Fat-cat Seneca

Seneca was easily within the 1% – and yet –

The problem, for Seneca, is not that owning slaves is bad for the slaves, or that the rich man’s wealth might be better spent feeding the hungry than buying another ivory-legged table. The problem is rather that owning too much – whether slaves or tables – can be damaging for the owner, because he (it is always “he”) will be unable to achieve what we all really need, which is the peace of mind that comes from virtue and truth. “We would belong to ourselves if those things were not ours,” he declares. Consumerist desires are essentially insatiable, because they are desires for things we do not really need: “You see, it’s not thirst; it’s disease.”

The rest of the article (by Emily Wilson) is here.

Tarbet blogviating on timeless books

As a proud Senior and a student aide, I argue to Freshmen (who are not listening, but deeply pondering their nipples) that there is definite value in reading about ancient lives because there is no such thing as time. Human nature (they start to lose attention) has always been and will always be the same thing. You can count on that. Every great book (their attention is now gone) has the basic elements of everything that makes up our current lives. Snatch some ancient Egyptians from 2500 years ago and sprinkle them onto the Moon with iPhones, and you tell me if their twitters aren’t all about who’s sleeping with whom, and who has the biggest cock. (Now their attention’s back.) Sex, death, war – these are things that eternally recur.

Read the rest here. (Glad to see the new blog for USU Classics and Literature!)

Two views on “Science vs. Religion”

Dan Dennett has a new book out, basically arguing (from what I can gather) that in our hyper-web-informed world, it will be harder and harder for people to continue to have religious beliefs – “It takes twenty years to grow a Baptist and twenty minutes to lose one.” There is an interview with Dennett here, and it closes with an interesting admission on Dennett’s part:

I think that over the centuries, one of the great things that churches of all varieties and religious groups have been able to do is to give people lives of importance, and provide love for people that otherwise don’t get love, along with a sense of community and belonging. This is extraordinarily valuable and important. And the state isn’t going to do it, and many other sorts of organizations seem incapable or unwilling to try. And I do think we want to preserve and enhance that function in society.

I think that’s the one function of religions that I would most want to see fostered and protected. How you can do that, and whether you can do that, with a frank acknowledgment of the mythic character of their creeds? I’m not sure it can be done, but I hope it can.

Secondly, there is an interesting essay by James Shannam arguing that the “conflict” between religion and science is not as stark as it is often presented as being, and that religion and scientific inquiry can, have, and should go hand in hand. Shannam has a book on how the medieval world laid the foundations of modern science. An excerpt from the essay:

Full-on confrontations between science and religion are reasonably rare. Even when such encounters occur, they are usually arguments between co-religionists with shared concerns about how new discoveries affect faith. We find this during the debate that followed the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species where Christians such as Asa Gray defended both the theory of evolution and Christianity’s accommodation with it. Another cause of confusion is when people seeking to attack religion seek to co-opt science onto their side. For instance, whether one is pro-life or not has nothing to do with science, but is often portrayed as such. Concerns about experiments on stem cells also arise from ethics.