8/31/25 – Fellow Americans, we are in a very low place. We have to do better than this. We have to allow ourselves to be transformed by God’s grace to be a light for each other and for the world, a city on a hill.
8/31/25 – And sometimes, you have to stand in the threshold, as if you’re holding the place of entrance open to say, we’re here for you. You are not alone. We are never alone. God is with us.
8/31/25 – “But at this Mass, members of the congregation were not in the pews to which they had grown accustomed, Father Zehren said. They were in folding chairs, with the sanctuary on the auditorium’s stage. And they were still wrestling with the tragedy that had unfolded.
‘It’s clear to us all here at Annunciation that we will be sitting in a different pew for a long time to come because of what happened,’ Father Zehren said in his homily.
The Scriptures for the day point to humility, Father Zehren said. Jesus encourages his listeners in the Gospel passage from Luke to avoid taking the seat of honor at a banquet feast. Rather, take the lowest place.
‘My good people of Annunciation, my good people of Minneapolis and beyond, we are in a very low place,’ the pastor said. ‘We are in a lower place than we could have ever imagined. We can look around and see that this is not our normal seat. This is not where we usually gather, not in our usual worship space.’
At the same time, they were seated in the high school auditorium where Masses had been held for decades before the new church was built in 1961, Father Zehren said.
‘Jesus speaks about humility, so we come back to our humble beginnings,’ Father Zehren said. ‘That’s what this day represents. It’s a humble beginning. … It’s a call to begin again. The tricky part about the virtue of humility is that we don’t always get to choose the seating the chart.’
At times, people get the seat of honor, or a seat where they are comfortable, with ‘all sorts of nice cushions,’ the priest said.
‘But sometimes we have to sit in the dust,’ he said. ‘It’s a very humbling seat. I know the best thing we can do is just sit there for a while. … Jesus says, “Can you just sit with me here, in the dust?” Because that’s where he is. It’s the same dust that Jesus fell in when he was carrying the cross. It’s the same dust that he bled in. Jesus said, “Can you just come sit with me and sit in this humble place?”’
‘That was the very first message we heard on Wednesday morning, when the first bullet came through the window, and the voices crying out, “Down, down. Get low, stay down, stay down, don’t get up,”’ Father Zehren said, his voice breaking with emotion.
‘But when we were down there, in that low place, Jesus showed us something,’ he said. ‘He showed us, “I am the Lord even here. I am the one who descended into hell. I am the one who had taken on all the darkness and evil in this world, all the forces of darkness and death and evil.” Jesus pointed and he said, “Can’t you see how weak it is? Can’t you see how desperate it is? Can’t you see that this can never last? Can’t you see that this is not why God created us?”
‘Then he showed us. He began to show us a light. It’s a new light. The light of a new day is breaking,’ Father Zehren said. ‘We watch for that light of a new day. … That light of the world is Jesus Christ.’
‘It reminds us, when death and darkness have done their worst, that’s when God says, “Now see what I will do,”’ Father Zehren said.”
Annunciation pastor: First parish Mass after church shooting is a ‘humble beginning’
8/30/25 – Between the high-profile killings of George Floyd (racial justice) and the subsequent violent destruction of the city, Melissa Hortman and her husband (political violence), and Annunciation (mass killing/religious violence), it’s a lot for one community, Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN, to bear. We have some soul-searching to do within our communities and our country. The present state of affairs is unsustainable.
Frankly, we don’t see how changing the gun laws would have prevented some of these events in our nation. This is really beyond the law. It is a matter of the condition of our souls and our culture. The Law of Moses were broken while he was still receiving them from God, and they were broken after he received them from God. We are no better than the Hebrews/Israelites. We have to change the culture. Laws are words on paper. They might act as a deterrence, but the best prevention is changing the culture that shapes our hearts and minds.
8/29/25 – David Brooks recently wrote about love and narcissism, and The National Review wrote about burning it all down. Also see The Black Keys song, “Burn the Damn Thing Down.” (By the way, The Black Key’s video for Beautiful People (Stay High) directed by Chris Saunders has been replaced by an inferior official one. We can thank the Millennials for destroying the music industry with their terrible taste.)
How are these references related to gunning down children praying in a church during mass? Is this a question? This problem is not unique to any political ideology. The common thread is wounded self-love and pride. See below. Apparently, the dark turn narcissism can take when these people feel spurned by society is to burn the thing down…or gun the people down who can still love properly.
8/29/25 – The days are a blur. It’s all too much. Let’s pick up here. Flashback Friday: “8/23/25 – Arthur Brooks of The Atlantic writes about the spiritual happiness born out of suffering. David Brooks in The New York Times writes about the nihilism that seems to be spreading on the right presumably born out of their perception of suffering. (We’re going to use first names for simplicity.) David writes, ‘an astonishing 88 percent of the students said they pretended to be more progressive than they are in order to succeed academically or socially. More than 80 percent of the students said they submitted class work that misrepresented their real views in order to conform to the progressive views of the professor.’ Unfortunately, this isn’t surprising. One should never be grading students’ work based on their own views, but on the strength of the students’ argument and other qualities of the work. Between the anti-Semitism and this, academia is pretty much a disaster right now. However, let’s consider how one responds to this real or perceived cultural oppression.
At one relatively brief point in my life, I felt depressed, not just for myself, but mainly for all the suffering people seemed to experience all the time throughout the world. Even though I was normally a resilient person, everything in my life suddenly felt really hard, one could say, hopeless. Then, through God’s grace, I learned an important lesson. I can’t help anybody else if I allow myself to wallow in this state. All those people I felt bad for needed me to be strong for them. This was a form of spiritual happiness born out of suffering, theirs, my own for them and my own for myself. Their suffering became a source of strength for both of us. I fell further into despair thinking about them than I would have if I had only been thinking about myself, but it was also easier for me to see the light in the darkness because I wasn’t as entangled in the dangerous intimacy of self-pity. Thinking about them helped me keep a healthy distance from myself.
