Friday, August 19, 2011

Friday Linkage

Today's linkage includes a rather wide-ranging smattering.
Would you rather spend money on tangible items or an experience? This article in Time Magazine weighs in on this dilemma.

How About Orange is a delightful blog. This personality test is especially fun.

William Deresiewicz wrote a sobering post on the concept of love fed to today's young women and the dire consequences of its false idealism. He also wrote a thoughtful post on the consequences of our perceptions of ourselves.

Image Journal published a lovely reflection on unattained plans. 

Christianity Today's article on happiness take a convicting look at our common definitions of happiness.

My favorite quotes from the article were the following:

"True virtue is personal, but it is never merely private. It involves a commitment to civic duty and the common good."

"We must challenge the tyranny of relativism not only in theory but also in our daily lives, families, communities, and businesses. We must show that true happiness comes only from being rightly related to God, the source of truth and virtue."

"The church of Jesus Christ has a special role to play in this moment: to speak the truth in love and to demonstrate our love to the world in acts of service and mercy. This is what Carl F. H. Henry had in mind when he wrote in 1947, 'We must confront the world now with an ethics to make it tremble and with a dynamic to give it hope.'"

The Cardus blog provided a sobering but optimistic perspective on the recent rioting around the world.
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1 comment:

Monica Jacobson said...

Interesting articles you mentioned last Friday. I was reading the one in The American Scholar about citizens vs. consumers. I think he's perfectly right. Well, almost perfectly right. He admits that we're just consumers and voters, but he talks as if a mindset change is all we need to turn ourselves into citizens. Unfortunately, the way our society works right now, that doesn't do anything. So you cast your vote, and maybe advertise your party. Yay. That did practically nothing. What you NEED is a colossal amount of money to throw away. It doesn't matter how politically minded you are, you still only get to choose (for the most part) between bad and worse. And that is not representation. That's choosing between two evils because you have no other option left to you. Because actually participating in government is only for those with hefty amounts of cash to throw around. We're just convincing ourselves that we actually have anything to do with who is elected.

And then I read the post before that about hope and unjadedness, and I felt reprimanded.

However, I won't take back what I said or say I should be more hopeful about the way our political system works because being hopeful doesn't change what is. And what is happening is that our society is becoming more socialist by the moment. And being hopeful and saying, "Nah, it'll never happen! Look at all the good people!" won't make that go away. We are consumers by nature and by trade, and socialism is the only result for people who live to be entertained and never produce anything of value. Seriously. The smart phone is a good example. It's slogan should be something like MUST TOUCH IT AT ALL TIMES. ;) Kinda' gross..