Safe Spaces be Damned

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In light of all the “safe space” talk coming out of universities these days, I thought I’d quote Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy speaking to his students in a philosophy course at Dartmouth College in the 1950s….

“So my appeal in all these (philosophy) classes, you may now understand, has always been to you as people who have to outgrow your childishness. I therefore cannot act as your wet-nurse. I — I’m not interested when you have a cold. Have 10 colds. Suffer! Because it will make you able, if you really suffer, to grow up. And if you — (if) I should pity you in all your difficulties and hardships, you see, I would forestall this process. I would tell you that you are still protected. I am not here to protect you against anything. I’m here to expose you. And this is what the world can expect from anybody who has this tremendous retardation of his growth granted to him in a college.”

*Quote taken from lecture #15 of Cross of Reality taught at Dartmouth College in 1953.

Rosenstock-Huessy’s lectures are available for free mp3 download here.

Christianity V. Mythology

skeletons If you read about or listen to the history of an organization, institution, nation, or religion, and it’s all great and glorious, without anything negative, and its failures are erased from memory, it is mythology.

“All secular societies have a skeleton in their closet. Even family genealogies usually omit the unpleasant ancestors and tell fairy tales in their stead.

“Christianity, on the other hand, took the unpleasantness for granted: in place of a pedigree from a mythical ancestor it put original sin inherited from Adam. And resolutely, it began in the midst of time, not in a mythical fog. Against all deathless myths and hopeless cycles the price of a living future is to admit death in our lives and overcome it. This is the supreme gift of Christianity; it showed that the fear of death need not force man into the narrow cycle of any given community. In place of pagan dividedness it created a universal pedigree for man that transcends all partial ends and beginnings, and measures history from the end of time.”*

* Excerpt from The Christian Future by Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, pg. 65

The Free Speech Trade-off

FT_15.11.19_speech According to this 2015 Pew Research article, 40% of U.S. millennials are in favour of the government having the authority to censor offensive speech about minorities.

Thomas Sowell has said: “Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.”

It sounds like a good idea to limit “hate speech”. Who would be against that? But if we stop at only what sounds good we create future trouble for ourselves. We have to ask questions and thoughtfully follow through on what these “good” ideas would actually create. Questions like: Who decides what “hate speech” is? Given the government has the authority to limit hate speech, would the government abuse that authority in the future?

I am in an interracial marriage. I’m a white Canadian, while my wife is a brown Cambodian. (Are you offended that I called her brown?) Suppose, while planning our marriage in Canada, we went to a bakery which was owned by a white supremacist. And suppose he refused to bake our wedding cake because he is against interracial marriage. I would be annoyed and a little offended at that. But, the most I would do is tell my friends and family about it and stop there. I’m not going to call the media. I’m not going to sue. I’m not going to boycott his bakery (although I can understand why others would). I’m not going to fight to give the government the power to shut him down. As much I wouldn’t like what he had done, I wouldn’t fight to take away his right to run his business as he wants. Because, if I take away his freedom, I take away everyone else’s freedom too.*

If the KKK comes marching through your town’s public square spewing hate speech against blacks and Jews, you have two options: you can ignore them or you can speak against them. One option you don’t have is to silence them. Even the KKK is protected by free speech**. However, if the KKK comes into your restaurant and decide to hold an impromptu rally, you can silence them by kicking them out of your business.

Thomas Sowell also often says: “There are no solutions, only trade-offs.” What is the free speech trade-off? Do we want the government to silence anyone who might offend us now, and, consequently, give the government the ability to abuse that authority in the future when our children and grandchildren are adults? (And if you don’t think that will happen, you just need to study history. Right now in certain Asian countries a person can be imprisoned for criticizing the government on Facebook. Do we want that in western society?) Or, we can grow a thicker skin and allow everyone to speak freely, even when it offends us, and ensure future generations will not have to live in fear that if they say the wrong thing, arbitrarily decided by government, they won’t end up in prison for ten years.

*I realize that there are already anti-discrimination laws in place, and I am not necessarily against those laws. This is just an example.

**Free Speech: The right to speak without censorship or restraint by the government.

Poipet Through the Ages

When the Khmer Rouge came to power in Cambodia in the ’70s they destroyed much infrastructure, including the railroad. And as Cambodia has been rebuilding, the railroad is coming back.

Poipet is the main crossing point between Cambodia and Thailand. Here is Lonely Planet’s description of Poipet…

Long the armpit of Cambodia, notorious for its squalor, scams and sleaze, Poipet (ប៉ោយប៉ែត, pronounced ‘poi-peh’ in Khmer) has recently splurged on a facelift and no longer looks like the post-apocalyptic place it once was. Thanks mainly to the patronage of neighbouring Thais, whose own country bans gambling, its casino resorts – with names like Tropicana and Grand Diamond City – are turning the town into Cambodia’s little Las Vegas. However, beyond the border zone it’s still a chaotic, trash-strewn strip mall sprinkled with dodgy massage parlours. The Khmers’ gentle side is little in evidence, but don’t worry, the rest of the country does not carry on like this.

