All American Presidents come to the office with a past. This was no less true of Woodrow Wilson as it was of Warren Harding, Jack Kennedy, or Bill Clinton. Wilson, like those just mentioned was rumored to have been a womanizer and this womanizing came back to bite him during his Presidency.
Those that put the bite on Wilson came to him through a close knit constituency that had supported Wilson in his candidacy for President. This constituency was the Jewish presence in America. Leading American Industrialists noted this tight knit relationship with the Jewish vote by writing, “The Jews made much of Woodrow Wilson, far too much for his own good. They formed a solid ring around him.” One of those Jewish leaders in Wilson’s inner circle was New York attorney Samuel Untermyer.
This same Untermyer was retained as a lawyer by one of Wilson’s former flames in order to try and discreetly take care of a potential breach of promise action against Wilson by this former Wilson mistress. Untermyer had been a supporter of the Wilson campaign and a contributor to boot. Untermyer came to Wilson hoping that the case could be taken care of discreetly without public embarrassment to the President.
The problem was that Wilson’s former paramour, who had remarried since the previous dalliance, had a step-son whom she was fond of who was in hock to the tune of 40K. The damsel, through Untermyer was hopeful that the President would have access to the funds to help her step-son get out of debt and in return she would surrender Wilson’s steamy love letters, which were now in Untermyer’s possession.
President Wilson conveyed his gratitude that the “lady” in question was trying to discreetly take care of this situation as opposed to going to a Republican lawyer who would make political hay out of Wilson’s indiscretion. Wilson, however had a couple problems. First of all he didn’t have 40 thousand dollars laying around. Secondly, hone didn’t think it wise to publish his need for that money to supporters given the questions that would naturally arise. (We must keep in mind that 40K in the early 20th century was a large sum of money in today dollars.)
Untermyer offered a solution to Wilson that would satisfy all parties. Untermyer offer that,
1.) Untermyer himself would, out of his own pocket, provide the needed 40K
2.) Untermyer assured Wilson that the breach of promise lawsuit would never see the light of day
3.) Untermyer promised Wilson that he would place the love letters in a safe place where no one would ever see them
The only quid pro quo that Untermyer asked was that Wilson would consider Untermyer’s counsel when the next Supreme Court Justice opening required Wilson’s appointment. That vacancy soon did occur and Untermyer suggested that the jurist Louis Brandeis be named the first Jewish Justice to the Supreme court. Untermyer’s suggestion became President Woodrow Wilson’s appointment.
Sources,
Lundberg, Ferdinand, America’s Sixty Families (New York: Vanguard Press, 1937).
Murphy, Bruce Allen. The Brandeis/ Frankfurter Connection.
Viereck, George Sylvester, The Strangest Friendship in History (New York: Liveright, Inc., 1932).
Wise, Jennings, Woodrow Wilson: Disciple of Revolution (New York: Paisley Press, 1938).
Freedman, Benjamin, Facts are Facts
Coleman, John, One World Order
.
Zionism definition: an international movement originally for the establishment of a Jewish national or religious community in Palestine and later for the support of modern Israel. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/zionism
Corporatism definition:the organization of a society into industrial and professional corporations serving as organs of political representation and exercising control over persons and activities within their jurisdiction.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/corporatism
Unilateral definition: constituting or relating to a contract or engagement by which an express obligation to do or forbear is imposed on only one party.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unilateral
I hope these are what you wanted and are accurate definitions.
The Definition of Zionism: A Jewish movement that arose in the late 19th century in response to growing anti-Semitic and sought to reestablish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Modern Zionism is concerned with the support and development of the state of Israel.
Zionism, Jewish nationalist movement that has had as its goal the creation and support of a Jewish national state in Palestine, the ancient homeland of the Jews (Hebrew: Eretz Yisraʾel, “the Land of Israel”). Though Zionism originated in eastern and central Europe in the latter part of the 19th century, it is in many ways a continuation of the ancient nationalist attachment of the Jews and of the Jewish religion to the historical region of Palestine, where one of the hills of ancient Jerusalem was called Zion.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Zionism
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/657475/Zionism
The Definition of Corporatism: Corporatism, also known as corporatism has more than one meaning. It may refer to political or social organization that involves association of the people of society into corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labor, military, patronage, or scientific affiliations, on the basis of common interests.[1] Corporatism is theoretically based upon the interpretation of a community as an organic body.[2][3] The term corporatism is based on the Latin root word “corpus” (plural – “corpora”) meaning “body”.[3]
In the last half of the 19th century people of the working class in Europe were beginning to show interest in the ideas of socialism and syndicalism. Some members of the intelligentsia, particularly the Catholic intelligentsia, decided to formulate an alternative to socialism which would emphasize social justice without the radical solution of the abolition of private property. The result was called Corporatism. The name had nothing to do with the notion of a business corporation except that both words are derived from the Latin word for body, corpus.
http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/corporatism.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism
The definition of Unilateral: 1. Of, on, relating to, involving, or affecting only one side: “a unilateral advantage in defense” (New Republic).
2. Performed or undertaken by only one side: unilateral disarmament.
3. Obligating only one of two or more parties, nations, or persons, as a contract or an agreement.
4. Emphasizing or recognizing only one side of a subject.
5. Having only one side.
6. Tracing the lineage of one parent only: a unilateral genealogy.
7. Botany Having leaves, flowers, or other parts on one side only.
1.
relating to, occurring on, or involving one side only: unilateral development; a unilateral approach.
2.
undertaken or done by or on behalf of one side, party, or faction only; not mutual: a unilateral decision; unilateral disarmament.
3.
having only one side or surface; without a reverse side or inside, as a Möbius strip.
4.
Law.
a.
pertaining to a contract that can be formed only when the party to whom an offer is made renders the performance for which the offer or bargains.
b.
pertaining to a contract in which obligation rests on only one party, as a binding promise to make a gift.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/unilateral
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/unilateral
Rebecca Bacon, Wednesday Modernity Class, 9/11/13
Review on last year
Modernity is the work of deGoding God and engoding man. Modernity is said to have started in 1789 with the French Revolution. Some say that it ended in 1989, but it is still going on today.
“You know who you are ruled by, by those you dare not criticize.”
When campaigning for his second term in office (1916), Wilson’s slogan was: “I kept your boys out of war.” He promised change and to get the economy running. But when he got in he fell back on his promises and got involved with war. Wilson was involved with the New World Order (NWO).
Colonel E. House was Wilson’s right hand man and also, as said; his alter-ego.
Lincoln, Wilson and Roosevelt were the trinity of bad presidents. Wilson was a man of the left even more than Roosevelt.
Zionist – a worldwide Jewish movement that resulted in the establishment and development of the state of Israel.
1921- War Recession for eighteen months.
The Corporate “Fat Cats” don’t want any competition because they are already on top.
Corporatism – the principles, doctrine, or system of corporative organization of a political unit, as a city or state.
“The more you earn, the more you are charged.”
The seventeenth and sixteenth amendments were changed during Wilson’s term and he created the Federal Reserve.
Power shifts from the individual to the Central Government.
Republicans- Isolationists: they want to mind their own business.
Republicans- Progressives: they want what the Democrats want, but a little bit less.
But they are trying to convince us that these are the same thing, but they aren’t.
Wilson’s 14 points
70 million causalities- WWI
You would feel better to surrender if the enemy promised you that the terms would be easy. Germany surrendered to Wilson because he promised not to make hard terms for them. But he lied and made it an unconditional surrender.
Popular Treaties
1. Versailles treaty was the treaty that ended WWI.
When Wilson crossed the sea, to argue his 14 points, he was the first president to do so. When he went he only brought “Eggheads”; no politicians with him. This left a bad taste in the politician’s mouths.
Because of WWI, Germany was forced onto land which belonged to others (in Europe), which caused friction, which caused WWII. Germany’s land was demolished after WWI, but the Zionists came in and started buying up all of Germany’s industries.
The winner of a war is the one who writes the history. When they do, they make the looser look bad, and themselves look really good.
2. Saint Germain-en-laye treaty
3. Trianon treaty
4. Sevres treaty
5. Lusuanne treaty
Bella Kuhn (Nee-Cohen) went to Hungary and tried to set up a communist demise. He basically tried to De-Christianize Hungary. But he failed because he got pushed out after a year or so.
If people know there are terrorists and blood-thirsty people in their neighborhood, it will cause fear.
What Wilson really wanted was a League of Nations. There is one now but it has a different name; The United Nations. He eventually died of a heart-attack. The reason he wanted a League of Nations was because he basically wanted to rule the world.
We wouldn’t be Christians if we weren’t waring against Muslims and Jews.
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
“The most dangerous aspiration of any man is to do something that has never been done before.” -C.S. Lewis
A long poem written in an attempt to relate the sort of documented corruption you mention with what I know of God’s Word, the goal to contextualize conspiracy within our life time in an honest and inspirational fashion.
Cosmic Truth
Fluctuating, inconsistent, yet to truth, he’s much resistant.
Presents himself a mystery. Offers what you want for free.
Not alone, he has a team, although they mostly go unseen.
As hockey lines, go in and out, changing’s what he’s all about.
He brings his fans, all to their knees, he’s buying off more referees.
Don’t wonder, if he’s real or not, he ties an endless slipping knot.
These once ejected, party crashers, seek revenge, through sin disasters.
Frustrate those who serve the truth, ever asking for more proof.
Tempting men to do his will, with promises, he can’t fulfill.
Revealing what he’s not about, camouflaged, within, without,
Nested dolls, turned inside out, confusion, chaos, full of doubt.
Impersonating right and wrong, advertising weak as strong.
Dependent on the truth to lie, Lucifer, he’s one bad guy.
He’s powerless upon our soul, if we believe in truth’s control.
You see he guides conspiracy, against the truth, and you and me,
All grist for his grinding mill, to the degree of truth we spill.
By seeking only self you see, we’re joining in his trickery,
Against our God, against our maker, deceiving us, this imitator.
Come out now, make haste to flee, away this damned conspiracy.
Expose the lie from far outside, accept the truth that he denied.
The truth that has defeated him, the truth that frees us from our sin.
The truth that wears the lies down thin, the truth that helps us stop his spin.
We may admit conspiracy, but please do not ignore,
God’s holy un-conspiracy, and what he has in store.
