Life Under the Regime of Science

Photo: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

The conquest of nature, first proposed by Francis Bacon 400 years ago, has opened up marvelous possibilities. Here is what I gleaned from some recent breakfast reading.

From the Economist:

"The National Ignition Facility: On Target, Finally" (May 28, 2009) opens with the question, "What do you get when you focus 192 lasers onto a pellet [frozen hydrogen] the size of a match head and press the “fire” button?" The National Ignition Facility at the Livermore Labs "is designed to create conditions like those found in stars." For "three thousandths of a second...it has a power of 500 trillion watts, about 3,000 times the average electricity consumption of the whole of planet Earth."

Each laser pulse will begin as a weak infra-red beam. This is split into 48 daughter beams that are then fed into preamplifiers which increase their power 20 billion times. Each of the daughters is split further, into four, and passed repeatedly through the main amplifiers. These increase the beams’ power 15,000 times and push their wavelengths into the ultraviolet.

The pellet itself contains a sphere of deuterium (a heavy form of hydrogen, with nuclei consisting of a proton and a neutron) and tritium (even heavier hydrogen, with a proton and two neutrons) that is chilled to just a degree or so above absolute zero. The beams should compress the sphere so rapidly that it implodes, squeezing deuterium and tritium nuclei together until they overcome their mutual repulsion and fuse to form helium (two protons and two neutrons) together with a surplus neutron and a lot of heat. If enough heat is generated it will sustain the process of fusion without laser input, until most of the nuclear fuel has been used up.

From the conquest of nature "out there," the editors of the Economist turn to the conquest of nature "in here," that is, human nature, as though it's really just all the same thing.

"The Behavioural Effects of Video Games: Good Game?" is a report on two studies, one from Iowa State University and the other from Ludwig-Maximilian University in Germany, that examined the relationship between playing video games and either violent or helpful thoughts and behavior depending on whether the games were themselves violent or "pro-social." We are told, "There is a body of research suggesting that violent games can lead to aggressive thoughts, if not to violence itself." In one Iowa State experiment, "those who spent the longest playing games which involved helping others were most likely to help, share, co-operate and empathise with others. They also had lower scores in tests for hostile thoughts and the acceptance of violence as normal." In another experiment by the same researcher involving games with helping others as their theme, "three to four months later, those who played these types of games the most were also rated as more helpful to those around them in real life."

The idea behind these studies is that if you can get children to play socially cooperative games, they will grow up to be socially cooperative people. Well, yes, but there are broad limits. Human nature is not so malleable as these researchers may hope. But you don't need expensive university research to tell you that if you occupy most young people's attention with violent video games, especially if the games are realistic, and even moreso if they put the player in the place of a criminal as hero, you will inherit a generally more lawless and criminally violent society.

Once the science of manipulating children for political ends advances sufficiently, they can be used to help control their unreconstructed parents.

In The National Review, Jonah Goldberg draws attention to this MasterCard "Priceless" commercial in which a child tries to make his father "a better man" ("The Littlest Totalitarian," June 8, 2009--not available online; buy the magazine).



It presents the child as wiser than and morally superior to his father who is unshaven and looks rather thoughtless and irresponsible. Of course, as MasterCard presents it, human virtue consists in living in an environmentally responsible way and leaving as small a so-called carbon footprint as possible (or at least making fashionable gestures in that direction). If children are for the most part more virtuous than their parents, it is because they learn the cutting edge of enlightened morality from their public school teachers and their Saturday morning cartoons.

Goldberg's political warning is this:

The idea of enlisting children to the Cause is as fashionable today as it was under Robespierre. To crack the bunker walls of the family and seduce the children has always been a top priority of totalitarians, hard and soft. Progressives love to elevate the sagacity of children...because doing so gives children all the more authority when they parrot the talking points of the latest progressive fad.

Goldberg evokes unrehabilitated common sense in his closing remark: "If the man in the ad were a better father, he would have scolded his kid for the disrespect and demanded to know who was teaching him such crap."

That's not science, but it's full of wisdom nonetheless. Perhaps science has its limitations and "it's place."

The Boomers Behind the Bust

David Brooks reports some sobering statistics in his column today, "The Great Unwinding."

"The ratio of debt-to-personal-disposable income was 55 percent in 1960. Since then, it has more than doubled, reaching 133 percent in 2007."

He adds: "Consumption as a share of G.D.P. stood at around 62 percent in the mid-1960s, and rose to about 73 percent by 2008. The baby boomers enjoyed an incredible spending binge." The post-WWII baby boomers have brought us new blessings with each successive decade of their self-absorbed lives.

When credit froze up last year, the government "replaced private borrowing with public borrowing." The result has been a dramatic increase in public debt: "In 2007, the federal deficit was 1.2 percent of G.D.P. Two years later, it’s at 13 percent."

The effect of this and the various bailouts in general has been a historically unprecedented spike in the money supply. This has ominous implications for inflation.

Source: research.stlouisfed.org

To move the country from a mostly consumption based economy (easy credit and imports) to an investment and production dominated economy (which requires much higher rates of savings), "[t]he members of the political class face a set of monumental tasks. First, they have to persuade a country to postpone gratification for the sake of rebuilding the country. This country hasn’t accepted sacrifice in 50 years." Fifty years takes us back to 1959. Again, that's when the boomers started to dominate American society, even as children.

Brooks says the Obama administration is aware of the need for this shift and of what it requires, but he is skeptical that Congress is up to the task. "Congressional leaders have been fixated on short-term conventional priorities throughout this entire episode. There is no evidence that the power brokers understand the fundamental transition ahead. They are practicing the same self-indulgence that got us into this mess." Congressional leaders are...baby boomers.

The baby boom generation is not solely responsible for this and every other mess, but since they were toddlers, they have had the shaping influence on our culture and economy. Brooks subtley identifies the characteristic excesses of his own generation in this present crisis too.

Will Baby Kim Jong Hang On Long?

Call this "blog tag."

Prof. Jeffrey Hodges at Gypsy Scholar, who writes from Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea, alerts us to an article from The Daily NK, "North Korean Collapse Already Underway."

From unclassified reports he has gleaned from the US Army's open-source intelligence-gathering office, Hodges himself supplies further interesting information regarding the advancing systemic collapse.

American Caesar

"It hath been taught us since the primal state, that he which is was wish'd until he were."