As the railroad is being rebuilt, it will eventually link Bangkok to Phnom Penh. That railroad will run right through Poipet.

map 001

Just as you enter into Poipet from Thailand, there is a roundabout (Kbal Spean Circle in above picture) which then leads on to the main road through the city. The train will come straight through that roundabout (the busiest road in town) and then run south of the main road through the current slum area.

I don’t even want to think of how busy that border crossing area is going to be when the rail is finished and the train is running.

Here are some photos of that border crossing over the years….

1) I don’t know how old this photo is, but it’s quite old I think. If you took this photo, your back would be towards Thailand, and you would be looking into the beginnings of Poipet and Cambodia. That’s a big idol standing in the middle of the Kbal Spean roundabout. All dirt roads.

2) This photo is well over ten years old. Now we are looking towards Thailand while standing on the road of the round-about. That big idol is standing just off camera to the right. The first photo was taken from straight ahead of the view of this photo. That arch-way being constructed is the start of an entrance to a new casino.

3) This photo is taken from inside Poipet looking out towards Thailand (probably taken around 2006/2007 or so). The idol can be seen, but now we are seeing the reverse side from what we see in the first photo. The red brick pillar seen on the far right of this photo (centered from top to bottom) is the archway under construction in the last photo. Now we see the casinos are dominating the scene.

4) Now we are looking into Poipet again with Thailand at our back. Now we see there are lots of buildings, and the roads are paved. This is pretty much what Poipet looks like today, except that big idol is gone. The new railway is going to run straight through the roundabout.

5) Here is the track being constructed. This photo was taken just a few days ago (May, 2016). The track is running right through where the roundabout used to be. Notice that the red brick archway from photos #2 and #3 has been torn down to make room for the train. Also notice the crane on the left is still there (from photo #3). I think that crane has become a permanent fixture.

6) A closer look. The casino builders knew the train would eventually come which is why they built the walkways up above the road to connect their buildings.

Sources…

Photo #1 is from Cambodia.com

Photo #2 is from this website.

Some Atheist Brief Book Reviews

All God Worshippers Are Mad

A short and stupid book. I give it one star out of five because it was only $1.99 on Kindle. I can’t decide if the book was written for 12 year olds, or if it was written by a 12 year old. For example… His first argument against God is basically summed up as: “In order for God to create the space/time universe, God’s existence can’t depend on space/time. My human brain can’t comprehend that. Therefore there is no God. Booyah!”

Why I Believed

He’s got a couple of decent Dostoevsky-type arguments against faith/God, but most of what he says follows a “I just don’t want to believe anymore” kind of thinking. Christianity is a faith which requires engagement. If you choose not to engage it you will grow cold towards it.

Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes

I’ll come back to this book for the language sections. Everett is a talented linguist. He had no business being a missionary though. I don’t think he ever fully understood what Christianity is. His descriptions of the faith show he never moved beyond a Sunday-school understanding of it.

God Needs to Go

It’s hard to get into one of these books when it starts out with a straw-man argument; which this book does. In fact, this book is one straw-man after another — falsely representing Christianity and then attacking that false representation.

He makes a couple good points against prayer (or, what I would call the misuse of prayer).

Atheists often argue that morality is based on the evolved sense of the common good. While that might be true for economy, it is not true for morality. Morality is not the same across the world. A westerner being accepting of a transgender person is doing so because he believes it is loving to do so. That belief of loving acceptance stems directly from Christian morality. A Buddhist in Thailand who is accepting of a transgender person is not doing so out of love; his acceptance and noninterference is based on karmic justice. A Buddhist would be less inclined to help the poor for that very same reason, whereas a westerner would be more inclined to help the poor based on Christian morality.

The author states: “Except for certain religiously based societies, many of the secular nations display a sense of right and wrong that has allowed them advance in a positive way.” (page 23) “Certain religiously based societies” — every society is a religiously based society, including the ‘post-Christian’ west. A society’s morality is tied to its predominant religion. This is not hard to see. Western morality is based on Christianity, absolutely. If you don’t see that, you just need to do some travelling. A Buddhist nation’s morality is based on Buddhism. The same is true for Hindu and Muslim nations. If a person born and raised in a Buddhist nation becomes an atheist, his morality will still be based on Buddhism. (Although, Buddhism as a religion lacks the conditions to create atheists — which is a whole other interesting topic. Western atheism would not exist if it weren’t for Christianity.)

Then there are the usual arguments about slavery and God’s wrath and so forth. If you want to understand those issues in the Bible you have to understand two very important things: covenant and holiness. If you don’t get those two things, you won’t get the Bible.

And there are the attacks on biblical prophesy. Jesus said certain things about His return that supposedly didn’t happen. Well, there are plenty of books on eschatology to explain that. But if you’re not willing to study it out, then there’s nothing more to say. Reading Psalm 110 and Daniel 7:13-14 will get you well on your way to understanding what Jesus said when prophesying about Himself.