You see, God doesn’t hide himself, his blueprint’s been revealed.
The son of man, who dared to say, he was the truth, he was the way,
Came to disapprove the lie, came to open, long blind eyes.
God’s fixed it all, now wrong’s a show, it’s all been conquered long ago.
And now the show is wearing thin, many now can sense the spin.
Of course we must still stand and fight. Resist the lies with all our might.
He is the God of new beginnings, God of truth who can’t help winning,
All powerful and full of grace, calling us to seek his face.
Open up his book today, living Word cuts through the haze.
God built up a truth campaign, long before those missing planes.
911, JFK, pick your poison of the day. Who hides the truth halfway, always?
Hoping that it goes away, resisting it, day after day?
Who tempts us, to sit back, ignore, keeping truth, outside the door?
Who tells the truth, and can not lie, who’s asking you to wonder why?
Who’s in denial? I’m sure you see, the cosmic truth conspiracy.
Very nice! I could not have put it better myself! Did you write it yourself? I really enjoyed it.
Yes, Becca, I wrote it myself after doing research.
Rebecca Bacon, Wednesday Modernity Class, 9/18/13
Review on the Roaring Twenties
Corporatism- Mega Corporations which become one with the state.
Uterlateral- to work or do something without help.
Zionism- a Jewish group that started in the 19th century, which resulted in making the state of Israel.
The WWI started in 1914. In 1916-17 America joined.
Culture- religion manifized.
Warren Harding comes to presidency in 1921 after Wilson. He was Republican. From 1896- 1932 there was Republican rule.
Stock market crash in 1929 results in Black Tuesday.
The Democratic party is captured by the Fabian Socialists to advance their agenda.
Fabian- seeking victory by delay and harassment rather than by a decisive battle as in the manner of Fabius Maximus.
“Make haste slowly,” was the slogan of the Fabian Socialist. Fabianism is named after General Fabius, who when fighting small battles would hit and run eventually wearing the enemy out.
Flappers and Speak-easy
The Volstead act made liqueur making illegal. The Kennedy’s helped with the Black Market, which is where illegal things were sold.
New dances were made, including the Jitterbug and the Charleston.
1913-1917: A Second American Revolution
Signs of a Second American Revolution:
1.) League of Nations was the corner stone of the NWO (New World Order).
2.) The 16th amendment- income tax was ratified.
3.) Constitution of Resolve allows the president to have more power.
The Legislative branch is supposed to have the most power because of money.
4.) Federal Preserve Act is a private bank which loans money to the Government. It has control over the money supply.
5.) The 17th amendment allows U.S. senators to be elected by the popular vote instead of party leaders picking them in the past.
6.) The Armed Ship Act allowed merchant vessels to be armed.
7.) Executive War Powers Act was an American emergency law that increased Federal power
The power to tax is the power to destroy.
The Cult Celebrity
People became celebrity on personality instead of talent, innovation not craftsmanship, and cleverness instead of calling.
At this point was the beginning of pop culture. It was the rise of Jazz, Cubism and Bauhaus.
Consumption- this helps Mass Manufacturing.
Consumer Advertising- advertising convinces us to buy things that we don’t even need.
Credit was also made at this time. It supposedly would help you buy the things that you didn’t need, but truly got you further into debt.
Warren Harding was the first media made president.
1917: The Bolshevik Revolution
1918-1925: The Russian Civil War
1919: The Hungarian Communist Coup
1920-1922: The Hungarian Civil War
1919: The Italian Fascist Terror
1920-1922: The Italian Civil Wars
1923: The Failed Nazi Putsch
1924-1932: The Weimar Civil Disarray
1920: The Ataturk Nationalist Revolution
1926: The Taisho Democratic Experiment Ends
1936-1939: The Spanish Civil War
Chaos and Leadership
Rebecca Bacon, Wednesday Modernity Class, 10/2/13
Hostilities Renewed: The Battle of Britain
WWI was seen as the end of Christendom.
WWII began in 1939.
Hostilities Renewed
Japan invades Manchuria, the outer rim of China in 1931.
Germany repudiated Versailles treaty in 1935.
Italy invades Ethiopia in 1935.
Japan invades China 1937.
The Anschluss occurred in 1938.
Munich Dictate in 1938.
Nazis invade Poland in 1939.
The Axis powers were Germany, Italy and Japan, while the Ally powers were England, America and Russia.
England declared war on Germany the day Hitler invades Poland.
Nazis bomb Scotland and Norway.
France and Britain were weak but Germany was strong because they had been building up and getting stronger through many years. So the Ally’s brought America into the war.
The first causality of war is truth.
The Cabinet of England revolted against Nevile Chamberlain, the Prime Minister of England, and he was taken out of his office. Winston Churchill was made Minister in his stead.
The Battle of Dunkirk.
English men were sent to France to rescue them from the grasp of the Germans. These men got trapped between the shore of the British channel and German tanks. Churchill sent any type of boat down to pick them up.
The English did not have any planes, but Germany had a large supply from building up over time. They sent then to England and bombed the city. Anyone who was able was sent up to the roofs to sweep off burning rubble so the fire would not spread.
Churchill came from a wealthy and famous family, yet he received neither. But when he was older he married a wealthy American woman. He had a speech impediment, but when he was still young he practiced in front of a mirror so much that when he was older and made speeches he had little to no problem covering it up. While he was a child, he was sent to boarding school and in his time there only saw his parents a couple times. He was a terrible student and in not studying well, got low grades. Later when he got out of school he was sent to Sandhurst; a famous military training unit.
At twenty-one he learned that his father had just died, in dept and without money. After this shock he got shipped off to the Boar war.
Rebecca Bacon, Wednesday Modernity Class, 10/9/13
Continuation of; Hostilities Renewed: Battle of Britain
A Man for His Times
1874: Born at Blenheim Palace
1893: Enters Sandhurst
1895: Adulthood arrives with a Triple Jolt
1898: The Malakand Field Force Is Published.
1900: Enters Parliament
1908: Elevated to the Cabinet
1915: Galipoli “Ends” His Career
1924: The Long Exile Begins
1940: King George Makes Him Prime Minister
1955: He Resigns to Queen Elizabeth
1965: He Dies at the Age of Ninety-One
After fighting in the Boer War, Winston Churchill became a journalist, moving from Cuba to Sudan and through the Boer War again for something to write about. He became a captive in the war and made a miraculous escape.
The winner writes the history.
After this he was put into Parliament at the age of Twenty-Six. He had never studied well at school, but at this time of his life he became very interested in history and studied it a lot. He became an Autodidact. He got put into the Cabinet soon after parliament.
He had a plan to take over Turkey, and when it failed, he got taken out of the Cabinet and put into exile. He started predicting a coming crisis or war, but people wouldn’t listen since WWI had just ended.
He settled down to a country cottage and learned Latin and oil painting. Crisis did eventually come in WWII. He was asked by King George to become Prime Minister after Nevile Chamberlain was cast out.
Churchill was a great motivator, leading men into battle with great speeches that are still known and heard today. He was made to look like a hero by many people including himself, especially after the Battle of Britain and of Dunkirk. Some say that he had a couple of heart-attacks while he was Prime Minister, but they were only known of by his doctor. He resigns his office at around eighty and dies at Ninety-One.
Vocabulary
Anschluss- union, especially the political union of Austria with Germany in 1938.
Repudiate- to reject as having no authority or binding force
Appease- to bring to a state of peace, quiet, ease, calm, or contentment; pacify.
Annex- to attach, append, or add, especially to something larger or more important.
Annexation- the act or an instance of annexing, especially new territory.
Sovereignty- the status, dominion, power, or authority of a sovereign; royalty.
Nullify- to render or declare legally void or inoperative
Reich- the German state, especially during the Nazi period.
Neutrality- the policy or status of a nation that does not participate in a war between other nations
Isolationist- a person who favors or works for isolationism.
Capitulate- to surrender unconditionally or on stipulated terms.
Capitulation- the document containing the terms of a surrender.
Arduous- requiring great exertion; laborious; difficult
Muster- an assemblage or collection.
Inveterate- settled or confirmed in a habit, practice, feeling, or the like.
Chapter 32, The Best and the Worst: WWII
WWII began in 1939 and ended in 1945.
Blitzkrieg- Armored vehicles concurring in a lightning-like fashion.
WWII is just a continuation of WWI with a short breather in between.
Defensive treaty- if anyone of the four Axis powers was invaded or attacked, then the other three would come to their rescue.
Axis and Ally powers of WWII:
Axis- Germany, Italy, Japan
Ally- Britain, Russia(Soviet Union), America
Japan thought it was disrespectful to surrender. They did terrible things to their prisoners.
During the war women were taken out of the home and put into the factories to work.
Technology improved during the war.
Rebecca Bacon, Wednesday Modernity Class, 10/16/13
Lesson 34, Heroes and Villains: The End of the War
Adolph Hitler was the Chancellor and the Fuhrer of the third right. Because the Whiner republic was so terrible at doing its job, the people wanted to throw it off.
Vermach- the German army.
Benito Mussolini was called “The Leader”, or IL Dulce, in Italian. At the end of the war he was executed by Italian Fascists. He was a Nationalist and a Socialist. He was allied with Hitler during WWII.
Fascism is were giant state and giant corporations are weaved together.
Josef Stalin was the Soviet Dictator in Russia. He was married to a Jew but was not one. Some of the people placed around Stalin were not loyal to him, so he either put them in exile or executed them. This was called the Great Purge. For a period of time he was allies with Germany and Italy, but after the war started he came onto our side. The fact that the Soviet Union was on Hitler’s side and invaded Poland with him (which caused the beginning of WWII) is rarely known.
Franklin D. Roosevelt lived in the shadow of his brother, Theodore. He married Eleanor Roosevelt (who was his fifth cousin once removed). Not many people knew this but he became paralyzed from the waist down, before his presidency. Somehow he was able to hide it the entire time. The Government grew one hundred times during his four terms.
The two things we do in communication are to reveal and to conceal.
Winston Churchill was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955.
Charles de Gaulle was a member of the Free Forces. Because of his resistance he was sent into exile. He was an author and an aristocrat. He also fought in WWI.
Dwight D. Eisenhower became the Supreme Allied Commander even though he was a German.
