"I've never seen one that has taken whatever author they're inspired by, or like, idea they're inspired by to the next level." I'm your huckleberry. 😏😎
Christianity is my favorite literary mechanism to describe spirituality and divinity. I’m not religious. I probably never will be. But it’s undeniably useful as an example of form, prose, syntax, etc. the Old Testament is IMO the perfect story book
I click on a lot of random writing/author videos and I just realized that you've been focusing on Cormac so it's an instant subscribe. I think the format you've landed on is pretty great, so if you ever branch out to other authors, like Delillo, I bet you'd have a chance to expand you're audience. (just a thought) That said, I would not complain if you continue on McCarthy forever.
I got David Foster Wallace, Jean Baudrillard, Carl Jung, Heidegger, and others in the chamber to start this year. Don will have to wait for another year. I've read all his works and am not inspired right now for some reason.
Great vid. If you’re interested in the evolution of consciousness I would highly recommend Jean Gebser and his model for the structure of consciousness. It’s too much to explain here but The Ever Present Origin is one of the most brilliant things I’ve ever read/seen
😂😂😂 I love it. In a sense, that’s a combo of Christ and culture in paradox and Christ above culture. I think those 5 views are a helpful taxonomy of the first principles most people apply to their own views of and that concept’s relationship to culture. Niebuhr puts it in Christological terms, but I don’t think that’s a requirement for his ideas to be helpful.
I appreciate so much about your commentary. It helps me better appreciate and understand McCarthy (and our world), and you! I LOVE your emphasis on the non-objectifying, non-idealized, reality-based WHO in McCarthy. That's probably my biggest and favorite takeaway. Thank you for this contribution to my life...! As a latter-day Christian (I use that term VERY cautiously, lol) who is very sympathetic to atheists and agnostics (having been one myself, and still one in some ways), I must say that your take on Christianity *seems* to focus on outward appearances (e.g. a structure- and power-based understanding of 'hierarchy') and less on essences. I'd love to hear your engagement with Francis of Assisi (e.g. Thomas of Celano's or Chesterton's biographies), Thomas Merton (e.g. 'Seven Story Mountain', 'Thoughts in Solitude', and correspondence with Thích Nhất Hạnh), and Jean-Luc Marion. Hopkins' 'As Kingfishers Catch Fire' gets at Catholicism's sacramental worldview, too, which is different from what you're describing as 'Christian'. Mary Oliver's good, too. All of which can't *really* be understood from the 'outside' or from a place of intellectual certainty/pride, which may seem like a cop out or an impossible task, but it's true, and you take truth seriously. (Am I guilty of these things here? I hope not.) Anyways, I look forward to continuing to engage with your enjoyable and intellectually stimulating reflections, and I hope to hear your response. Keep up the good work, Ian.
I have read Merton's "The Wisdom of the Desert," I have read a bunch about Assisi (no biographies but they look good) read short excerpts of Marion in a phenomenology class, read the Hopkins poem, and read Oliver's full bibliography. In terms of the innerward aspects of Christianity, they have the potential to manifest powerful transformations, especially through the lineage of the authors you've mentioned. I would add one of my other favorite authors Wendell Berry to that list. I've experienced inner transformation through their work, and known people who've done a high degree of individuation through those ideas. If 30% of the world worked toward this style of being we'd live in a utopia. But, there is one question my whole response rests upon. 1. Do you believe in the He-God and going to heaven? If so, I recommend you and everyone else take them up and continue. However, as someone who doesn't believe in the He-God, heaven, and is skeptical about the historicity of Jesus then these archetypal systems, stories, and ways of living are weak. They also have no potential of actually getting 30% of the world on board. We are never going back to a Christian society. Science, technology, and the counter-culture have guaranteed that (unless you believe in a deterministic view where God shifts us back at some point in the future.) So, if someone wants to obtain mystical states, gain reciprocity with nature, understand their own psychology, create a coherent lifestyle without any negative baggage, create communities without baggage, and other things the Christian modality of thought (in any of its incarnations) is down the chain. Christian thought and energy can be manipulated to serve any of those purposes but that shouldn't blind us to other ideas that are better. My goal is a global educational revolution on a spiritual, emotional, and mental level and Christianity had its turn and run its course. Some Christian ideas and figures are strong enough to come along but the whole package is too much. Thanks for the kind words and support and I hope this answer is sufficient!
@@WriteConscious I appreciate your response, Ian! God is not a man. Hello. It's a conundrum - 'problem', though not necessarily in a negative sense - that so much Judeo-Christian-speak (e.g. Jesus') refers to God as "Father". God is, obviously (at least to those who actually think through this stuff), definitionally, not human and beyond any human conception. And so, with Elizabeth Johnson and other Catholic theologians, I believe God is as much (and as little!) "She" and "They" as "He", and more so these than "It". And better "Thou" (or just "God" or some other word that expresses the ineffable, like "YHWH", or just silence...) than any. Jesus' claim to being fully human and fully God is indeed a conundrum. Elizabeth Johnson is a great resource for orthodox (in my opinion), feminist Christian thought and praxis. Heaven is less a place to attain someday ("I hope I get to heaven when I die!") than an invitation to beatitude now, which, for Christians (thinking ones), includes embracing Reality as it is, "both the straights and the curves", as August Wilson wrote. People know caricatures and simulacra of Christianity more than they realize. I wish people wouldn't settle so much. As to your skepticism about the historicity of Jesus, well, I don't know what to say. Maybe Josephus was full of shit (or a figment of someone's strange, sick imagination), and those first-hand accounts were all tricks or delusional, too. I don't want to waste your or my time here, and I don't know how central this is to your work with writing and McCarthy, which is important. I'll just say, I have more and deeper problems with fideistic, angelistic, out-of-touch-with-reality Christianity than most atheists. They give thinking Christians a bad rep. (I'm holding my tongue by not calling out certain denominations in which this is more present than others.) And, I will say, inability and unwillingness to embrace Reality - real people, for instance, instead of living in their idea-worlds - is not at all unique to Christians. Anyway, thanks again for your engagement with McCarthy. I'll keep following and won't be a troll, I promise. I'm about a third of the way through 'Pretty Horses', my first foray into McCarthy! I'm loving the banter between the boys. And, obviously, the landscape descriptions - I really appreciate McCarthy's specificity and lyricism - are sublime.
Hey man when are we diving into Outer Dark? I’ve just finished Child of God and you are right, it’s a bit shit. Keen to get into Suttree now I’ve slogged through his early works.
