text:
Not enough to define man as individual of the species
But it is not enough to define a man as an individual of the species Homo (or even Homo sapiens). The term 'person' has been coined to signify that a man cannot be wholly contained within the concept 'individual member of the species', but that there is something more to him, a particular richness and perfection in the manner of his being, which can only be brought out by the use of the word 'person'…Speaking figuratively, we can say that the person as a subject is distinguished from even the most advanced animals by a specific inner self, an inner life, characteristic only of persons…Inner life means spiritual life. It revolves around truth and goodness.Karol Wojtyla
Love and Responsibility
Sep. 29, 2009, at 11:20pm
The question of what exactly an ideology is, how it functions in human life, why it appeals and how it affects us, has been with me ever since I posted about it a week or so ago. Here are some points from my reading and reflecting that I thought might interest others.
Ideologies lead to homogeneity
First, I have been reading a great and probing lecture by our friend Mark Henrie (not to be confused with Mark Henry). (Katie linked to it some weeks back; here it is again). Its central theme is ideology and conservatism's resistance to it. According to Mark, the essence of ideology lies in its claim "to have captured the whole truth about man" and the correlative proclamation of "a universal history for all the world." On the basis of a presumed insight into the universal nature of man, ideologies work to impose a homogeneous (and ultimately global) state.
Conservatives, he argues further, while unlikely to fall into the danger of communism, are by no means immune to the danger of ideology as such. Adherence to the ideology of individualistic liberalism, for instance, or of the unrestrained free market is widespread. The reductive and depersonalizing tendencies inherent in these ideas (if not kept in check) are becoming clear. Nowadays, for instance, the free market is often experienced as "a realm where uniform laws of rational efficiency work to the end of homogenization. Human goods such as community, solidarity, and indeed, even eccentricity…are threatened".
The homogenizing power of liberal market logic is revealed in contemporary political arguments that speak of the necessity of "competitiveness" in international markets. While it is often claimed that modern technological production has freed humanity from nature or necessity, the unrestrained market has itself become the realm of necessity that cannot be opposed. Here it is contended that we are not free to resist the demands of market efficiency. We are not free to seek such social goods as higher environmental standards. We are not free to defend settled ways of life by protecting older domestic industries. Owing to lower wage levels brought on by a competitive labor market, women are not free to remain at home as mothers, regardless of the non-quantifiable harm to children. In short, we are not free to organize any of our social relations in a manner that will lead to production inefficiencies.
There are more worthwhile things in Mark's lecture (for instance, on how the present encounter with Islam might hasten the end of the age of ideology by revealing the "universality of the West's modernizing history" as a kind of "parochialism".) But I have said more than I meant to already, and turn now to the first few pages of Vaclav Havel's essay, "The Power of the Powerless," which is included in this great collection of his writings.
Ideologies are attractive because they provide ready answers to life's difficult questions
Havel thinks that an ideology can be atractive because it offers ready-made answers to difficult, existential questions. It provides a coherent worldview in a confused and drifting age.
Keep in mind, while reading these excerpts, that Havel is reflecting on the communist ideology of the Soviet system. This means 1) that his remarks, while containing general insights into the nature of ideology as such, are taylored to a specific instantiation of it. And 2) he is dealing with an ideology that has been very successful in terms of being able to establish itself and maintain its grip on whole peoples, across large regions, and for a long time. As a result, essential characteristics of ideology are more thoroughly realized and clearly revealed than they would be normally.
It offers a ready answer to any question whatsoever; it can scarcely be accepted only in part, and accepting it has profound implications for human life. In an era when metaphysical and existential certainties are in a state of crisis, when people are being uprooted and alienated and are losing their sense of what this world means, this ideology inevitably has a certain hypnotic charm. To wandering humankind it offers an immediately available home: all one has to do is accept it, and suddenly everything becomes clear once more, life takes on a new meaning, and all mysteries, unanswered questions, anxiety, and loneliness vanish.
But there is a cost:
Of course, one pays dearly for this low-rent home: the price is abdication of one's own reason, conscience, and responsibility, for an essential aspect of this ideology is the consignment of reason and conscience to a higher authority.
Our experience with ideology is more benign. But don't we all know instances of a similar dynamic in more ordinary circumstances and in less dramatic ways? In certain religious groups, for instance, or in peer-groups?
Ideologies have an excusatory function
Havel begins section 3 of his essay by describing a greengrocer who hangs a sign in his window, "among the onions and carrots," with the slogan: "Workers of the world, unite!" Obviously the grocer has no interest in this message at all. Why, then, does he place it in his window? Simply because he is expected to do so and wants to stay out of trouble. Havel continues,
Let us take note: if the greengrocer had been instructed to display the slogan "I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient," he would not be nearly as indifferent to its semantics, even though the statement would reflect the truth. The greengrocer would be embarrassed and ashamed to put such an unequivocal statement of his own degradation in the shop window, and quite naturally so, for he is a human being and has a sense of his own dignity… Thus the sign helps the greengrocer to conceal from himself the low foundations of his obedience, at the same time concealing the low foundations of power. It hides them behind the facade of something high. And that something is ideology.
Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them… It is a veil behind which human beings can hide their own fallen existence, their trivialization, and their adaptation to the status quo. It is an excuse that everyone can use, from the greengrocer, who conceals his fear of losing his job behind an alleged interest in the unification of the workers of the world, to the highest functionary, whose interests in staying in power can be cloaked in phrases about service to the working class.
I am sure we are all familiar with the temptation of hiding something low behind something high. For instance, instead of admitting we are afraid to do something, we tell ourselves it would be imprudent. It is when such deceptions take on a communal character, that they start to look more like an ideology. Good examples don't come to mind right now, and its time to turn in. (As Newman said, "go to bed in good time, and you are already perfect.") Perhaps a reader can provide an example?
Sep. 25, 2009, at 12:12pm
One of my hot button issues—Natural Family Planning—came up as a sidebar at another thread elsewhere on the web, where one mother lamented the guilt-riddled approach to marriage she often finds among religious Catholics. I couldn't agree more. I want to add that I think it is not unrelated to an excessively legalistic and externalistic approach to the moral life, whereby we conceive of it as conformity to an elaborate set of do's and don'ts, rather than living in harmony with the interior law of our own being, which is to say, love.
In this area, as in so many others, what is wanted is more personalism.
Here is an article I wrote on the subject several years ago.
Sep. 24, 2009, at 12:31pm
In an online interview I came across recently, the interviewer, obviously annoyed by president Obama's frequent exhortations to "move beyond the ideological battles of the past", asks: "Since when did ideology become evil?" Why is "adherence to a coherent set of beliefs" bad, while "pragmatism, doing whatever fits the moment, the panacea?"
If ideology were nothing other than "adherence to a coherent set of beliefs," then there is nothing wrong with it. But that is not all it means. An ideology is in some way disconnected from reality. A coherent set of beliefs becomes ideological as soon as it is no longer tested against the concrete facts on the ground and adjusted accordingly. Ideologies are not just partial and incomplete, like any world-view, but closed off to genuine dialogue and to the correcting influence of stubborn facts.
This is why the call to put ideological battles behind us is rhetorically clever (and often so frustrating). It obfuscates the important difference between principled opposition to nationalized healthcare, say, and merely ideological opposition to it. It is also the kernel of truth in that call. Few of us are immune to the danger of unreality in our approach to politics. We do well to be on guard against it.
As Russel Kirk famously argued, "conservatism is the negation of ideology". We should oppose mere pragmatism in politics, not with ideologies but with true principles.
Katie forwarded me a link to a great 1977 speech by Ronald Reagan, in which he expressed something similar to the above:
I have always been puzzled by the inability of some political and media types to understand exactly what is meant by adherence to political principle. All too often in the press and the television evening news it is treated as a call for "ideological purity." Whatever ideology may mean—and it seems to mean a variety of things, depending upon who is using it—it always conjures up in my mind a picture of a rigid, irrational clinging to abstract theory in the face of reality. We have to recognize that in this country "ideology" is a scare word. And for good reason. Marxist-Leninism is, to give but one example, an ideology. All the facts of the real world have to be fitted to the Procrustean bed of Marx and Lenin. If the facts don't happen to fit the ideology, the facts are chopped off and discarded.
I consider this to be the complete opposite to principled conservatism. If there is any political viewpoint in this world which is free from slavish adherence to abstraction, it is American conservatism.
Sep. 18, 2009, at 10:53am
Paul Marshall reviews Christopher Caldwell's book, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe. Caldwell "ponders the current state of a continent where the aging indigenous population is gradually being supplanted by young newcomers. Today's immigrants might be considered hostile to European values, except that Europe itself increasingly has only a foggy sense of what those values might be."
The author notes that even the prominent German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, who is an atheist, has acknowledged that "Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. To this we have no other options. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter."
Yet much of Europe has discarded its historic religious underpinnings as irrelevant at best, harmful at worst. Even the memory of what a religiously ordered society was like has seemed to disappear, Mr. Caldwell observes. "A good definition of religion" for most modern Europeans, he says, might be "an irrational opinion, strongly held."
Sep. 17, 2009, at 1:32pm
The right relation between mercy and justice is something I've been mulling lately, because I've experienced personally the harm done by the confusion about it rampant in our society, including in the Church. I've witnessed many others experiencing it too, in large and small ways.
It came up again this morning, as I read an article at Catholic Light by canon lawyer Peter Vere critiquing a long-winded letter sent out by Fr. Alvero Corcuera, LC, to Legionary priests and Regnum Christi consecrated women. (An unofficial translation of the Spanish letter with some commentary can be found here.)
The letter drips with piety—piety of the vaguest and most generic kind. It is effusive in gratitude for the service and fidelity of the Legionaries and Regnum Christi members. It is boundless in its expression of ardor for Christ and anguish over the suffering his flock (that is, the Legion) is undergoing because of the "present difficulties".