George Patton won wars in North America, Sicily and Italy. He also won the Battle of the Bulge.
Douglas MacArthur had remarkable courage and was a third generation general. He had little patience and defeated Japan with the Atomic bomb.
Rebecca Bacon, Wednesday Modernity Class, 10/21/13
Continuation of Lesson 34, Heroes and Villains: The End of the War.
Douglas MacArthur lived in a long line of military. He had remarkable courage, was polished and went to West-point. He was also a strong aristocrat.
He fought in both Pancho Villa and WWI. He made the Occupation Government of Japan and prevented them from making guns and nuclear weapons. This means if they get attacked than we have to come to their aid.
Bernard “Monty” Montgomery was the son of a minister. He went to Sandhurst for military training and during his time in the war became a Field Marshall. He turned to his work and the military when his wife died from a spider bite. He fought in WWI and was a part of Operation Overlord.
Erwin Rommel was a German General. He was known as the Desert Fox because he commanded the Desert Africa Corps. While still very young, he made a working model of a Glider. He tried to overthrow Hitler, but never got the chance. Rommel was apposed to an assassination. But when a failed attempt was made on Hitler’s life (July 20, 1944), his name was brought to light and witnesses said that he was involved with the incident. He was arrested and was given the choice to either go to court and have his staff executed and his family suffer, or commit suicide and the others would be given full pension payments from the government. He decided the latter.
Hideki Tojo was the Prime Minister of Japan. When Japan was taken during WWI, he was not captured or brought to court until he had shot himself five times in the chest and missed his heart.
Resistance
Kuyperian Dutch Underground
This resistance never did much yet were like mosquitoes. They were only an irritation. The ones who were found were put in concentration camps.
Gaullist French Resistance
Anti-Colonial Uprisings
G.I. Joe and Rosie the Riveter.
Rebecca Bacon, Wednesday Modernity Class, 10/21/13
Lesson 36, Pop Goes the Culture: The Fifties and the Cold War
After WWII, the two great powers of the world were Communism and “The West.”
The World of the Fifties
Suburbs and Exurbs were created because people had more money and the wanted to use it. This money could have gone into the war but instead it went into interstates, motels, shopping malls and striping centers. At this point came mass marketing, mass branding and mass media.
New terms and words were used. Pop music came in with Rock and Roll, Blues and Country. Movie shows, super heroes and sitcoms came to the fore.
De tente- uneasy peace.
Glasnost- openness.
Perestroika- rebuilding, reorganization.
Banal- nothing to an item.
Music and TV start dumbing down the family. These things seeped into people’s lives and made them brain dead. These things are control.
Pop Politics
Politicians were sold like groceries. At this time, Celebrities were people who were famous for being famous.
Eisenhower- became president by the media. He was sold to the people like a bar of soap.
MacArthur- found there was a problem with the government as Communists were being put in it.
Taft- was supposedly a man of the right.
Pop Goes the Culture
People got famous by doing outrageous things. Even now when someone does something outrageous they get plastered on the news.
Think of it as chewing gum. It wont last forever. It will get drab and no one will care for it any more. Pop Culture is the same. The things that are advertized will get boring and they will have to find something new.
Mass Produced Culture
People make the same thing over and over, but they say they are making it better each time. The same cars, houses, even the people are the same. We need to fight back against this Mass Production. We will stand out and be unique. It is an uphill clime.
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12:2.
Rebecca Bacon, Wednesday Modernity Class, 11/13/13
Lesson37, Q’s Enduring Legacy
Facism- Political and Economic means of Social order, where by controle is exercized by means of the state and mega corporations working together.
Corporatizm
The Civil War was like the French Revolution in the United States.
Modernity has attacked the Christian Legacy so much that it is now on life support.
Modernity cannot work for it is a culture of death. It will do what is obvious, die.
The Ballad of the Tempting Book
Good leadership is needed to defeat Modernity. The responsibility to train up childern to lead is given to the parents.
“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6
Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863-1944)was from a small town in England called Fowey. His father was a noted physician, folklorist and historian, but died in 1887 leaving the family destraght. As the eldest child, Arthur took responsibility to provide for the family. He left to get lessons in writing and soon got a job as a journalist. He left this and started writing “penny dreadfuls.” These were of pirates and the high seas. These became best sellers snd was able to provide enough money to send his siblings to collage and support his mother.
Trinity Collage of Oxford
He published many other books while still at Oxford and was even able to complete Robert Louis Stevenson’s unfinished novel, St. Ives. Later in the early 1900’s he was given the King Edward VII Professorship of English Literature at the University of Cambridge. He was also elected to a Fellowship of Jesus College. Both of these he held to his death. In 1900, he published the Oxford Book of English Verse. He was a noted literary critic, publishing editions of some of Shakespeare’s plays and several critical works.
After all his publicity, all he wanted to do was to go back home to Fowey. He had a sence of place. He was alowed to go back but in promicing that he would come back occasionaly to do his work.
He taught many deciples and was a strong influence to others. A few of these were: Chesterton, Belloc, Buchan, Lewis, Tolkien and Sayers.
Eliot, Agrarians, Classical Ed.
Anthology- a published collection of poems or other pieces of writing.
The truth is so imbeded in stories. You may not see it when you read it, even it you get into the deepest cores of it. Yet when you actually think on it’s words later worldveiw wise, you will find it’s real meaning.
Another way to say this is; If you read the Classics without a Christian worldveiw, then that is all they will be.
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
Was a great writer and before he finnished school he was offered a job and was able to publish his books. He also wrote for the newspaper. He was the author of over 100 best sellers.
“The most important fact about the subject of education is that there is no such thing.”
John Buchan (1875-1949)
Buchan studied at Glasgow, and during his life he went to Africa. When he came back he pored all his experiences into books. He wrote a twenty-four volume book on the war and was one of the first to write spy novels. He also wrote for the newspaper.
“Our greatest inheritance, the very foundation of our civilization, is a marvel to behold and consider. If I tried to describe it… I should call it Humanitas.”
J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973)
Tolkien’s Father died when he was three, and at twelve his mother died as well. He and his ten year-old brother were raised by a Catholic parish priest, who taught them out of Q’s books. After being in WWI he worked at Oxford and met Q when he came to work on his Oxford Book of English Verse. He became a great visionary. Elites hate Tolkien because of his Christian works.
“Education ought to be little more than a form of intellectual repentance. If it is more than that or less than that, horrors result.”
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)
Lewis was raised on books by Q from his father, as his mother died when he was only twelve. He was friends with Tolkien and was in the war with him. He was not a Christian but Tolkien was a great influence. Watched many of his friends die in the war. When he returns, he starts teaching Western Classics. Wrote many great books including The Cronicles of Narnia and Out of the Silent Planet. You could almost say that he and Tolkien compeated in writing the best books. Later he was asked to do radio brodcasts by BBC.
“I must confess that I can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enoughto suit my tastes.”
Dorthey Sayers (1893-1957)
Sayers became a mass master comunicator and a jornalist writer. At this time, women were not given degrees, yet she was able to recieve one. She was unable to use it for a time.
Translation; Multi-Media.
Sayers learned from Q’s Oxford Book of English Verse.
“Although we often succeed in teaching our pupils subjects, we fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them how to think. They learn everything except the art of learling.”
We need to become workers in doing everything after God’s word.
“You are heirs of a remarkable legacy–a legacy that has passed into your hands after no little tumult and travail; a legacy that is the happy result of sacrificial human relations, no less than of stupendous human achievements; a legacy that demands of you a lifetime of vigilance and diligence so that you may in turn pass the fruits of Christian civilization on to succeeding generations. This is the essence of the biblical views, the covenantal view, and the classical view of education. This is the great legacy of truth which you ar the chief beneficiaries. And this is the great legacy of truth which you are now called upon to bequest to the world.” Arthur Quiller-Couch
Rebecca Bacon
Architects of Conspiracy
Notes on Chapter 20, F.D.R. At War
In December of 1938, a Gallup poll found that seven out of ten voters did not want F.D.R. returning to the White House for a second term. But they said that he would be brought back because he promised to keep us out of war, and he was believed. He found that it would take a lot of work to get the country into the war.
In 1939, Roosevelt declared that quote: “This Nation will remain a neutral nation.”
In the Summer of 1940, less than eight percent of the country thought we should join the war.
In August of 1939, only forty percent thought that Roosevelt should have a third term. By June of 1940, the figure had risen to fifty-seven percent.
On June 20, 1940, the draft act was introduced in the Senate. This turned out as a failure because only nine thousand men had enlisted after six weeks.
President Roosevelt then gave 50 destroyers belonging to the American Navy to Britain without the authority of Congress. After this he said that he was doing it to keep us out of war. He found that he needed more time before he could officially move the country into the war. Roosevelt kept repeating that the men would not be sent to war. As he was posing for peace-keeper, he won the vote by nearly five million popular votes. Before this he promised that he would not try for a fourth term.
F.D.R’s war program was called a defense program.
Hitler made things hard for F.D.R. by not attacking American ships. Even when we fired at German ships they would not fight back. Despite his pledge to keep us out of war, Roosevelt was doing every thing in his power to get us into it. Even a warning from our Ambassador in Tokyo of a attack on Pearl Harbor was ignored.
With the disaster at Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt now had an excuse to go to war.
Those who kept quiet about the betrayal of Pearl Harbor were payed off.
In 1944, a dying F.D.R. was re-elected. The war in Europe created the large demand fore American munitions, equipment, supplies of all kinds, foodstuffs,– which started us on the road to full production and full employment. Not only were there more than a million American casualties, but the aids to the president made sure that the Communists were the ultimate beneficiaries to WWII.
Rebecca Bacon, Wednesday Modernity Class, 11/19/13
Lesson 38- Right Things, Wrong Ways: The Sixty’s and Nietzsche
Dionysian- one who is reckless or undisciplined.
Dionysus- the Greek god of fertility, wine and drama; Bacchus.
Bacchanalian- one who is characterized by or is involved with drunken revelry.
Transvaluation of Values- making wrong right and right wrong.
Culture- worldview externalized.
Promiscuous- UNFOUND.
The Age of Rock and Roll
The Great Depression made people aware that they needed to save money and be careful with it. During the Sixty’s this was wearing off.