Shakespeare's axiom of popular susceptibility to demagoguery is fleshed out in Stanley Fish's NYT piece on Obama this morning, "Yes I Can." Stanley Fish is one who commands the sort of respect reserved for the likes of the serpent in the garden; towering intellect, competent in the dark arts of persuasion, and capable of making his auditors enjoy their hornswaggling at the hands of an expert sophist. (Fish is very great admirer of Milton's Satan, who he also greatly resembles.) Yet today he lays aside his sophist's hat and, worried lest the One give away the game like some prestidigitator whose trick is showing, gently admonishes Obama while demonstrating to the rest of us the sheer mastery of the upward gyre of demagogic, narcissistic self possession.

Last week I was driving home listening to President Obama’s speech on the General Motors bankruptcy, and I heard the full emergence of a note that had been sounded only occasionally in the two-plus years since the announcement of his candidacy. It was the note of imperial possession, the accents and cadences of a man supremely aware of his authority and more than comfortable with its exercise.

Imperial possession, indeed--and it looks like he intends to possess quite a bit more before he's done. Fish's analysis of the progression of Obama's use of the first person singular, which makes Bill Clinton seem a tongue-tied school boy by comparison, is instructive. Indulging in his own form of idolatry, Fish admiringly compares Obama to Don Corleone, who began a patriot and ended by striking the pose of a Roman emperor:

Obama is still idealistic and a patriot, but he is now also an emperor and his speech shows it.

That Fish shows no alarm at the implications of that sentence is telling in itself. Postmodernism is about power--unmasking its surreptitious manifestations in the oppressor class, while drawing its practitioners and acolytes like moths to a flame in their almost desperate willingness to do anything to get and hold power themselves. It is in this sense that Obama is the first postmodern president, although again Bill Clinton made a pretty good run at it. Thus, Fish is an admiring observer (and in time, with the rest of us, a servant) of the new emperor for whom egotism and narcissism are recommendations.

In the beginning, observes Fish, it was about "us". Obama began with sentences like "It’s humbling to see a crowd like this, but in my heart I know you didn’t come here just for me.” “Let us be the generation that reshapes our economy”; “Let us be the generation that ends poverty”; “this campaign can’t only be about me; it must be about us.”

Fish ably shows the transformation as the campaign progressed:

When he wins the Iowa caucus on Jan. 3, 2008, the rhetoric alters as he imagines himself (perhaps for the first time) performing in the office he aspires to. “Let us” is replaced by “I’ll”: “I’ll be a president who harnesses the ingenuity of farmers.” “I’ll be a president who finally makes health care affordable.” “I’ll be a president who ends this war in Iraq.”
[...]
Everything alters in the inaugural address (Jan. 20, 2009). The promises are now made to an America that is asked only to stand by while they are fulfilled. “Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. “But know America” — or, in other words, “hear me” — “…they will be met.” And later, when he says, “We will build the roads and bridges… We will restore science to its rightful place… We will harness the sun and winds,” the “we” is now the royal we: just you watch, “All this we will do.”
[...]
By the time of the address to the Congress on Feb. 24, the royal we has flowered into the naked “I”: “As soon as I took office, I asked this Congress.” “I called for action.” “I pushed for quick action.” “I have told each of my cabinet.” “I’ve appointed a proven and aggressive inspector general.” “I refuse to let that happen.” “I will not spend a single penny.” “I reject the view that says our problems will simply take care of themselves.” “I held a fiscal summit where I pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term.” That last is particularly telling: it says, there’s going to be a second term, I’m already moving fast, and if you don’t want to be left in the dust, you’d better fall in line.
[...]

There’s no mistaking what’s going on in the speech delivered last week. No preliminary niceties; just a rehearsal of Obama’s actions and expectations. Eight “I”’s right off the bat...Accompanying the “I”’s are a bevy of “my”’s, which reach out to embrace the universe. The third time he says “my auto task force,” it sounds as if he were referring to a lap dog. Ditto the mention of Karen Mills, “my Small Business Administration” chief. When he thanks Canada and Germany for doing their part, it is as if those sovereign nations were doing him a personal favor to which he was entitled. When he invokes “my administration” you might think he was talking about some prized possession. (My daughter…my ducats.) It is always “I couldn’t in good conscience,” “I became convinced,” “I wanted to ensure,” “I instructed,” “I recognized,” “I want” (three times), “I’m calling on Congress.” At least he doesn’t say “my Congress,” although that is certainly implied.

Fish never indicates directly that there is anything problematic with any of this. His concern is that Obama not offend against taste, or perhaps against the canons of imperial dictatorship:

An occasional passive construction to soften the claim of agency would be a good idea (even though the grammar books warn against it). It’s one thing to be calling the tune; it’s another to proclaim it in every sentence.

So, a little advice from the old professor to the young would-be Caesar: it is better to be feared than loved, but dial back the "naked I" before you take the crown.

More Obama Apotheosis

"Fountain of Hope," by Ron Keas

Here we go again. More apotheosis of Barack Obama. More elevation of the sitting President to divine status.

The New York Times, under the auspices of simply reporting on what's happening out there, gives us yet another spread of Obama celebration art ("Obama's Face (That's Him?) Rules the Web," May 30, 2009). (Of course, I am also publicizing these things in my own small way, but you know where I stand on the matter.) One of the paintings is just dreadful. Perhaps the title of the article recognizes that. "Team Player" is just trite. It depicts Obama in a D.C. basketball uniform wearing #1.

Get it? Sure you do.

There is also one that is quite good ("Looking Presidential" by Mimi Torchia Boothby) with his wedding ring figuring prominently on his pensively and prayerfully placed hand.

Then there is the man in the white suit. What does Ron Keas have in mind with "Fountain of Hope?" In the background is the White House in front of which is a fountain of white water, in front of which stands Barack Obama dressed entirely in white: suit and shirt, but no tie. My wife's first reaction was that he does not look like an American President. American Presidents don't wear white suits. As usual, she put her finger on the central disturbing point. He looks like a Central or South American dictator. Even facially, he looks like a thin Hugo Chavez. And of course, this glorification by art is what they do with their leaders in dictatorships.

The apotheosis is in the phrase "Fountain of Hope." God, according to the well-known hymn, is the "fount of every blessing." The image of a fountain or spring is that of an inexhaustible supply of blessing, in particular of water, the means of life, and thus figuratively of life itself. Psalm 36:9 says, "For with you (the Lord) is the fountain of life; in your light we see light."