Believe me that I would give my life, or whatever it would take, so as to soften the cross of each one, and that I feel very unworthy of being able to offer you my whole life and renew to you my gratitude, support and brotherly closeness.
Peter Vere responds:
Nobody is asking Fr. Alvaro to give up his life. We're simply asking him to apologize publicly to Maciel's victims. It's a debt of justice owed to those who were victimized at the hands of Maciel, then victimized again by having their reputations shredded when they came forward with the truth. Yet this is the one course of action Fr. Alvaro keeps avoiding. Why?
He avoids it because admitting the truth would (he must know at some level) discredit him, his way of life, and his cherished institution, which, I suppose he tells himself, is so important to the Church. He seems to hope that he can make up for the lapse in justice by "going the extra mile" in his expressions of Christian humility and piety.
It backfires. He aggravates the original wrong, by putting the moral onus on the victims and those standing in solidarity with them. "I'm sorry that even though I have given you so much and professed so ardently my Christian love and concern for you, you remain bitter and unforgiving."
From Caritas in Veritate, paragraph 6 [my emphasis]:
First of all, justice. Ubi societas, ibi ius: every society draws up its own system of justice. Charity goes beyond justice, because to love is to give, to offer what is "mine" to the other; but it never lacks justice, which prompts us to give the other what is "his", what is due to him by reason of his being or his acting. I cannot "give" what is mine to the other, without first giving him what pertains to him in justice. If we love others with charity, then first of all we are just towards them. Not only is justice not extraneous to charity, not only is it not an alternative or parallel path to charity: justice is inseparable from charity[1], and intrinsic to it. Justice is the primary way of charity or, in Paul VI's words, "the minimum measure" of it[2], an integral part of the love "in deed and in truth" (1 Jn 3:18), to which Saint John exhorts us.
It's not okay to take what doesn't belong to us. Nor can we make up for it by offering ever so much of what does belong to us, while we refuse to return what doesn't. Nor is that person fairly accused of being bitter or vindictive or unforgiving, because he asks to have it back and refuses to give up his claim to it.
Sep. 17, 2009, at 11:49am
Jay Nordlinger makes a key personalist point—one that ties into more than one of our ongoing discussions—in a post this morning at the Corner: [my emphasis]
P.S. When President Ford, at the encouragement of Secretary Kissinger, refused to meet with Solzhenitsyn, conservatives thought this was a pretty rotten move and posture. I hope these same conservatives, and their heirs, see what President Obama's snubbing of the Dalai Lama means today.
P.P.S. When President Obama does something — even a small something — like turn off the "news ticker" outside the American interests section in Havana, he tries to make nice with oppressors. Sometimes in life you have to choose: whether to make nice with the oppressors or with the oppressed. It's hard to do both.
Writ large on the stage of international politics, it's easy (at least I hope for most of us) to see the wrong of this. But this same dynamic is constantly at work among us in smaller, subtler ways much closer to home, where it is often disguised in pious garments. For instance, when those who have been abused or mistreated bring their charges forward and receive from those in a position of responsibility not justice (or even an honest investigation of the matter involved), but homilies on forgiveness and the need to avoid bitterness and vindictiveness.
It reminds me of that marvelous scene in The Winslow Boy, where Sir Robert calls on parliament to allow the boy's case to be heard by reminding them of some the deepest principles of Christian justice: "You shall not stand with the powerful against the weak!" and "Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me."
Sep. 12, 2009, at 7:49am
I found Mark Levin's memorial tribute in the opening segment of his radio show yesterday beautiful and moving. You can listen to it at his free audio page. Just click on the 9/11 date.
Sep. 12, 2009, at 7:47am
Parents in the Alameda Unified School District [in California] were refused the right to excuse their kids from classes that would teach all kids in the district's elementary schools about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender alternative families.
Fox news (via the Corner.)
Sep. 12, 2009, at 6:26am
Here is an excellent and thought-provoking article (hat tip Arts and Letters Daily) in The Australian warning about the growing sway of "expertise" with its tendencies toward social manipulation and ultimately tyranny.
All too often experts do not confine their involvement in public discussion to the provision of advice. Many insist that their expertise entitles them to have the last word on policy deliberation. Recent studies indicate that in public debates those whose views run counter to the sentiments of scientific experts find it difficult to voice their beliefs.
The author ties the growing reliance on "expertise" (which he traces to the industrial revolution and the development of the social sciences) to the decline of traditional (and superior) forms of deference:
The prerequisite for the rise of the expert was the erosion of traditional authority. The diminishing salience of custom and traditional truths created a demand for guidance and advice. The demand for experts was fostered by a cultural climate where little could be taken for granted and where people lacked the intellectual resources to make sense of the world. At a time when Western society was confronted with a crisis of causality the public was ready to embrace those who claimed the authority of scientific truth..