Hippies and Beatniks.
Around this time there were three great assassinations. J.F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy (who was JFK’s brother).
One of the famous sayings at this time was “Make love not war.”
Attack on the Family
Divorce had been introduced already but it became a lot more common during the Sixty’s. Birth control pills were allowed to be sold to married and single women.
Virginia vs. Loving was introduced. This permitted blacks to marry whites. After this Marriage licenses were introduced. Also, music changed and effected the younger generation in a very bad way. Rock concerts were the worst. It doesn’t even make sense, the things they would do at these. The two most famous were Woodstock in New York, and Ultima in California. Researchers said that the reason the younger generation was acting the way they were was because of the generation gap. But it was really because of the worldview difference between parent and child.
All of these things were and still are today an attack on the family.
The Transvaluation of Values were at the time put into the University’s. There is also a connection between it and homosexual rights, with right being wrong and wrong being right.
Constitution of the French Revolution
People called this time the Age of Camelot.
Things which now contained a Revolutionary or Marxist worldview:
University’s
Music
Art
Courts and Political Spectrum and… many other things.
The Communists were known as the Reds.
The Red Mennas
MAD- Mutually Assured Destruction. Even if you die, your murderer will die anyway. Nucular Weapons.
Idea -> Proponent -> Result
Fight Reds -> John F. Kennedy/Lyndon B. Johnson -> Vietnam and MAD
Preserve Ecology -> Rachel Carson/Ralph Nader -> Environmentalism
Reject Caprice -> Abby Hoffman/Jane Fonda -> Profligate Culture
Creative Energy -> Bob Dylan/Jimi Hendrix -> Anarchism
Personal Peace -> Timothy Leary/Carlos Castaneda -> Psychedelia
Silent Majority -> Barry Goldwater/Richard Nixon -> Governmental-ism
The only difference between the fifty’s and the sixty’s is that before, the changes in music and even in the meaning of words was hidden, and after it was exposed.
At this time there was the phrase “I am going out to find myself.” In truth we can only “find our-selfs,” when we first find God. We cannot know our-selfs without first knowing God, for we are made in his image. Thus man cannot destroy God or himself without in doing so, destroy the other. When you become alienated from God, you then will then become alienated from others and eventually yourself.
If the culture shifts than people’s idea of God will also shift.
Superman- a man beyond good and evil.
How can one be beyond good or evil.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was born in Saxony, in Eastern Germany. He was raised in a loving home by his mother. But after going to school he completely disowned God. He believed that the weak were useless and should be gotten rid of.
We now scorn those who are not the weak yet do not help them. We pity the weak and bring low those who are not.
Rebecca Bacon, Wednesday Modernity Class, 1/4/13
Continuation of Lesson 39, Right Things, Wrong Ways: The Sixties and Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was born in Saxony, in Eastern Germany. He was raised in a loving home by his mother. But after going to school he completely disowned God. He believed that the weak were useless and should be gotten rid of.
His worldview was that there was no meaning. In it, right was wrong and wrong was right. Transvaluation of Values.
Because of this he went insane. For, when you believe that there is no meaning, you will start to question if there is any meaning in even that. He also contracted a sexually transmitted disease.
Taboo- something that is forbidden.
In the culture of the early nineteenth century, the Taboos were things like being pregnant out of wedlock or saying that you are a homosexual. You were shunned and put out of sight. These two examples are no longer considered as Taboos. In fact the Taboos of our culture are things like saying that pregnancy out of wedlock or being a homosexual is wrong.
Nietzschean Implications
Moral Relativism -> Relative Amoralism
Spiritual Escapism -> Naturalism
Revolutionary Ideology -> Anti-Rationalism
Sensate Existentialism -> Anti-Establishmentarianism
Materialism -> Sexual Promiscuity
Artistic Experimentalism -> Alternative Consciousness
Taboo Talismanism -> Counterculture
What is called art is no longer so. You could put a crucifix in a bottle of urine and put it in a museum calling it art. What we see most during our lives becomes what we are.
Rebecca Bacon
Architects of Conspiracy
Notes on Chapter 21, An Inquiry Concerning Churchill
Churchill was known for his career as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and his WWI role as First Lord of the Admiralty. Today to most people he is known as the fiery orator and great leader who rallied his people against Hitler’s blitz, personified the indomitable spirit of British resistance, and gave blood, sweat, toil, and tears to make surrender unthinkable and defeat of the Hun inevitable.
Churchill was a poor student at school who had publicly admired Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. He suffered fits of arrogance as well as depression, refusing at times that he was ever wrong. He wanted to become a super-general in WWII, for instance, apparently because he felt qualified as a result of having attended Sandhurst after his undistinguished years at Harrow. By all accounts, he was personally a self-centered, ill-tempered, and insolent man, provoking intense dislike in almost everyone. Even one of his friends referred to Churchill as “the Minister of Civil Slaughter.” He also earned lifelong foes among Labourites for alleged heavy-handedness against strikers when he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
As First Lord of the Admiralty in WWI, Churchill helped impose a blockade on the continent, including neutral countries, in the hopes of starving the Germans into submission. The suffering of the non-combatant women and children was something he overlooked, and the blockade was continued after the Armistice, producing widespread hunger and misery. Churchill even laughed at the respect his officers sought to show for the rules of the sea, personally directing the misuse of truce flags, ordering the flying of the flags of neutral nations, and even authorizing the killing of prisoners.
“I have achieved a great deal to achieve nothing in the end.” Winston Churchill
Rebecca Bacon, Wednesday Modernity Class, 12/4 &11/13
Amusing Ourselfs to Death: A Brave New Media World
Technology effects the message and thinking. We have a reduced attention span because of technology. This is why sermons have been cut short to twenty to may be thirty minutes.
Orwellian and Huxleyan Worldview
Orwell believed that our leaders will eventually be able to control us by fear, while Huxley believed that they would control us by appealing to our feelings and emotion.
Technological Transformation of Media
1906: The First Radio Broadcast Aired
1925: RCA Spun Off Its Broadcast Unit
1926: First Television Broadcast Aired
1931: First Commercial Television Program Aired
1932: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World Published
1941: First Commercial TV Station License Issued
1946: George Orwell’s 1984 Published
1954: First Color Television Broadcast Aired
1961: First Regular Network Color Program Aired
1962: Air Force Packet Switching Began
1968: Honeywell Introduced the Computer Switcher
1972: BBN Created E-mail as CompuServe
1975: Bill Gates Launched Microsoft
1976: Steve Jobs Launched Apple
1979: Microsoft Bought The MS-DOS Operating System
1983: Motorola Introduced Cellular Telephones
1983: First TCP/TP Network Launched
1984: Apple Introduced the First Mac
1984: William Gibson’s Neuromancer
1987: Steve Case Launched AppleLink
1988: Steve Jobs Announced The Newton PDA
1989: AppleLink Is Renamed AOL
1994: Netscape Introduced Its Internet Browser
1999: Napster Introduced Music File-Sharing
1998: Apple Launched An Internet-Ready Computer
2001: Apple Introduced the IPod and ITunes
2002: MySpace Created Social Networking
2003: FaceMash Is Launched At Harvard
2006: Twitter Introduced The Micro-Blog
Rebecca Bacon
Wednesday Modernity Class, 12/11/13
Continuation of Lesson 39, Amusing Ourselfs to Death:
A Brave New Media World
A Media Play
A Christian worldview helps us look past the things people say and notice what they do.
Distopia- oposite of Utopia.
Orwell believed that the Government will eventually be able to controle us by fear, while Huxley believed that they will controle us through pleasure.
Stats of the Media World
The avrage kid watches 59 hours of TV every week and 67 films in a year. They own 42 CD’s, 16/37 vidio games and 35% of them have their own TV’s. 76% of them own their own iPods, 59% own PC’s and 88% have their own internet.
Trojan Horses
What is the culture being sent as a message of good and evil?
Television: Sex, Violence, and Twaddle.
Movies: Hollywood Fantasies.
Music: Creativity v. Cleaverness.
Internet: Vast Black Hole.
Responses
Censorship, Negation and Denial.
Synthesis, Justification and Absorption.
Antithesis, Confrontation and Reformation.
Technology, while not bad in and of itself, shapes our worldview and changes who we are and how we think about things. We need to guard our hearts ans eyes, and be mindful of its shaping effects, especially its ability to shape us away froma Biblical worldview.
Rebecca Bacon
Wednesday Modernity Class, 12/11/13
Lesson 40, 444 Days: Islamic Ji’had, Part 1
Ji’had- holy war.
Holy war is exceptable in the Qur’an.
Stepping Stone of Modernity:
Even if man gets rid of God (in his head)he still believes in a capital “T” truth. This instead of being God himself, becomes man or man said loudly.
Stepping Stone of Post-Modernity:
If man could got rid of God, he may believe that he has no capital “T” truth. But this belief becomes his capital “T” truth.
A Simple Faith
1. Small Beginnings
There has been a conflict between Islam and Christianity for a long time. Through the years it has grown small. Yet it is still there, waiting for a chance to regain power.
(A.) Meccan Crossroads
Muhammad (570-632 ad)
Mecca was a trading post for many different cultures. Muhammad was born in the line of the Hashamites, but was raised by relatives.
(B.) Paganism: Ka’ba, Allah, and Jinn.
Muslims believed in many different gods and worshiped them. Every “faithful” Muslim goes on a trip to Mecca once in their life to see the Ka’ba, a rock that they worship.
(C.) Eclecticism: Caravaneers.
Wandering the desert land, seeking solace, he met with caravans going to and from Mecca. They each had different worldviews and beliefs. He wanted to make one belief that all could follow.
2. Evolution
(A.) Qur’an (610-620 ad)
Muhammad started having visions around the age of 40. He declared that there was only one God, and his name was Allah. The Qur’an was a book he made which is now the holy book for Muslims. It is to them what the Bible is to us, with their beliefs and laws put into it. He and his disciples, that he had gathered over time, were pushed out of Mecca for their beliefs.
(B.) Hijra (622 ad): Medina and Hadith.
They went to Medina, and there they made a foot-hold. Muhammad made a commentary on the Qur’an which is called the Hadith. It is also a holy book of the Muslims.
(C.) Mecca (630 ad): Conquest and Cleansing.
