Sometimes, it seems all we do on the Internet and social media is argue about whose activities are most superior and most important. We all want to “matter,” but we can develop elaborate defensive arguments about who gets there the best. Many times, our own need to matter gets in the way of recognizing what matters to other people. And yet needing to matter at something is one of the deepest human longings. We need…
I’m a huge fan of French polymath Blaise Pascal simply because he provokes thought. Besides his scientific and mathematical contributions, he died before forming his greatest philosophical work into a coherent defense of the plausibleness of Christianity. Instead, they were left as a series of fragments for us to ponder in the following centuries. Simply titled Pensées (or “thoughts”), they give us insight into the spiritual life of one of history’s greatest scientific geniuses. This…
Søren Kierkegaard’s writings have long entranced me since I first ran across it as a teenager. He brought a thoughtful and philosophical approach towards the Christian life that didn’t center around being merely “churchy.” Indeed, as this biography testifies, he ran into conflicts with the institutional church throughout his life. Clare Carlisle details how Copenhagen received this eccentric bachelor before his eminence grew after his death. She particularly focuses on his love life as the…
The Epic of Gilgamesh, the truly ancient of ancient stories, is vitally important to civilization for several reasons. First, it’s a really good story talking about the meaning of life, much like Job is to the Bible. Second, it provides a window into early civilization with the view that humans have always been, well, relatively human. It’s a timeless classic. Finally, it’s a religious work from a non-Roman, non-Hebrew, and non-Greek source. It illustrates the…
Simone Weil, a twentieth-century French philosopher and political activist, possessed excellent academic training and worked in the Spanish leftist political movements. Around the advent of World War II, however, she became disillusioned with the totalitarian politics of Europe and made a reflective move inward. She began to convert to a Roman Catholic form of Christianity. Unfortunately, she died in obscurity before the war’s end as a result of a longstanding struggle with anorexia. She had…
Technology in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries can be as much of a problem as a help. As an instrument, it can make mass killing much easier. Indeed, nuclear bombs enable the world to potentially destroy itself in less than an hour. Yet technology can enable human flourishing as well. For instance, I develop software professionally that I hope will help my domain (medical research) advance. How are we to understand technology, a concept as…
Humanity seems to be moving from paper-based forms of authentication (like licenses or passports) to electronic forms of authentication (like iris scans, face scans, or fingerprints). In this work, Grinnell signals that the changes wrought by such biometric technology might not be all good. Ever-anxious “biometric thought” arises from interacting with this technology, and he analyzes how this thought tends to leave out social relationships that really define us. By trade, I’m a software developer,…