Note the striking contrast this with Newman's view of the true aim of education, as expressed, for instance, in this chapter of The Idea of a University. It is not expertise, but wisdom and judgment, learned not only through books and instruction, but through the personal influence of excellent teachers, through the dialog with other minds, and the traditions of the place…
We have lost this sense in our society. We conflate "reason and objectivity" with science and expertise and consider forcing the policy conclusions on the public as almost synonymous with good governance. Just this week the highly regarded New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, openly envied China, where a "relatively enlightened" elite has the power to "get things done" without having to go through the messy and protracted democratic process of winning the consent of the people. And more and more of the political, academic and media elite tend to agree with him.
Nor is this limited to large questions of public concern. Here's more of the article:
THROUGH extending the idea of complexity to the domain of personal and informal relationship, the authority of expertise has sought to colonise the private sphere. One of the characteristic features of modern times is that the decline of taken for granted ways of doing things has encouraged the perception that individuals are not able to manage important aspects of their life without professional guidance. Frequently the conduct of routine forms of social interaction are represented as difficult and complicated, which is why child-rearing can be treated as a science and why we often talk about parenting skills, social skills, communication skills and relationship skills. The belief that the conduct of everyday encounters requires special skills has created an opportunity for the expert to colonise the realm of personal relations.
We must find ways of reversing the trend.
Sep. 7, 2009, at 3:24pm
This seems worth keeping in mind while we're discussing anger.
"Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one."
Sep. 7, 2009, at 3:22pm
Arts and Letters Daily links today an interesting Newsweek article about Mary Shelly's novel, Frankenstein. I read it years ago; Jules read it this summer. (Dr. Healy's quotation of passages from Dracula in his talk on damnation had put him in the mood for catching up on those classics.) What strikes me in particular is the number of personalist thoughts and themes in the article as well as the book. Take just this passage:
The Romantics did not reject science, as Richard Holmes demonstrates in his remarkable new book, The Age of Wonder. (Holmes is also the author of a brilliant biography of Percy Shelley). They were ambivalent. Romantic artists and scientists shared a commitment to the quest for truth, and they were both motivated by wonder. It's no accident that Frankenstein shares certain features with Percy Shelley. Frankenstein is a kind of artist, as well as a composite of the era's well-known scientists. But as Holmes shows in a chapter on Frankenstein, Mary also captured the fear surrounding scientific exploration: if man can manipulate nature like a machine, what becomes of the soul? Chemistry and biology must be only half the story—half the human, one might say. Frankenstein is an argument between reason and emotion, nature and civilization, the divided self. Frankenstein's radical suggestion is that it doesn't take God to heal the rift. It takes the loyalty and love of another person.
Makes me wish I could take a year to study the seeds of personalism in 19th century English ethos. I'd like to look into questions like the relationship between science and persons, the problem of solitude, and the role others play in mediating us (or not) to ourselves.
Sep. 6, 2009, at 8:32pm
1. The Immediate Evidence of Freedom in the Cogito
A first answer to our question imposes itself on us: The god-like attribute of the free human person: "for if we will, it is; if we will not, it is not…," as Augustine says, is given just as immediately as our own existence in the experience of consciously living our being and performing free acts. (After ending this series on freedom, I will send to the Personalist project my whole text that underlies these blogs, namely a more extensive article with all the quotes.)
We can reach the knowledge of the real existence of our freedom in actually experiencing it from within – as part of the indubitable evidence of the cogito; it can be known with the same immediacy as our own existence, or in a sense even more immediately; because, as Augustine says, even if we were mistaken, per impossibile (which is impossible), about our own existence, it would still be evident to us that we would not want to be deceived, and in this will not to be deceived we experience our freedom with evidence.
Thus we may say that nothing is more evident to us than our freedom: Our very existence and conscious life are not more indubitably given, though perhaps more easily understood, than our freedom. And indeed we know of our freedom with the same type of immediate and thereupon reflective evidence with which we know of our own existence.
[Investigating this matter more closely, we could distinguish between the evident givenness of freedom on different levels: a) in the immediate inner conscious living of our acts, b) in what Karol Wojtyìa calls "reflective consciousness" (which precedes the fully conscious self-knowledge), and c) in explicit reflection and self-knowledge properly speaking in which we make our personal freedom the explicit object of reflection, d) in the insight into the nature of freedom, an insight which grasps the necessary and intelligible essence of personhood, which is realized in each and every person, and e) in the clear and indubitable recognition of our personal individual freedom, an evident knowledge which depends, on the one hand, on the immediate and reflected experience of our being and freedom, and, on the other hand, on the essential insight into the eternal and evident truth of the connection between freedom and personhood.]
The awareness of our own free will – a knowledge which is so evident that it cannot be deception – is in fact part of the evidence of the famous Cogito in René Descartes and even more in its richer and more adequate Augustinian version.
And the existence of free will in us is so evident that its evidence in a certain sense is more primary and indubitable than that of all other evident truths given in the knowledge: I think, I experience, I am.
And the existence of free will in us is even so evident that its evidence in a certain sense is more primary and indubitable than that of all other evident truths given in this knowledge (the Cogito).
