property of Deity like Susie lacks straight teeth. Both are tragic misunderstandings of beauty and the phelix culpa, and stem from a poor view on identity. They get things mixed upside down. Before we know it, Satan will be trying on a two piece, and Susie wielding a triton.

Our reasons for sinning always seems silly years later, when the experience is no longer fresh, and the memory abstracts. But its consequences rarely go unnoticed. An assault on our identity leaves an impression. Paul warns most severely against sexual sins for a reason: they destroy the both the physical and metaphysical man. And that, I think, is the great sin of elitism. Its primary failure reeks not of insecurity—though that is true— but of self-centered indifference to the identity of a consciousness external to itself. What of our axioms? What matters more than loving others? The Mona Lisa pales in comparison to Mona Lisa; quoted lines of Tennyson’s Ulysses are not the words of Ulysses. Paul at the coffee shop has a fairyland somewhere in his rib cage. Our friends, our lovers, our parents have a history rich with adventure and tragedy and love. To hell with metaphysics if it comes at the cost of a love which consists in knowing someone. I’d rather talk about whatever they want, like what they like, see what they see. The real trick seems a dance between the actualized, authentic self and the other dancers.

the K.H.

Edge Im Acation

Christians only have the luxury of knowing that a good God controls their tomorrow, not the luxury of knowing exactly what that includes. I’m applying for graduate school, and await either a yes or a no. Fingers crossed, libations poured, and several rabbit’s feet later, I am hopeful. But whether God decide I sit in a classroom, or spend the long hours of my life elsewhere, my approach to education will not change; His decision will only determine how much time I spend on it.

Americans can be classified as having one of two mentalities toward learning. To their chagrin, the majority employ a mode of learning characteristic of a defense mechanism. With an air of unconscious dismissal and superiority, they censure any and all foreign ideas, criticizing both people and philosophies they do not understand. As a species of learner, they fail to listen, which is their primary problem, and lack a healthy curiosity, which is their secondary. Our parents are particularly susceptible to this approach—part of it having to do with a misunderstanding of their valued experience, and part of it with their Modernist tendencies. Concrete experience consistent with correlative philosophies procure a sentimental attachment, making people feel a security toward tested propositions.

Have you noticed, for example, that the majority of elderly people cannot, or rather, will not so much as listen to an alien idea—no matter the source? If you introduce someone they believe to hold a position contrary to their own, they simply will not listen. Condescending patience arises and nostrils flare. This mentality, they have come to believe, is the result of wisdom—the amalgamation of learned experience opposes any idea. And this, I say in a manner meant to shock, is Codswallop.

Experience can only turn into wisdom if one has learned how to learn first. A lifetime spent with a poor learning attitude (regardless of the degree of intelligence) does not produce sages, it produces dilettantes and immaturity. Education and learning is a field like any other. There are better and worse approaches. On its own, the critical habit limits learning. When we criticize anything, we can only take what we already know—our intuitions, assumptions, and facts— to contradict novelties. Criticism is by its very nature an exercise with parameters. One cannot learn and criticize at the same time. We may, if we like, switch in and out of this mode, but in the actual moment by moment a critic cannot learn.

Contrary to popular Protestant Evangelical belief, criticism as an intellectual habit is the less impressive mental activity and weaker sister to creativity. In fact, criticism is most laudable, when it is at all, as an act of creativity. Our preoccupation with Christian ‘filters’ has made proud and naïve Christians. Don’t get me wrong, I think there is a time and place to shepherd our’s and our flock’s minds. But no amount of safety should come at the cost of unhealthy sheep. Why protect from wolves the environment killing your sheep?

I am talking about the difference between a mature and immature mind. Let me clarify that I do not believe myself to be promulgating the ideals of youth. There is a measurable difference between those who operate within the unhealthy or healthy mentality, no matter the age. The learned as well as the laymen, the young and as well as the old are equally in danger of using their minds incorrectly.

Doubtless, you find the source of these words ironic. Who but the kid with a high appreciation for education would pick on peccadilloes of the mind? Of course. But here, you will be cheating both me and yourself. If you take me for what I am actually saying, if you listen, you will realize that I do not believe sins of the mind small—not when I have personally witnessed their destruction upon myself and those I love. Christian anti-intellectualism has not resulted in a few silly Christians, it has resulted in the perpetual spiritual depravity of every major university in the Western hemisphere.

The great tragedy of all I’ve written here is that I will only be preaching to the choir. Those who don’t know how to listen will surely not listen to this pile of rubbish. Mentalities usually go unchanged until a crisis moment smacks sense into us. Quickly, then, I will try my best to recreate such a moment in writing: the critical mentality does not only make you stupid; it makes you immature of mind; it makes you a greater sinner. Patience and prudence are not your virtues because you have never enacted them, and know nothing of the goodness they confer to you and yours. Agnostics consider you naïve because you are. Atheists think you superstitious because you are. Your disagreements turn into emotional attacks because you do not know how to say ‘I don’t know’ or ‘you might be right.’

I hate getting preachy, especially with abrasive language in public view. But I have had too many conversations with ph.d.’s whose critical genius has made them peevish, and too many conversations with laymen who would have you believe they have a ph.d in any given subject. When our Lord commanded us to love Him with all our minds, He meant that thinking is an act of worship. To treat it as anything less is sin. Like loving God with all our hearts, souls, and strength we are required to do it well. We are required to do it with purity as well as sincerity.