For more and more people, work appears to serve no purpose. Is there any good left in the grind? [The] bullshit employment has come to serve in places like the U.S. and Britain as a disguised, half-baked version of the dole—one attuned specially to a large, credentialled middle class. In “Bullshit Jobs” (Simon & Schuster),… Read More The Bullshit-Job Boom
Are we becoming a more and more skill-less World? Modern technology as a flight from reality. “I have known Dr. Taylor for years and I wrote a forward to his book on trinitarian theology and its relation to our vision of Creation. Modern technology as a flight from reality. “This is an important topic on… Read More Quasi-Luddites in a Digital World. Larry Chapp Interviews Dr. Michael Taylor.
C.S. Lewis on materialistic thoughts; Consequences for Our Thought-Processes and Philosophies of Truth… ‘If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are… Read More Revisiting C.S. Lewis on the Dangers of Scientism
Tolkien Mourned the Decline of the Shire* …the real shire of his youth which he ever remembered and sought to salvage to the extent that he could; the simplicity and beauty of the land and villages which he grew up in, the countryside, the mountains and streams, the beauty of the day and the night… Read More Tolkien’s Battle for the Shire. And for Us All.
‘Luddite’ Teens Don’t Want Your Likes. Updated. “When I got my flip phone, things instantly changed,” Lola continued. “I started using my brain. It made me observe myself as a person. I’ve been trying to write a book, too. It’s like 12 pages now…You post something on social media, you don’t get enough likes, then… Read More “Social media and phones are not real life”
—First, Ross Douthat. What Euthanasia Has Done to Canada. And: Yuan Yi Zhu: “Since last year, Canadian law, in all its majesty, has allowed both the rich as well as the poor to kill themselves if they are too poor to continue living with dignity. In fact, the ever-generous Canadian state will even pay for… Read More Why is Canada euthanising the poor?
… or of Scientistic Transhumanism? Eva Vlaardingerbroek and millions of young people around the world are waking up to the threats of scientism, what Vlaardingerbroek rightly calls the poisoned chalice of history. We are living in New Time. Christians believe history is going somewhere. If man (m/w) is not allowed to flourish as the Image… Read More Man as Image of God?
Updated: Neuralink Corporation is a neurotechnology company that develops implantable brain–computer interfaces (BCIs). Co-founded by Elon Musk, Max Hodak and Paul Merolla, the company’s headquarters is in the Pioneer Building in San Francisco sharing offices with OpenAI.[5] Neuralink was launched in 2016 and was first publicly reported in March 2017.[1][6] —Wikipedia Telegraph UK. “His reasons to do this are two-fold. At one level, he sees an… Read More No Thanks, Elon.
McLuhan, 1969: “There’s nothing at all difficult about putting computers in the position where they will be able to conduct carefully orchestrated programing of the sensory life of whole populations. I know it sounds rather science-fictional, but if you understood cybernetics you’d realize we could do it today. The computer could program the media to… Read More Marshall McLuhan on media manipulation of peoples and nations
Paul Kingsnorth (born 1972 in Worcester) is an English writer who lives in the west of Ireland. He is a former deputy-editor of The Ecologist and a co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project. He wrote about his spiritual journey and conversion to Christianity in a June 2021 essay in First Things. [wikipedia]. [His] debut novel, The Wake, won the… Read More Paul Kingsnorth on the Theological Roots of Transhumanist Projections
When making money is not a good enough reason for a talented Catholic Christian to “take a job”. What are we building? — See also Vocation Versus Job Hunting No man can serve two masters, the Lord said. Consider: thе Vіdео Gаmе Іndustrу. “Lіkе аnу іndustrу, thе vіdео gаmе іndustrу сеrtаіnlу hаs іts fаіr shаrе… Read More When Making Money Is Not A Good Enough Reason
“The Hidden Environmental Toll of Smartphones If you’re reading this on a phone screen, you hold between your hand valuable pieces of the Earth’s crust which have been extracted from mines all over the planet. You’re not alone: an estimated 3.5 billion people use smartphones, almost half of the world’s population, and this number grows… Read More Oligarchs Choose Efficient Global Surveillance Over Environmental Ideology
What is Order to the Spider is Chaos to the Fly. —Morticia Addams. The LORD presented our first parents with wondrous Creation, Being. The Enemy of souls however proposed a counter-reality. And our Maker allowed this test of the only real freedom there is. SH. Two presentations. The Thomistic Institute and the proposed “World Brain”… Read More The iPhone is Changing us …
“If Dante were alive today, the tortured souls in the ninth circle of hell would suffer an eternity of being on hold listening to a brain-scrambling tune interrupted every 20 seconds by a robotic she-devil intoning, “Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line and a customer service representative will be with you shortly.”… Read More Your Call is Important to Us
“In the summer and fall of 2021, Prof. Mattias Desmet appeared widely on the internet and in print as he discussed his theory of “mass formation,” or “mass formation psychosis” as it is sometimes called, especially in regard to the government reaction (and overreaction) to the Covid pandemic. Most interesting to Desmet was how many… Read More The Psychology of Totalitarianism.
