On Becoming an Elder

“In late adulthood [65+] a man can no longer occupy the center stage of his world. He is called upon, and increasingly calls upon himself, to reduce the heavy responsibilities of middle adulthood and to live in a changed relationship with society and himself. Moving out of center stage can be traumatic. A man receives less recognition and has less authority and power. His generation is no longer the dominant one. As a part of the ‘grandparent’ generation within the family, he can at best be modestly helpful to his grown offspring and a source of indulgence and moral support to his grandchildren. But it is time for his offspring, as they approach and enter middle adulthood, to assume the major responsibility and authority in the family. If he does not give up his authority, he is likely to become a tyrannical ruler — despotic, unwise, unloved and unloving — and his adult offspring may become puerile adults unable to love him or themselves.”

~from The Seasons of a Man’s Life by Daniel J. Levinson, page 35

Further reading: On Eldership – Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy

The Great Good Thing (Brief Book Review)

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I discovered Andrew Klavan, not through his books, but through his conservative political podcast on the Daily Wire. I’ve since read two of his books: Don’t Say a Word and The Great Good Thing.

The Great Good Thing is Klavan’s memoir — his life story focusing on his growth from secular Jew to agnostic/atheist to Christian. I say his “growth” as it is easy to see in this memoir that Klavan becomes a healthier and happier person in his life-long transition from empty religion to saving grace.

This book is for intellectuals and fans of literature. If you’re hoping for a bunch of touching mushy stories, you will be disappointed. Klavan is an author and political commentator — he lives in the realm of ideas. Therefore, Klavan’s discovery of God was through that realm. His journey began by reading and studying all the works which made western civilization what it is: the greatest culture the world has ever known. Underlying this culture all throughout is Christianity.

Andrew Klaven also discovered God through joy. At one point in the book he mentions how, with most people, their relationship with Christ leads them to joy, but with him it was the opposite — his joy led him to Christ. After many years of depression and hopelessness, Klavan was “cured” of his emptiness through the help of a psychiatrist and the growing realization that love really was the most important part of life. And, love is not just some vague idea in an uncaring universe — love comes from a real and living God.

Before becoming a Christian, Klavan began to pray regularly in his life, and through his prayers God told him to get baptized. He did, and ever since has been a devoted Christian.

Being a realist and a skeptic, Klavan makes it clear throughout the book that his conversion was never based on feelings or sentimentality — it was his reason which led him to Christ. This is why I say this book is for intellectuals: people who like things to make sense; people who like to reason their way through problems, and get annoyed when they’re expected to do otherwise.

I gave it 5/5 stars.

Human History According to Franz Rosenzweig

“What happens in history, [Rosenzweig] says, is not a struggle between man’s faith and man’s reason but a struggle between God and man. In world history the absolute powers themselves are dramatis personae [the characters of the play]. Revelation breaks into the world and transforms creation, which is the Alpha of history, into redemption, which is the Omega. Philosophy has a pagan quality. It is an expression of the Alpha, of creation, of pure nature to which God has given freedom — even against himself. But as revelation comes into the world, it gradually absorbs philosophy, deprives it of its pagan elements, and illuminates it with its own light. The Omega of history will be realized after the element of creation, the world’s freedom, has spent itself. Then God, who has allowed the world to be in the Alpha, will again be the First and the Last, the Alpha and the Omega.”

~Alexander Altmann, from Franz Rosenzweig and Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy: An Introduction to Their “Letters on Judaism & Christianity”, from Judaism Despite Christianity, University of Chicago Press, 1935, page 33.

The Kingdom of Speech (Book Review)

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The Kingdom of Speech, written by Tom Wolfe, is a simple and interesting book looking at the miracle of human speech, or language.

Wolfe begins with the theory of evolution and Charles Darwin. I’m not sure how much Wolfe believes, or disbelieves, in evolution, but he does criticize it here. Most people are unaware that Darwin was almost “scooped” in his theory by a man named Alfred Wallace. Wallace, who was not a member of the elite class like Darwin was, sent in a paper to Darwin explaining the idea that evolution occurred through the process of natural selection. Darwin had already thought up that idea himself, but had not yet put his thoughts to paper hoping to collect more evidence for it. Darwin gave Wallace credit for the idea, but in a backhanded way — “He, Darwin, would not be claiming priority. Just the opposite. He was extending a magnanimous hand to a newcomer. He would be making room on the stage for a lowly flycatcher to be heard.” (Wolfe)

Darwin, of course, wanted his theory of evolution to apply to Man in every way. The one issue that didn’t seem to fit though was language. How did language evolve? Darwin wrote that it came from birds tweeting and animals grunting and so forth. Wallace, however, wrote in an essay entitled, The Limits of Natural Selection as Applied to Man, that language was an absolute dividing line between Man and animal. This conundrum stymied Darwin and other evolutionists on the issue of language, and the field of linguistics entered into, what Wolfe names, its Dark Ages for about three quarters of a century.

