Posts in Modernity
Words Worth Noting - December 29, 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?”

Words Worth Noting - December 10, 2023

“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)

Words Worth Noting - December 7, 2023

“It is now much discussed among the learned whether art should abolish morality by calling it convention. It might well be discussed among the wise whether art should even abolish convention. But what seems very queer to me is this: that modern art has so often abolished morality without abolishing convention.”

G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News February 6, 1932, quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 #1 (9-10/22).

Words Worth Noting - December 6, 2023

“Generally speaking, what I complain of in the historical philosophy of Mr. Wells is that it is always jam to-morrow and never jam to-day.”

G.K. Chesterton quoted in “Chesterton University” “An Introduction to the Writings of G.K. Chesterton by Dale Ahlquist” “G.K.’s Weekly, Volume 8 ■ September, 1928 – March, 1929” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 #1 (9-10/22)

The Moncton menorah mess

In my latest Epoch Times column I say the mercifully now reversed decision by Moncton city council to ditch their traditional Hanukkah acknowledgement (and a nativity scene) reflects a dangerously mistaken understanding of the place of religion in a free society.