They eventually went back to Mecca and conquered it. They convinced people that the Qur’an was right, and the people who would not give in were cleansed from the city. The word Islam pretty much means submission.
3. Caliphates (leadership structure of Islamic rule)
(A.) Abu Bakr, Umar, and Uthman.
After Muhammad other leaders came to the fore. Such as Abu Bakr, Umar, and Uthman.
(B.) Ali and the Shi’a
When Uthman died, Ali, a direct relative of Muhammad took power.
(C.) The Umayyads and the Heshemites
After Ali was murdered the Umayyads and the Heshemites controlled Islam.
Islam took up Ji’had across the top of Africa, through Spain, Portugal, France and all the way to Constantinople, which they renamed Istanbul.
Charles Martel was a Christian, yet his theology was a little off. He stopped the Muslims from pretty much taking over the West. Without him, we would all be speaking Arabic.
The Five Tenets
1. Allah
When the Muslims say the name of their god, it is normally followed by the description: the Just, Compassionate and Merciful. They say this when he is really the opposite: the Unjust, the Uncompassionate and the Unmerciful.
2. Muhammad
Penultimate Prophet.
Successor to Banu Hashism
Precursor to Mahd’hi
Mahd’hi has not come yet. He is what Jesus will be to us on judgement day.
3. Qu’ran
Penultimate Sacred Writ
It has 114 Suras or chapters. The Hadith is another holy book of Islam. It is the commentary.
4. Life
Test: Good Deeds
Muslims believe that if you do enough good deeds in your life you can go to “heaven.”
5. Judgement
Paradise and Hell
We believe that God requires perfection from us to enter heaven, while they believe that if you do enough good deeds they will out weigh the bad ones. They do not believe in Jesus being God’s Son or that he needs to save us from our sins. They believe that he was a lesser prophet.
The Five Pillars
1. Shaha’dah
Profession of Faith
“There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet.
2. Sal’at
Ritual Ra’katin Prayer
At first the Muslims only needed to say this twice a day, but Muhammad turned it into three times, and then five. Five times each day, where ever they are, they will pull out their prayer rugs and bow towards Mecca recite their Ra’katin prayer.
3. Zak’at
Alms-giving
Muslims are required to give to the poor as a “Good Deed.”
4. Saw’um
Fasting During Ramadan
Muslims are also required, during the season of Ramadan, to fast all day till the sun goes down.
5. Hajj
Pilgrimage to Mecca
Every “faithful” Muslim goes on a trip to Mecca once in their life to see the Ka’ba, a rock that they worship.
The Five Social Teachings
1. Brotherhood
The Umma and the Infidels
2. Justice
Sharia: Retribution
3. Women
Chain of Being and Polygamy
There is a chain of being with Allah on the top and women on the bottom, equal to insects, pigs and dogs.
4. Trade
Business and Commerce
This is one way to take over the world.
5.Ji’had
Razzia and Riddah: Wars of Apostasy
Aza’sin: Cleansing Infidelity
Rebecca Bacon
Notes on Book, Amusing Ourselfs to Death
By Niel Postman
Part 1.
The Medium is the Metaphor
We are at this time living in a culture in which all public discourse increasingly takes the form of entertainment. Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education and commerce have been made into congenial adjuncts of show business. We no longer know or care what we are watching, as long as we go away remembering. But unfortunately we can’t even pick apart what we remember, or even what use our remembering is.
Television gives us conversation in images, not words. Just as an Indian may use smoke signals, the news of the day could not exist without a media filled world to give it expression. Each of these enables you to communicate over vast spaces. Also, forms of media favor particular kinds of content and are therefore capable of taking command of a culture.
God’s law explicitly commands us in the second commandment, not to bow down to or to worship anything on earth, in heaven, in the water under earth, or any thing that takes the image of them. Our culture as a whole has ignored this direct commandment from God and repetingly worships this media culture that we live in.
Speech of course makes us human and keeps us so. Not to say though that if there was no other way to communicate we all would find it equally convenient to speak about the same things in the same way. This is because of world view. How we think about space and time greatly influences the grammatical features of our language. Now, the culture effects the way each of us communicate as well, depending on how much control it has over each and every one of us. I think that is what Marshall McLuhan meant when he said that the medium is the message.
Often though, one may confuse a message with a metaphor. A message denotes a specific, concrete statement about the world. But the forms of our media do not make such statements. Instead they are like metaphors, working by unobtrusive but powerful implication to enforce their special definitions of reality.
What is peculiar about such interpositions of media is that their role in controlling our lives goes on without notice. A person who reads a book or watches TV or looks at his watch is usually not interested in how his mind is organized and controlled by such events, and even less in what idea of the world is suggested by them. Let us take the clock as an example. Starting in the fourteenth century, it made us into time-keepers, and from there to time-savers, and now to time-servers. Our life is now made up of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, seasons and years. Eternity ceases to serve as the measure and focus of human events. Little do we realize that the unrelentless ticking of the clock has more to do with weakening God’s great plan for us than we know.
The alphabet is also a representation of this. We can now see what one says instead of hearing it. Before, you would have to actually be with someone to tell them something. Now, we can just send an email to them. Writing has now frozen speech. This gives birth to the grammarian, the logician, the rhetorician, the historian and the scientist. As Northrop Frye said, “the written word is more powerful than simply a reminder: it re-creates the past in the present, and gives us, not the familiar remembered thing, but the glittering intensity of the summoned-up hallucination.” We are at this time going through a shift from the magic of writing to the magic of electronics.
We are told in school that a metaphor suggests what a thing is like by comparing it to something else. By the power of it’s suggestion, it so fixes a conception in our mind that we cannot imagine one thing without the other. Our media-metaphors are not very explicit but are rather complex. As an example, it has been said that the invention of eyeglasses not only helps people who have defective vision, but suggest that we need not accept as a final answer the endowments of nature or the ravages of time. They put forward the belief that our bodies and minds, both made by God who does no wrong, are improvable. Even the microscope reveals a world hitherto hidden from our view.
Intelligence does not have quantity or magnitude, except as we believe that it does. And why do we believe so? Because we have tools that imply that that is what the mind is like. They also suggest what the body is like.
So our conversations about nature and about ourselves are conducted in whatever “languages” we find it possible ad convenient to employ. And our languages are our media. Our media are our metaphors. And our metaphors create the content of our culture.
Media as Epistemology
The printing press has generated enough junk to fill the Grand Canyon. Yet television is not old enough to have matched the printing’s output of it. Unfortunately for us, even the best things on television are junk. The thing is, is that we do not measure a culture by the obvious trivialities, but by what it calls important. At this point television is at it’s most trivial, and therein dangerous when it’s aspirations are high and presents itself as important. Similar to the printing press, television is nothing less than a philosophy of rhetoric. To talk seriously about it you must talk about Epistemology.
Epistemology is a complex subject concerned with the origins and nature of knowledge.
I believe that every medium of communication has resonance, for resonance is metaphor writ large. Resonance is imposing itself on our consciousness and social institutions in myriad forms. It is sometimes able to become implicated in our concepts of piety, or goodness, or beauty, and is always in our definition and regulation of truth. There are three ways to truth-tell.
The first is to search the content of the Bible, or in the good and right proverbs of your culture. This was largely the method of Jesus and other Biblical figures who, living in an essentially oral culture, drew upon all of the resources of speech as a means of discovering and revealing truth. On the topic of oral cultures proverbs and sayings, Walter Ong points out, “They are incessant. They form the substance of thought itself. Thought in any extended form is impossible without them, for it consists in them.” We normally reserve the use of proverbs and nacky sayings for resolving disputes among or with children. A few of these include: “first come first serve.” “Haste makes waste.” “Possession is nine-tenths of the law, ” etc. We are fine pulling these out for small crises with our young, yet would think ridiculous in a courtroom. “What use would ‘to err is human but to forgive is divine’ be of use there?” we ask. Nothing, because we don’t consider it a serious enough matter for the courtroom. Judges, lawyers and defendants do not consider proverbs or our household “nacky” sayings an answer to their legal disputes. In the courtroom, there are law books, briefs, citations and other written materials which define and organize the method of finding the truth. We could say that oral tradition has lost much of its resonance, yet not all of it. Testimony is expected to be given orally, on the assumption that the spoken, not the written, word is a truer reflection of the state of mine of a witness. In many places, we depend on the spoken word and the power of speech to be truth instead of the written and printed.
In the second belief of truth-telling, there is little to no tolerance of poetry, proverbs, “nacky” household sayings, parables or any other expressions of oral wisdom. A similar paradox to the first belief exists in universities, where there are a few traditions which are based on the notion that truth lies in the power of speech. But for the most part, their conception of truth is tightly bound to the structure and logic of the printed word. Some might ask: “Why do you assume the accuracy of a print-referenced citation but not a speech-referenced one?” The correct answer to this would be that, the form in which something is written is completely relevant to its truth. In the academic world, the published word is invested with greater prestige and authenticity than the spoken word. People take more care in what they write and how much truth is in it than when they speak it. For the written word is assumed to have been reflected on over and over by it’s author, and again by authorities and editors. It is also easier to verify and to confirm for true, as the written word endures while the spoken word is there and gone. The spoken word, if told of, is but a rumor of what might be and may not be. It would be as if the cashier told you what you had bought, what each item cost, (and any coupons or discounts), what the tax was and told your total, yet did not give you your receipt. It would definitely not be the same, even if you did write it all down. And would you be able to believe him as much as if he had given you a receipt? No.
The third and last example and belief for truth-telling we will draw from the trial of the great Socrates. At the beginning of his defense, addressing a jury of five hundred, he apologized for not having a well-prepared speech, begs them not to interrupt if he should falter, and promises them that he will tell the truth. This was characteristic of Socrates, but not of the age in which he lived. For as he knew well, his Athenian brothers did not regard the principles of rhetoric and the expression of truth to be independent of each other. We find great appeal in Socrates’ plea because we are accustomed to thinking of rhetoric as an ornament of speech– most often unnecessary. But to them it near indispensable means of organizing evidence and proofs, and therefore of communication truth. To the Greeks, rhetoric was a form of spoken writing. Its power to reveal the truth resided in the written word’s power to display arguments in orderly progression. To disdain rhetorical rules, to speak one’s thoughts in a random manner, without proper emphasis or appropriate passion, was considered demeaning to the audience’s intelligence and suggestive of falsehood. Socrates’ lost. And we can only guess that the reason why 280 of the five hundred voted against him was because they thought his manner was not consistent with truthful matter, as they understood the connection.
