Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label freedom

Powers of 2

Oh! the inundation of triumphant screenshots: four-by-four arrays of cool-grey bevelled tiles, warming up to rust and cheeky crimson, dawning -- finally! -- victorious in glorious sunshine yellow. If you haven't 2048 ed yet, you're nothing  in today's world, even should you boast whole hosts of grand post-nominals. Or so it would seem from Facebook. For those who've been passed by by this particular phenomenon, 2048 is an online, single-player, sliding block puzzle game, the aim of which is to collide (and consequently additively combine) matching tiles displaying powers of two until the value 2048 (= 2^11) is reached. It's all the rage. At least, it was a week ago...at the time I start to write it is already on the wane, and by the time I finish (in a few months if my recent rate of composition's anything to go by) we'll doubtless be several new-fangled iterations down the line, our Facebook feeds populated by some hybrid whatsit -- virtual cultivation o...

I will abroad...

I struck the board and cried, "no more; I will abroad..." (George Herbert, The Collar   [1]) Or, in my case, I will not  abroad. Like Herbert, desiring to defy his priestly calling, to escape, to flee the life that God has given him which seems to him too burdensome, too wearisome, I don't want to do it anymore. I don't even know what "it" is -- I'm not a priest, I'm not a missionary, I'm not an anything-in-particular; the Bible tells me I'm "his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them" ( Ephesians 2 :10). "Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if you do not give up" ( Galatians 6 :9). Well, I'm weary. I'm not even sure I know what giving up looks like, but I know I want to do it. Part of me resents the strength to carry on, because without it I wouldn't have a choice, and without a choice I wouldn't h...

Nietzsche and Jesus via Willard (with brief reference to Mitchell)

A habit I have benefited lots from is stocking up my iPod with stuff that I might be able to learn from in those moments where I'm physically occupied but mentally at liberty (cleaning and exercising being obvious such opportunities). Hopefully some of it filters through! (A habit which I have not benefited from is falling asleep listening to BBC 4's ' Unbelievable Truth '...I don't half worry about what that has 'taught' me! :-/ ) This talk by Dallas Willard on 'Nietzsche vs. Jesus' made for a very interesting gym session a couple of weeks ago. The premise of his talk is that 'the burden of human life is to find an adequate basis for human action in knowledge' and explores what those two thinkers* have to say about that knowledge. According to Willard, Nietzsche was calling out the hypocrisy that was rife in academic/social/cultural institutions, which professed Christian ideology but in practice were driven by ambition, cliques, and ...