David writes, young people feel that they don’t have anything to believe in; they ‘believe in nothing.’ Arthur writes, ‘Have faith in the future.’ When you choose (and it is a choice) to lose hope, faith or trust, the psychological source is likely pride. Explore your emotions to their depths, and for as surprising as it might seem (because the problem must be the rest of the world, right) that is probably where you’ll land. (See Dante’s Inferno.) This might not be what people want to hear because it’s a lot harder to work on yourself than to burn it all down, but it’s closer to the truth than the (conspiracy) theories circulating in their minds or in the company they keep. Let’s assume that the cultural oppression is real. Is the correction really to burn it all down, or is that an emotional response stemming from your own wounded pride? Nihilism by definition is destructive. To be a spiritually happy person, in spite of any adversity you might be experiencing, personal or vicarious, we are created ‘to carry forward an ever-advancing civilization.’ Is this what you’re doing by abandoning hope, faith or trust? This is surrender not to God’s will but to your own hurt ego. To truly advance civilization, we must set aside our pride and do God’s will.
The Rise of Right-Wing Nihilism
Five Baha’i Lessons for a Happier Life”
8/28/25 – What is there to say? We feel sad. Although we don’t know the motive, we can say this: Christians have been martyrs since the beginning of Christianity. We will never break. Nothing will diminish our faith. Our sisters and brothers in Christ throughout the world face persecution on a daily basis. They are slaughtered for nothing more than wanting to practice their faith openly and in peace. We will never surrender our faith to anyone. Our hearts break for the victims, their families, and the community. Our faith is our strength, and we are praying for all of them. God is with us.
8/25/25 – This is worse than Brave New World, and we’re incensed about it. Because life is in abundance here, people don’t give it the respect and the value it deserves. They take it for granted and treat it as if it’s cheap and disposable. Here are some excellent arguments for basic morality and for life in all its forms that God gave us. Can we just stick with Christian ethics? It actually values human life and life in general, including our planet, God’s cathedral.
What It Really Means to Choose Life
We Shouldn’t Be Designing Babies
At Times Like These, My Advice: Take a Hike!
8/23/25 – Arthur Brooks of The Atlantic writes about the spiritual happiness born out of suffering. David Brooks in The New York Times writes about the nihilism that seems to be spreading on the right presumably born out of their perception of suffering. (We’re going to use first names for simplicity.) David writes, “an astonishing 88 percent of the students said they pretended to be more progressive than they are in order to succeed academically or socially. More than 80 percent of the students said they submitted class work that misrepresented their real views in order to conform to the progressive views of the professor.” Unfortunately, this isn’t surprising. One should never be grading students’ work based on their own views, but on the strength of the students’ argument and other qualities of the work. Between the anti-Semitism and this, academia is pretty much a disaster right now. However, let’s consider how one responds to this real or perceived cultural oppression.
At one relatively brief point in my life, I felt depressed, not just for myself, but mainly for all the suffering people seemed to experience all the time throughout the world. Even though I was normally a resilient person, everything in my life suddenly felt really hard, one could say, hopeless. Then, through God’s grace, I learned an important lesson. I can’t help anybody else if I allow myself to wallow in this state. All those people I felt bad for needed me to be strong for them. This was a form of spiritual happiness born out of suffering, theirs, my own for them and my own for myself. Their suffering became a source of strength for both of us. I fell further into despair thinking about them than I would have if I had only been thinking about myself, but it was also easier for me to see the light in the darkness because I wasn’t as entangled in the dangerous intimacy of self-pity. Thinking about them helped me keep a healthy distance from myself.
David writes, young people feel that they don’t have anything to believe in; they “believe in nothing.” Arthur writes, “Have faith in the future.” When you choose (and it is a choice) to lose hope, faith or trust, the psychological source is likely pride. Explore your emotions to their depths, and for as surprising as it might seem (because the problem must be the rest of the world, right) that is probably where you’ll land. (See Dante’s Inferno.) This might not be what people want to hear because it’s a lot harder to work on yourself than to burn it all down, but it’s closer to the truth than the (conspiracy) theories circulating in their minds or in the company they keep. Let’s assume that the cultural oppression is real. Is the correction really to burn it all down, or is that an emotional response stemming from your own wounded pride? Nihilism by definition is destructive. To be a spiritually happy person, in spite of any adversity you might be experiencing, personal or vicarious, we are created “to carry forward an ever-advancing civilization.” Is this what you’re doing by abandoning hope, faith or trust? This is surrender not to God’s will but to your own hurt ego. To truly advance civilization, we must set aside our pride and do God’s will.
The Rise of Right-Wing Nihilism
Five Baha’i Lessons for a Happier Life
8/21/25 – We’re not going to tell people how to live their lives, but let us elaborate on why having some grand, overarching plan might not be a good idea. We give you some information, and you decide what you want to do with it. This is your life, and you own it.
We have had conversations with people who have their entire lives mapped out. By such and such age, they will have done such and such things. This has always been a little difficult to understand for someone who is not predisposed, even allergic, to it. If one’s life starts deviating from said grand plan, the impulse is to try to get one’s life back on it. But is this the right thing to do? Usually, people are so focused on “getting it back on track” that they don’t stop to ask this important question. It’s actually an opportunity for discernment.
I remember one distinct moment when this did happen to me. I was surprised that I ended up in this place because it was out-of-character for me. Although I had not noticed it, I had a certain idea where my more recent decisions should lead, and I had also made a mistake. I mistook status and material comfort with living a meaningful life.
At this point, I had the religious understanding and the vocabulary to process my mistake, and I remember thinking, what am I doing? Despite much more challenging periods earlier in my life, it was the only time I had ever felt even mildly disappointed with God. Think about that. Little old me felt disappointed in God. See the comment below about presumptuous and self-important.
