Fodder
Items to spark thought and discussion from our ongoing research
Sayers on Work
Fri 10 Nov 2006 by Peter Edman
A commenter on Dallas Willard’s article mentioned Dorothy L. Sayers’ essay, “Why Work?”
The essay was originally published as a pamphlet in 1942, and has been republished in several collections, two under the title, Creed or Chaos?. Currently, the essay is collected in “Letters to a Diminished Church” (an unfortunate title, as Sayers’ writings are appropriate for a wider audience). Here are two good chunks:
The Duty of the Christian Business Man
Tue 24 Oct 2006 by Phillips Brooks
“Is it possible for a man to be engaged in the activities of our modern life and yet to be a Christian? Is it possible for a man to be a broker, a shopkeeper, a lawyer, a mechanic, is it possible for a man to be engaged in a business of today, and yet love his God and his fellow-man as himself?”
Editor’s Note: Dallas Willard mentioned Phillips Brooks in a footnote in his recent article, so we thought to find something by him to share with our readers. Brooks (1835–1893) was an Episcopal clergyman who ended his career as Bishop of Massachusetts. After reading this, it may become clearer why he was ranked as one of the greatest preachers of his day. This midday sermon, sadly abbreviated, is from the 1895 edition of his Addresses, available from Project Gutenberg. Its vision of the Christian life will challenge and inspire both believers and seekers. You can (and should) download a PDF version of the entire sermon here.
In the first section excerpted here, Brooks sets out something of his understanding of the Christian life as life, and in the second section he has some more direct reflections on what this means for those engaged in business.
Romano Guardini on Technology
Thu 13 Jul 2006 • Responses: 1 • by Peter Edman
One of the books that we read that didn’t make it into the Technology curriculum is Letters from Lake Como, by Romano Guardini.
It’s a profound and reflective book, written conversationally. He’s got a useful opening section on the need to welcome technological innovation, but not naively so. There is a place for moral action, he argues; the future is not inevitable.
We must take our place, each at the right point. We must not oppose what is new and try to preserve a beautiful world that is inevitably perishing. Nor should we try to build a new world of the creative imagination that will show none of the damage of what is actually evolving. Rather, we must transform what is coming to be. But we can do this only if we honestly say yes to it and yet with incorruptible hearts remain aware of all that is destructive and nonhuman in it. Our age has been given to us as the soil on which to stand and the task to master.
Calling and Commitments
Thu 25 May 2006 • Responses: 3 • by Peter Edman
We often think of calling or vocation as something we either choose or discern from our talents. This is how I approached the issue when I was younger and my friends and I were asking what we should be doing with our lives. But maybe there’s a different way to look at it, another dimension we need to consider.
I’ve recently been conversing via e-mail with Dr. Gilbert Meilaender at Valparaiso University, and he called to my attention the “letters to Derek” that he published in the Christian Century in the summer of 2003. I was able to find one on the web and found that, as often happens when I read something from Dr. Meilaender, I was presented with a new approach to a topic—in this case, calling. The quote below is from “Living into Commitments,” the second of these open letters to his adopted son.
Control. Fear. Hope.
Mon 24 Apr 2006 by Peter Edman
I just ran across a headline about how many leaders around the world are suffering from low popularity. It reminded me of a favorite book of mine.
Terry Pratchett’s Night Watch has been out for a few years now. It’s one of his Discworld series of fantasy novels, but don’t let that stop you: this is the novel that got critic Michael Dirda to compare Pratchett to Chaucer. The book is that good. What makes it so, at least for me, is the way it helps you think through the limits of leadership and what we can really control. Sometimes things are just complicated.
Why the Sea Is Salt
Mon 06 Mar 2006 by Peter Edman
Now that our curriculum on technology is off to the printer and finalized for the moment as we get ready for the spring Forums, I’ve been finding all sorts of articles and resources that would have made great boxes or readings. I take some comfort in the fact that our framework seems to be able to fit each of them in—in this case, the tendency of technology to do its job, even if you don’t want it anymore; the need to be careful with overpromising technology; and the critical need for a wider purpose for technology than mere blind “progress.” I’m also excited to have the website now, so I can document these items that are useful thinking and talking points for a conversation about technology and the good life.
Item one is the Scandinavian fairy tale, “Why the Sea is Salt,” retold in Andrew Lang’s Blue Fairy Book among many other places (executive summary here). Seems people in the past occasionally took advantage of those long cold dark winter nights to think things through. The wonderful mill—which keeps doing what it is asked to do until stopped, but the user doesn’t know how to stop it—is a great metaphor for technology.
The Price of Wilberforce’s Success
Tue 21 Feb 2006 by Peter Edman
In one of our curricula, we use an 1833 quote from William Wilberforce, delivered from his deathbed on hearing news of the success of abolition.
“Thank God, that I should have lived to witness a day in which England is willing to give twenty millions sterling for the Abolition of Slavery.”
Our notes say that £20 million, the price to be paid to the slave owners of the British Empire, approximately half the value of their slaves, was an astronomical sum in those days. Not being British, I’ve always wondered how much it was worth in dollars. I recently ran across a comparison site, and now I know. Depending on the method of conversion, in 2000 US Dollars the value is between $1.3 billion (retail price index) to more than $42 billion (via a GDP comparison, which may be the more valid comparison). That’s a lot of money. The details are here.
The Future Does Not Compute
Tue 15 Nov 2005 by Peter Edman
We’re getting ready for the revision of the forthcoming curriculum on technology after some very helpful feedback from our first pilot forum in September.
Coincidentally, Volume 75 of the Mars Hill Audio Journal arrived in my mailbox a few weeks back and its topics are salient to our revision work. In particular I found helpful a conversation that Ken Myers had with Steve Talbott, author of The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst. They talk about the way the technology we use affects the way we talk, and then the way we think. This is a very difficult subject to talk about.
In particular, computers are (necessarily?) incapable of dealing with abstracts and metaphors, but the deepest things about us are in what we cannot directly express, what comes through in the spaces between the words, the realm of scientific discovery and the spiritual life. Talbott uses the example of the phrase “love your enemies,” which says a lot to a human but its metaphor is such that any attempt to subject it to a computer translation into another language would fail miserably. Do we, then, stop using such phrases? Technology can be wonderful, but we need to make sure we do not allow it to trample the full expression of our humanity.
Overall, the conversation was very helpful in shaping my own thinking on how to express what we’re trying to accomplish with our new curriculum. If we do not have a real vision for what makes us human, for what a human being is and should be, then the technologies we use will supply one for us by their very limitations, and it will by definition be less than fully human.
James Stockdale, RIP
Wed 06 Jul 2005 by Peter Edman
Speaking of out-of-print Readings, in response to the news this morning of the death of Adm. James Stockdale (1923–2005), here is a quote from his essay “The World of Epictetus,” which appeared in The Atlantic 241 (April 1978): 98-106.
Stockdale was a philosopher, professor, vice-presidential candidate, Navy admiral, prisoner of war, and recipient of the Medal of Honor. May he rest in peace. The World of Epictetus was the fifth Trinity Forum Reading; Os Guinness wrote the foreword and Admiral Stockdale kindly granted us reprint permission.
When I ejected from the airplane on that September morn in 1965, I had left the land of technology. I had entered the world of Epictetus, and it’s a world that few of us, whether we know it or not, are ever far away from.
The Essence of Christian Humanism
Tue 05 Jul 2005 by Peter Edman
While updating things for our Online Store this morning, I had to mark a Reading as out-of-print (Amazing Grace) and was reminded of the other Readings that have sold out and that we’ve decided for various reasons not to reprint.
One of those is “You Are the Man,” the second Reading we ever did, an excerpt from sociologist Peter Berger’s book The Precarious Vision: A Sociologist Looks at Social Fictions and Christian Faith (Doubleday 1961) with a foreword by Os Guinness. Os wrote:
Unquestionably, our greatest challenge is not the fictions of totalitarian tyrannies or of Western consumer fantasies. It comes from the rationalizations of our own minds, the fictions of our own imaginations, and the deceptions of our own hearts. “Living in truth” is a prerequisite of personal integrity before it is one of public life. All of us who do not wish to be exposed some day should live by submitting ourselves to truth every day. The way of faith turns the way of the world upside down. Instead of concealing our worst and revealing our best, we are called to do the reverse. After all, as Jesus taught and modern psychology underscores, we are our secrets, not our PR. It is truth in the hidden life that counts. The story of David is worth pondering.
