Reviews by Whitewave

Do you want to know... what... it... is?Do you want to know... what... it... is?

2005-02-28T07:44:06Z

My fairly concise ideas about postmodernity...My fairly concise ideas about postmodernity...

2005-02-22T05:54:55Z

I just wrote all this in response to a comment on Jason Clark's blog and decided that it's mine and I should really be putting at least this much effort into my own blog. Duh. I love Jase, he brings out the best in me. Postmodernity is not in competition with Christianity. Even if they say they are, they're not. Lemme 'splain.Jesus came during a premodern world system. What that was exactly is debatable since there couldn't be enough cohesion in the world for it to have one single system anyway - and histories don't deal with world epistemologies. But the system in place in the Jewish world at the time was a glom of several world systems, all corrupt and all oppressive. Once Jesus did His thing, something changed. His strange pov really threatened Worldly hierarchy systems because it was not rude, condescending and oppressive, so they were very suspicious of Him and His followers.Then came Constantine. He turned The Gospel into another World system - Authoritative Direct Revelation. Once again people were oppressed and harmed (we were just as rude and condescending as the corrupted Jewish Leaders of Jesus' day.) NOT BECAUSE OF THE GOSPEL but because of the worldly system that grew around it.The oppressed people fought back (as academia) and challenged Christianity at the point of entry. Epistemology. How could we know that we know anything about God and His plan? They devised a new system of knowing - Reason and Scientific Inquiry - and told us that ours - Direct Revelation - was invalid.We fought back by ADOPTING THEIR SYSTEM OF KNOWING and then using it to prove that Christianity was true. We thought we had them. But in reality they had us. Again, we used this system to oppress and harm people!So they (academia) fought back again! They did it the same way, though this time they went in the opposite direction. Once again they invalidated all our systems of knowing - Reason and Direct Revelation - and told us that there is now NO reliable system of knowing. At all.YOU ARE HERE ---> there is no valid system of knowing [...]

Review - Lemony Snicket's: A Series of Unfortunate EventsReview - Lemony Snicket's: A Series of Unfortunate Events

2005-02-28T08:00:33Z

Book - Confessions of an Economic Hit ManBook - Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

2005-01-28T22:20:13Z

I have been completely absorbed by something very disturbing. I've been reading a book called, "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins. Here's the Prologue. I belong to a weekly Bookgroup composed of myself, my best friend, a retired pastor and two MFCCs (I forget who's the ...ologist and who's the ...iatrist, sorry guys). At Paul's request, we are reading this book. Now Paul and I differ in political tendencies, so at first I thought I was gonna have to have one of them give me a prescription of lithium just to get through this book. But it turns out (as it often does) that that would have dulled my instinct to solve problems. I have been poring and obsessing over two projects since starting this book. I emailed Dinesh D'Souza who's research and writing on economics I have respected and enjoyed and in a fit of pathetic confusion and sense of betrayal, wondered in print if he was an EHM and if not, what he was gonna do about this. I have nearly completed my design and Call for the formation of a local Christian Community that will concentrate on sustainable, productive living so as to bless the local community and beyond to the World.Mr. D'Souza has been very gracious to accept my request that he look into this guy's story, but will have to put it off until he gets through some research that he's currently in the middle of. I will have to keep myself busy with other things while I wait so as not to panic and bug him even more. The sense of urgency I feel is overwhelming. I'll write some stuff in my profile later about the Community thing, as it's quite lengthy and I want it to always be easily accessible. I really cannot stand the idea of American-Dreaming my life away while victims of our secret economic policies are starving and dying. I've told my daughter about my intention and asked for her thoughts. She's teasing me about starting a cult. Poor thing. It's hard being my daughter. I'm thinking of trying some other things too but I'll have to think them through very carefully. I'm anticipating some polemic wars about this, so let me be up front. I am politically Conservative. This book has not changed my mind about political loyalties because the problem transcends party politics. This problem transcends everything we normally think of as politics, period. In fact this is one of the biggest Principalities and Powers (see the "Connection to Faith" section in my review for "The Incredibles") I've ever seen. It is very much like one of those visual aids that Daniel was shown about Empires and Kingdoms. You know, the ones that made him so sick that he went to bed and ate nothing for days! Horrifying! The Monster is huge and gobbles up the right and the left and everyone in between. No one is immune. The stated goals for the Republican Party as condensed in "The Oath" are good ones and I agree with them. But they are only stated goals; and they, along with any other statements coming from any organization with it's fingers in the pie, are becoming empty and pointless. I am afraid for my Country and for the World and for my friends and for those who think they hate me because I'm an American. We're all being played in this deadly game. Last Saturday, I attended my best friend's son's Eagle Scout Award ceremony. As I sat there and watched these men and boys talk about the ideals of The Boy Scouts and my friend's beautiful proclamation of how much they have blessed her throughout her life by being kind and respectful towards her as a girl, I messed up my mascara crying in agony over the incongruity of it all. Here's the list of what a Scout is: Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, Reverent And, of course, the Oath is something that everyone has heard and heard mocked: On my honor I will do my best To do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; To help other people at all times; To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight. [...]

