Thanks for the head’s up on the “sg” push back. I think I’ve got it fixed.

1) Surfing right off the data wave sounds painful, but I do like the image of surfing the data wave sans “wipe out.” It’s a good way to characterize the new, newly responsive, mode of reacting to a dynamic culture.

2) As to normalizing the exceptional, it depends entirely, I think, whether we are talking about the vertical or the horizontal. The vertically exceptional are the ones you refer to: best in class/show. And this is painful, to encourage people to think that they have failed unless they have done as well as the best athletes, CEOs, etc. But we are also engaged in normalizing the horizontally exceptional, those on the margin, those who depart from the norm. And surely this is a good thing. Well, it doesnt actually matter whether it’s a good thing, it is simply an inevitable thing, and has been Rousseau decided to enter an essay competition.

3) As to gay marriage, I respect the position of those who object for reasons of religious belief. But it does seem to me that contemporary culture represents a new order of challenge for many kinds of orthodoxy. It leaves the faithful persuaded that the world is going to hell in a hand basket when what they are looking at is the new dynamism of our culture.

And this latter will not go away. It is time for doctrinal adjustment! And this is, perhaps, not so very difficult. It would be simple enough to cease insisting on social and cultural “form” (for these will surely be washed away by our new restless powers of invention) and insisting instead on “content.” What matters is not that people are married according to some particular form, but that, whatever the form, they embrace Christian (or some other) set of values that encourage them to be, in the Christian case, generous, caring, respectful…

And this would not be the first time that religious doctrine has responded to the culture in which it finds itself. In the Christian case, the accomodation has been continual. What cannot be formalized by the existing church, creates new ones. This might be one way to think about the unfolding of the Protestant church. Start with Anglicans and end up with Quakers. The religious impulse ends up with many variations, many responses, all of which evoke and exercise the authority of doctrine.

As a last point, I would feel a whole lot better about the anti-gay position, if it was not sometimes accompanied by the tell-tale signs of intolerance and simple peevishness. These suggest that there is something more than orthodoxy at work, specifically a wish to block something that disturbs and affronts. For me, the best thing about Christianity, in some forms, and especially the original ones, is it’s perfect generosity. This is “content” that allows for many “forms,” that begets many “forms,” and that can form many “forms.”

Geez, here it is Sunday morning and it sounds like I think I’m working on a sermon. May I now ask you to open your hymn books?

ess gee being contigious.

Fouroboros: Very well said. You do get the feeling that it doesn’t much matter which “external other” is demonized just so long as someone is. This is a way of creating the illusion that they are “taking a stand.” Taking a stand? Even their metaphors are immobile!

And your “arhythmic” remarks reminds me of a work of art owned by a friend of mine. You can not see it whole. You are obliged to engage with one part, and then shift your interpretive frame to engage with another. Then, of course, you end up with several, discordant readings which do and don’t intersect in the most interesting ways. Between you and me, it’s not good art, but it is good exercise. (Golly, I hope he’s not a blog reader.)

Thanks, Grant

Couldn’t agree more. Harmonics. It always struck me that trendwatching and innovation seem to have the arythmic quality about them to many of us because they require us to engage a divergent view rather than our standard urge for classification.

Ex: Sit a nurse, a waiter, and a CSR down together and in 15 minutes they’re finishing each others sentences and sharing wisdom and jokes. Hmm. Somebody from HR or the Dept of Labor would have an embolism over the suggestion, though.

Struggle for, and insist on, immediate order and you get prima facie comfort, and soul crushing ennui. And, maybe, just maybe, people jonesing for some external other to beat up on or denigrate to make their own lot seem less inconsequential.

Maybe “shape” equates to feeling and the potential intrinsic in things and opportinities? Sure would explain the force multiplying power of great design. Order from “chaos,” the latter defined in antiseptic boardrooms.

If you look deep enough, there is a sanity clause, right, Virginia?