The mystery of the 12,000

Actually, the 12,000 hits to which I referred was in regards to the Christian Century article by Howard Mumma; which given the significance of the subject matter, is quite low indeed. But I am not suprised, and this non-reaction is the perhaps in part one reason that Camus chose not to make public his interest in the Bible; which is to say that that most of his readers would be deeply disappointed because they were reading him as one similarly disaffected as they were themselves after 2 world wars. The non-Christian existentialists existed, if you will, to damn the church and not to praise it, not even faintly; to get away from the church, not to embrace it. Apparently Camus in the end found his progress thwarted by his willingness to stand in judgement on other people, the very thing he tried to avoid in his fiction. It is an easy thing to do and a very comfortable resting place inhabited by billions--but it's a little crowded too...I know...more on the Christian community later, per Bonhoffer.

I have noticed this tendency to flee references to the Spirit/God and/or "church" in many other instances. To blatantly publish reams of opinion about Walker Percy or Flannery O'Connor without the trace of a reference to their Mainspring is to miss not only the point of their writing but to the significance they gave to their own existences. Percy in particular was most deeply influenced by S. Kirkegaard--a church guard, no less, and more thoroughgoingly a Christian than many thinkers (and non-thinkers) today in the religion biz. But I guess that critics usually think they are smarter than the writers themselves, any old how.

In regards to hits: I am being told by my own church magazine that blogs, after deeply influencing even elections in the recent past, are no longer relevant. So that I should in future restrict myself to sound bites, bon mots, brief quotations, and bumper-sticker philosophy.

This simply illustrates what Neil Postman and others have been saying about the inability of people conditioned to speed and entertainment alone, to be able to follow any kind of a sustained argument, such as might be found in Pascal or Montaigne or even Abe Lincoln. Are the governed to consent to rulers--like unto Rehoboam-- that cannot enlighten even themselves, or benefit from an actual accumulation of wisdom? Both Oscar Wilde and Alvin Toffler and many others in between and since have given us fair warning of unfair weather up ahead--"there is more to life than increasing its speed." One could also include brevity. The soul of wit, sure, but of what else?

The Japanese did not invent haiku because they were in a hurry!!!

To compromise on this is, for me, absolutely pointless. Its like compromising with Onkel Adolph-- it's never enough--as is the case with so many instances of "people-pleasing." If one is given a specific ability and told by God in various ways to use it, what of stats and "give the people what they want"? If that were not enough, there is the burgeoning presence of ageism. If young people will not tune in to anyone under 30, well, that's not only natural but it's their continual loss, and they will be burned by their own torches in not a short while because their own children also will be only content to carry their own torches and to obliterate those torches the previous generation tries to pass on. If there is no passing of wisdom, if each generation has to re-invent itself, it certainly would explain why we blindly barge ahead technologically but in no other wise, if I may pun. And is it not "tech" itself that we allow to drive us forward at an insane pace? Which no one will be able to sustain? This is the degrading of even information, much less meaning and depth?