“Previous civilizations have degenerated. Previous ages have marched into the dark not knowing that they were marching into the dark. But in any previous time, were artists, scholars, and thinkers so eager to explain that degeneration was really progress?”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” April 17, 2023 [https://undergroundthomist.org/antipasto]
In my latest National Post column I warn my posterity, and yours, why artificial intelligence is far and away the most dangerous and urgent problem they face.
“The proponents of the so called ‘new natural law theory,’ or ‘basic goods theory,’ say that we shouldn’t speak of the natural purposes of things. For example, we shouldn’t say that the natural purpose that anchors the sexual powers is procreation, because this ‘instrumentalizes’ and ‘depersonalizes’ us – it makes us tools for making babies. This is absurd. One might as well say that it depersonalizes us to say that the natural purpose of the intellectual powers is deliberating and knowing the truth.”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” April 17, 2023 [https://undergroundthomist.org/antipasto]
“How can we rush to catch a train which may not arrive for a few centuries?”
G.K. Chesterton “The Eternal Revolution” in Orthodoxy, quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 #5 (May-June 2023)
“On TikTok, one of the latest music trends is speeding up popular songs. And now, fans are demanding that artists comply with their expectations for speedy sounds.... Artists and labels are now leaning into the trend by releasing their own sped-up remixes of songs. The remixes will oftentimes see even more engagement than the original, according to the TikTok spokesperson.”
NBC November 22, 2023 [and filed in my notes under the heading “Patience? How long’s that gonna take?”
In my latest Epoch Times column, I say 2023 feels like one of those years where trouble was plainly a-brewin’ but the storm had not yet really broken.
In my latest National Post column I lament widespread vicious persecution of Christians abroad, and the puzzling indifference to it here in Canada.
“Elsewhere Chesterton describes Progress as a rut, a false philosophy of fatalism and endless improvement. It is a promise of freedom, but the actual results are servitude – to the regulatory state, to the unforgiving corporation, to the latest fashionable idea, to the materialist mentality that is unwelcoming to and increasingly oppressive to the faith. But the answer is in faith, both immediately and ultimately. Instead of following the fashion and following the world, we are to follow Christ – and all that that entails. Chesterton says, ‘To take up the cross is not a servitude; it is something far more terrible and intimidating: a freedom.’”
“An Introduction to the writings of G.K. Chesterton” by Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #6 (July/August 2022)