The concept of truth is intimately linked to the biases of forms of expression. To the modern mind, resonating with different media-metaphors, the truth in economics is believed to be best discovered and expressed in numbers. Galileo also said that the language of nature is written in mathematics. Yet he did not say that everything is. And even the truth of nature need not be expressed in mathematics. For most of our history, it’s language has been found in myth and ritual. Some ways of truth-telling are better than others, and have better results with the cultures that adopt them. But as a culture moves from orality to writing to printing to television, its ideas of truth move with it. Nietzsche, who we can not say was a great or good man, once said that every philosophy is the philosophy of a stage of life. To this we may add, that every epistemology is the epistemology of a stage of media development. Truth, like time itself, is a product of a conversation man has with himself about and through the techniques of communication he has invented.
In the culture that we live in today, we consider memorization as irrelevant, and certainly not considered a sign of high intelligence.The wise Solomon, as we are told in First Kings, knew three thousand proverbs. People who are like that now a days are thought to quaint at best, more likely pompous bores. Yet in a purely oral culture, a high value is always placed on the power to memorize, for where there are no written words, the human mind must function as a mobile library. To forget how something is to be said or done is a danger to the community and a gross form of stupidity. In the culture that we live in today, the memorization of almost anything is merely charming.
To finish, I am going to give you three short points that may serve as a defense against certain counterarguments.
The first point is that I do not care to claim that changes in media will definitely bring about changes in the structure of people’s minds or in their cognitive capacities. Some have done so, or have come close to it, but I have not been led to believe so. I am not going to stay on that part of the point, but I will say that a major new medium changes the structure of discourse; it does so by creating new forms of truth-telling. I believe that the epistemology created by television not only is inferior to a print-based epistemology but is dangerous and absurdest.
The second point is that the epistemological shift has not yet included everyone and everything. While some old media will disappear, other forms of conversation will always remain. For example, speech and writing. I think of it as such: Changes in the symbolic environment are both gradual and additive at first, and then, all at once, a overwhelming amount is achieved. Let us say that a river that was once polluted becomes toxic. The fish die, it is unfit to swim in, yet it is still the same river and looks the same too. Even when life has been taken away from it, it is still useable to say a boat. All other values have been taken away, yet it is still there. This is the same with our symbolic environment. Our ideas now get formed by the television, not by the printed word. The use of reading is extremely diminished.
The third and last point is that in the river analogy I used a moment ago, the river refers largely to what we call public discourse. I believe that television has and is polluting our culture and age, just as the toxic river was to the fish. I am aware that it may be a great comfort to many people, youth and elderly. That it may have the power to undermine rational discourse. These and other benefits cannot be taken lightly. Media change does not necessarily result in equilibrium. In sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes, it is the other way around. We must be careful about how we think of the television because of what it holds for us in the future.
This concludes part one of five of my notes on Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves To Death.
Rebecca Bacon
Notes on book, Amusing Ourselves To Death
By Neil Postman
Typographic America
The Americans among whom Benjamin Franklin lived were as committed to the printed word as any group of people who have ever lived. It is a fact that the immigrants who came to settle in New England, along with their heirs, were dedicated and skillful readers whose religious sensibilities, political ideas and social life were embedded in the medium of typography. The Mayflower itself brought several books with it to America. The most important to them of these was the Bible. We also know that during the first few days of settlement, each of the ministers was given ten pounds to use to start a religious library. There is sufficient evidence that between 1640 and 1700, the literacy rate for men in Massachusetts and Connecticut was somewhere between 89 percent and 95 percent, quite probably the highest concentration of literate males to be found any where in the world at that time (Hart, James D. The Popular Book: A History of America’s Literary Taste. New York: Oxford University Press, 1950.).
As they were Protestants they believed that the Bible should be the central reading matter in all households. Of course, there were other religious books which they owned and read as well.
The English who were sent here, came as readers and were certain to believe that reading was as important in the New World as it was in the old. They in fact made laws that said communities where required to attend schools for reading, writing and even Grammar. In these laws they mentioned that Satan’s evil designs could be thwarted by education. Beginning in the sixteenth century, an epistemological shift took place, in which knowledge of any and every kind was transferred to the printed page. Lewis Mumford wrote of this shift saying: “More than any other device, the printed book released people from the domination of the immediate and the local;…print made a greater impression that actual events…. To exist was to exist in print: the rest of the world tended gradually to become more shadowy. Learning became book-learning.” (Mumford, Lewis. Technics and Civilization. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1934.)
The first printing press in America was established in 1638 as an adjunct of Harvard University. Presses were established shortly thereafter in Boston and Philadelphia without resistance by the Crown, a interesting fact since it was not allowed in several English cities. The earliest use of the press was for the printing of newsletters, mostly done on cheap paper, since quality paper was scarce. They first testing for a newspaper in September of 1690. It started with Benjamin Harris’s Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestic. This did not turn out well, yet was followed by others, such as: The Boston News-Letter in 1704, the Boston Gazette in 1719 and finally the New-England Courant in 1721.
But in 1786, Benjamin Franklin observed that Americans were so busy reading newspapers and pamphlets that they scarcely had time for books, except of course for Noah Webster’s American Spelling Book. The South had lagged behind the North not only in the formation of schools but in it’s uses of the printing press. In fact, Virginia did not get its first regularly published newspaper, the Virginia Gazette, until 1736.
As they moved into the nineteenth century, they did so as a fully print-based culture, in all its regions. Between 1825 and 1850, the number of subscription libraries trebled. What were called “mechanics’ and apprentices’ libraries ” –that is, libraries intended for the working class– also emerged as a force for literacy.
Publishers were so anxious to make prospective best sellers available, they would sometimes dispatch messengers to incoming packet boats and their book would be out in a single day. There were no laws at this time against copyright, so copied editions abounded. The public nor the authors even cared or complained. When a famous author such as Dickens visited America, they were treated like the biggest pop-stars of our age are.
When others from England visited they were surprised at the near universality of lecture halls in which stylized oral performance provided a continuous reinforcement of the print tradition. In these, audiences could hear lectures from the leading intellectuals, writers and humorists of their time. Among lecture halls, there was also libraries and common schools. From its beginning, into the nineteenth century, America was as dominated by the printed word and an oratory based on the printed word as any society we know of.
The influence of the printed word in every arena of public discourse was insistent and powerful not merely because of the quantity of printed matter but because of its monopoly. This cannot be stressed enough, especially for those who are reluctant to acknowledge profound differences in the media environments of then and now. Public business was channeled into and expressed through print, which became the model, the metaphor and the measure of all discourse. The resonances of the lineal, analytical structure of print, and in particular, of expository prose, could be felt everywhere.
Karl Marx, the founder of Marxism, once wrote: “Is the Iliad possible when the printing press and even printing machines exist? Is it not inevitable that with the emergence of the press, the singing and the telling and the muse cease; that is, the conditions necessary for epic poetry disappear?” (Marx, Karl. The German Ideology. New York: International Publishers,1972.) We need to understand that the press was not merely a machine but a structure for discourse, which both rules out and insists upon certain kinds of content and, inevitably, a certain kind of audience.
The Typographic Mind
What kind of audience would enjoy and be able to sit and listen to seven hours of oratory and debates? An audience from the 1850’s. A people who regarded such events as essential to their political education, who took them to be an integral part of their social lives, and who were quite accustomed to extended oratorical performances. Their attention span would obviously have been extraordinary by current standards. For who in our today’s culture could sit through seven, or even three, hours of debate and oratory? Also, they must have had an equally extraordinary capacity to comprehend lengthy and complex sentences aurally.
These audiences were made up of people whose intellectual lives and public business were fully integrated into their social world. People of a television culture need “plain language” both aurally and visually, and will even go so far as to require it in some circumstances by law. We must remember that these people were the grandsons and granddaughters of the Enlightenment.It is true that among their number were frontiersmen, some of whom were barely literate, and immigrants to whom English was still strange. The language that was offered was clearly modeled on the style of the written word.
I’ll begin by pointing to the obvious fact that the written word, and an oratory based upon it, has a content: a semantic, paraphrasable, propositional content. Whenever language is the principal medium of communication– especially language controlled by the rigors of print– an idea, a fact, a claim is the inevitable result. If a sentence refuses to issue forth a fact, a request, a question, an assertion, an explanation, it is nonsense, a mere grammatical shell.
To engage the written word means to follow a line of thought, which required considerable powers of classifying, inference-making and reasoning. To uncover lies, confusions, and over-generalizations, to detect abuses of logic and common sense. And to weigh ideas, to compare and contrast assertions, to connect one generalization to another. For one to accomplish these things, one must achieve a certain distance from the words themselves.
In a culture dominated by print, public discourse tends to be characterized by a coherent, orderly arrangement of facts and ideas. The public for whom it is intended is generally competent to manage such discourse. In a print culture, writers make mistakes when they lie, contradict themselves, fail to support their generalizations, try to enforce illogical connections. The readers made mistakes when they don’t notice, or don’t care to.
It is not difficult to demonstrate that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, American public discourse, being rooted in the bias of the printed word, was serious, inclined toward rational argument and presentation, and therefore, made up of meaningful content. Also during that time, religious thought and institutions in America were dominated by an austere, learned, and intellectual form of discourse that is largely absent from religious life today.
The differences between the character of discourse in a print-based culture and the character of discourse in a television-based culture are also evident if one looks at the legal system. During the mid eighteenth century, a lawyer needed to be a writing and reading man par excellence, for reason was the principal authority upon which legal questions were to be decided.
Words cannot guarantee their truth content. Rather, they assemble a context in which the question, Is this true or false? is relevant. In the 1890’s that context was shattered, first by the massive intrusion of illustrations and photographs, then by the non-propositional use of language.
The act of reading in the eighteenth and nineteenth century had an entirely different quality to it than the act of reading does today. Reading would have had a sacred element in it, or if not that, would have at least occurred as a daily or weekly ritual invested with special meaning. What else was reading to them but comprehending? The printed word had a monopoly on both attention and intellect, there being no other means, besides the oral tradition, to have access to public knowledge. Public figures were known not by their look of even their oratory, but by their written words.
