Whatsthatsmell?

Hallowe'en Rant: The Church Party

Okay, so they organised an "alternative" Hallowe'en party at the church because some parents are "concerned" about the pagan and satanic implications of Hallowe'en.  Okay, I'm just going to keep my mouth shut, as my daughter would enjoy a party, and despite me (an ex-pagan) going into a rant about how many pagans actually get offended by turning it into a children's holiday where their beliefs get mocked.

But what did they replace it with?  A Star Wars party.  And they tried to sell Star Wars to the kids as "Judaeo-Christian" thing rather than as a Taoist-Buddhist-Joseph Campbell hodge-podge of beliefs that are shared across many world religions...

Talk about false idols.  I am really disturbed by this.  The closest thing in Christianity that the theology of Star Wars comes to is Manichaeism, a Gnostic belief system that was deemed a heresy as early as the 4th Century.  Star Wars may have a story where Good ultimately triumphs over Evil, but there is an inherent dualism between the Dark and the Light Sides of the Force, an impersonal pantheistic force that penetrates everything.  Definitely not the G-d of the Torah nor Our Saviour of the New Testament.

I am really torn.  Do I inform the person who was selling this that she was misinforming the kids?  Or do I let it slide?  Is it really worth it?

Of Men and Giants

I just started reading Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton.

Just two sentences in, his prose elicits an appreciative grin.  What a pure pleasure.

One gets the feeling one is in the presence of a giant among men. 

I'm really looking forward to the rest of it...

Even More Solzhenitsyn

There’s plenty to blog about, but I don’t really have the discipline to do that on top of schoolwork, paid work, and life...So, here you go, a third helping of Solzhenitsyn from The Gulag Archipelago. And if you ever get a chance, I recommend you read it yourself.

A must read for anyone interested in morality and freedom.

More Solzhenitsyn

In no exact order:

Quoting the head of the Cheka, Martin Latsis from the newspaper Red Terror, in 1918:

"We are not fighting against single individuals.  We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class.  It is not necessary during an interrogation to look for evidence proving that the accused opposed the Soviets by word or action.  The first question which you should ask him is what class does he belong to, what is his origin, his education and his profession.  These are the questions which will determine the fate of the accused.  Such is the sense and the essence of the red terror."

And I wonder how far away we are from this:

Lost in the Cosmos...

I recently finished reading Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book by Walker Percy.  Although I finished it about a week ago, its effects are still lingering with me.

Don't be fooled by the title, it is not a self-help book in the traditional sense.

It's a book filled with philosophical assertions and conundrums and discourses on semiotics, followed up with short mini-quizzes, which culminate in a question as to which sort of world would one want to live in (after several hypotheticals).  And I suppose it is within these short Q & As that one "discovers" oneself, or is forced to confront the fundamental inconsistencies within one's belief system. 

Unlike with comparable works which I have read - by the likes of Robert Anton Wilson, for instance - one is left a bit more hopeful and less agnostic than from the point whence one begins.

He also hits upon a few issues that have been in the forefront of my navel-gazing of late: