Luke Capps > Recent Status Updates

Still good stuff. I’m slower getting through this because it is filled with information and logical argument that I have to consider before just reading on.

“We tend to think of virtue as a personal matter, each of us to choose which virtues to practice or not practice— the privatization of morality, or, if you will, the ‘pursuit of happiness,’ as each of us defines happiness. But only a public morality, in which trust, truth, and self-control are prominent features, can long sustain a decent social order and hence a stable and just democratic order.” (P. 142)

Chapter 7 was strikingly accurate—the book having been written in 1997–in its predictions.
More terrifying: the stories of deviancy and depravity he records—again, written almost 30 years ago—have clearly only gotten worse.
Considering the “filth” of our entertainment:
“A great many people are willing to deplore such material but unwilling to take or allow action to stop its distribution.” (P. 138)

Speaking of an America obsessed with individual rights: “There is no more sterile form of ‘argument’ than the bald assertion of rights, but bald assertion, unaccompanied by analysis or reasons, is the common form of discourse…” (p. 98)
“…largely in the interest of individual autonomy, the Court drastically limited the public expression of religion beyond anything the ratifies intended.” (P. 99)

Addressing differences in people and hierarchies:
“Our leveling instincts are so developed that men and women are allowed celebrity, but, outside the realms of entertainment and sports, rarely are they permitted superiority. Great men are no longer admired, unless they learn how to disguise their greatness. Otherwise, they will be faced with the fatal charge of ‘elitism’.” (P. 76)

“Rewritten history has always been a weapon in the struggle for control of the present in the future.” (P. 35)

“A culture obsessed with technology will…value personal convenience above almost all else…Among those consequences…is impatience with anything that interferes with personal convenience. Religion, morality, and law do that, which accounts for the tendency of modern religion to eschew proscriptions and commandments and turn to counseling and therapeutic sermons; of morality to be relativized…” (p. 9)

The first few pages, alone, have been good food for thought—if not more valuable.

“Typography fostered the modern idea of individuality, but it destroyed the medieval sense of community and integration. Typography created prose, but made poetry into an exotic and elitist form of expression. Photography made modern science possible, but transformed religious sensibility into mere superstition.“ (page 29)

First time reading the book—never watched he movie. Thoroughly excited and pleased with the story so far.