Of course, this priority is not to be understood absolutely: for without the evidence of our existence and thinking activity also our freedom and will could not be given. Nevertheless, Augustine's remark is valid in the following sense: even if we assumed, per impossibile, that all other truths given to us would be doubtful, we could still be certain that we would freely want and wish to avoid error and to reach the truth. For even if we could be in error about all things, it would still remain true that we do not want to be in error and of this free will we can have certain knowledge, as Augustine states:
Likewise if someone were to say: 'I do not will to err,' will it not be true that whether he errs or does not err, yet he does not will to err? Would it not be the height of impudence of anyone to say to this man: 'Perhaps you are deceived,' since no matter in what he may be deceived, he is certainly not deceived in not willing to be deceived? And if he says that he knows this, he adds as many known things as he pleases, and perceives it to be an infinite number. For he who says, 'I do not will to be deceived, and I know that I do not will this, and I know that I know this,' can also continue from here towards an infinite number, however awkward this manner of expressing it may be.
And again Augustine says:
On the other hand who would doubt that he … wills…? For even if he doubts, he … wants (wills) to be certain….
René Descartes gains the same insight as Augustine that we possess freedom of choice and know this from within our own experience of the free dominion over our acts, and expresses it in the following way:
[Descartes says that our freedom of choice] "is so evident that it must be counted among the first and most common notions that are innate in us."
Thus, starting from the immediate self-experience of our conscious life, we gain the evidence that we possess the freedom to will not to err, and in a similar manner proceed to the more general evident knowledge of our freedom expressed by Saint Augustine thus:
for we do many things which, if we were not willing, we should certainly not do. This is primarily true of the act of willing itself - for if we will, it is; if we will not, it is not…
Augustine continues a little further down:
…Our wills, therefore, exist as wills, and do themselves whatever we do by willing, and which would not be done if we were unwilling.
The evidence of this knowledge cannot even be refuted by any and all possible forms of self-deception because these imply or presuppose already the evidence of free will, particularly the evidence that we can will "not to be deceived," as Augustine says.
2. The Evidence of Our Own Freedom in the Light of the "Eternal Truths" or "Necessary and Supremely Intelligible Essences and Wesensgesetze"
An extremely important advantage of the Augustinian over the Cartesian Cogito lies in Augustine's clear grasp that the unique inner perception or grasp that we really exist through our intimate conscious contact with our being and life "from within" is connected with the light of eternal truths, an insight into necessary essences and states of affairs that are quite independent from our individual person but without knowledge of which we could also not understand the existence of anything: for example, we do not only immediately perceive from within that we live and are conscious but we understand at the same time the universal truth of the principle of contradiction "nothing can exist and not exist at the same time and in the same sense" or: "Deception and error requires the real existence of the person who errs or is deceived; therefore, nobody who errs and is deceived can fail to exist". And as we perceive the concrete fact of our own existence in the light of these eternal truths, so we can also perceive our own freedom in the light of the eternal truths about the essence of freedom we discussed above. Thus we could formulate: in understanding what freedom is, we at the same time perceive in ourselves the actually existing power to act freely. As it were the light of the insights into the universal facts we discussed above about the nature of freedom at the same time allows us to understand clearly the instantiation of freedom in our own being and conscious life.
3. The Knowledge of Freedom through the Mediation of the Experience of Moral Calls and Oughts
There is another way to know that we are free: we all experience that we ought to do and not to do certain things. But an ought would not only lose any sense without freedom but in its experience freedom is co-given with the same evidence as the ought itself. In a similar way, the call issued from all objective values to give them their due response, explained so well in Hildebrand's Ethics, which is, as a matter of fact, the main rational reason for an ought, cannot be perceived without at the same time knowing our freedom, without which we could never respond to the call for a due value response. For while we can also give an affective response, that is not within our free power to engender and still is due to a great work of art or to a beloved person, this due response as well calls for a free sanction without which our response as it were does not enter fully in relation with due-ness. Therefore in the experience of any "ought" or call to give a due response we are given with the same evidence with which we know that we ought to do or to omit something, or to perform an inner act due to a beautiful or good object or person, also our freedom, which is the only conceivable addressee of an ought or call for a due response. No conceivable totally unfree reaction can ever properly respond to an ought or to a call from a value per se. We can say: nobody can know of an ought or call to give an adequate response to a good without knowing that he is free; hence as we do know of many such oughts and calls for a due response, we know that we are free.
Sep. 6, 2009, at 8:31pm
In our discussion of the essence of freedom we already presupposed all along, and as we shall see with good reason, that we as human persons are free. We spoke of us being able to take free stances, to command actions, to cooperate, etc. Nevertheless, we must distinguish sharply between knowing the essence of freedom and knowing the existence of human freedom. In principle, to gain an insight into all we saw about the essence of freedom does not yet imply that we actually are free, that freedom actually exists in the human being, either in actu or in potency, as fundamental faculty of the person. Especially when it comes to freedom, we can well understand the fundamental difference between grasping the essence of freedom and knowing the existence of human freedom. This is evident because the determinist who denies the existence of human freedom has as well to understand the essence of freedom whose existence in man he denies. He cannot deny freedom without some grasp of what the freedom is the existence of which he denies. Can we then know that human freedom exists and that we actually are free?
