Some more links

October 27, 2021

This is an interesting piece but a weird piece about young people and religion.  It seems to be all about what they say about themselves, but in fact what we need to know is what they do, whether they recognize it or not.  This piece would be very different if it asked the following question: so you’re not institutionalized into institutional religions, how exactly do you spend your day?  I would suspect the largest institutional fact about every one of the young people interviewed here would be—on their phones and social media.  Which is most definitely its own kind of institutionalization.  And yet it never appears once in this article.  (Which many people would have read, of course, on their phones.)

 

This is a really good podcast, that mostly avoids “both-sidesism”, about the brouhaha about the phrase “critical race theory.”  Mostly it avoids engaging the GOP’s ridiculousness about it, with all participants—Michelle Goldberg, John McWhorter, and Jane Coaston the host—basically admitting the GOP is exploiting it as a racist talking point.  But McWhorter makes the most interesting case I’ve heard for there being real problems with discourse on the left about race.  Everyone is astute and thoughtful, and when it was done, I felt enlightened.  Definitely worth a listen.

 

Very moving article about Leonard Cohen, traversing the whole of his life.  Almost a biographical essay, really. Very much worth your time. 

 

Gotta say this piece made me think, I don't watch Dave Chappelle a lot but there do seem to be a lot of Rorshach tests out there today.  Maybe this piece is one, too. 

 

This seems good: “now, for the first time in close to three decades, the economic boom Democrats are creating will give the party a new way to frame its economic policies and its economic record. This will require more than just taking credit for economic gains. It requires explanation—because the shifts we are seeing are happening against the backdrop of a decades-long effort to entrench a set of beliefs about what the economy is and how it works.”

 

“There's a longstanding debate over whether the Olmec civilization led to the development of the Maya civilization or if the Maya developed independently.“ New findings suggest deeper connections. Very interesting if you are interested in pre-Columbian meso American civilizations.

 

A fine rememberance of Adam Zagajewski. “Your writings, dear Adam, propose a perspective that is strangely uncommon among poets of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries: you bend toward mystery, allowing praise in, despite the odds.”


Be well, try to praise the mutilated world, wherever you are, however you can.