> We think because the university we went to has different "departments," where the different "majors" hang out, that these are all different enterprises -- like the manufacture of jet engines differs from training horses for future dressage tournaments. But politics and philosophy and education are all part of the same essential project. We will not successfully deal with any one of them without dealing with them all.

"[Much of our thinking on happiness] relies on a hidden dualism. Faced with some problem of the mind – depression, anxiety – the 'natural-born dualists' assume the solution must lie on the level of the mind, too. Exercise might give them a boost, but they tend to assume it can't be a real solution to such woes; that has to come from therapy, meditation, or other 'psychological' work. Yet who says so? Talk of the 'mind-body connection' is often dismissed as new-age quackery, but if physicalism's right, mind and body are more than just connected: they're essentially the same thing. If I were a dictator, page one of every self-help book would read, in bold, inch-high capitals: 'FIRST, GO FOR A SWIM.'"

Christianity, Culture, Vocation

"Was the violence gratuitous and overly graphic?  That depends what you’re measuring it against.  Compared to the Berenstain Bears or the Hardy Boys, yes, it was way over the top.  Compared to Ehud’s exploits in Judges, not so much." Very well said. :)

What order there may be in the world is not, Mr. McCarthy suggests, of our devising and is very likely beyond our comprehension. His project is unlike that of any other writer: to make artifacts composed of human language but detached from a human reference point. That sense of evil that seems to suffuse his novels is illusory; it comes from our discomfort in the presence of a system that is not scaled to ourselves, within which our civilizations may be as ephemeral as flowers. The deity that presides over Mr. McCarthy's world has not modeled itself on humanity; its voice most resembles the one that addressed Job out of the whirlwind.