I thought perhaps that the artist intended to criticize either the President or his followers with this painting. But, no. Ron Keas is just a terrible painter. See for yourself at keasart.com. He has a whole series of hagiographic paintings of the next re-founder of our republic. He also does Marilyn Monroe and Elvis.

Following Evolution Into the Abyss

This is where godless, evolutionary thinking gets you.

David Brooks, reflecting on the role of empathy in jurisprudence, and Nicholas Kristof, sharing research on why liberals and conservatives take the positions they do, both offer teachings from evolutionary psychology as thrillingly helpful advances in our self-understanding.

David Brooks, "The Empathy Issue," (New York Times, May 29, 2009).

Nicholas Kristof, "Would You Slap Your Father? If So, You’re a Liberal," (New York Times, May 28, 2009).

Of course, if all our notions of good and evil, right and wrong, beautiful and vile, are simply the products of evolution, and are thus not true in themselves and as they present themselves, but are merely useful for the preservation of our species as a whole, then morally serious people are dupes and romantics, and the cruelly ambitious, megalomaniacal Machiavellian is the only sensible human being.

What Allan Bloom called "Nihilism with a happy ending" requires not looking at your nihilism too closely.

Harold adds:

David,
I've been amazed to watch as the influence of evolutionary psychology has seeped through the humanities and social sciences like effluent from a leaking sewer pipe through stacks of cardboard in a basement. There is now nothing that cannot be explained by way of survival value, especially now that we have the concept of group survival value, a transparent and illegitimate move around the problems of empathy, altruism, love, and self consciousness existing in creatures competing in the survival of the fittest sweepstakes. Humans are superior because we evolved superior characteristics, ergo, evolution is true. It is a circular argument, no? Affirming the antecedent? Oh, and this little bit: Darwinism good, social Darwinism not good. Why not?

Tell me if I'm wrong about the development here: evolution is posited as establish fact, based on 1) the analogy (illegitimate) of superior, hereditary traits within species, to transmogrification between species. White moths become black moths to survive, etc. 2), "Phylogeny recapitulates ontogeny"--human fetuses appear to look like other species while gestating, and this proves humans developed historically from other species. 3) A drawerful of pieces/parts of fossilized bones give the barest outline of a suggestion of a penumbra emanating from a dream of Wallace and Darwin that all species have a common ancestor. A dream come true! 4) A fair amount of DNA is shared by all living things, with chimpanzees and humans somewhere north of 98%. We are superior to chimpanzees, therefore we evolved from them, since we are so close genetically. QED.

From these hints is raised a grand theory of auto-genesis; at some point in the history of the boiling cauldron of chemical soup that was the early earth, one of those inorganic molecules learned how to replicate itself, and viola! information began to exist along side of, and exclusive of, energy and matter, all by itself. Not only did the incredible protein carrier for information appear by itself (DNA), but also the information to be carried to the next generations, with increasing complexity--all this in the face of iron law # 2 of thermodynamics, which has the universe running down, I believe. Evolving complexity from a cosmos-sized explosion, the very definition of chaos and disorder, culminating in a self-conscious being able to speculate about the one thing that does not exist--telos, or the purpose of it all. A little joke played on us by that original self-life-giving molecule perhaps. What a card! And what an opening for those darn Machiavellians--they're barely more than self-replicating carriers of accidental DNA, but they're having all the fun!

GM Mission Creep

The Obama people are having a hard time coming up with a way to pay for their universal government health care program. But now that they own General Motors, it may cross the minds of more than a few that this corporation might be useful for paying for the health plan.

The problem is that government (and unions, also big stakeholders now) are incapable of running an industry, i.e. making good products that people want, providing good customer service, and, in all of this, making a profit. So to the extent that government is involved in GM, the car maker won't be turning a profit and funding anything.

But government will certainly get involved in actually running GM. It will prove too tempting not to. That means that business concerns will be subordinated to political concerns. Just yesterday I saw a Senate committee excoriating GM executives for shutting down dealerships and the manner in which they did it. What these politicians were thinking was obvious. We own this company now, so we'll use it to keep people in their jobs. That is, they'll use it as a welfare system, not a business. Think of the way factories functioned in the old Soviet Union.

We are also seeing gleeful Democratic pols pushing to shut down the production of moneymaking SUVs (vehicles that liberals see as evil planet-destroying machines in general, but useful and cool when they own them themselves because, well, a few don't make that much difference) and expand the production of fuel efficient "green" cars that nobody wants but that everyone should want.

But really what difference do markets and profit make? If government should run the health care industry because everyone needs health care that is affordable and accessible regardless of ability to pay, then surely the same is true of cars. Think of it this way. Everyone needs a job, and cars are necessary for most people to get to their jobs. Government can now help put people in cars regardless of their ability to pay. Furthermore, for the sake of our health and for "the survival of the planet," we all need to be driving the right cars. Given what's out there, clearly the market is not able to direct either producers or consumers to socially and environmentally responsible cars. But the government can help there too.

Government ownership and management of, and political fiddling with, the auto industry may provide Americans a valuable lesson in what the government can and cannot do well, regardless of what in principle is should be doing. Or those lessons may come too late. On the other hand, the GM deal may prove to be a great leap for the government even more deeply into providing for everyone's "basic human goods," such as health care, cars, houses, schooling (with hot breakfast and lunch), retirement, and perhaps even tucking you in at night.

Consider the disastrous British experience with government ownership of the auto industry, especially when militant unions are involved. Follow this series of videos.

And here again for the fun of it is the Congressional Motors ad you've seen before:

I saw another mock ad for a new American car that reads this way: "You wouldn't buy our lousy cars. So now we're taking your money anyway. The Bailout. Coming in January."

Harold adds:
Our friend Iowahawk found this ad:



David responds:

The thing about these spoofs is that you can never be too ridiculous when anticipating secret liberal ambitions. Remember when charges of "Homosexual marriage will be next" was thought to be an hysterical scare tactic? Now they treat you like an Ayatollah if you question it in any way. The stakes could not be higher for these people. They're out to "save the planet." Why should we not expect them to impose wartime rationing like use of the car only on odd numbered Saturdays?

