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Frederick Smith

Simon Critchley on Doestoevsky's Grand Inquisitor - 0 views

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    Dostoevsky's great virtue as a writer is to be so utterly convincing in outlining what he doesn't believe and so deeply unconvincing in defending what he wants to believe. As Blake said of "Paradise Lost," Satan gets all the best lines. The story of the Grand Inquisitor places a stark choice in front of us: demonic happiness or unbearable freedom? And this choice conceals another, deeper one: truth or falsehood? The truth that sets free is not, as we saw, the freedom of inclination and passing desire. It is the freedom of faith. It is the acceptance - submission, even - to a demand that both places a perhaps intolerable burden on the self, but which also energizes a movement of subjective conversion, to begin again. In disobeying ourselves and obeying this hard command, we may put on new selves. Faith hopes for grace.
Frederick Smith

Wheaton President Ryken's Reply To Alumni Protesting Lawsuit Against HHS Over ACA Contr... - 0 views

Dr. Philip Ryken, President, Wheaton College alumni@wheaton.edu via email.imodules.com Reply-to: alumni@wheaton.edu Date: Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 10:00 PM Subject: Responding to your feedback regar...

abortion conflict contraceptives Ella Plan B Wheaton College evangelicals and public square

started by Frederick Smith on 29 Jul 12 no follow-up yet
Frederick Smith

SerPolUS_IDES on DIIGO - a longer description of the group's focus - 8 views

Service-Politics, Universal Spirituality, Inclusive/Diverse, Embracing Science SERPOLUSIDES (http://groups.diigo.com/groups/ser_polus_ides)  SerPol: Politics in Service to the greater ...

service politics community inclusive diversity spirituality equality science humanism religion human rights . freedom moderation middle path Buddha-consciousness Christ-consciousness

started by Frederick Smith on 28 Dec 09 no follow-up yet
Frederick Smith

The Case for Contamination, by Kwame Anthony Appiah - 1/1/2006 - 0 views

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    '"Contamination" ... is an evocative term. When people speak for an ideal of cultural purity, sustaining the authentic culture of the Asante or the American family farm, I find myself drawn to contamination as the name for a counterideal. [The Roman playwright] Terence [whose plays acquired that label to describe his conflation of Greek plays into a single Roman comedy] had a notably firm grasp on the range of human variety: "So many men, so many opinions" was a line of his. And it's in his comedy "The Self-Tormentor" that you'll find what may be the golden rule of cosmopolitanism - Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto; "I am human: nothing human is alien to me." The context is illuminating. A busybody farmer named Chremes is told by his neighbor to mind his own affairs; the homo sum credo is Chremes's breezy rejoinder. It isn't meant to be an ordinance from on high; it's just the case for gossip. Then again, gossip - the fascination people have for the small doings of other people - has been a powerful force for conversation among cultures. 'The ideal of contamination has few exponents more eloquent than Salman Rushdie, who has insisted that the novel that occasioned his fatwa "celebrates hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs. It rejoices in mongrelisation and fears the absolutism of the Pure. Mélange, hotch-potch, a bit of this and a bit of that is how newness enters the world." No doubt there can be an easy and spurious utopianism of "mixture," as there is of "purity" or "authenticity." And yet the larger human truth is on the side of contamination - that endless process of imitation and revision. 'A tenable global ethics has to temper a respect for difference with a respect for the freedom of actual human beings to make their own choices. That's why cosmopolitans don't insist that everyone become cosmopolitan. They know they don't hav
Frederick Smith

Public Domain Collections: Free to Share & Reuse | The New York Public Library - 0 views

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    Did you know that more than 180,000 of the items in our Digital Collections are in the public domain? That means everyone has the freedom to enjoy and reuse these materials in almost limitless ways.
Frederick Smith

9/11 & Pearl Harbor, Muslims & Japan - 0 views

On 8/3, my good friend and much-admired fellow physician Patrick Cavanaugh brought up a relevant question - asking, "Would a Japanese history museum be appropriate at the Arizona memorial [at Pearl...

islam religion politics mosque 9_11

started by Frederick Smith on 15 Aug 10 no follow-up yet
Frederick Smith

US Exceptionalism as Idolatry - 0 views

The insistence of conservative leaders that patriotism be defined by a believe that the US is INTRINSICALLY EXCEPTIONAL strikes me as the very form of IDOLATRY attacked by both Hebrew prophets and ...

Politics American exceptionalism Washington Post

started by Frederick Smith on 05 Dec 10 no follow-up yet
Frederick Smith

Millionaire gives away fortune which made him miserable - London Telegraph - 0 views

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    Karl Rabeder, an Austrian Horation Alger, decided he'd be freer if he gave away his fortune to a micro-credit philanthropy he set up in South America. He does not pass judgment on other rich people who don't follow his example
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