If human freedom did not exist, human beings would not be persons, as we have seen – but why should this be impossible? Maybe humans are not persons, as those countless philosophies imply that deny human freedom.
That it is one of innumerable "eternal truths" that "person and freedom are inseparable," leaves the question unanswered: Does freedom exist in man? All the facts about the essence of freedom and personhood say nothing yet about human beings' actually possessing this astonishing faculty.
Is it not a prerogative of God to be Lord over the being and the non-being of a thing by a simple inner word or fiat, without the person being determined to such a fiat by any cause other than his or her free center itself?
Is there then such a god-like quality in any finite person as to be the lord over the being and non-being of her acts? Answering this question affirmatively, as we implicitly did, obliges us to answer also how we can know that we are free? I will present in the following six ways in which we know that we are free or "six proofs of freedom."
Sep. 4, 2009, at 10:39am
A propos of our discussion on anger and holy wrath, I am both dismayed and challenged by this passage from Boston Archbishop Sean O'Malley's blog entry describing his attendance at Senator Kennedy's funeral.
At times, even in the Church, zeal can lead people to issue harsh judgments and impute the worst motives to one another. These attitudes and practices do irreparable damage to the communion of the Church. If any cause is motivated by judgment, anger or vindictiveness, it will be doomed to marginalization and failure. Jesus' words to us were that we must love one another as He loves us. Jesus loves us while we are still in sin. He loves each of us first, and He loves us to the end. Our ability to change people's hearts and help them to grasp the dignity of each and every life, from the first moment of conception to the last moment of natural death, is directly related to our ability to increase love and unity in the Church, for our proclamation of the Truth is hindered when we are divided and fighting with each other.
Is it fair to suggest that the critics of the decision to allow President Obama to give a eulogy at a Catholic funeral for a pro-abortion public figure are motivated by "judgment, anger or vindictiveness"? Can he give them no credit for concern with true and justice and moral clarity? And what of the irreparable harm done to the communion of the faithful by Catholic public officials promoting abortion and living scandalous personal lives?
What do others think?
LifeSiteNews has an article expressing an opinion more like my own (hat tip American Papist), by Msgr. Ignacio Barreiro Carámbula, Doctor of Dogmatic Theology and head of the Rome office of Human Life International
In the same way that publicly incoherent Catholics might be denied communion, these persons can also be denied ecclesiastical funeral rites. The Code of Canon Law establishes, Can. "1184 §1. Unless they gave some signs of repentance before death, the following must be deprived of ecclesiastical funerals: 3/ other manifest sinners who cannot be granted ecclesiastical funerals without public scandal of the faithful."
It's that "public scandal of the faithful" that I thought missing from Archbishop O'Malley's blog item—that I think missing from much of Catholic ethos and practice today. Needless to say, this ties into our forgiveness discussion as well. Can there be meaningful forgiveness where there is no repentance?
Msgr. Carambula gets even stronger and more specific:
We are informed by the press that the person who received the recent funeral in Boston gave some signs of repentance; but those signs were not specific at all with regards to the many grave and public violations that he committed against the teachings of the Church. Even if the signs of repentance would have been judged sufficient by competent local ecclesiastical authority, the problem of the scandal remains because the ordinary of the place where the funeral was officiated could not have been ignorant that the funeral was going to be turned into a celebration of the life of that particular person.
Aug. 26, 2009, at 12:02pm
Inner Free Acts
Thus I can act in the outside world, realize states of affairs or prevent them, but I can also take inner stances, respond by speaking a free "yes" or "no" to something. Besides such actual free responses, which I experience here and now and direct to an object, there are also superactual free responses in a person. These continue to exist in us even when we do not actually experience them or think of them. As we know many things superactually even when we do not think of them, so we find also that concretely lived free acts and responses do not exhaust themselves in our actually experiencing them. Both our responses to individual beings (such as our love for our wife or child) and to general types and whole spheres of value, such as attitudes of reverence, the virtues of justice, of purity, etc. can last in the form of superactual acts. They manifest themselves in our emotions, feelings, concrete responses and actions, etc. All virtues and vices are superactual acts. They profoundly influence the concrete actual consciousness of a person and are as it were a basso continuo which accompanies the actual melodies of our daily life. Finally, there is the so-called fundamental moral option for or against all morally relevant goods, for or against God and the whole world of values. This response has the most universal scope of objects at which it is directed. If it gains sturdy roots in a person, it becomes more than an "option," it becomes the most fundamental moral attitude; this attitude may also be called the general moral attitude.
Cooperative Freedom and the Gift of Self as Supreme Fulfillment of Persons
It is clear that we cannot directly realize superactual attitudes and virtues by a simple fiat. We can engender freely general moral intentions, yes, but they neither immediately take root in the person nor acquire instantaneously the personal depth proper to superactual virtues. Similarly, we cannot, by a simple fiat of our will, bring about affective responses such as grief or love, joy, compassion, or repentance, however appropriate also these spiritual affections are to their objects, as Dietrich von Hildebrand has shown in his books The Heart and The Nature of Love. Yet this does not imply that we have no freedom or responsibility with respect to our superactual attitudes or to our spiritual affective responses such as love, repentance or grief. We come to recognize here two further important manifestations of freedom: (1) the indirect role of our free acts, and (2) cooperative freedom.
