Thinking again, growing up, and being ambivalent

No posts here recently, as my blogging time has been saturated by a couple of discussions over at The Blogging Parson:

• "Missiological assumptions?", on what was actually going on when (many) churches shifted to informal services, and informality more generally; and
  
  
• "In praise of difficult children", a response to an Adam Phillips piece in the London Review of Books on "truancy", self-betrayal, and self-understanding. (The link to Phillips' essay is here, but you'll need a subscription to read all of it.) If you think this sounds like something that earnest Christian types might have trouble assimilating, then of course you'd be right. The discussion has turned into a dialogue between myself and some others, in which I am I hope with some subtlety, but no doubt at far too great length, arguing that we should get with the program.
  

Anyone interested in these issues, or in my own related concerns, will find a great deal on them ad loc: the first discussion, on liturgy and more general church practice in this town, has generated a lot of heat; but also some light. A couple of excellent posts by Laurence (known to some readers of this blog) are a case in point.

I read The Blogging Parson very regularly, and participate in discussions there quite often, but remain (as previously mentioned) ambivalent about it. Michael has the gift of making initial posts that are both informed and provocative, and that generate real discussion; but some of that discussion is frankly dismaying. It's a partial answer to point to the grim nature of much online discussion generally, but only a partial answer.

Along related lines Michael is kind enough to hat-tip me for some rather slight help I gave him in thinking through an issue for an article in Southern Cross. I am in two minds about this. On the one hand, people read SC, and Michael is a reasonable man whose opinion I respect, so I'm happy that he is writing for it; on the other, I thoroughly disapprove of the magazine and think my friend is wasting his time or worse. But did I mention the part about me respecting his opinion?

xkcd on internet arguments

Internet Argument says it all, I think.

Brontë on frankness and reserve

By this time he had sat down: he had laid the picture on the table before him, and with his brow supported on both hands, hung fondly over it. I discerned he was now neither angry nor shocked at my audacity. I saw even that to be thus frankly addressed on a subject he had deemed unapproachable --- to hear it thus freely handled --- was beginning to be felt by him as a new pleasure --- an unhoped-for relief. Reserved people often really need the frank discussion of their sentiments and griefs more than the expansive. The sternest-seeming stoic is human after all: and to `burst' with boldness and good will into `the silent sea' of their souls is often to confer on them the first of obligations.

I am finally, after many interruptions and failures of application, struggling towards the end of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, this being my third, and I swore my final, attempt to read it. Passages like this one make it seem worthwhile: I see the point of the book.

Call me a Philistine if you will, but I don't see the point of a lot of the rest. Such as --- oh, let us pull an example out of the air just at random --- Mr Rochester. Let me be clear that this is no mere objection to Rochester being a woman's man: a fantasy figure. For I would have a beer with Mr Knightley at any time, on a moment's notice.

If seeing is believing ...

If seeing is believing, then we better be damn careful about what we show people, including ourselves – because, regardless of what it is – we are likely to uncritically believe it.

It's sentiment I endorse, but I'd be a bit suspicious of it coming from me, or from someone likewise conservative. In fact the author is Errol Morris, writing in his blog at the New York Times. As a documentary film-maker who himself uses dramatic re-enactment as a tool, I'd say he can speak with some authority on this question.

The article is a little long, but well worth reading: on re-enactment generally, and on some fascinating individual cases. And (somewhat off-topic), if you haven't seen Morris' documentary The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara, then truly, you must.

Teenage boys are human after all ...

... according to a survey discussed in the NYT on the weekend. This reads like another of those studies that gets over-interpreted because its results are striking on their face, but the discussion in the article is interesting. A sample: after noting that the survey results --- which showed that boys were motivated by things other than sex --- had been greeted with derision by male bloggers, it's stated that

skepticism about boys in their teens isn’t surprising ... but it reveals more about what’s going on in the minds of adults, than of teenagers.

“Grown men often deny how dependent they are on women,” said Michael G. Thompson, a psychologist specializing in children and families and co-author of the book “Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys.” “The idea that you could pine for a girl, and be devastated by a girl makes an adult man uncomfortable. It reminds them of how profoundly attached they get to women.”