I hope the shade of the late, great Ursula Le Guin won’t mind the following longish excerpt from her short novel The Word For World Is Forest: “In Rieshwel, New Java. Fourteen days ago. A town was burned and its people killed by yumens of the Camp in Rieshwel.” “It’s a lie. …
Category: reality
Jan 20 2024
Matter And Spirit
The following passage from C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity has me thinking about things most theologians don’t – or perhaps won’t – address: There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread …
Sep 01 2023
Why are Americans so unhealthy?
Rather than rail against those silly Americans and their horrible diets, let’s ask why their diets are so poor? Tim Pool has mentioned more than once on his broadcast that he and many of his friends, when traveling in Europe, eat the same things they eat here in the states, and they lose weight. When …
Aug 21 2023
Reinhold Niebuhr Was A Cockeyed Optimist
Why are you here, Gentle Reader? I don’t ask that question in the metaphysical sense that demands a discussion of theistic cosmogony and the alternatives to it, but rather in the immediate and supremely practical sense. Why are you here, at Liberty’s Torch? What has brought you here, and – should you decide to …
Jul 29 2023
Sallies And Salients
Yes, Gentle Reader, I’m back on that topic this morning. It’s no longer a matter of isolated skirmishes. There’s no longer an identifiable “front” as such. Situational awareness has become mandatory. Learn to recognize places and times of hazard, how to avoid them, and what to do about them when avoiding them is inadvisable …
Jun 10 2023
Reality And Its Detractors
In this universe, which is kept running by the often invisible operation of inviolable natural laws, we can observe various kinds of order. Natural order – the reliability of various cause-and-effect relations – is what makes life possible. Men use their knowledge of those relations to organize their activities in pursuit of sustenance and …
May 18 2023
The Deniers And You
I do like that word denier. Its principal meaning, of course, is “one who refuses or rejects a particular assertion or proposition.” Its other meaning is about the fineness of the threads in a garment. Are there any other words with two completely disconnected meanings, according to context? Anyway, on to the main event. …
Apr 26 2023
Great Men And Superheroes
If you attended high school around the same time as I did, you undoubtedly learned about the Great Man theory of history. For our younger Gentle Readers: The Great Man theory is a 19th-century idea according to which history can be largely explained by the impact of “great men”, or heroes: highly influential …
Apr 21 2023
It Won’t Go Away Part 2: “It”
Yesterday’s essay brought only one comment and a single ping. Perhaps our Gentle Readers were nonplussed by it. I could hardly blame them; it was a “passion piece,” the sort that writes itself with the fervor the subject aroused in me. If it left readers wondering when the men in the white coats toting …
Apr 20 2023
It Won’t Go Away
“And what is good, Phædrus, and what is not good? Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?” – Plato, “Phaedrus” Among the seminal conceptions in human thought, there’s one that’s been mocked, parodied, railed against, and serially dismissed without ever losing its force. Repeated attempts to drain it of its power …
Nov 05 2022
Facing Reality
Many things have been said about reality. You might say it’s the most discussed subject of all time…and space…and matter and energy. But that’s neither here nor there…unless it’s both. An old gag, usually presented as part of a mock test called “Qualifying Exam,” includes as an “extra-credit question,” this chestnut: “Define the …
Oct 12 2022
Unreality And Lethality
I have no idea how much attention John C. Wright’s impassioned essay, which I cited yesterday, has received. I hope the answer is “enormous,” as it deserves that much, but in the main people are averse to confronting their own sins. And let’s be candid here: just about all of us are complicit in …
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