Log24

Al Gore and the
Absence of Truth

"Evil is a negation, because
it is the absence of truth."

— Mary Baker Eddy,
founder of Christian Science,
in Science and Health
with Key to the Scriptures,
(Boston, 1906,
page 186, line 11)

 M. Scott Peck on evil:

"There are quite popular
systems of thought these days,
such as Christian Science
or the Course in Miracles,
which define evil as unreality.
It is a half-truth. The spirit of evil
is one of unreality, but it itself
is real. It really exists."

"We must not fall back into Saint
Augustine's now discarded doctrine
of the 'privatio boni,' whereby evil
was defined as the absence of good.
Satan's personality cannot be
characterized simply by
an absence, a nothingness."

— People of the Lie:
The Hope for Healing Human Evil,
by Morgan Scott Peck, 1986.
(Touchstone paperback,
2nd ed., 1998, page 208)
 

Al Gore on M. Scott Peck:

He did?

"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled
was convincing the world he didn't exist."
— Verbal Kint in "The Usual Suspects"

A Baffled Reader

A reader this morning commented on my first Xanga entry (July 20, 2002):

“To set one up (which I have not done because I don’t want anyone to know what I think),” … William Safire regarding “blogs”.

I still don’t know what you think.  Yet … I try, try, try.

Here’s one thing that I think– today– based on my “Hate Speech for Harvard,” on “Devil in the Details” (Log24, May 18 and 23), and, more recently, on

1. last evening’s PA lottery number 005,
2. the I Ching hexagram of the same number, and
3. the New Yorker issue linked to at the end of the previous entry:

Revised version of the
New Yorker cover of 5/21/07

See the Dickinson poem quoted here on May 15 (the date, as it happens, of Dickinson’s death) in the entry “A Flag for Sunrise.”  See also Zen and Language Games and a discussion of a detail in a Robert Stone novel.

From the May 18 Harvard Crimson:

“Paul B. Davis ’07-’08, who contributed to a collection of student essays written in 2005 on the purpose and structure of a Harvard education, said that ‘the devil is in the details’….”

Related material:

“In philosophy, reductionism is a theory that asserts that the nature of complex things is reduced to the nature of sums of simpler or more fundamental things.” —Wikipedia

“In the 1920’s… the discovery of quantum mechanics went a very long way toward reducing chemistry to the solution of well-defined mathematical problems. Indeed, only the extreme difficulty of many of these problems prevents the present day theoretical chemist from being able to predict the outcome of every laboratory experiment by making suitable calculations. More recently the molecular biologists have made startling progress in reducing the study of life back to the study of chemistry. The living cell is a miniature but extremely active and elaborate chemical factory and many, if not most, biologists today are confident that there is no mysterious ‘vital principle,’ but that life is just very complicated chemistry. With biology reduced to chemistry and chemistry to mathematics, the measurable aspects of the world become quite pervasive.” –Harvard mathematician George Mackey, “What Do Mathematicians Do?“

Opposed to reductionism are “emergence” and “strong emergence“–

“Although strong emergence is logically possible, it is uncomfortably like magic.” —Mark A. Bedau

Or comfortably.

x

Related material:
Log24 entries of 11/18/05

Entertainer of the Year

Frank Rich on the United States:

“… a country where
     entertainment is god”

In another country:

Question:

“Que pasa, pendejo?”

— Question in a music video,
   “You Save Me,” by last night’s
    Academy of Country Music
    Entertainer of the Year

Answer:

“Yolanda King founded and led Higher Ground Productions, billed as a ‘gateway for inner peace, unity and global transformation.'” —New York Times

“Yolanda King’s Lecture Performances are tailored to suit your company’s immediate need for a critical and timely message delivered with a high-level of entertainment value.” —Higher Ground Productions

From the five log24 entries
ending with “Dinner Theater?”
(linked to in yesterday afternoon’s
Perspective on the News):

Frank Rich has the last word:

“A ‘moral values’ crusade
that stands between a TV show
this popular and its audience
will quickly learn the limits
of its power in a country
where entertainment is god.”

A Flag for Sunrise

The title of the Robert Stone
novel comes from Emily Dickinson:

A Wife -- at daybreak I shall be --
Sunrise -- Hast thou a Flag for me?
At Midnight, I am but a Maid,
How short it takes to make a Bride --
Then -- Midnight, I have passed from thee
Unto the East, and Victory --

Midnight -- Good Night! I hear them call,
The Angels bustle in the Hall --
Softly my Future climbs the Stair,
I fumble at my Childhood's prayer
So soon to be a Child no more --
Eternity, I'm coming -- Sire,
Savior -- I've seen the face -- before!