The internet is still brimming with commentary on what “the good life” really means, a question which, in itself, may prove the point of The NY Times‘ recent must-read op-ed, “The Gospel According to ‘Me’”. In it Jamieson Webster and Simon Critchley, a psychoanalyst and a philosophy professor talk shop about today’s “church of self,” […]
Ambition's Invisible Walls and the "Good Life" Ruthie Lived
Over at the The Atlantic, Emily Esfahani Smith released a book review-slash-sociological study last week on the relationship between ambition and community. She sets up her article on the recently released memoir of Rod Dreher, whom we’ve mentioned on here before, entitled The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, A Small Town, and […]
Five Golden...Themes! What We Just Couldn't Get Enough of in 2012
One of Mockingbird’s most distinctive features is the repetition. Like Christmas itself, we’re trying to point that one “old, old story,” that ancient theme, as we see it dug up time and again. It’s dug up in all sorts of places, of course, from 18th century poetry archives to slasher films, from church basements to […]
Infuriating Altruism and the Evolution of a Good Samaritan: E.O. Wilson's Theory of Everything
A few months ago, The Atlantic published a piece called “E.O. Wilson’s Theory of Everything”. The title caught my eye, but I’ll just come right out and say it: the piece was dense and confusing – or maybe it was the theory itself, I’m not sure. You could tell there was something significant being said, […]
Choking the Chicken: A Locavore's Lament
It’s undeniable that the Locavore Movement has been gaining momentum for years now, and that having a small backyard vegetable garden is no longer a reliable counterculture identifier. (You only grew kale from seed?) The phenomenon of buying local, eating local has settled in stride with the contemporary (and arguably ancient biblical) values for the […]
4G, Make Me New! Planned Obsolescence and "Newness" of Life
You’ve seen the Best Buy “Buy Back” commercials, the unveiling of the newest editions of things consumers don’t have–and the stinging agony that accompanies being left behind, duped into buying into that which was built to die. It’s a clever marketing strategy, funny because it’s gesturing the truth of consumerism: both commenting on the psycho-social […]
The Subjective Power of an Objective Gospel
This little reflection by Mbird’s Jacob Smith and David Zahl has made the rounds recently, first in Logia: A Journal of Lutheran Theology and second on The Gospel Coalition (where it generated quite the conversation!). We thought we’d repost it here for, you know, posterity: The great Southern novelist Walker Percy once asked in his […]
Baby You're A Rich Man (Blues)
Another gem of an article in this past month’s Atlantic, “The Secret Fears of the Super Rich” by Graeme Wood, which delves into the results of remarkable, soon-to-be published survey of the very rich (aka, folks with a net worth of more than $25 million) from Boston College’s Center on Wealth and Philanthropy. Needless to […]
The Kayak and the Spaceship
“…how could someone as smart as Freeman Dyson be so dumb?” The cover story of the December Atlantic is the most fascinating essay I have read in a while — along with being funny, touching and just a delight in terms of sheer prose style. It touches on so many things that are of interest […]
Obesity and the Bound Will
NEWS FLASH: there’s a really interesting Mockingbird thread going on right now, started by Jeff Dean and Dave Browder, on a proposed tax on sugar sweetened drinks like Coke. It’s already quite long — take a look! The thoughtful comments started by Herr Browder made me think of an extraordinary cover article in THE ATLANTIC […]
I want one
Beam me up, NOW!!! One of the many awesome things in the current issue of The Atlantic is a brief piece on how, in the last few years, tricoders have become real! You could get one now. And they really work! I am sooooooo excited….
None Of Us Are Free - PZ Meets Solomon Burke
A classic quote from PZ’s Grace In Practice and yet another great reason to join us later this week(!): One of the reasons we need to embrace the fact of the un-free will is for the sake of its effect on love. A benefit of the un-free will is that it increases mercy in daily […]