To these people, reading was both their connection to and their model of the world. The printed page revealed the world, line by line, page by page, to be a serious, coherent place, capable of management by reason, and of improvement by logical and relevant criticism.
America was dominated by a public discourse which took its form from the products of the printing press. It did its talking in typography, and with that as the main feature of its symbolic environment rose to prominence in world civilization.
This ends part two of five of my notes on Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves To Death.
Rebecca Bacon, 1/15/14
Fraud with 1960 Election?
Many Republicans believed that Kennedy benefited from vote fraud, especially in Illinois, home of Mayor Richard Daley’s powerful Chicago political machine. If Nixon had carried both Texas and Illinois, he would have earned 270 electoral votes, one more than the 269 needed to win the majority in the Electoral College and the presidency. Kennedy won Illinois by less than 9,000 votes out of 4.75 million cast, or a margin of 0.2%. However, Nixon carried 92 of the state’s 101 counties, and Kennedy’s victory in Illinois came from the city of Chicago, where Mayor Richard J. Daley held back much of Chicago’s vote until the late morning hours of November 9. The efforts of Daley and the powerful Chicago Democratic organization gave Kennedy an extraordinary Cook County victory margin of 450,000 votes—more than 10% of Chicago’s 1960 population of 3.55 million, although Cook County also includes many suburbs outside of Chicago’s borders—thus barely overcoming the heavy Republican vote in the rest of Illinois.
A reporter later said that he found names of the dead who had voted in Chicago, along with 56 people from one house. He found cases of Republican voter fraud in southern Illinois, but said that the totals did not match the Chicago fraud he found.
In Texas, Kennedy defeated Nixon by a narrow 51% to 49% margin, or 46,000 votes. Kennedy’s margin in the state’s initial tally made it far too difficult to prove that voter fraud had determined who won Texas and that any recount would’ve also been hard to conduct.
So will we ever know for sure if Kennedy made fraud votes? I suppose not, but there seems enough evidence here to convict Kennedy, and Mayor Daley.
All notes are taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1960
Rebecca Bacon, 1/8/14
Wednesday Modernity Class
Continuation of notes on Lesson 40, 444 Days: Islamic Ji’had
Razzia and Riddah: Wars of Apastasy
Aza’sin: Cleansing Infidelity
Fidah’is: Suicide Martyrs
Dhimma: Imposed Submission
Khar’jai, Fad’lak, Sult’ah: Absorption
Assassini and Janissaries: Conscripts
Conscripted- being taken and forced into some sort of activity.
Iran and History
1. Persia
Farsi, Mede, and Greek
Seventh Century Conquest
Qajar Dynasty
2. Iran
British, Reza Khan, and the Pahlavis.
Tehran Conference
Mohammed Mossadegh.
3. The Shah
Iranian Oil Deal
White Revolution and SAUAK
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
444 Days
1. Ayatollah’s Revolution
Imman’s Disciples and the Shah.
Islanic Constitution and Sharia.
The “Great Satan.”
2. Jimmy Carter
Camp David Accords
Rescue Operations
An Administration Undone
3. Ronald Reagan
The Death of the Shah.
Carry a Big Stick
Sudden Release
If you control the oil, than you will be able to control the Middle East. And If you can control the Middle East, then you are able to control the world.
Rebecca Bacon, 1/8/14
Wednesday Modernity Class Notes
Lesson 41, Scandle, Malaise, and Polarization: Watergate
The Watergate Scandal
1. Botched Burglary
June 17, 1972.
Nixon told his workers to do anything they could so he would win the election against Kennedy. He did not know that a plan was made to break into the Democratic National Headquarters, so they could spy on what the Democrats were plannig and doing.
The CRP (or CREEP)
Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy
The first presidential debate on television was in 1960 with Kennedy and Nixon. Nixon lost the debate and last the election. If you had been listening on the radio, you would have thought that he had won. But if you had been watching on television you would have thought that he had lost. On television, it is all about looks, and how you present things. Kennedy’s crew knew how to present him and make him look right for the television, because they understood it. But Nixon’s crew didn’t have any practice with television looks. If you had been watching the debate on television, you would have thought that Kennedy looked born for the job, while Nixon looked tired and scruffy.
Nixon published many bestsellers and came back on the news. He ran for Governor of California in 1966 and lost. After that he was not expected to come back again on television. But he restarted at the grass roots. He ran for President again in 1968. This year was a wreak because of the Vietnam War. The students did not support the war and were rioting in the streets and on campus. A lot of these things were put on TV. The adults thought this was terrible. Nixon appealed tho this and won the election. Also in 72′ he won with a huge landslide. The press started attacking him though right after this because of what he did to get there. We will speak on this next time.
Rebecca Bacon, 1/15/14
Wednesday Modernity Class Notes
Continuation of Lesson 41, Scandal, Malaise, and Polarization: Watergate
Botched Burglary
In 1972, Nixon told his men to win him the election, no matter what the cost. Nixon had a list of enemies, I mean who doesn’t. But he used this list to dig up bad history on his foes and used it to blackmail them. CRP (or CREEP) sent two CIA agents into the Democratic National Committee Headquarters to spy on the Democrats, and steal information to use against them for the election. These two agents were Howard Hunt and G.Gordon Liddy. Unfortunantly for them it was found that there had been a break-in into the Watergate Hotel and an investigation was started.
Investigation
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were reporters for the Washington Post. They hammered away at the Watergate story for sixteen months. Acting as detectives, making movies about it, and even posted articles which made it above the fold. They even said that they had a source from inside the White House which they called Deep Throat.
Cover-up
Eventually the people who had organized the burglary came to the light. They, Hunt and Liddy were arrested.
The Watergate Trial
1. White House
Trial: John Sirica
Senate: Sam Ervin
White House Resignations
Independent Counsel: Cox.
2. Tapes
Executive Privilege Defense
Saturday Night Massacre
Nixon had taped discutions in private, for history reasoning’s, and eventually these were found out by the press. The public wanted these, claiming that they must hold the answers to the Watergate burglary. But Archibald Cox, who was the Independent Council, immediately subpoenaed the tapes, as did the Senate, but Nixon refused to release them, citing his executive privilege as president, and ordered Cox to drop his subpoena. Cox refused. When the top two people who could fire Cox said that they would not, Nixon fired them. The third took a bit of threatening, but finally gave up and fired Cox.
He finally decided to destroy the worst tapes and give up the rest. He also edited out any profanity and vulgarity. This left blank spots with absolutely nothing in them. Those who listened to them still weren’t convinced that they didn’t hold any thing on Watergate, and said that the blank spots were what were left of them.
3. Convictions
White House Staffers
House Impeachment Articles
“What did the President know?”
Results of Watergate
The Attack on Nixon got so bad that he was pretty much stripped of presidential power. On August 9, 1974, Nixon became the first President to Resign.
Campaign Finance Reform
The Freedom of Information Act
The Transformation of Campaigns and Debates
The Reinvention of Investigative Journalism
Bar Association Reforms
Scandle Logomorphs and Snigglets
A Culture of Cynicism and Skepticism
The Aftershocks from Watergate
Pardon: The Undermining of Gerald Ford
Malaise: The Presidency of Jimmy Carter
Stagflation: Debt, OPEC, and the New World Order
Appeasement: The Grim Days of the “Evil Empire”
Cynicism: Investigative Journalism
Polarization: Increasingly Shrill Left and Right
Scandal: Black Ops and Smear Campaigning
Decline: The End of the American Century
Rebecca Bacon, 1/15/14
Wednesday Modernity Class Notes
A President, a Pope, and a Prime Minister
Pope John Paul II
Margaret Thatcher
Ronald Reagan
Reagan was the first person most like Coolidge since Coolidge himself. After Coolidge were many supporters of the New World Order. Of course, Reagan didn’t have the best history as Governor of California. He signed into law the “Therapeutic Abortion Act”, in an effort to reduce the number of “back room abortions.” Reagan was one who talked the talk, but did not walk the walk.
The Left The Right
a. Liberals a. Conservatives
b. Gov. centered b. Family centered
c.Aquinas: Synthesis c. Augustine: Antithesis
The Right has increasingly become more Left and is now merely an echo of the Leftists plans.
Aquinas: Synthesis
Aquinas believed that since Christianity and non-Christianity kept fighting, we should put them together to synthesize or neutralize them.
Augustine: Antithesis
Augustine believed that there was first of all, this age that we live in, and second, the age to come. He thought that we were the yeast which made the bread (or this age)rise (to the age to come).
AU H2O
Barry Goldwater (1909- 1998)
Grand Old Man
“Extremism in Defense of Liberty”
College Student Underground
A Choice, not an Echo
Conscience
Moral Leadership
The Reagan Reformation
1. Beginnings
“The only thing read in Hollywood is scripts, and only half of them. Which is why so many bad movies are made.” -Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan was born in 1911 and died in 2004.
He started his Hollywood career in 1937 and was a known face by 1954, when he became a large part of GE Theater MC. Reagan originally was a Leftist, but he switched to Republican in 1962.
2. Political Star
Back in Reagan’s time (sometimes even still today), Presidents or candidates would bring in an actor to make them look good.
Reagan, who had not yet entered politics, gave his official endorsement to Goldwater in 1964 at the GOP Convention. This later played an important role as he became Governor of California in 1966.
1976: Campaign Against Ford.
3. President
1980: Campaign Against Carter
1981: Campaign Against Modernity
1984: Campaign for a Legacy
After Reagan was re-elected he was considered as too old to be President. By 84′, he was already 73 and was having his “lackeys” run the whole thing.
The John Paul II Restoration
1. Polish Son
Paul was born as Karol Jozet Wojtyta in Poland in 1920 and died in 2005.
He was a talented athlete but was called to the church and became a Catholic Pope.
He hated Communism, but was under it’s rule.
2. Rising Star
John Paul was also against the Modern Culture that we are now living in.
He became the Bishop of Krakow and was a Patron of the Solidarity Movement.
3. Pope
Pontifical Institute for Doctrine
He was the first non-Italian Pope since 1521.
