I have discovered your Substack from the comment you left on my blog "The Blue Flower". We are becoming a community of thinkers without any formal links or association. The important is to keep studying and writing along with our life of prayer.
Thank you Father. Yes, there are (I pray) Inklings-like links beginning to form all across the world now. It's deeply encouraging and a sign of God's continuing presence in these often disorientating times.
> One of the biggest challenges of life today is the lack of a positive vision of the future - some goal or target, some collective reason for living that we can all buy into.
...
> In the past we had the great cathedrals and in more recent times supersonic jets and rockets to the moon. But these days there don’t seem to be any such projects, and I think this goes a long way to explaining much of the neurosis and general loss of meaning that we see and feel around us.
Given that point of view, how do you interpret the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11?
(“Come,” they said, “let us build for ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens, that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of all the earth.” )
Yes, good point. The positive vision I speak of should indeed be orientated towards the highest good (i.e. God) rather than human aggrandisement as in the Tower of Babel. That said, I think I'd prefer the Babel vision to no vision at all. It misses the mark, for sure, but at least it's got a bit of dynamism and energy to it. Better than that than Nietzsche's 'last man' scenario - hollowed-out, mindless, passive consumers. That's worse, in my view - collective spiritual entropy and death.
I have discovered your Substack from the comment you left on my blog "The Blue Flower". We are becoming a community of thinkers without any formal links or association. The important is to keep studying and writing along with our life of prayer.
Thank you Father. Yes, there are (I pray) Inklings-like links beginning to form all across the world now. It's deeply encouraging and a sign of God's continuing presence in these often disorientating times.
The post begins with:
> One of the biggest challenges of life today is the lack of a positive vision of the future - some goal or target, some collective reason for living that we can all buy into.
...
> In the past we had the great cathedrals and in more recent times supersonic jets and rockets to the moon. But these days there don’t seem to be any such projects, and I think this goes a long way to explaining much of the neurosis and general loss of meaning that we see and feel around us.
Given that point of view, how do you interpret the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11?
(“Come,” they said, “let us build for ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens, that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of all the earth.” )
Yes, good point. The positive vision I speak of should indeed be orientated towards the highest good (i.e. God) rather than human aggrandisement as in the Tower of Babel. That said, I think I'd prefer the Babel vision to no vision at all. It misses the mark, for sure, but at least it's got a bit of dynamism and energy to it. Better than that than Nietzsche's 'last man' scenario - hollowed-out, mindless, passive consumers. That's worse, in my view - collective spiritual entropy and death.