Paul Kingsnorth. “Do not be conformed to this world“— St. Paul Welcome to the Abbey. ‘Instead of thought there is a vast, inhuman void, full of words, formulas, slogans, declarations, echoes, ideologies … If we do not think, we cannot act freely; we are at the mercy of forces which we never understand, forces that… Read More The Abbey of Misrule
An important discussion on our perilous technological time. Orthodox Christian Jonathan Pageau, Ph.D, writes, “This is my second conversation with Paul Kingsnorth. We talk about his brilliant substack, called The Abbey of Misrule, civilization and control, the power of the state and our technological systems, the matrix, politics, what it takes for communities to survive,… Read More Civilization and Control. Jonathan Pageau
Thomas Reeves, the author of “America’s Bishop,” a biography of Fulton J. Sheen, tells of Sheen’s concerns regarding what he saw as the accelerated secularization occuring during WWII. Reeves mentions in particular the bishop’s 1944 book Seven Pillars of Peace where the subject is treated. This secularization involved the breakdown of the family which Sheen… Read More Bishop Sheen, Rosie the Riveter, and the War’s Greatest Casualty
by John Waters 4.29.22.First Things Magazine Elon Musk is typically the object of considerable masculine envy, and so, in the interests of avoiding accusations of green-eye, it would be nice to be able to declare him unequivocally as on the side of the angels. But, for all his legendary space-adventuring, this is by no means clear.… Read More Elon Musk And the Post Humanist Threat — First Things Magazine
This documentary shows only one tragic instance of the proficient use of propaganda in the 20th century. Of course, the Communists did the same, even if a little more clumsily. But what about us today in the 21st century? Western people today live, move and think in a 24×7 media hall of mirrors. George Orwell,… Read More The Propaganda Machines of Yesterday Should Give Us Pause Today
He purchased Twitter, the largest “Public Square” in the entire world. And coterminous with it . Elon Musk is also making implants to link the brain with computers and Smartphones — and very much more. There will be “many applications” in time for all, he insists. Spiritual Derangement, Specious Rationalizations, toying with improving the Imago… Read More Elon Musk? What’s Everybody So Happy About?
Ireland’s John Waters writes, “As things stand, it appears that artificial intelligence, while capable of outperforming humans in certain tasks and reckonings, still requires human supervision. Being neither sentient nor self-aware, AI cannot reflect on its own processes. It gets things wrong, mainly due to insufficient, poor, or confusing inputs, albeit less so than before.… Read More Morality in the Age of Machines.
“The Creepy Line” is an “eye-opening documentary, [it] reveals the stunning degree to which society is manipulated by Google and Facebook and blows the lid off the remarkably subtle — hence powerful — manner in which they do it. The Creepy Line is a title culled from the words of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt,… Read More What Some Internet Companies Have Done To Us
“Totalitarian?” It took me many years to really believe that we could ever get that bad here, but, just in case, I did vainly hop around the blogosphere scribbling, as I heard that this or that platform was worse or better (or promising to do better!) than the other. Even Julian Assange, after all, held… Read More The Appalling Spy Machines
Crisis MagazineOCTOBER 29, 2021David Larson I try my best to temper my tech-skeptic instincts, but despite these efforts, I can’t help but consider all the worst possibilities of the coming “Metaverse.” In fact, the more I read about it, the more I think Christians should start preparing for it now, before we, along with our… Read More Christians, Beware the Metaverse
St. Pius X: It is of great importance that the priest should combine his daily divine meditation with the constant reading of pious books, especially the inspired books. That was the command that Paul gave to Timothy: Attend unto reading. The same lesson was taught by St. Jerome when instructing Nepotianus on the priestly life:… Read More St. Pius X on Spiritual Reading & Pope Pius XII on Media
In 1954 the famous Thomist, Josef Pieper wrote: “Once, and as soon as, world dominion in the full sense has become possible, the Antichrist has become possible. To this corresponds the other coordinate fact that the Christian gospel must have reached the totality of the peoples of the earth, who have been rendered accessible to… Read More Thomist Josef Pieper on the Pseudo-Order and World Dominion of the AntiChrist.
“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.” –G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy English author & mystery novelist (1874 – 1936) Utopia literally means “nowhere’.… Read More Futurism and Accelerationism
[Note: Why the concern? a government agency implanting a microchip in a citizen may use disease tracking and treatment as a pretext also to track and farm human ‘animals’.] Daily Mail: “Pentagon scientists reveal a microchip that senses COVID-19 in your body BEFORE you show symptoms and a filter that extracts the virus from blood… Read More Antichristic Mischief
Social Justice, War, and Housing: Have children! Have many children! Have as many as you can. This is God’s way. Be fruitful, not voluntarily barren (save for specially graced vocations which bear other kinds of fruits for the Body of Christ). Yes, certainly, but today the dilemma for many is how many children can one… Read More Family, Eternity — and Catholic Social Justice
Catholic Critique 