Paul was fluent in 10 different languages and was most widely-traveled.
The Thatcher Reversal
1. Manse Child
Margaret Thatcher was born in 1925 and died in 2013.
She was a daughter of a Methodist Preacher.
Thatcher went to Oxford to read Chemistry and Law.
2. She became a member of Parliament for Finchley in 1959, and Secretary of State for science in 1970.
1975: Opposition Leader
3. Iron Lady
Thatcher became the Prime Minister of Britain in 1979, and was re-elected in 1983, and again in 87′.
The Cost of Leadership
1. Undermining
Global Media and Entertainment
Political Sabotage
Negative Resistance
2. Assassination
Attempts were made on all three lives.
Reagan: March 13, 1981
Pope: May 13, 1981
Thatcher: October 12, 1984
3. Perseverance
Solidarity Success: December 9, 1989
Fall of the Wall: November 9, 1989
Fall of the U.S.S.R.: December 8, 1991
When you stand against modernity and all that it has done, you will get resistance and push back. Culture does not allow you to want to go along and get along. They want you to be a pucker-up or duck type of person. The supporters of Modernity will try to destroy your reputation. And if that fails, They will attack your person.
“Heroes, more often than not, emerge at very unexpected times in very unexpected places with very unexpected gifts producing very unexpected results. That unexpectedness is the very thing that makes them heroes. They never fail to surprise.
-Paul Johnson
Rebecca Bacon, 2/5/14
Wednesday Modernity Class Notes
Chapter 43, Essential Habits of Emerging Leaders
The Lectio Divina for Leaders
1. Lectio: Reading, Hearing, Seeing
If you want to be a leader, you have to read. We may give up and ask “who cares?” when reading gets boring or thick, but that is when we look at the nobody’s. The people who started out on the bottom, but went from there to be great writers or leaders because they read good books.
No matter how many books you read, if they are not Christian or don’t have a good worldview, or just aren’t useful at all, all it will do for you is further your paganism.
We can’t just see with our eyes but through our eyes. In other words, when we read, we must read between the lines.
The danger of reading so much, is to over think things, or to think further into something than is necessary.
2. Meditatio: Thinking, Meditating, Connecting
Taking a thought all the way home- teasing a thought to find all the implications and connections.
3. Oratio: Praying, Inscripturating
to put what we learn or what we need to learn into prayer.
4. Contemplatio: Living, Applying, Obeying
When we read, we also need to apply things to our lives. Obeying God’s order to convert all evil-doers, and if they will not be converted, to destroy them.
Lectio: Read
1. Read
a. Read widely- to read all different types. Including History, Sociology, Science, and autobiographys.
b. Read deeply- to read books which take a lot of work and practice. Tackling heavy stuff takes practice.
c. Read broadly- to read magazines, essays, blogs, pamphlets and journals. Having these sources will help rebuttal attacks on Christianity.
d. Read outside your time- to read things from the past, far past. Reading things from hundreds of years ago will help you keep from being stifled from your own era. Gaining insights from greater leaders than those of our own time. If you only read things from the present, than you will become stuck in your time.
2. Collect
a. Gather tools- build your own library. The greatest people don’t feel safe unless they have a book by their side wherever they go.
b. Follow the footnote trail- to follow up on authors and the authors who inspired those authors. You should find the extra books talked about in footnotes or those which inspired the book you are reading.
c. Build a legacy- Inspire others to read the books which you have read. So after awhile they also turn into great leaders, wanting to be more like you.
3. Focus
a. Reform the palate- you may have gotten used to bad habits when you were younger. You must work to get rid of these habits and get better ones.
b. Have a plan- stay organized. make lists of books and organize everything. Know what to do and when to do it.
c. Adjust the plan- try to stay to the plan. But at the same time, be flexible and balanced. Adjust yourself and your plan to changes.
Meditaio: Think
1. Journal
a. Write it down- you should have a journal along with your books, writing down what you learn and documenting it along the way.
b. Observation before Interpretation
c. Interpretation before Application
2. Space
a. Get alone- its hard to be unsocial, but when you read you need to be away from the world.
b. Be quiet- sometimes even when you don’t want to, you need to be away from everyone. Relax and concentrate on new plans and ideas.
c. Purpose and plan- again, stay organized. Beware of getting too organized, it can be harmful. Remember in all that you do what your end goal is. Stick to that when your plan fails.
3. Community
a. Nurture Conversation- even though you need space, you need to not become “monkish,” or unsocial. There is a time and place for everything. Communicate with good people, and talk on good subjects.
b. Engage Accountability- discipline is a good habit but you need to be Accountable for your bad habits just as much.
c. Embrace Differences- when you rise up to the top, what gets you there is your being different than everyone else. You may stand out and be despised or laughed at, but all the greatest leaders have only walked on with their heads held high, embracing their differences.
Oratio: Pray
1. Ruts
a. Spiritual do-overs- we all make mistakes, we each have bad habits that need to be gotten rid of. Each time we pray to God, it will make us stronger. Stronger to fix mistakes, and stronger to avoid them.
b. Tangibilitate- in other words, be tangible.
c. Habits of the Heart- we may believe things or do things which are wrong, but this only means that we need to learn more good habits.
2. Disciplines
a. Semper Gaudete
b. Sola Scruptura- when we pray, we sometimes don’t know how to say or put things. That is when we must turn to the Bible, God’s word, to give us the correct words to say. In other words, read back the scriptures to God.
c. Vox Magister
3. Unceasing
a. In the closet- when you pray, be alone. Time alone with God is the best way to recover from pain.
b. In the Midst
c. In the Covenant
Contempatio: Live
1. Recreate
a. Unstring the Bow- when we come back from war, we unstring our bow. We have that moment of letting go and relaxing.
b. There’s a physical side to spirituality- music is a good way not to stress. Stressing will not make you a good leader.
c. The GIGO principle
2. Wherefores
a. In, but not of
b. Well-examined
c. Intentionality
3. Integrate
a. Pick your battles- you can’t be a knight in every battle. Some fights are not a hill to die over.
b. Focus on solutions not problems- a solution to many of our problems is family. Isolation is not a good thing for the family. Get closer to them.
c. Balance urgency with patience- walking with God and feeling his presence is one of the best things to become a leader. There is danger in not caring, but there is danger in caring too much. It is pathetic to see people who have gifts, but don’t care to use them.
Even though in the Biblical world the leaders should be men. The women should be leaders in the home, and encouraging the spiritual leader of the home.
The more we learn and read, the more we understand that we don’t know.
The application of what we learn when studying Modernity is a bit difficult, yet crucial. Application must emerge in potential rising leaders if in fact the smothering uniformity of ideological nationalism and the revolutionary impulse are to be reformed. To engage our passion we must have the ability to think and do. That’s what the lectio divina ultimately provides us with.
Rebecca Bacon, 2/12/14
Wednesday Modernity Class Notes
Lesson 44, In for the Long Haul: The Adullam Strategy
The Final Lesson
The Lectio Divina for Leaders
“Education begins in delight and ends in a clarification of life.” ~Robert Frost
Lectio: Reading, Hearing, and Seeing
Meditatio: Thinking, Meditating, and Connecting
Oratio: Praying, Inscripting
Contemplatio: Living, Applying, Obeying
The Lovedale Mission
1. Lovedale
The Glasgow Missionary Society was created in 1824 in South Africa.
Tyumi Tributary of the Keiskama
Cape Province of South Africa.
2. Trouble
1834: Buildings Destroyed
1846: War of the Axe
1850: Fort Hare
3. Institute
1841-1851: Mission School
1851: Edward Govan
1867: James Stewart
The Adullam Strategy
1. Livingstone
New Industrial Enterprises
Ma-botsa Frontier on the Limpopo
“Open-up” Africa’s Interior
2. Discipleship
Train, Disciple, and Educate
Equip and Prepare
Education, Hard work, and Devotion
3. School
Classical Education
Industrial Arts
Nation-Building, Cultural-Building
Shabboz Goy- when someone is being used as a puppet by someone else. When a Gentile is being manipulated by a Jew to get something they want.
From Indebted, Distressed and Bitter
“David escaped to the cave of Adullam above the plain of the Philistines and the Valley of the Rephaim. When his brothers and all his father’s house heard it, they went down there to him. And then, everyone who was distressed, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was bitter in soul, came and gathered to him. And David became captain over them. And there where with him about four hundred men.” (1 Samuel 22:1-2)
To David’s Mighty Men
“Now these are the last words of David and these are the names of the mighty men whom David had with him. They were with him from the time they first gathered together at the Cave of Adullam, when a band of Philistines was encamped in the Valley of Rephaim.” (2 Samuel 23:1,8,23)
The mind-set of a revolutionary wants change overnight, while the mind-set of a reformationist knows to be patient and not to expect a quick change.
David did not despise the day of small beginnings. He looked at his four hundred men, the indebted, distressed, and bitter, and he turned them into giant killers.
In for the Long Haul
“We do what we do compelled by the love of Christ.” ~James Stewart
There are no shortcuts to true reformation. You cant just push a button and have all you want. It is a slow and steady process.
Education and Discipleship have always been kind of “David and Goliath” experiences. You will always have unexpected results, and you will face unexpected odds.
Its never been easy. Not then. Not now. Not ever. Sometimes God puts us on paths that we don’t like or are just plain hard.
Trouble inevitably follows transformation. You cannot bring change to a culture without resistance. People get used to certain things as they grow up. If you come in trying to change all they have ever known, they will not like you. If you are going to come at you hard and fast. This is because the Devil and all his followers are against anything good, are true, or beautiful.
And finally, success cannot be measured in the short
“Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds.” (Hosea 6:1)
“And not only [so], but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope.” (Romans 5:3-4)
“And the LORD shall smite Egypt: he shall smite and heal [it]: and they shall return [even] to the LORD, and he shall be intreated of them, and shall heal them.” (Isaiah 19:22)
“The LORD will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing: thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness.” (Psalms 41:3)
“Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped, and said, ‘naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” (Job 1: 20-21)
“The Adullam Strategy is hardly the way we would choose to undertake the great task of cultural transformation. But more often than not, it is the way God, in His good providence, chooses for us. As Shakespeare quipped, ‘So it ever has been; so it will ever be.'” ~ Tristan Gylberd