I had to actively correct my mindset, which I had never had to do before, one of the perils of getting older. I had to let go, and say, God, where do you want me to go? I surrendered control, and I discerned. I then recognized that I had made a mistake in terms of both my spirituality and my reasoning, and I started trying to swim with God’s current instead of against it, which is practically inviting God to shout at you when you would hear his whispers if you were actually listening.
So, the next time things “aren’t going according to plan,” it might be a blessing in disguise, but you need to be able to recognize it as such. Instead of forcing your life back on your plan, consider simply surrendering and listening to God.
8/20/25 – The proposition of three types of lives: happy, meaningful or psychologically rich is interesting, if a bit simplistic. It does offer an understandable framework to approach one’s life, which can be helpful for many people. We would like to challenge the proposition in a couple ways though. Firstly, happiness is generally not a good goal. It’s too elusive and more like the result of the other two types of lives than an approach to life.
Secondly, even as someone who had almost no support, I took many risks particularly during the psychologically rich period of my life, my youth. Would I characterize this as confidence? No. I was not insecure, but I was also not confident. I just didn’t perceive the risks as really risks. They seemed more like, well, adventures.
So, the question is: Was the psychological foundation actually faith or trust even though I wouldn’t have necessarily understood or expressed it in religious terms at the time? People with deep faith don’t seem vulnerable to fear in the way others are. They can also have a much higher risk tolerance, but they don’t describe it this way. They would describe “risk tolerance,” which is a somewhat negative term, as faith or trust in God to lead them where they need to go.
Additionally, when we read a novel or watch a movie, we suspend disbelief. Maybe to live psychologically rich lives, we need to suspend distrust. This isn’t to imply that we should trust anyone or any situation. I certainly didn’t do that, but I trusted in a more overarching way, aided by a strong dose of youthful ignorant bliss. (Note: There has never been some grand, overarching plan at all to my life. That would not work for me, as it would feel presumptuous and self-important. I am more of a make it up as I go along person.)
Lastly, it does seem true that a meaningful life requires some planning and routine. This aspect might help balance psychological richness, which can sometimes be too experiential oriented and not enough productivity or service oriented. As a general structure, one might want to retain both, meaningful and psychologically rich, throughout one’s life, but psychologically rich seems particularly well suited to one’s younger years while meaningful better suited to one’s older years.
8/19/25 – The United States of America has had two main aspects to its ethos: the soul of a church and innovation. When expressed correctly, they keep each other in balance. People from all over the world come here or want to come here for many reasons, but none of them is for what they want to leave behind. They have dissatisfactions with their home country and see in the United States the possibility for something better. This is why they often take great risks to come to our great country. We do not want the character of our country, as defined here, to change.
The Protestant work ethic and its relationship with capitalism can be taken too far, but we also don’t want socialism or communism. Even in the early church, the expectation was that all of its members would work, given their talents, knowledge, and accommodating for their limitations. Work is not simply about money. It’s about a healthy pride and dignity. We work to serve God and each other. We work because it gives us purpose and allows us to contribute to our communities and our country. We work because it makes us feel like we are needed. The soul of a church also means that we are there for each other. We help each other, historically, out of Christian charity, in secular terms, because it’s the right thing to do.
We do not want immigrants to come to this country because they want to become dependents of a welfare state. We also don’t want that for our indigenous or black members, who have much better claims to entitlements than immigrants or white people. This is not about whether they are entitled to financial compensation for past wrongs. That’s a separate conversation. It is not healthy for anyone, native or immigrant, to feel like a burden or to be dependent on the state when they are capable of working. It is not good for their soul and their relationship with others. Idleness can also give space for bad habits, such as substance abuse, and negative emotions.
We are also a country about innovation (or we were until recently…see posts below). If some members of younger generations prefer socialism or communism, move to those countries. They are waiting for you, but that is not the United States of America. We are the new world. We didn’t have a feudal system. We didn’t have their ancient cultures and traditions that keep those countries more rooted but also less nimble. If they are not happy here – leave. If they do not love what this country has to offer – leave. But our core ethos needs to stay. It isn’t going to change for some flaky, ignorant generations that are unhappy with the present state of affairs.
Capitalism is not perfect; neither is democracy. But they are both better than the alternatives. We are in the midst of redefining capitalism. In case people didn’t notice, a certain person is the Elizabeth Warren of the right. They are both capitalists but with a noticeable statist bent. When it’s both on the right and on the left, there is clearly a dissatisfaction with the way capitalism has been working in this country.
Is there too much inequality? Yes. Were there market failures and subsequent failures to hold its perpetrators accountable? Yes. Does it often feel like there are two sets of rules, one for the rich and one for everyone else? Yes. Yes and yes to so many things. But capitalism needs to stay. Surgically fix the things that are wrong. Don’t make the mistake DOGE made. You don’t move fast and break things. You move smart and fix things, whether that’s healthcare, income inequality, climate change, whatever, and we have to have consensus. This is a capitalist democracy. Respect it.
8/19/25 – The clergy needs to keep their political endorsements out of our churches. The Johnson Amendment might have infringed on First Amendment rights as it relates to sharing one’s opinion with their congregation in-person while simultaneously retaining a tax-exempt status. However, there are a lot of considerations, such as if the services are recorded, etc. It gets murky quickly, and it’s unclear how a law can be written to prevent perverse outcomes, such as a church becoming an extension of a candidate’s or a political party’s campaign.
In any case, it is unwise. It diminishes the clergy’s prophetic voice, and we have our own conscience and intellects that God gave us, our own expression of our religiosity. We will discern for ourselves, and we don’t want the clergy to tell us who to vote for or against. Jesus said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” Churches aren’t giving to Caesar so that they can focus on giving to God what is God’s. The clergy needs to keep straight who they are ultimately serving – God and, in so doing, their faithful, not a politician or a political party.
8/18/25 – We’re not fans of Boomers, who descended on the planet like locusts, but at least they could read.