The Boy King

By the dog that is god in Egypt*, I don't know who in the Muslim world is responsible for this equation of Obama with Tutankhamen, but it certainly is not any more over the top than anything the sycophantic press corp here has come up with--e.g., "Lightworker" in New Age parlance, "Messiah" or the "One" in Christian-speak. Fortunately, there is an expedient available to deflate this latest idolatry, in the form of Steve Martin's fabulous King Tut routine.

Unfortunately, it is not available for imbedding, which means you'll just have to link to YouTube yourself to see Martin's prophetic political statement. I urge you, in the interest of political hygiene and historical truth, to see it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP7AJiQM2RI

* One of Socrates' favorite oaths upon discovery of yet another aporia.

Union Made. Union Proud.

Before there were auto industry bailouts, there was...DODGE AIRES!



GM is now bankrupt. In the 1950s, it employed over 500,000 people and enjoyed a roughly 50% market share. Now it's bust. The reason for this is plain from these figures: GM employs 92,000 workers and supports 500,000 retirees. It is what Mark Steyn calls a vast retirement community that makes cars on the side.

It is the trade unions that brought GM to it's knees. The New York Times reports Don Skidmore, president of UAW Local 735, saying, "I was angry at first, then I cried, then I got angry again." Did he really expect that GM could continue as a viable company with powerful unions forcing such suicidal business conditions on it in a competitive world economy? No, he and his union pals were not thinking past their bellies.

An even larger issue is that these unions dominate the party that is now running the country and restructuring the economy.

In a democracy, you get what you ask for.
David Brooks in "The Quagmire Ahead" gets right to the point in his summary of the evils that will flow from this move. GM execs now have no incentive to improve the company. The government will not let it fail. The way ahead is now conflict avoidance with the unions and the government. In addition, we will soon see what effect the subsidization of one company by the government has on its competitors in the industry. Speaking of the government, despite what the President said about being a "hands off" owner of the company, Democrats are already lining up with with political plans for what they want to do with the company. Building so-called "green" cars that perhaps nobody wants to buy is just one of them.

Leon Kass, Physician-Philosopher

On May 21 in Washington DC, Leon Kass delivered the 38th Annual Jefferson Lecture for the National Endowment for the Humanities, "Looking for an Honest Man: Reflections of an Unlicensed Humanist."

Leon R. Kass, M.D., Ph.D., is the Addie Clark Harding Professor in the Committee on Social Thought and the College at the University of Chicago and Hertog Fellow in Social Thought at the American Enterprise Institute. He was chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2001 to 2005.

The lecture is about the lifelong pursuit of answers to the great human questions, the questions which Socrates began to address after his famous "turn" from natural philosophy to the deepest moral and political questions.

He summarizes his quest this way:

I have sought wisdom about the meaning of our humanity, largely through teaching and studying the great works of wiser and nobler human beings, who have bequeathed to us their profound accounts of the human condition.

This is classic Kass, the physician-philosopher:

I found that I loved my patients and their stories more than I loved solving the puzzle of their diseases; where my colleagues found disease fascinating, I was fascinated more by the patients—how they lived, how they struggled with their suffering. Above all, I hated the autopsy room, not out of fear of death, but because the post mortem exam could never answer my question: What happened to my patient? The clot in his coronary artery, his ruptured bowel, or whatever diseased body part that the pathologist displayed as the putative explanation of his death was utterly incommensurable with the awesome massive fact, the extinction of this never-to-be repeated human being, for whom I had cared and for whom his survivors now grieve.

Kass describes a turn of his own.

In summer 1965, interrupting my research, Amy and I went to Mississippi to do civil rights work. We lived with a farmer couple in rural Holmes County, in a house with no telephone, hot water, or indoor toilet. ... [O]n returning to Cambridge, I was nagged by a disparity I could not explain between the uneducated, poor black farmers in Mississippi and many of my privileged, highly educated graduate student friends at Harvard. A man of the left, I had unthinkingly held the Enlightenment view of the close connection between intellectual and moral virtue: education and progress in science and technology would overcome superstition, poverty, and misery, allowing human beings to become at last the morally superior creatures that only nature’s stinginess and religious or social oppression had kept them from being. Yet in Mississippi I saw people living honorably in perilous and meager circumstances, many of them illiterate, but sustained by religion, extended family, and community attachment, and by the pride of honest farming and homemaking. Indeed, they seemed to display more integrity, decency, and strength of character, and less self-absorption and self-indulgence, than did many of my high-minded Harvard friends who shared my progressive opinions.

From there, he takes us through his encounters in the late 1960s with Rousseau's Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, Huxley's Brave New World, and Lewis's The Abolition of Man. After 1970, when others were attempting to bring moral theory up to speed with advances in the biological sciences, Kass was turning to ancient writers for the wisdom that moderns in their rush for technological advance had largely forgotten.

No friend of humanity should trade the accumulated wisdom about human nature and human flourishing for some half-cocked promise to produce a superior human being or human society, never mind a post-human future, before he has taken the trouble to look deeply, with all the help he can get, into the matter of our humanity—what it is, why it matters, and how we can be all that we can be.

In the remainder of the lecture, he discusses three inquiries that have been central to his forty year reflection on the human meaning of science.

First, addressing the conceptual danger, stressed by Lewis, of a soul-less science of life, I have worked toward a more natural science, truer to life as lived. Second, addressing the practical danger, stressed by Huxley, of dehumanization resulting from the relief of man’s estate, I have worked toward a richer picture of human dignity and human flourishing. And third, addressing the social and political dangers, stressed by Rousseau, of cultural decay and enfeeblement, I have looked for cultural teachings that could keep us strong in heart and soul, no less than in body and bank account.

Here is a select Leon Kass bibliography.

Books:

Being Human: Core Readings in the Humanities (W. W. Norton, 2004).

The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (The Free Press, 2003).

Human Cloning and Human Dignity: The Report of the President’s Council on Bioethics, (President’s Council on Bioethics, 2002).

Life, Liberty, and Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics (Encounter Books, 2002).

Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar: Readings on Courting and Marrying [with Amy A. Kass] (University of Notre Dame Press, 1999).

The Ethics of Human Cloning [with James Q. Wilson] (American Enterprise Institute, 1998).

The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature (Free Press, 1994).
Toward a More Natural Science (Free Press, 1985).

Articles:

“Ageless Bodies, Happy Souls: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Perfection,” in New Atlantis, Spring 2003.

“The Aims of Liberal Education,” in The Aims of Education, John Boyer, ed., (University Chicago Press, 1997).

