What do you do when you would like to learn or understand something, but ‘looking at’ is inadequate for that endeavor, and ‘looking along’ is not (yet) possible?
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Nothing Is Of Value If It Lacks the Good
In the dialogue Charmides, Socrates and Critias have an interesting conversation about the interplay between know-how and moral knowledge.
I daresay we can learn something from it.
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Star Wars – A Cry For Redemption
The Star Wars galaxy cries out for redemption.
By redemption I mean a state in which everything is as it should be, and stably so: evil and darkness should not have the possibility to creep back in.
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“Sometimes doing the right thing means bending the rules”
“I’ve learned from my Master that sometimes doing the right thing means bending the rules” explains Ahsoka Tano to the Jedi younglings who had come to rescue her from pirate captivity although they had been explicitly commanded not to[1].
Ahsoka thus appreciates their ‘act of disobedience’ because in “bending the rules” they had done “the right thing”.
Read More“The secular community (…) has no higher end than to facilitate and safeguard the family and friendship and solitude. (…) a household laughing together over a meal, or two friends talking over a pint of beer, or a man alone reading a book that interests him (…) all economics, politics, laws, armies and institutions save insofar as they prolong and multiply such scenes are a mere ploughing the sand and sowing the ocean, a meaningless vanity and vexation of spirit.”
C.S. Lewis in his essay Membership
Governments’ Only Raison d’Être
Personas as Stabilizer in Character Development
“Do not scold, like a kitchen-girl. No warrior scolds. Courteous words or else hard knocks are his only language.” (Tirian to Eustace in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle)
Eustace is told to behave like a warrior. But is he a warrior? Or about to become one? And, is it his purpose anyway to become a warrior, or rather something even greater which shares only some features with a warrior?
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‘Healthiness’ as a Touchstone For Assessing Narratives
Faced with corrosive doctrines inside of churches founded by him, the apostle Paul conspicuously often argues that those false teachings are ‘not sound’ or ‘contrary to sound doctrine’[1]. ‘
Sound’ can also be translated ‘healthy’, and indeed the underyling Greek word is hygiaino, where we get our ‘hygiene’.
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When emotional transformation is rushed
Suppose you want to change a character trait of yours, one that mainly consists in emotional mismanagement.
Take irascibility as an example. Your aim is to become more considerate, more serene, and less irritable.
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