8/18/25 – The media is filled with one of the dumbest generations in American history, that is Millennials, and they are imposing their moronic groupthink on the nation.
8/17/25 – Whoever The New York Times gets to write on Gen X tends to be inaccurate and engages in generational self-loathing in one respect or another. It is also using these supposed objective analyses to promote the socialist aspiring mayor, who is a Millennial and “good at TikTok” because that’s what we all need in a mayor. Millennials, aka –1, didn’t need to sell out because they were busy watching Paris Hilton (Y2K), dressing like prostitutes, and pining for a corporate, suburban, wannabe-rich lifestyle right from the start while pretending on social media to be somehow cool, urban, and socially conscious. It was pure hypocrisy, not to mention beneath the dignity of any self-respecting younger generation.
This isn’t a question about the distribution of the nation’s resources across generations. They overwhelmingly went to Boomers, who were too enamored with their fiction of earning their lot in life to see how the society itself and their large numbers, which translates into political power, tilted the power structure and the country’s finances in their favor. They remain narcissistically obsessed with the lie that they were somehow better. Better at what? Being totally imbalanced in terms of work/life, corporate a–kissers par excellence, and shallow in terms of the purpose of life?
If it is, in fact, the case that Gen Xers are whining about being “passed over” in corporate America, they need to get over it. They were an entrepreneurial generation, and that’s a much prouder legacy than sucking up to sold-out corporate Boomers whose sole goal in life was enhancing their personal wealth and status and who found Millennials’ flattery as a stamp of approval of their superficial success. If Millennials are more CEO material, good for them. That’s not an enviable status, as the country’s general loathing of them attests. Also, anybody who has worked in the corporate world knows that promotions are often based on kissing a– , not on talent or competence.
The author’s argument is simultaneously that Millennials are both more attractive to said discriminating CEO finders, meaning more successful at the sell-out than Gen X, and lazier and more distrustful of institutions than Gen X, which apparently is not a contradiction. Which is it? What the author is mistaking as Millennials’ skepticism of institutions is, in fact, simply frustration that they didn’t have the advantages of the Boomers, even though Millennials tried as hard as they could to have them. See cancel culture and other cultural obsessions to control the narrative and the powers-that-be.
In consideration of voting patterns, what was it for Barack Obama? Maybe Gen X just likes anti-establishment candidates, and given the level of elite failure and privilege and the anti-meritocracy they have been living through, it’s not too hard to understand why. It’s also not too hard to understand why a generation that is known for entrepreneurialism might not be keen on socialism, like entitled Millennials who want to remake the country in Europe’s image are. Everything should be free. Nobody should work. They should get everything because they’re so morally and intellectually superior, as they have esteemed themselves to be. The generation that got gold stars for showing up now wants everything for simply existing. That’s not how life works. Was it unfair that Boomers got so much? Of course. Is the correction continuing down a financially unsustainable path? No, of course not. We’re all losers, baby, just in different ways.
8/14/25 – Some articles on art, visual and performing, in The New York Times.
What Does It Mean to Be a ‘Very American’ Artist Now?
The Secret Weapon of Dance? Hands!
8/14/25 – American excellence. Patriots.
Is This the Hardest Physical Contest in the World?
8/14/25 – Americans are capable of excellence in every aspect of our lives, not just tech, which has been sucking up too much of our talent. Let’s diversify our talent.
8/13/25 – Now, we are going to try to stay calm, but this is absolutely disgusting. It is hard to do justice to our feelings on this topic with words. Let us just say this for now. Would you go to someone who has, for example, down syndrome and say, “It’s too bad you hadn’t been aborted?” Would you? Would you go to the person and say, “Have you considered suicide?” Would you say this? Now, imagine that the person is expressing their distress about their body or their life and suicidal ideation. Would you then say, “Have you considered ‘assisted’ suicide?” Does the word “assisted” in front of it somehow make it easier on your conscience? What about the words, “It’s legal”? There are people who pour love and effort into helping people with disabilities live a good life with dignity, and you come along and are willing to do this. You are willing to participate in the murder of a fellow human being because someone, somewhere says it’s legal. So many people said that this is a “slippery slope.” It’s more than that though, isn’t it? Some might say, it’s a total and complete ethical failure, a failure of one’s conscience.
Canada Is Killing Itself
8/13/25 – Before we talk about the next subject, which is going to be hard, let’s start with a personal story. When I was in my teens, I wanted to make the most minor change to four of my teeth, my canines. I thought they were a bit too long and pointy. Looking back they were just fine, and I wish I hadn’t done it. Let me reiterate: I wish I had not done it. The dentist, a young man, was uncomfortable with it, but he granted my request to a certain degree. When I asked for a bit more removal to my top two canines. He said that he would not/could not. I was puzzled by this, but he adamantly refused to do anymore. The change is definitely not noticeable to almost anyone. It is very minor, probably around a millimeter. I looked at his face as he was looking down and saying this. He looked pained. I said OK. I never asked again. I obviously could have asked another dentist, but I didn’t. I want to thank this man. He was a good and ethical man. I still remember his obvious discomfort with the request and his refusal, and it changed how I felt about it. It changed how I felt about any changes to my body at all. Even as young and headstrong as I was, it had an impact that remains with me. Sometimes, people tell you “no” because their conscience prevents them from doing certain things, and you need to respect it and really consider why they are refusing to do it. Sure, you have bodily autonomy, but your exercise of it is not always in your interest.
8/12/25 – Apparently, a certain person meant the DJ comment as an insult. Coming from someone who doesn’t seem to have a single genuine joy and has managed to piss off much of the free world, one can take it as a compliment. Can the man retire and move to North Korea? He would find its economy more suited to his tastes.