“Am I My (Foolish) Brother’s Keeper?,” in American Enterprise, November/December 1994.

“The Case for Mortality,” in American Scholar 52, 1983.

“Death with Dignity and the Sanctity of Life,” in Commentary, March 1990.

“Defending Human Dignity,” in Commentary, December 2007.

“Dehumanization Triumphant,” in First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, August/September 1996.

“Educating Father Abraham: The Meaning of Wife,” in First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, November 1994.

“The End of Courtship,” in Public Interest, Winter 1997.

“Evolution and the Bible: Genesis I Revisited,” in Commentary, April 1989.

“Experimental Genetics and Human Evolution,” in The Future Is Now: American Confronts the New Genetics, William Kristol and Eric Cohen, eds., Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002.

“Farmers, Founders, and Fratricide: The Story of Cain and Abel,” in First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, April 1996.

“For the Love of the Game: Against the Adulteration of American Sport” [with Eric Cohen], in New Republic, March 26, 2008.

“Human Frailty and Human Dignity,” in New Atlantis, January 27, 2005.

“Human Stem Cell Research Is Unethical,” in Ethics, Brenda Stalcup, ed. (Greenhaven Press, 2000.)

“Love of Women and Love of God: The Case of Jacob,” in Commentary, March 1999.

“Making Babies—The New Biology and the ‘Old’ Morality,” in Public Interest, Winter 1972.

“‘Making Babies’ Revisited,” in Public Interest, Winter 1979.

“Man and Woman: An Old Story,” in First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, November 11, 1991.

“Neither for Love Nor Money: Why Doctors Must Not Kill,” in Public Interest, Winter, 1989.

“The New Biology: What Price Relieving Man’s Estate?,” in Science 174, 1971.

“On Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’,” in First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, March 2000.

“On Religion and Science,” in Commentary, July 2007.

“Regarding Daughters and Sisters: The Rape of Dinah,” in Commentary, April 1992.

“What’s Wrong with Babel?,” in American Scholar, Winter 1989.

“Wisdom of Repugnance: Why We Should Ban the Cloning of Human Beings,” in New Republic, June 2, 1997.

Poor Cleveland

Speaking of blighted civilization and the end of the world...

If you know anyone from Cleveland OH, you should pass this along. (There is a hidden "email this post" button below, but you have to look for it.)



Wasn't Dennis Kucinich the mayor of Cleveland?

Just Wondering

I stated in my usual flippant way about a year ago that if Obama were elected I would consider it a sign of God’s judgment getting seriously underway. Yet I was more than half serious. The Bible is emphatic in saying He will not always strive with man—there is an end to the pathetic metaphysical rebellion of creatures who would overthrow their creator, and all the forms that rebellion takes. I don’t consider the United States or any political entity the new Israel, nor do I think we are his “chosen people” in any covenantal sense, though we certainly are blessed in many ways. Yet I’ve wondered at the timeframe of this Christian and now post-Christian era, as it stretches into two millennia since His ascension and promise to return. Every generation, beginning with the evangelists and apostles who themselves walked the earth with Christ, were looking for the end of days in their lifetimes, since the signs of the end of the age He gave have been plausibly ascribed to every previous generation. Certain it is that some generation will be the one which sees His coming—but all believers at all times were given to understand that it could be any day. The world has seen horrendous moral evil, social and cultural upheavals, economic and political catastrophes, disease and natural disasters that in many ways exceed anything we who are now living have seen. Frightening events have characterized every era, and believers have lived their lives fearing on the one hand the awful judgment preceding His return, and on the other looking forward to their vindication and His, when the Author and finisher of their faith puts paid to the works of evil in this world.

There are reasons to think we are declining into the days foretold of old, reasons no previous generation had—though we can see the whole of history, Anno Domine, as pitching toward the inevitable end.

The first is the nuclear technology slowly seeping out into the barbarian world for a decade or two —the second time will not be flood but fire, recall; the agents of proliferation have been busy putting it by the august and wise councils of the transnationalists in charge of ruling the world, and it is very near the time when an insane dictator or group of apocalyptic mullahs pulls the trigger and unwittingly fulfills the will of God in bringing to a fiery end wide swaths of humanity. It cannot escape notice that Israel is ground zero in most of these apocalyptic nightmare scenarios.

The second is the abandonment of Israel by the only nation who ever really acted as an ally—America. The Obama administration appears to be setting the predicate for a European approach to relations with Israel-i.e., throwing them to the wolves. Across Europe, throughout the U.N., and increasingly in the upper echelons of elite American institutions, anti-Semitism is once again in vogue, a sickening undercurrent becoming more brazen and open by the day. Another run at a “final solution” seems on tap for the very near future, if the Iranian mullahs have their way. I suspect many Europeans of the WWII era remained unrepentant of their feelings against Jews, even after the atrocities of the Nazis came to light. The hard hearts of today's hard Left would shed few tears over a nuked Israel—they brought it on themselves, after all, and aren’t we all better off without the Zionist entity?.

The third is the great turning away—“the hearts of most will grow cold”. The “post Christian” era finds the rise of a militant and evangelical atheism, along with an official and determined persecution of Christians unprecedented under a constitution that expressly prohibits it. The widespread and general rejection of God by those people who knew the Gospel is one of the signs of the end, and even though there have been many such periods before, this seems a much more knowing and final rejection, given the presumption of knowledge modernity and science have thrown down, and given the self referential and narcissistic self absorption of postmodern types .

A great flourishing epoch of vast wealth is crashing into a worldwide depression, providing the antecedent crisis conditions for that ultimate demagogue foreseen in John’s Revelation, the anti-Christ himself. Is this the turn of the wheel that sees the Man of Perdition walk onstage? Only time will tell; many another era has had the look and smell of the final judgment. But did you ever notice how the sand at the end of an hour glass seems to run so much faster? The sand seems like it’s running faster to me…so many exigencies at once, so many abrupt cultural and constitutional changes forced on us by the One…

Some changes come so very slowly—over decades and centuries of years—but some come rushing past so fast people are left with their hands in their pockets as everything is swept before them. Did you ever really think you would live in a socialist America, with a ruined economy, moral anarchy in the form of gay “marriage”, abortion and even infanticide officially supported, our sovereignty handed over to transnational organizations? The deliberate crushing of individual freedom, and the fomenting of crisis conditions to augment the taking? Maybe the twenty-first century A.D. is the last. Twenty one is enough I think.

