More June reading

Alan Jacobs, again, with a nicely captured piece of worldly wisdom completely at odds with orthodox Christian belief:

“[M]etaphysical capitalism”: I am a commodity owned solely by myself; I may do with this property whatever I want and call it whatever I want; any suggestion that my rights over myself are limited in any way I regard as an intolerable tyranny. I am what I say I am. I am my own. As a Christian I do not and cannot believe this. My only comfort in life and in death is that I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ.

“last word on critical theory,” Snakes and Ladders (June 17, 2020) [link]. There’s more here, and you can follow Jacob’s interior links, but this is an immediately important concept that is relevant in many political, social and personal contexts. “You are not your own.” 1 Cor. 6:19-20. Let us strive to live as Christ’s δουλοι.

Stephen L. Carter, “Are the George Floyd Protests Different?” Bloomberg News (June 4, 2020) [link]”

Is it different this time? That’s the question on so many lips as furious protesters march through streets all across the U.S. and major cities impose curfews. We ask because we’ve seen this movie before — explosions of activism that seem for an instant to herald a tectonic shift in the nation’s self-understanding, only to turn out to be the distant fading trumpets of a movement in retreat.

But what if this is an actual uprising? A revolution? Not in the silly way the words are sometimes used, as synonyms for “really big demonstrations” — but an actual uprising, the sort of thing that over history has toppled regimes?

That’s the question, but you need to read the entire piece to see what Mr. Carter thinks.

W.H. Auden, A Certain World: A Commonplace Book, 87 (1970), quoted in Ian Sansom, September 1, 1939: Biography of a Poem 224 (2019)*:

By all means let a poet, if he wants to, write engagé poems, protesting against this or that political evil or social injustice. But let him remember this. The only person who will benefit from them is himself; they will enhance his literary reputation among those who feel as he does. The evil or injustice, however, will remain exactly what it would have been if he had kept his mouth shut.

Matters aren’t solved by words, spoken or written, it is true; but matters are not normally solved by silence, either.