(1) A single free action of helping someone lies within the power of our immediate freedom (in spite of the difficulties and limitations we may experience with respect to its actualization), and has an immediate and direct effect in the world and on our conscious life. Yet each action has also indirect effects on ourselves; it will influence and gradually change our superactual attitudes and the kind of emotional responses (love or hatred, warmth or envy and bitterness) we give to others. This applies to good as well as to bad actions. We cannot directly bring about with our free fiat attitudes towards persons or values which result indirectly from many free actions nor can we immediately evoke affective responses of repentance, compassion, or love, which often arise in our nature without participation of our freedom and which nevertheless can be morally and humanly speaking adequate or inadequate to their human or divine object. Now the fact that all of these acts and feelings do not obey our immediate free command does not impede that they are in many ways influenced indirectly by our free acts. Thus the free acts of repeated adultery will give rise to an impure and unfaithful attitude and to kinds of feelings towards his wife and other women which the faithful husband will not experience. Thus we come to understand that our freedom has an enormous indirect influence distinct from direct freedom by which we bring about free acts.
(2) Even more amazing is what we might term "cooperative freedom." Besides indirect freedom exerting great influence on such data of the moral life as virtues and vices and our affections, we also have another important capacity: namely that of cooperative freedom, of relating freely and in a particularly intimate way to those realities in us that arise without freedom. We can conspire freely with the tears of repentance that arise in us, or suppress them; we can freely disavow feelings of hatred or identify ourselves with them. We can cooperate with emotions of love and form them freely from within by sanctioning them. We touch here upon what constitutes the very heart of human freedom.
Recognition of cooperative freedom even modifies what we have said about freedom at the beginning of this series, describing freedom in terms of being "the lords over the being and the non-being of our acts." This characterization of freedom in terms of autonomy does not describe adequately many aspects of freedom such as the freedom in the grateful receiving of gifts, in gratitude as such, and in cooperative freedom. In many cases, of which the highest involve divine grace, we find in our soul gifts and experiences of joy or love which arise in us without depending on our freedom. Yet inasmuch as such movements of our soul are adequate or inadequate to their object, good or bad, we must not let them arise in us without involvement of our freedom. When they are bad, we ought to disavow them, thereby not immediately eradicating them but "decapitating" them, as it were. We can freely speak a 'no' to our feeling of intense envy, when we realize its evilness and inappropriateness. This is not an act of repression but, on the contrary, an act of conscious confrontation with ourselves. By disavowing feelings of envy, the person disassociates herself from them. Thus they become movements of the soul for which we are no longer responsible in the way in which we are responsible when we let envy grow in us without taking such a free stance. Much more profound is the interpenetration of freedom and affective responses – or other non-free experiences and gifts in us – in the positive case. When a deep love or feeling of repentance is granted to us – a feeling or movement of our soul which we never could have given to ourselves – our freedom is not fated to remain outside such gifts. It can join in with the gift. We can freely sanction our affective response or an attitude of our will of which we recognize that it gives a due response to an object or a person and that it has gift-character and does not stand simply within our power. By such a free sanctioning of these acts, we integrate them into our free life. Analogously, we can appropriate and accept into our freedom all intentional and good acts which arise in our soul, including our acceptance and conviction of the truth. Also in the sphere of the intellect we can integrate by a free sanction, and affirm from within, convictions which arise organically and without being free acts from our cognition. Given the rationality of the conviction and its character as a theoretical and adequate response to reality (states of affairs), we can also sanction it or add to convictions resulting simply from knowledge (being convinced by the object known) convictions which have the character of free real assent. We can speak a free yes to truth, a response which takes on a new role when it is not merely based on evident knowledge but on probable knowledge or on faith. We can turn that which is given to us as a gift into a free act, by freely sanctioning such gifts. Gift and freedom interpenetrate each other here. We might speak of a spiritual wedding of our will with our affections and with other noble movements or acts in us, including the assent to truth. By affections which well up in us as gifts, such as deep emotions of love, our will is enriched and allowed to partake as it were in the wealth of those affections and of other movements of the soul which possess gift character. Thus the deepest dimensions of freedom do not actualize themselves simply by the free center of the person alone. They are not even only formed by, as well as dependent on, the value of the object which gives purpose and meaning to our freedom. Rather, the deepest dimension of human freedom requires a gift which precedes it and in cooperation with which alone freedom can attain its supreme dignity. This is true in a special way of the deepest act of freedom realized only in love and in the gift of Self, in which we give to the other not only a response or something in ourselves, do not only perform acts, but give our very self to the other. This self-donation in love requires, in its fullness, on the human level, also the gift of the affective response to the beloved person which we cannot produce but sanction by our free will. In this ultimate sense, then, "to be free" means to cooperate with gifts on the natural (and, as the Christian believes, also the supernatural) order. Without using our freedom in cooperation with such gifts we can never attain the highest perfection to which the person is called nor fulfill what it means "to be a person."
