Ire is often directed at younger generations – those darn kids, blasting hip-hop out of their speakers, refusing to watch black and white TV shows from when men were men and women were women, and burning down every statue they see. I don’t think these complaints are entirely unfounded, but what I find bizarre and want to focus on is the flip side of this … Continue reading Nostalgia, Sequelitis, and the Past
For most modern Americans, the idea of agrarian living is woefully antiquated. With supercomputers in our pockets and self-driving tractors in the fields, picking up a shovel to plant vegetables seems like unnecessary work. Supply chain issues and global catastrophes notwithstanding, why worry about growing food when Kroger’s shelves are fully stocked and Walmart is always open? This attitude towards food production reveals the fractured … Continue reading We All Have an Agrarian Purpose
When I was in fifth grade, I used to listen to audiobooks. My favorite was C. S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair; I eventually listened to it so many times that I memorized the whole thing and would retell the story to my sisters as we drove to school with my dad in the mornings. Those who have read this story know that memory pervades the … Continue reading Love and Forgetfulness
When I sat down to watch Free Guy, I was expecting some kind of imitation of the movie Ready Player One, where characters from within and without a video game must save it from being commandeered by a greedy tyrant, a pleb rises to prominence, and cheesy comedy and cringey romance abound. What I got instead was a stunningly clever film that tackles some of … Continue reading Sweet, True Fantasy: How Free Guy Reflects Eternity
I recall vividly one afternoon last summer when I had some free time. As I walked home, I pulled my phone out of my pocket, opened up Snapchat, and slid over to tap through my friends’ stories. I noticed underneath them some of the suggested features. In one, “Love Triumphs!” accompanied a picture of a same-sex couple, with a subtitle suggesting that all the world … Continue reading Love in Context
(Spoiler warning follows for The Searchers, Sunset Boulevard, and Strangers on a Train) Because of Hollywood’s influence on America, to understand our current cultural context it is important to understand Hollywood’s Golden Age. Despite the significance of the topic, most people have a faulty view of this time. Classic Hollywood is often seen as an era that either moralized or simply refused to tackle mature … Continue reading Understanding the Golden Age of Hollywood
Prior to my arrival at Hillsdale College this fall, I had designed and offered several times a new course on a trendy topic: transhumanism. It was something of a devil’s bargain. While I had come to believe that all young men and women ought to know something about this movement, I was also looking to design a topical course that would be popular. For mainstream … Continue reading Made in Our Image?: Straight (Theological) Talk About Transhumanism
Guerilla Game’s 2017 action-adventure game Horizon Zero Dawn tells a dual narrative. Story A is set in the game’s past, the later half of the 21st century, while Story B shows the events that happen to the player character, Aloy, in 3040. The two stories parallel each other: in each, a remarkable woman rallies disparate people to defeat some great threat to humanity. HZD‘s gameplay … Continue reading Stoic Perseverance and Horizon Zero Dawn
On April 29, 1992, Los Angeles was on the brink of chaos: four Los Angeles Police Department officers who had been videotaped beating Rodney King, a black man, had been acquitted. Mayor Tom Bradley held a press conference, where he said in part “I am here to tell this jury, ‘No. No, our eyes did not deceive us…what we saw was a crime.’” Within an … Continue reading Not Your Parents’ Rule of Law: Marcusian Anarcho-tyranny and the Supplanting of Equal Application of the Law
It had been a month since the breakup. My heart was still aching; my mind still clouded with uncertainty. The agonized words of Psalm 143 had become the refrain of my soul: “My spirit is faint within me, my heart despairs…Hasten to answer me Lord, for my spirit fails me.” As I laid in bed, the pain seemed like it would overwhelm me for the … Continue reading Heartbreak and Christ
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