8/11/25 – Road Trips: America the Weird
8/11/25 – To be clear, we don’t feel nostalgic for our childhoods. Would we ever trade them for childhood these days? Not in a million years, but that doesn’t mean we’re nostalgic. We live in the here and now. The relationships and good habits we formed during our childhood are well-established. When I get on a bike, which is much more infrequent than when I was a kid, which was practically every day during the summer, I don’t feel any different in my relationship to it than I did when I was a kid. It is as if no time has passed. Granted, again, I practically lived on my bike. We aren’t less free now that we’re older because we didn’t change all that much in key respects. Our main points are: the arts, especially music, has noticeably decreased in quality. We are quite unhappy about this. Also, the misuse of technology, which by the way is entirely within people’s control, is damaging young people and our society. Young people aren’t going to fix that by waxing nostalgic and watching AI 80s clickbait on their phones! Come on, people.
8/11/25 – In terms of the sensory sanitation of Paris, it is one of the few cities in the world that lives in the imagination of the artist not as a place but as an aesthetic experience. A sanitized version of this experience is like American music without innovation. To evoke Paris in its sensory saturation and its draw for artists as a source of inspiration, we recommend two books: one fiction, one nonfiction: the novel by Patrick Süskind, Perfume, and a collection of stories about Paris in the 1920s by William Wiser, The Crazy Years.
8/11/25 – Back in the day, Gen X had no tolerance for artists as prostitutes and sellouts. This standard was embodied in Kurt Cobain of Nirvana. Millennials are the reason for this unfortunate change. They seemed to have come into and out of their adolescence with a penchant for narcissistic and opportunistic self-endorsement and with it self-debasement. See influencer culture and the sickness it has inflicted on our society. Whatever Sydney Sweeney’s talents might be, as Frank Bruni of The New York Times describes, she is the embodiment of everything that went wrong when that standard fell. Prostituting oneself to make a buck, especially when you already have plenty, does not align with our expectations for any serious artist. We expect them, as most white-collar and blue-collar professionals do, to make their living with integrity and through their talent and their craft. Being an influencer or a brand is antithetical to artistry. There is the example of Kurt Cobain from a more recent era and there is Michelangelo from a previous one. He once felt ashamed for signing his name on one of his masterpieces; he didn’t need to sign his name on any of his works for a reason. His work was his name. The rest of us mere mortals might need to sign our name for recognition and attribution, but our work must always be our professional name.
8/10/25 – The Book of Job is brilliant and has served as inspiration for artists for centuries. The thing with Catholicism is this. The priests say, “We want you to have a relationship with the Lord.” You say, “OK.” Then, it turns out like what she describes below. And they go, hm. (Feel free to depict as a cartoon in your imagination.)
Translation: We want you have a relationship with the Lord that is similar to the relationship we have. But that’s not how things work, now is it? Firstly, one would hope that the relationship the clergy has with God is different. If it isn’t, then that’s curious. Secondly, in the protestant, especially evangelical tradition, they say, “personal relationship.” Well, if it’s personal, then the nature of the relationship will depend on the person. Ultimately, if it’s supposed to be close, like a good friendship, then like any two friends, the relationship will be unique to them. Again, the excerpt below captures the dynamic well as it relates to the unique expression of her relationship with God. The question for the clergy is: Can you handle the relationship and our expression of our faith as it is, or do we have to make it into your image of what it should be?
“But Spark also admired the God of Job because he was ‘not the God of love,’ Wilson writes. He was the braggart God who boasted to Job that—in Spark’s words—’I made this and I created that, and I can crush and I can blast and I can blow. And who are you to ask questions?’ A devoted ironist is the answer: Spark reserved the right not only to ask questions but to admit amusement and dismay into her faith. Anyone can worship a God who doesn’t trim himself to the size of the human imagination—that’s what God is for, to make sure that we don’t mistake our petty schemes for anything other than half-baked. But it takes a Spark to be fond of a God who chest-thumps and is otherwise outlandish—a God who, she writes, ‘basks unashamed in his own glory, and in his anger is positively blasphemous.’ Because who are we to say how God should behave?”
The Judgments of Muriel Spark
8/10/25 – You can be Christian, and cool and artistic. They are not mutually exclusive. In fact, throughout history, this combination was common. Artsy or not, remember, God loves all of us with a deep and abiding love. Happy Sunday!
My Father, Guitar Guru to the Rock Gods
8/9/25 – Instead of feeling sad or frustrated about the end of the Golden Age of Music, we’re going to feel blessed that we were able to experience and to live it in our youth. Also, there really could be no better end to it than Kurt Cobain giving the man the middle finger. Rock on.
8/9/25 – The stars seemed to have aligned to guide us to this channel to make our present points…. (Quite random find.) When we were young, did we party? Yes, everybody partied. This is not an exaggeration. It was part of the culture. We had different musical preferences. They tended to go with the group or groups you hung out with, and they had corresponding styles, but uniformly, we were social and liked to have a good time. In our late teens and early 20s, we did not worry about career, family, money and all of that. We just lived in the moment. Perhaps it was a gamble. But you can always buy a house. You can never buy your youth back. It comes once, and that’s it. The moment he describes, there were so many moments. It’s hard to remember them all. You have your whole life to get old, neurotic, and preoccupied with the world far too much. You have your youth to be free and to have fun. It lasts a few years, and that’s it.
Are we becoming less human?
8/9/25 – It is fascinating to see how obvious our musical evolution was to people in other countries who were paying attention. See how his description of Golden Age to “by committee” corroborates what we described below about the musical transition to Millennials based on our own lived experiences. They are watching us, even when we are living us and can become oblivious to the fact that the world is still watching us….
8/9/25 – An interesting analysis and argument. The part about Cambodia blew our minds, but it’s the point we made earlier. Our most powerful means of converting the world to democracy, freedom and human rights is done via culture and connection. In any case, see if you agree with him.
Did Clapton change the world?
8/9/25 – These findings match what we’re seeing related to Gen Z’s dating patterns. Older generations basically had to work hard to keep their hormones from getting them in trouble, a natural problem to have when you’re young. Whatever normal anxieties people had in approaching each other during the matching process, whether in schools, coffeeshops, bars, entertainment venues, etc., were overridden by their raging hormones. This is normal and, generally speaking, a prerequisite for coupling and procreation.
