“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
[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
