Reading with Ally

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Tag: philosophy

  • Probably All I will Say about Fundamentalism

    Part 1 – the long part

    I recently sat down with a mentor to talk about being burnt-out-on-being-burnt-out-on religion. I am at a place where I feel like I’ve read everything on the internet about Christian fundamentalism and half the books that have been written in the last decade or so. I’m really, quite frankly, tired of it all, and I want to move on with my life, but the fundies of course insist that moving on is equivalent to losing your faith, and I don’t want that either, so here we are. Maybe more specifically, each time I think I’m past it all, I find myself questioning, why am I doing X – Activity and it’s usually something related to fundamentalism.

    I needed to talk to a third party. Someone who doesn’t know me that well, isn’t my age, and who takes ~religion and doctrine~ seriously without also being a fundamentalist. You can always find some anonymous person on Reddit to tell you what you want to hear, but, we are ~social creatures~ and sometimes, you need to talk to a real person. So I did.

    The interesting thing about getting out of fundamentalism is that, of course, there is never one problem to solve. Questions about having children are connected to the question of the Dominion Mandate, the question of what-job-should-i-do is connected to what you were taught about gender roles and whether or not whole bodies of human knoweldge have been concocted by liars, and the question of how deeply you engage with things you like to do is connected to whether or not you believe you must continually deny yourself or whether or not you believe God will take something away just because you like it.

    To live that way is exhausting and I’m tired of it. It is even more exhausting to make that statement and immediately hear in the chorus of one’s mind “Cry Out to Jesus” by Third Day (which the fundies would criticize as being too “hard rock”) or the age old hymn “Softly and Tenderly” (played by a virtous old lady on a light oak piano). When you say you want to exit the narrative, you’re still stuck in a never ending loop. You cannot exit the hamster wheel of Church Culture.

    Sometimes I think about blogging about my experiences with fundamentalist culture, but I don’t know what I or anyone else would get out of it. The few times I’ve emailed such organizations (come on AiG, where’s your global flood RAS model) or written reviews about the books online, I’ve been unable to avoid undertones of sarcasm and anger, despite my best efforts to just critique the ideas (not very Matthew 18 of me, eh). Besides, plenty of people have written or talked extensively about these topics, both in the blogosphere and book reviews and of course written their own formal academic books. I don’t really have anything to add except “lol samesies.” I’ve also read the comments that insist the main perpetrators of these ideas are “really super sweet people” and I know, just like me, they are just out doing a job to make money to live, except they do it by telling other people what to do instead of, idk, sizing pipes or something. Alas, there I go again. The world does not need my anger.

    AND, in case anyone is curious, I’m a post-millenialist now.

    Part 2 – the short part

    Well anyways, the mentor reminded me that within the bounds of God (which I took to be Phillipians 4:8-esque), we are free from the rules of man and can pursue God. God will ask a lot of us, but it will be in the line of Romans 8:28; what you are asked to do will be what makes you more like Christ. That will not look the same for everyone. We are free to become who God made us to be. While the mentor used the word “calling”, he clarified that the word “calling” is a term loaded with Christian-ese, and we aren’t called to one specific path, but rather, to be people like Christ.

    The Gospel is simple. We are new creations in Christ and our time on this earth is spent becoming more like Him. That’s really all there is to it. I rest in that, and let the rest go.

    I don’t think the ‘problem’ of this stuff constantly coming up in my mind will go away, but I don’t have to dwell on it anymore. (Maybe it will though, God created neuroplasticity, too).

    The next time I find myself sitting at my kitchen table at 9-pm, scrolling through the James Webb telescope’s Instagram, smashing a Kirkland brand KIND bar in my face and crying over the beauty of the Universe, I can just…enjoy them…and know the images, and the minds that put together the telescope to get them, reflect the infinite power and care of their Creator. That is really beautiful, really nice, and most importantly, really reassuring.

  • Serious Things and Substack

    I guess most people blog on Substack now. I like what I have here and I don’t want to switch to Substack. I’m suspicuous of Platforms(TM); although, arguably, WordPress is a platform. I’m not going to put a server in my basement or get an AWS account though (alternatives to Substack or WordPress), so here we are. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

    I think when it comes to blogging, or writing in general, it’s easy to feel like everything one writes must have a “big point.” High school me could not write an essay without worrying about the eternal fate of humanity. Usually a piece of writing should have a point, unless your point is that some things don’t have a point, but there is a difference between a Point of Cosmic Significance and just Something Nice You Observed. Furthermore, the Something Nice You Observed doesn’t need to segue (segway?) into a Point of Cosmic Significance. The friendly chirping bird in your backyard can be a reminder of God’s creation without also being a reminder of the Persecuted Church and How People Are Sparrows (TM) the Awful Evolutionists (TM) the Problems with the Government (TM) and The Meaning of Life (TM). Whoa, that escalated quickly. Maybe, more on that later, maybe.

    That idea though – the idea that all writing must have some giant, cosmic point – has definitely crippled my writing in the past. The second I start to write, I get a thousand whirling thoughts of things that must be said write now. I start arguing against myself. I imagine all the criticizers and what they are going to criticize. At the same time, I feel like my writing is cliche and boring, what could I possibly have to say that noone else has said, there is nothing new under the sun, nobody will be interested. I go around and around in circles without ever actually writing anything. I am pretty good at finding Big Reasons Not to Write.