When you look at Gen Z, however, that is not what you’re seeing. The “neuroticism” is greater than the biological desire that would then manifest in those prosocial personality traits, especially extroversion. As the author mentions, it is not irreversible; however, the longer this persists, the more damage it will do to the generation and our society and the harder it will be to reverse.
Young Adults May Be Losing Their Ability to Lead Good Lives
8/9/25 – This seems generally correct. People might quibble with the dates, but the broad analysis is right. He doesn’t dig into the conditions that support or damage these periods. See below for some of that.
The REAL Reason Boomer and Gen X Music is the BEST
8/8/25 – Once you start digging into Gen Z’s dating patterns (or lack thereof), it’s terrifying…. We’ve got to get these people offline, or our society is going to fall apart. Who needs the apocalypse when you have social media, dating apps, etc.
8/8/25 – If you look at Shakespeare (English), Dostoevsky (Russian), Michelangelo and Da Vinci (Italian Renaissance) or in our context, the Golden Age of Music, which was the combined Boomer and Gen X periods, there are often cultural conditions that support the arts. These conditions support an ethos of experimentation that the artists embody. Some of these conditions are financial support and artistic freedom, and a knowledgeable and discriminating audience. All great artists need to feel free and secure enough to experiment. They need to take artistic risks, or they cannot innovate. We somehow went from the Golden Age of Music to this awful period of formulaic, safe output that is boring as s—t. This also parallels dysfunctional dating patterns. People are being way too cautious. Tear a page out of the punk handbook, already. Take some risks. You’ll be OK. Humiliation won’t kill you. It just teaches you what not to do or where you can grow. That’s called learning and living. Live a little!
8/8/25 – Is this going to happen or what? Congress and many other people in the country need to get some god—n balls.
Trump Is Letting TikTok (and China) Win
8/8/25 – In the early 90s, the men were more or less fine. They behaved as men had always behaved. They tried to woo a girl; they tried to date them, and hopefully, the relationship went somewhere permanent, meaning marriage. Then, hook up culture took hold, and men seemed more interested in sex than in a meaningful relationship, which always comes with interpersonal challenges and emotional risks. Now, men can’t handle even that. Their egos have become so fragile that they can’t handle the “rejection,” which is par for the course of dating/romantic engagement. Hint: it’s not actually “rejection.” It’s a matching game. Typically, men show their interest, and women get to decide if they think the men will be compatible with them. If the women do not think so, for whatever reason, the men are out of luck. That’s how this works.
The question for both parties: How do you increase your odds that the other person will find you to be a match or, at least, to have enough potential to consider seriously dating you? Is everybody ready for this because it’s as old as time: You have to have desirable qualities. For women, that has historically meant being physically attractive by whatever standard the culture in which they lived had set. While physical attraction is still important, there are (and have always been) other important aspects to compatibility. In countries like India, which still do arranged marriages, the process can seem like an interview. Every aspect of who you are, within and out of your control, is scrutinized. Key aspects include your family, religion, level of education and professional potential even if you end up being a stay-at-home mom. It is explicit matching, and it can be ruthless, particularly for women. (Forgive them if they are not interested in listening to spoiled westerners cry into their avocado toast while listening to overrated musicians singing their diary entries.) If you cannot handle the emotional rigors of this process whether implicit, such as in the modern system, or explicit, such as in the more traditional system, then by default, you’re indicating your unsuitability for marriage. If you can’t handle the matching process, how are you going to deal with the rigors of marriage and likely parenthood?
Also, if you go into this as, you need to accept me as I am instead of I am going to impress you with my character, including my ambition and the exercise of discipline and hard work to realize those ambitions, at least to some meaningful degree (because most ambitious people fall short of their aspirations; it’s the nature of the beast), you are setting yourself up for failure right from the start. Would you go to a woman and say, I’m an alcoholic or a drug-addict, don’t you want to marry me? No, of course not. It’s no different for other forms of addiction: video games, porn, cellphones, social media, etc. It’s an addiction, meaning you lack the willpower that is an inevitable requirement for success in life. By the way, this applies to men and women.
The problem for men is the same problem that has damaged the society at large. Everybody has gotten soft, partly because they did not realize and/or take seriously enough the damage that technology was doing to them on a holistic level. Addiction of any kind is not marriage material. Lacking ambition is not appealing. A deficit of emotional resilience is not viable in the context of relationships or life. Life is hard, and the onus is on you, man or woman, to show prospective partners that you can not just handle it but excel in spite of it. You adapt to the world; you don’t expect the world to adapt to you. The world is never going to change for anybody. That is not the message Millennials and younger have been sent. Read the commentary below and how it has set up our society for failure. Thank you, and Happy Friday.
8/7/25 – This content is being produced free of charge to you – not to us. We are not influenced by anyone. We are not paid by anyone. We are not beholden to anyone. We are way too independent for that, and that’s how it’s going to stay. We will exercise our prerogatives as we see fit. One of those prerogatives is being critical of whoever and whatever that deserves it. The news media has failed the American people and the country in many ways, not just in terms of political coverage. In fact, the more we analyze it, the greater failure was actually cultural. If you watch, for example, MJ’s concert in post-communist Romania or Billy Graham’s sermons, the real power is people not politics, policies, and pointy headed elites. It’s through the culture and the values that we share with the rest of the world in emotionally connected ways. What we lose when we lose these giants is immense. We need a culture that can produce them, and we don’t have that right now. The news media played a significant role in this decline, and they need to be held accountable for it.
8/7/25 – It is rather surprising to see how many men openly wept at MJ’s concerts. Apparently, men can be moved, especially during…calls for action, such as Heal the World and Man in the Mirror. It reveals a lot about the male psyche. MJ is not a “man’s man,” masculine in the traditional sense, and perhaps that helped them feel safe enough to be vulnerable. The songs suggest it’s more than that though. We’ve said this before. Men need to feel needed. You don’t need Joe Rogan to access men. You need authentic connection that calls on them to be their best, just like you would with women or anybody else.