Then came Noam Chomsky. Chomsky has been seen as the god of linguistics since the 1950s. Chomsky’s big idea was/is that language evolved in Man over time, and now every human has what’s called the “language organ.” The language organ functions in every person just like the heart or kidneys do — it’s just there and it is functioning from the moment of birth. Chomsky also put forth the idea of recursion. Recursion is the ability of humans to place one thought within another (in one sentence) in a potentially endless series. For example: John has a nice house … John, your brother, has a nice house … John, your brother, has a nice house on thirty-first street … John, your brother, has a nice house on thirty-first street, which he purchased from his father in law … etc… etc… The idea of recursion became orthodox within linguistic circles — like a law of nature, Wolfe says — Noam Chomsky – like Newton, Copernicus, Einstein – had discovered a new law!

Now enters Daniel Everett. Everett is a failed missionary, ex-Christian, who lived and worked with the Pirahã (pronounced Pee-da-hannh) people for many years. He is one of the only people who actually learned the Pirahã’s language. Everett found no examples of recursion among the Pirahã, and he refuted Chomsky’s theory by suggesting that, rather than humans evolving language and developing a language organ, humans instead developed language as a tool after evolving to the current state — a tool, much in the same way humans have developed hammers, axes, bows & arrows, and computers. Language is not a direct product of evolution, but rather an artifact invented by humans after evolving to the point when humanity was capable of developing such a thing.

This idea caused much controversy in the linguistics world, and the gods (Chomsky & followers) were not happy. But, even though Everett was dismissed as being a low-brow hack, his idea did change the flow of thought in linguistics and brought things to the point where no one really knows anymore where language came from. “Language — what is it? What is it? Chomsky’s own words at age eighty-five after a lifetime of studying language! The previous 150 years had proved to be the greatest era ever in solving the riddles of Homo sapiens — but not in the case of Homo loquax, man speaking. A parade of certified geniuses had spent lifetimes trying to figure it out — and failed.” (Wolfe)

Wolfe completes his book with some of his own conclusions. He seems to agree with Everett — speech is a tool developed by Man, enabling Him to take dominion of the world. Notice how the words of one man, like Jesus or Muhammad, can control millions of people over centuries: “[T]he power of one person to control millions of his fellow humans — for centuries — is a power the Theory of Evolution cannot even begin to account for … or abide.” (Wolfe)

“Speech ended not only the evolution of man, by making it no longer necessary for survival, but also the evolution of animals.” (Wolfe)

The elephant in the room, which Wolfe never mentions but I will, is God. God: the Great Speaker, who created all things with His Word, and then breathed His breath into Man making him His image bearer. Man does have dominion over the world because Man can speak, and that speech is a gift – not a product of evolution – straight from God. God sustains the universe by His Word, all things were made through His Word, and that Word became flesh for all to see: Jesus (John 1:1-14). So, the mystery of speech is no mystery to the Christian.

All in all, The Kingdom of Speech, is a good book — an easy read which I recommend to anyone interested in the field of linguistics and the power of speech.

I gave it 4/5 stars.

Further reading: Kingdom of Language by Peter Leithart, First Things

Thomas Sowell Quotes #5

“Like so much else that is done by those who treat education as the continuation of politics by other means, the lasting damage that is done is not by insinuating a particular ideology, for people’s ideologies change over time, regardless of what they were taught. The lasting damage is done to the development of critical thinking.

“Learning to think, and how to know what you are talking about, is a full-time occupation. Nowhere is this more true than in the formative years. Even naturally bright people can turn out to be nothing more than clever mush heads if the discipline of logic and the analytical dissection of many-sided empirical evidence is slighted for the sake of emotional ‘experiences.'”

~from The Thomas Sowell Reader: Educational Issues, page 346-347