****************
Innes adds:
Take heart, brother. Try to see the whole thing in a broader covenantal perspective. Think of the Solomon's reign. It seemed to be the Kingdom of God itself. And in an anticipatory way, it way. Then it all came crashing down. The kingdom divided. Idolatry was everywhere. Eventually, Jerusalem was overrun by the ungodly and the Temple was desecrated and even toppled. he world had come to an end. But God's plans were bigger and more gloriosu than anything they could imagine.

In 476 AD, Rome was sacked. We often think of Rome as having an adversarial relationship with Christianity, but not only was the world shocked by this fall, Christians saw the end of all things in it. Jerome wept in his cave at Bethlehem where he was writing his commentary on Ezekiel when he received the news. He did not rejoice over the fall of what could surely be called a city of great sin. Rather he wrote, “Who could have believed that Rome, founded on triumphs over the world, could fall to ruin; and that she, the mother of nations, should also be their grave?” And again, “The world is rushing to ruin. The glorious city, the capital of the Roman Empire, has been swallowed up in one conflagration.” And indeed centuries of civilizational darkness followed, but then a great flourishing of the gospel and of civilization. The Puritans took the opposite view of their age. They thought that things were going so well that the millenial rule of Christ prior to his return must be at hand. (Many were post-mil). It seems they were wrong. The end of liberty as we have known it in America is not necessarily the end of the world, much as it breaks my heart to see great chunks of it fall off into the advancing sea of the nanny state.

Eschatology is a tricky subject to square with current events, though I respect your long paragraph of qualification. Even when our exegesis and theology are spot on, we're just too caught up emotionally with out times to judge them soberly one way or another.

A book on the eschatology of the early church that came recommended to me today is Dale C. Allison, Jr., The End of the Ages Has Come: An Early Interpretation of the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus (Fortress Presss, 1985).

Civilizational Suicide Part II

It is not only the Russians and the Chinese who have a demographic problem (follow the link to "The Withering Away of Russia," "President of a Disappearing Russia," and "Cradle Robbing in China"). It is very much a European and, yes, even a North American problem. Seven million people have viewed this "Muslim Demographics" video. See what you think.



The problem with video arguments is that they generally do not support what they say with footnotes. How true are these claims? The 8.1 fertility rate among Dutch Muslims seems overstated. No country in the world has a rate anywhere near that high. Also it does not account for immigrant rates dropping once their community settles into prosperity. This video questions some of the figures.



Nonetheless, we most certainly have a problem. When I was in high school, we were warned of an overpopulation problem. The planet, we were told, could not support the world population growing as it was. They gave us the figures, made their scientific projections, and assured us that having babies was a form of planetary suicide. Here we are just one generation later, and we're vanishing from the face of the earth.

The CIA World Factbook estimates that for 2009, 104 of the 225 countries (including the EU) have a fertility rate of less than the 2.11 needed for replacing a previous generation. For example:

USA 2.05 (not the 1.6 that the video claims)
France 1.98
Sweden 1.67
Netherlands 1.66
Britain 1.66
Canada 1.58 (notice they lag far behind their liberty-oriented American neighbor)
European Union 1.51
Germany 1.41
Italy and Spain 1.31

That's Europe.

But many other countries have extremely low fertility rates. Our major geo-political competitors are also doing poorly. China has a fertility rate of 1.79 and Russia a devastating 1.41. The industrialized East is rapidly depopulating. Japan and South Korea are at 1.21. Taiwan is 1.14 and Singapore has a rate of only 1.09. Poor Eastern Europe is doing even more poorly than their cousins to the west. The entire region is reproducing itself at a rate between only 1.2 and 1.5 per couple, except for Albania, a country close to my heart, which is close to thriving at 2.01. It is not just the rich materialist nations that are declining. Poor materialist countries are also languishing. Cuba's rate stands at 1.83, and Vietnam at 1.61.

Iran is not atheist and materialist, but their fertility rate is 1.71. Perhaps oil funded social security programs are the cause.

I would not presume to speak with confidence on the situation in places like Vietnam or Chile (1.92), but what is bringing the West to this civilizational suicide is fairly obvious. It is first of all self-indulgent secular materialism. If this world is all there is and if the fundamental good is my own comfortable self-preservation, then the only reason for having children at all is to provide for one's old age when one is no longer able to work. The wealthy of course don't have that concern, and so have no need of children beyond carrying on the family name, if that is even an issue.

The welfare state removes this concern for everyone. The state provides for your old age, as does a growing economy together in conjunction with wise investments. Medicare and Social Security give you all the benefits of children without the expense and the headaches.

Lastly, there is feminism, the all purpose poison. When we break down all sorts of barriers--cultural, legal, logistical, etc.-- so that women may enter the workforce and pursue any career they choose, it is soon culturally expected that they will take this course. It also becomes economically necessary. Salaries adjust so that one income is no longer sufficient for a middle class way of life. Children become both too expensive and too inconvenient to have more than one or two of them.

The United States has by far the highest fertility rate (2.05) of all western industrialized nations (though followed closely by France at 1.98, oddly enough). My suspicion is that this has something to do with the unusually great strength of religious faith among Americans.

Catholics used to be known for their large families, but they have conformed to the culture and are pursuing their enlightened self-interest like everyone else. You still see large families with four to eight children in some Evangelical churches, but they are exceptional. If people who know the Lord and trust him to provide for their families and bless both them and the world through their families do not have but one or two children*, what hope is there that anyone else will populate our future, and thus that America and the West will have a future?

What I find most interesting about this video is the call to action for Christians at the end of it. The call to action is to evangelize Muslims (a good thing, in my view), not to have large families. Having a large family and taking the necessary steps to raise your children in godliness is a profoundly important way of loving your neighbor. With that in mind, examine yourself for what your attitudes are with regard to (1) self-indulgent secular materialism, (2) the welfare state, and (3) feminism, or the interchangeability of men and women in society. Are you part of our civilizational suicide or part of the remedy?

With a view to that, here is the first of several parts of Mark Steyn's Heritage Foundation speech, "America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It" (Jan. 10, 2007). You can navigate your way to the rest of it on YouTube. He describes how Europe is depopulating itself irreversibly and allowing itself to be replaced demographically by Muslims through immigration and much larger families.