8/7/25 – But like usual with these people, the oxymoronic “athleisure” isn’t about athleticism or leisure. It’s about creating the impression of being a certain kind of person. Like we said from the start of this series of posts, Millennials turned everything they touched into an opportunity for superficial, narcissistic expression. They did not gaze into a pool of water to see an image of themselves as they are. They gazed into it to see an image of themselves as they imagined themselves to be, and they wanted the world to see them in the same way. That’s just not how the world works. If you want to be seen as fit and athletic, you need to put in the work. You can’t just put on the “athleisure.” If you want to be cultured and smart, you need to put in the work. The generation that got gold stars just for showing up never learned these lessons, and it shows.
8/7/25 – “Athleisure” as a word is oxymoronic. It’s also oxymoronic to be so fit and athletic that you’re too lazy to change your outfit.
8/7/25 – A note on the website. Nothing is being deleted. It’s just being reorganized, which is long overdue, to better manage the increasing volume of content. We will do this as time permits, which is another way of saying it’s going to be slow and intermittent because there is usually not much time.
8/6/25 – Apparently, while we were absorbed in our cultural critique, there seemed to be some obsession on social media about recessive blue jeans…. (Genes are recessive for a reason.) You people are such suckers. You spent your time on this. We are not going to be spending time on that. However, we will comment on physical aesthetics.
Let’s continue talking about MJ. Back when he became a megastar, probably the greatest single star the world has ever seen, he looked like a handsome black man. Although he maintained a dancer’s body throughout his life, his physical appearance changed dramatically. Obviously his skin color, but also, quite noticeably his features.
Let’s be honest. He was more handsome when he looked like a black man. He looked natural and sexy. None of this changed his immense talent and commitment to his craft, but he made unnecessary changes to his appearance that detracted from his natural good looks, and the theatrical facial expressions that would add an extra dimension to his great performances became a little distorted. Compare his face in Thriller to his face after all the plastic surgery.
Insecurity manifests itself in many ways. There is the MJ way, who had much better excuses than most people on the Internet, and there is also the fighting about idiotic things online way. As someone who is not blond and blue-eyed and has no desire at all to be, who cares. OK, some people find it hot. It can be depending on the person. It can also be quite unattractive. There are also many people who don’t find it that attractive. It’s called personal preferences.
Now, let’s continue being honest. Slender is sexy. Healthy is hot. Most people don’t want to be fat. Most people don’t want to be unhealthy. There is nothing wrong with wanting to look good, healthy, hot, sexy, pretty, beautiful, graceful, elegant, whatever aesthetic target people are aiming for. If people want to keep this real though, that target is never ugly.
8/5/25 – Smooth Criminal
8/5/25 – The man is 50-years-old. Think about that. Look at him. On a more personal and ordinary-life level, I could toil away in my garden in 90-degree heat for 10 hours straight if I wanted to. (I usually stop at 7 or so just to keep things reasonable because I’m aware that I’m older.) My feet would hurt by the end, but that’s pretty much it. I spent my entire childhood being very physically active. I know that many young people half my age would have a hard time doing that. We can’t allow this to continue for so many reasons. Aside from all the ones mentioned before, it is unhealthy. You need to develop that endurance over your life, starting young. Sitting in front of a screen for hours when you’re young sets you up for health problems down the line. You won’t be able to have that level of physical endurance.
Michael Jackson’s This Is It
8/5/25 – American culture was once the envy of the world. We produced more outstanding artists than the world could keep up with. News media = incompetent losers with bad taste, vulnerable to talentless, narcissistic bulls–t artists (see Millennials), and they have contributed greatly to our cultural decline. The news media will turn this tragic situation around, or they don’t deserve to exist.
8/5/25 – What kind of a news media elevates a generation, Millennials, whose greatest contributions were video game addiction, cellphone addiction, social media addiction, and culturally, on the things that actually matter, -1? They talked a lot. They achieved nothing. Now, their time is up. We want to see something artistically phenomenal before our time is up on this planet. The culture needs to change.
8/5/25 – Smooth Criminal
8/4/25 – Rewatching some of those videos. They just get better with time. The artistry and the insane choreography. Good god could that man dance. Even with all of the difficulties, Gen X might have been the luckiest generation….
8/4/25 – Thriller made MTV. Politics and Reality TV killed it. (See below the description of the cultural shift from the 80s to punk/grunge.) Sound familiar? Politics and social media are killing childhood and the arts. It has to stop.
The Golden Age of MTV — And Yes, There Was One
8/4/25 – This is great! Let’s keep moving in this direction. Aside from the divorce rates, Gen X had an excellent childhood. An entire generation learned their ABCs so they could write the word “Thriller.” Immigrants would come to our country, and the first thing they saw were cool dance moves, like the moonwalk. That’s America at its best. Full of talent, driven, disciplined and brilliantly innovative.
Gen X’s childhoods were about riding their bikes to each other houses and playing outside with their friends. A significant portion of conversations were about music, movies, and dance – the arts. They also watched MTV for this reason, thus dubbed “the MTV generation.” That is living, and that’s what childhood should be.
Also, when you are exposed to the arts from an early age, you develop discerning tastes. It became part of Gen X’s ethos and identity because they had been talking about it and following it since they were kids. Gen X was a small generation that managed to give one of the largest generations in world history, the Boomers, a run for its money in terms of creative output. It could do this because it started early. Independence, being outside and the arts were integral parts of its upbringing.
Gen X gave Millennials a lot to work with. See below. They squandered it. Their contribution was the Millennial Whoop. That’s -1. They could have done nothing and been at zero. We’re hoping Gen Z does better. If it does nothing, it would do better. We’re hoping it can actually enter positive territory. Innovate. Younger generations have to innovate.