    And you know what? All those reasons suck. It is easy to criticize. It is hard to create. Data is cheap these days. Little words have little meanings and a lot of them are lovely.

  • The End of Aesthetics

    I think the brief Internet Trend Age of curated aesthetics is ending. It’s pretty disappointing; after all, what is more satisfying than a Pinterest board full of assemblies of objects that give “Ravenclaw” or “Dark Academia”? Not much. I dig a Dark Academia aesthetic day.

    Before I moved to the city on the prairie, I thought a lot about aesthetics. I was living in a time of transition. Based on what future job my partner chose, I could have moved to the Southern Great Plains, the Upper Midwest, or stayed in a college town in Indiana. I sat in my favorite coffee shop and wrote a bunch of garbage which I’ve copied and pasted below.

    Now I’ve seen a couple Tik Toks which rightfully attach aesthetic to Capitalism, saying that we promote and keep this aesthetic thing going by buying shit to live our aesthetic. This idea is especially prevalent with the “eclectic grandpa” and “bookshelf wealth” aesthetics, two aesthetics which boil down to doing a variety of things you’re actually interested in and displaying books you’ve actually read. These Tik Tokers criticizing aesthetics as a tool of capitalism (and other stuff, please, just watch the Tik Toks on your own, this is a blog, not going to find a bunch and summarize them) are right, but damn if it doesn’t make me feel kind of sad.

    Tik Tok 1 | Tik Tok 2

    This article says that it’s “ok to mourn the death of social media,” and I kind of feel the same way about this aesthetic curation situation. I’m glad that people are criticizing the “image-ness” of aesthetics. But there’s a sixteen-year-old inside me that still gets excited when I see a Ravenclaw aesthetic board and I feel a little sad that it feels stale. I feel a little sadder to know that the image feels stale because aesthetics have been over-produced; that is, I’ve consumed so much digital content that I’ve been forgetting to do stuff. So all in all, it’s better that people are criticizing these online aesthetics, and the more we move on and do our own stuff, the deeper and better our personalities and relationships will be.

    Idk though, a couple years ago I visited an AirBnB near Point Pelee, Ontario. It was a small add-on to a small house on the shores of the Lake. The decorations, random books and items, were from all around the world. The house was right across the street from a restaurant that had nice sandwiches and beer and it was located a short distance away from a place that served ice cream. I remember thinking that I wanted to have a house that looked and felt like that. And now I actually do, and – I feel – very happy and content.

    the words from 2019:

    I’ve thought about this idea for at least a year now. These are not original thoughts. Many people have thought them before. Thus, it seemed, not great, to waste time corralling this idea into a narrative, because, it is really just a series of questions.

    Experiencing an aesthetic is less exciting than the experience of imagining an aesthetic. Experience is subtle. Experience is uncontrolled. The sounds which create an aesthetic are irregular and we do not choose when they occur. Rain is subject to the rhythms of the wind – the shifting solar pressures of a planet which we do not hold in our hand.

    A friend said simply: “Life is not glamourous. My life as a consultant is not glamorous. Life is not an academic TikTok. It is not a stock office photo.” Marketing packages aesthetic, presents an image, tells others. Marketing simplifies complexity to an authentic aesthetic. Marketable authenticity is an aesthetic which forgets that authenticity is beyond complex. It is messy.

                The grad school English student aesthetic?

                The grad school engineering student aesthetic?

                The flying aesthetic?

                The water engineer aesthetic?

                The dank middle Midwest winter aesthetic?

                The southern Great Plains aesthetic?

                The aesthetic of the Northland?

                I want to feel the aesthetic of the Northland.

                The Ivy League theology professor or the Toni Morrison is a goddess aesthetic?

    How can we differentiate pursuing excellence from pursuing an aesthetic?

    How many aesthetics are acceptable to be combined and packaged into a singular person’s brand?

    How can you authentically brand yourself to get a job without constantly falling into the trap of saying, what aesthetic do I fit into?

    Are aesthetics a new religion?

    Are aesthetics an extension of the postmodern sensate culture of the self?

    When one arrives at phrases about cultures of the self and self-centeredness, it is time to look outward.

    What kind of person should I be, as a Christian, that part of myself which is beyond myself?

    Even then, the summarized sentence, “instead of pursuing an aesthetic, our pursuit should be to come to know God,” has been aestheticized. When I say that phrase, I imagine old men studying books printed with tall 1990s Times New Roman font and the pastor’s wife in the church cinder-block basement, sucking all the fun out of life. In turning from that aesthetic, I imagine awful visits to new churches, the question “how can we serve you,” coffee, Bible journaling.

    I guess what I’m trying to say using the aesthetic of a blog post is that my question used to be how does one get out of all the aesthetics and then I realized today when you are out of pursuing an aesthetic and instead you are totally in a moment there is no aesthetic, there is only what is, and you don’t feel what you feel when you look at an acclomeration of aesthetics, instead, you just feel what you are, and how, who, has described that before.