Anything Smart: October 2017

Sunday, October 15, 2017

"Mad With Joy" - G.K. Chesterton

I've been reading a lot about G K Chesterton lately. One of those people I love to spend time with. So smart they seem scary. So smart they keep losing me and I have to back up circling around and around to pick up the trail again. So smart that every sentence they write, almost, is worth pausing over to contemplate and ponder.

About Francis of Assisi Chesterton wrote: "...all true joy expresses itself in asceticism. It was 'the universe itself' that made Francis's followers 'mad with joy' - 'the only thing really worthy of enjoyment....' Ultimately, people in Chesterton's view are either optimists or pessimists: either they see 'life black against white' or 'white against black.' And the Franciscans embraced sacrifice because they saw life as 'full of the blaze of an universal mercy,' whereas pessimists indulge themselves because they see only 'a black curtain of incalculable night.' But Chesterton concludes: 'The revelers are old, and the monks are young. It was the monks who were the spendthrifts of happiness, and we who are its misers.' "

Chesterton wandered through early 20th century London thinking like this, writing like this, wearing a cape and a sombrero and a sword-stick, talking to himself and getting lost because his mind was so often present elsewhere.

He wrote somewhere around 100 books including poetry, fiction, essays, travel, literary criticism, Christian apologetics, and detective stories.

Scary smart.

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[Read this great biography of the scary smart G.K. Chesterton.]

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Wednesday, October 4, 2017

Western Intellectual Tradition - A Book To Make the Earth Tilt....

Look what came in the mail yesterday! (Saturday 30-Sep-2017)

So I was up reading before dawn today....

This book traces the development of the main ideas of Western Civilization from the 1400's to the 1800's, the weakening of the medieval Christian synthesis, the growing chasm between science and the humanities, the ever more rapid gain of reliable knowledge combined with the ever more rapid loss of human meaning.

By describing the greatest ideas about the most important issues of an entire civilization this book helps us to sort out what we believe for ourselves and how we understand the world and how we understand our place in it.

This is the kind of book that makes the earth tilt... makes your hands tremble... makes it hard to catch your breath....

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[Read this great book about the people who started the United States.]

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Sunday, October 1, 2017

The Spirit of the Framers....

I love this little story about John Adams as an old man:

"When one young man tried to congratulate him for belonging to a truly heroic generation, Adams felt obliged to correct him: 'I ought not to object to your reverence for your fathers, meaning those concerned with the direction of public affairs,' he cautioned, 'but to tell you a very great secret, as far as I am capable of comparing the merit of different periods, I have no reason to believe that we were better than you are.' "

When we study the Constitutional Convention we see that the participants were smart, but there are lots of smart people around now.

And yet, in 1787, a group that disagreed on many issues, ultimately wrote a complete Constitution for an entirely new government, that was then accepted by the people of every single state! Now, in 2017, we can't even get a health care bill passed, or reach a compromise on gun safety.

I think the biggest difference is that in 1787 leaders were debating HONESTLY, which doesn't mean they never shaded the truth but that they were sincerely trying to solve a problem. In 2017 leaders are not really trying to solve problems, they are trying to WIN and make their opponents look bad.

I think that is the difference.

I think if we could get people to argue less about parties and factions - which are hopeless arguments that never end - and argue more about problems and solutions - which are practical arguments that can lead to progress - we might be able to recapture some of the spirit of 1787 and make the world a better place!

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[Read this great book about the people who started the United States.]

[If you want to support "Anything Smart" just click on book links like the one below to buy your books. "Anything Smart" will receive a commission. Thanks!]

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