What Kids Told Us About How to Get Them Off Their Phones
8/3/25 – PS This is not an exhaustive list. That would take too long. There was metal, heavy metal, New Jack Swing, other musical innovations, and local music scenes with their own sounds. Aesthetics also accompanied many of them. Go and do your research for a more comprehensive survey. This is a broad-brush description to make the point. Gen X youth knew the arts, especially music, and they were demanding. Was it all over the place? It was, and it was glorious. To get new and to make your mark, you have to have substantive knowledge. You can’t fake it. All the BS that happens on social media is just making young people delusional. Like we said before, their brains are being decoupled from reality.
8/3/25 – On this glorious Sunday, because every Sunday is, let us go back in time and evolve with Gen X. Hopefully, people will understand the difference between an actual culture and the informational sewer pipe we have now. Gen X was born between 1965 and 1980, a small but turns out rather influential generation, not because there was anything special about them, just because of the line of demarcation provided below.
In the 1980s, there was the Reagan-era optimism that infected the native population and immigrants alike. There was a strong sense of patriotism and a palpable hunger for personal success. It was captured rather well in the music. Think about, for example, Prince or Michael Jackson and the discipline and passion that went with the talent. The movies were also really good. It was a creative, positive period. Sartorially, preppy was in.
Then, with divorce rates rising, the darker side of this national ambition started to show itself. Parents became career-focused, and a generation of latchkey kids had part-time parents. The kids ended up quite independent but also somewhat jaded and disillusioned.
Being a naturally expressive and creative group of people, this led to the punk and the grunge movements, which were quite counter-cultural. It formed the foundation for what we now understand as alternative, which had an aesthetic that matched the culture. Flannel, Dr. Martens, and baggy jeans were in. Many people also did vintage.
The music of the prior era, which was excellent, started feeling too pop, too commercial, and they wanted something different. The negative side of this evolution was an indulgence that could be somewhat self-destructive. Both of these cultural shifts coexisted, and if Gen X is being honest, even as they evolved, they still wanted some MJ on the dance floor, meaning both parts were within their own sensibilities and lived experiences.
Toward the end of their formative period, hip hop and a skater aesthetic started to enter the scene. The old-school hip hop was better than what is being created now because it was actually new. It grew organically from the youth that kept wanting the culture to reflect its own evolution and changing preferences – its own desire for the tradition of the new. All of these styles and ways of being coexisted. It was a beautiful mess. There was a strong drive to be cultured, to know the world, the arts, and to impress others with actual substance, not the impression fetish we have now.
And then, things basically stopped. Where the next generation should have taken up the mantle, that didn’t happen. Nothing truly new evolved from them. What you see now are bastardized versions of what already existed. The hip hop and skater aesthetic lost connection to the culture and became a generalized lazy way of dressing. Alternative became hipster. And so on. The cultural connection to the aesthetic preferences became severed.
It all became superficial because the organic creative production that usually comes from the youth of that generation that should drive the cultural shifts weren’t really there. Instead, the creativity dried up, and the culture became coopted by the powers-that-be. When a generation, Millennials, is associated with the same musical sound, the Millennial whoop, something has gone off the rails. Compare this creative stagnation with what came right before, and it is frankly sad. This is what happens when you spend all your time staring at your phone. The younger generations deluded themselves into thinking they were really cool, trendsetters and whatnot, but they didn’t produce anything cool. The tradition of the new died. Happy Sunday!
8/2/25 – Discipline takes work. It’s worth it. It’s one of the best ways to show oneself self-respect.
8/2/25 – Right, and much worse. Either fix this, or prepare for the country to be conquered by a foreign enemy, and we have many now, possibly the entire world. A debased citizenry, which is what these younger generations are, is simply unsustainable. Their level of pretty much everything is lower. It’s evident in every aspect of their lives. Turn this around, or expect the worst.
Thinking Is Becoming a Luxury Good
8/2/25 – Speaking of body positivity, people need to stop using God as “motivation” for their diets. Fasting as a spiritual exercise is not the same as dieting to lose weight overlaid with performative piety to hit one’s weight targets.
8/2/25 – Why believe our opinion of the obvious decline of good fashion sense? Let’s ask AI. See the informational sewer pipe expresses itself in many ways. Like a cancer, it spread lazy, fast fashion that has become the bane of the country. One could make the argument that in no other country, even ones that are considerably poorer than ours, do its people dress so badly.
“Generation X fashion is characterized by classic pieces influenced by the punk movement, focusing on quality and timeless styles. Millennials favor bold, statement-making outfits with a penchant for athleisure, while Generation Z embraces high-waisted jeans and thrifted ‘grandpa’ styles, often prioritizing comfort and individuality in their fashion choices.”
Fashion Influences:
“Gen X: Music and movies of the ’80s and ’90s; punk and grunge movements. [This is actual culture.]
Millennials: Social media and pop culture; influenced by the ‘YOLO’ mindset. [This is the informational sewer pipe, not culture.]
Gen Z: Digital content and social consciousness; focuses on body positivity. [Same]”
*Italics added.
8/1/25 – We understand that with everything going on in the world, such as starving Gazans due to the cruelty and selfishness of Hamas, Netanyahu and Israel’s extreme right, and our imminent banana republic status (see firing people because one doesn’t like the data), this might not rank highly on areas of importance. However, it is an eyesore, and it is unpleasant to be subjected to it – every single day. Could we get the young people to, well, dress better? There are many options: preppy, vintage, bohemian, beachy, etc. Pick a style – any decent style. We don’t want to see sweats, exercise attire and other crappy clothes – all the time. The Wall Street Journal reports that Gen Z have (re)discovered SeaVees. This is good. Retro, recycled materials and stylish. Could they keep moving in this direction? For anyone with even modest means, the way one dresses is an expression of taste and self-respect. We can’t have entire generations prioritize comfort and comfort alone. It reflects sloth, and that is never a good look.