On the demographic problem and the general civilizational collapse, you may explore this bibliography.

Bat Ye'or, Eurabia: The Euro Arab Axis.

Melanie Phillips, Londonistan.

Bruce Bawer, While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying The West From Within.

Mark Steyn, America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It.

Walter Laqueur, The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent.

George Weigel, The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God.

Bernard Lewis, The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror.

Joseph Ratzinger, The Dialectics of Secularization.

Claire Berlinski, Menace in Europe: Why the Continent's Crisis is America's Too.

*Keep in mind that some people are biologically unable to have children or have not been able to have more than one or two. Furthermore, some people have had to limit the size of their family for medical reasons. So we can make these broad observations and judgments, but no one should jump to conclusions regarding particular couples.

This Is Your Brain on Science

Because we can invent something, does that mean we ought to? Regardless of the answer to that moral question, it does mean that we will invent it.

Consider this gadget. It scans and analyzes whatever is in front of you--whether it is a book, a can beans, or even a person--then it searches the internet for relevant information, and projects the information wherever you want to read it: a wall, your hand, or the product you are holding. It is at the same time both amazing and (not surprisingly) frightening. At the very end, the speaker suggests that embedding the technology into our brains might be the ultimate goal. The speaker, associate professor Pattie Maes of MIT's Program in Media Arts and Sciences, suggests that this could become our "sixth sense."



On the TED website, some readers were predictably uncritical in their joyful anticipation of the brave new world that awaits us all just over the beautiful horizon of enlightened progress.

One fearless young man writes:

The quantity of people now on this planet and the way we twist our environment to suit us will significantly slow down the process of natural selection and biological evolution. The next step in our evolution lies in augmenting ourselves. Hence the development of genetics, bio-engineering, robotics, artificial intelligence and nanotechnology. It's up to us to make ourselves better. Implants, and indeed all technology, should never remain in the domain of fixing what is broken, but used to make what exists better.

We have it in our power to make ourselves "better." Of course, he means simply "more powerful," and by that he means "having greater power over, or control of, our world." Machiavelli called it the conquest of fortune. But for Machiavelli, power is always personal. The state that a prince governs is "his state." A century later when Francis Bacon spoke of "the conquest of nature," he had the same idea in mind, and he was fully aware of C. S. Lewis's insight that the dominion of "man" over nature is always the dominion of some men over other men. There is no basis for believing that these "enhancements" will bring unambiguous improvement to people's quality of life.

Bobbie Carlyle's "Self-Made Man"

This happy optimist sees movement here toward,

...integrating the 'unused' capacity in our brains into the rapidly evolving data cloud that is growing throughout this planet. For many years heavy use projects all over the world have solicited unused computing capacity on millions of connected computers to process huge data streams and allow projects on a scale not possible with local hardware capacity. Is this technology a first glimpse into the possibility of using the vast power of human brains as a common resource?

Why should I get to keep the unused portions of my brain when there are others who can put it to work for the good of humanity? Imagine all our brains connected into a worldwide mental internet. A common resource. The ultimate private space would be turned over to public use. But people can't even share a dorm room or a desk without conflict. Consider also the public authority that would govern the public use. Do you want to invite that authority into your brain?

A gadfly in the ointment of hope pictures a policeman approaching you with this device, scanning you, and saying: "Hello, I'm Officer Smith. I see you're Catholic, own two guns, traveled to Israel last year, and frequently post on blogs. Are you attending your AA meetings? Did your wife's infection clear up? I see you don't live in this area. Why are you here? You can't be shopping because your credit cards are maxed out."

In our rush to restore science to its "rightful place" in government, we should pause to ask what the government's source of moral guidance is. More importantly, what is the source of moral guidance for those who are electing the government? Professor Maes teaches media arts and sciences. We use our media arts to debunk the very idea of moral guidance, and then with just as much social energy we use the sciences to acquire power that cries out for the moral guidance we have silenced.

Piper's Respectful Rebuke on Abortion

In the wake of President Obama's commencement address at University of Notre Dame, controversial because of the university's Roman Catholicism and the President's passionate commitment to killing any unborn baby that anyone suggests killing (and sometimes even born ones), this video-text of John Piper's response to the President's statements on "reproductive freedom" back in January are well worth the three minutes it takes to view it.



(The text graphics are artsy, perhaps post-modern, and I suspect they corrupt us as we watch them appear and move and explode and such.)

After the Recovery, the Hyperinflation

Former hedge fund manager Andy Kessler does a fine job explaining the basics of money supply and inflation in relation to the recent trillions that have been flowing out of Washington DC. (And, yes, I expect you to be interested.)

Here is how he starts "Putting the Toothpaste Back Into the Tube" (The Weekly Standard, April 27, 2009).

So how is Fed chairman Ben Bernanke going to get all that toothpaste back into the tube? The Fed has been cranking money out like water over Niagara Falls. The monetary base has increased by a trillion dollars in just the last six months. And he's not done, furiously printing dollars (bank credits, really) and buying Treasuries in an attempt to flood the economy with dollars. When will it end? $3 trillion? $4 trillion? And then what? A functioning economy doesn't need all that cash sloshing around. Is runaway inflation our next crisis?

Let's go back to fundamentals for a second. Money is a placeholder of value--the price of a cold Heineken or the value of work already done, a hole dug, a piece of software written, whatever. When things work just right, prices seek the right level and we get a match between that cold beer and the sweat from working for it.

Money supply is how much money is floating around the economy to handle all the transactions. No one quite knows how much money is needed. The classic formula is the output of the economy equals the amount of money times the velocity of money, or how many times the same dollar is spent during the year. You buy the beer, the bartender buys beer nuts, the nut farmer buys a Ford pickup truck, the auto worker buys a cell phone, which you the programmer just finished writing the location-based service code for, so you are out celebrating buying a beer and on and on. Of course, no one really knows what the velocity of money is. If times are tough, you may hold off buying that Heineken for a few months, and when times are good you may party every night.

I like to think of the economy as a giant bucket filled with money (money supply) sloshing around the bucket (velocity). We all hope the bucket is filled to the rim. But, in normal times, the economy grows every year. Population increases, too, so the size of the bucket has to grow to handle the transactions of more people who like to eat and drink. So more money needs to be created to fill the bigger bucket. That's pretty straightforward.

But now the hard part. ...