A Useful ReferenceA Useful Reference

2005-01-18T22:44:28Z

I've been far too busy lately trying to establish my ground and not enough time using that ground to do my work. If a farmer waits too long to plant his seed, he may miss an entire season. So here I am. I've been trying to figure out how to put a blogroll on this thing, but I think I have to go outside of blogger to do it. I don't feel confident enough to mess with that just yet, so I've decided to make a post listing as many of the blogs that I read as I can remember. I'll make that a separate entry so that it can stand alone and not have all this intro junk on it. For now, I'd like to pass on some interesting info that I came across the other day. It happened on the way to trying to find a definition for "onanism" because I'm working on a big thing about The Matrix that I'd like to open up to the world eventually. Yeah, I had to look up that word. I had no clue. I heard Ghost say it in the computer game clip section on the Ultimate dvd collection thing that I got. I thought it was some mystery religion. Maybe it is in a way... I'm a dork. So, while I was figuring out how to spell it correctly (how humiliating), I stumbled upon this link: The Skeptics Annotated Bible It fascinated me how much effort (and bandwidth) these people were putting into denying the validity of the Bible. But that aside, I made note of the list of issues on the right side of the page which they deemed important enough to give icons to and categorize their objections under. This list is very informative. Before anyone goes off half-cocked and says that's the list we need to root out their weaknesses and debate them on... lets take a moment to contemplate the fact that the Church has not done enough to remove the need for such a list... Some of the items on the list are purely reactionary such as: "Family Values", "Cruelty and violence", "Sex" and "Language". Those identify the things that we typically complain about in secular society, but have not lived out, thought out or at least articulated clearly enough to help people understand what God is after, so they feel the need to call attention to our hypocrisy. Good call. Since Hollywood Jesus itself focuses on mass market entertainment and said entertainment is a major concern for Christians for the reasons listed here, I think we need to look hard and long at this and try and figure out why we're not being understood correctly. And then there are the 20th Century Civil Rights issues which created the need for proactive interest groups such as: "Injustice", "Intolerance", "Women" and "Homosexuality". Those, ironically, reflect the standards of relating as human beings being raised in the secular arena, while the quality gap widens between that world and the Church. The Church is certainly in upheaval about the morality issues and bringing all the science, psychology, philosophy and hermeneutic to bear on it as it can, but rarely does it make it's stance on how to behave lovingly very clear. This is a thorn in their side. [Sidebar:] Read a rippin' great book on this issue recently called, "Slaves, Women & Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis" by William J. Webb. Every Christian should read the Forward and pages 13-66. The rest is for egg-heads. I wish that section were printed separately as a kind of tract for people in the church, with a web-address to the rest tacked on at the end. So few people who attend church actually understand the subtleties of interpretation and application and it's impact. Nor do many realize how flexible we can be and still maintain orthodoxy. It's so important. [Back to the list of issues:] The issues I have the least appetite to deal with are the Reason and Logic ones such as: "Absurdity", "Contradictions", "Prophecy" and "Science and History". This stuff irritates me to no end because as I've been discussing with some others lately about the Bible, the rules of debate are corrupted and they provide a place for people witho[...]

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