Read on, then hold onto your seats. Given the way we have chosen to ride out this recession, we could be in for a bumpy landing.

Civilizational Suicide Part I

This is an interesting and encouraging development. Explorers is a branch of the Boy Scouts that trains young people in the techniques and discipline of law enforcement, including counter-terrorism and border patrol. ("Scouts Train to Fight Terrorists, and More," New York Times, May 13, 2009.) No doubt the left, upon reading this, will raise the roof, even though law enforcement is not only a necessary function, but also a noble ambition.

In 2005, Anthony Esolen published a marvelous article on the effect of the sexual revolution and its inevitable consequence, homosexual liberation, on friendship between men, and the devastating consequences of that for the sustainability of our civilization. Yes, it's that serious. ("A Requiem For Friendship: Why Boys Will Not Be Boys and Other Consequences of the Sexual Revolution," Touchstone, Sept. 2005.)

The prominence of male homosexuality changes the language for teenage boys. It is absurd and cruel to say that the boy can ignore it. Even if he would, his classmates will not let him....

For good reason boys used to build tree houses and hang signs barring girls. They know, if only instinctively, that the fire of the friendship cannot subsist otherwise. If the company of girls is made possible, then the company of girls becomes a necessity, if only to avoid having to explain to others and to oneself why one would ever prefer the company of one’s own sex. Thus what is perfectly natural and healthy, indeed very much needed, is cast as irrational and bigoted, or dubious and weak; and thus some boys will cobble together their own brotherhoods that eschew tenderness altogether—criminal brotherhoods that land them in prison. This is all right by us, it seems....

In the name of protecting homosexuals, we ignore the feelings of boys and snatch from them their dwindling opportunities to forge just such friendships whereof homosexual relations are a delusive mimicry....

Reader, the next time you feel moved to pity the delicate man in the workstation near you, give a thought also to an adolescent somewhere, one among uncounted millions, a kid with acne maybe, a kid with an idea or a love, who needs a friend. Know then that your tolerance for the flambeau, which is little more than a self-congratulating cowardice, or your easy and poorly considered approval of the shy workmate’s request that he be allowed to “marry” his partner, means that the unseen boy will not find that friend, and that the idea and the love will die....

No civilization has been built without that foundation of male camaraderie directed toward civic ends: not Athens, not Rome, not Japan, not India. It remains to be seen whether any civilization can long endure without it. Looking at what used to be our cities, I’d say not.

Of course, these are just samples of the deep wells of insight that Esolen offers on this matter in the article. You must read the whole thing if you read anything.

Some of this insight can be found in popular culture, but only traces of it. Here is "Guy Love" from Scubs.




Anthony Esolen is Professor of English at Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.

He's Everywhere He Wants to Be

Finally, a bit of parody from the Republicans that actually bites:

The Faceless Generation

"The more time people spend before the computer screen or any screen, the less time and desire they have for two human activities critical to a fruitful and demanding intellectual life: reading and conversation. The media invade, and in many instances destroy altogether, the silence that promotes reading and the free time required for both solitary thinking and social conversation." -- Susan Jacoby, The Age of American Unreason (New York: Pantheon, 2008), p.247.

I was explaining to a prospective student for the fall at The King's College why I do not permit the use of laptop computers in my classroom. She was surprisingly agreeable to this policy, and I found her reason illuminating.

She told me that relationships among her peers are mediated by screens, whether computers and cell phones. Their social life centers on Facebook and MySpace. They communicate via text messaging and cell phone. Consider all the 14 year olds walking around constantly on the phone. One way or another, they're distant when they do not have to be. Face to face relationship is one of the most precious goods in life--when it is done right. A kiss between two people is a particularly intimate face to face relationship. God's promise to his redeemed people is that they will see him one day "face to face" (I Cor. 12). But it is disappearing among those of the emerging generation.

This self-imposed distance between close friends is changing the nature and quality of human relationships. In electronically mediated relationships, people are more careless in what they say, and in particular they are bolder in what they say to the opposite sex. They say things they would never say "to your face." People of the rising generation are socially more awkward and have a more difficult time sustaining a friendship. Marriage will be even more difficult than it has been for previous generations.

You might find Maggie Jackson's recent book, Distracted, on the effect of email on one's attention span, interesting.

An older and more philosophical writing (and more difficult to find) is George Grant's essay with the intentionally ironic title, "The computer does not impose on us the ways it should be used" (in Beyond Industrial Growth, Abraham Rotstein ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976. 117-31).

Quality Time With The Venerable Dead

Samuel Davies (1723-1761) was one of America's greatest preachers. He was a Virginian and the fourth president of the College of New Jersey, known today as Princeton University, succeeding Jonathan Edwards. As a pastor in Virginia, he had the privilege of discipling young Patrick Henry from the pulpit each Lord's Day.

On a friend's Facebook page today, I found these words from Pastor Davies which everyone who is serious about the truth, wisdom, and the life of the mind will take to heart.

I have a peaceful study as a refuge from the hurries and noise of the world around me, the venerable dead are waiting in my library to entertain me and relieve me from the nonsense of surviving mortals.*

C. S. Lewis had the same sentiment when, in his introduction to Athanasius On The Incarnation, he recommended the reading of old books, or at least balancing our diet of new books with healthy servings of the old.

It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.

Machiavelli shares the pleasure he takes in communing with geniuses across the centuries through the books they have left us:

On the coming of evening, I return to my house and enter my study; and at the door I take off the day's clothing, covered with mud and dust, and put on garments regal and courtly; and reclothed appropriately, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them with affection, I feed on that food which only is mine and which I was born for, where I am not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reason for their actions; and they in their kindness answer me; and for four hours of time I do not feel boredom, I forget every trouble, I do not dread poverty, I am not frightened by death; entirely I give myself over to them. ("Letter to Francesco Vettori")

Further down on the right you can find a list of spiritual classics whose authors you will surely find justly venerable.

*Of course, he is using the word "entertain" in an older sense. It appears to be the ninth definition offered by Oxford English Dictionary: "To engage, keep occupied the attention, thoughts, or time of (a person): also with attention, etc. as obj. Hence to discourse to (a person) of something. ... 1692 Br. Ely Answ. Touchstone A v, I hope I shall neither tire the Reader, nor entertain him unprofitably. 1748 Chesterf. Lett. II clxxiii. I have so often entertained you upon these important subjects." The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (1971), vol. I, p. 876.