Three Levels of Freedom that Belong Essentially to the Person
We said that already on purely philosophical grounds freedom inseparably belongs to personhood. Now we have to make some fundamental distinctions within what we call freedom, namely between: 1) freedom as a faculty (power) inseparable from personhood; 2) freedom as ability here and now to perform free acts; and 3) freedom as activation of this ability in actually performing free acts. Only the latter two imply the conscious life, self-determination and other traits of freedom spoken of above. The faculty of freedom or the free will (sense 1) belongs substantially to the person qua person and exists in every person even prior to awaken to consciousness. This is not true of freedom in the senses (2) and (3). Certainly, also the faculty of freedom is ordained to be exercised in conscious actualizations of it in which alone we encounter and experience freedom, and from whence alone we gain the metaphysical insight into its bearer, the person, and into the existence of the free power and of free potentialities which must exist prior to their actualizations in free acts. On the other hand, and equally certainly, neither the actual ability to perform free acts nor the actual use of it in these acts themselves is inseparable from personhood. They are not found in embryos and new-born babies, unconscious or comatose patients and in persons afflicted by certain types of grave mental retardation or psychic compulsion, and are absent in all human beings during sleep. But it is a most wrong consequences many bioethicists draw from this by holding that embryos and infants or mentally impaired persons are not persons. While they cannot exercise their freedom, they still are free: to be a person entails the fundamental metaphysical faculty, a capacity in principle to perform free acts. As faculty, freedom resides on the level of the substantial being of the person or, more precisely, is inseparable from the substantial spiritual being of the person.
Aug. 24, 2009, at 10:27am
For those interested in the Christopher West/TOB/prudishness discussion, don't miss this comment box, which has seen some substantive new contributions from Fr. Geiger, Josef Seifert and others in the last few days.
Aug. 16, 2009, at 4:24am
Freedom is one of those arch-data that cannot be defined in terms of something else or reduced to anything besides itself. It includes, however, many dimensions and traits which can be unfolded and analyzed (as this has recently been done in deep works of Karol Wojtyla and Dietrich von Hildebrand): It is not only a freedom from determining causes, an "I can but I do not need to," but also the power of self-determination that makes free acts utterly different from chance-events, with which Heisenberg and many physicists and philosophers of science confused it. Freedom also involves a special form of possession of one's being, which is only possible in and through the free agent's rational consciousness and capacity of self-governance and self-determination. To a person's free determining and governing herself corresponds also the person's being governed and determined by herself.
None of this can be understood if we do not recognize that free acts necessarily presuppose and entail consciousness, not only immanent conscious states such as fatigue but an intentional conscious directedness to something over against freedom, to some object of which we are conscious, to which we can refer in free acts only because we also are related to them through some rational knowledge and thought: "nothing is willed if it is not known before"; or: "nothing is willed that is not first conceived in thought", one could formulate roughly the immensely differentiated relation between freedom and objects of consciousness. But consciousness of some objects is not only presupposed by freedom, it characterizes free acts themselves: they relate consciously to their object.
Free acts, however, not only presuppose some objects, perhaps neutral objects such as the number of little pebbles on the street which can be objects of our perception or knowledge. Rather, free acts presuppose an object of some weight or importance, some good we aspire to or some evil we seek to avoid; otherwise freedom would sink down to the level of a totally sense-less exercise of changing neutral facts. We cannot meaningfully speak of a free act in an axiological void; in a meaning- and valueless universe free acts would not have any sensible motivation and freedom would sink down to the level of pure empty arbitrariness, like: "I am free to move pebble # 2,000.019 from its position at the right of the adjacent pebble to its left."
The object of a meaningful free act must therefore possess some importance that lifts it out of neutrality. The importance of the object of a free act can be positive or negative. It also can take fundamentally different forms, which explains the drama of human freedom: it can move just on the level of the merely subjectively satisfying or dissatisfying; pleasure is very often a desirable good but it can continue to motivate us even when such a satisfaction is neither objectively good for us but destructive nor good in itself; thus we can consume drugs even if we know that they destroy our health, life, and happiness, or turn us into thiefs. The Good can also be an objective good for us, lie in our true interest, which can happen even when we feel subjective dissatisfaction, as when we get freed from a drug-addiction. A being can thirdly also possess value in itself, an intrinsic preciousness calling upon our adequate response, such as when we say that the human person deserves respect in view of her dignity.
Freedom is thus not only a freedom from and self-determination, lordship over our own acts, but also a freedom for, the ability to speak a free yes or no to some object. The close connection between freedom and an object of which we are conscious and which possesses positive or negative importance, is good or bad, entails the all-important power to engender from oneself acts of freely responding and taking stances towards objects and other persons, to fulfill oughts and obligations issuing from them, to give them their due response, as well as the capacity of serving goods and other persons, and of self-donation. But we are also free to ignore the call of objective values and for example use or rape a girl without any concern for her intrinsic dignity and for what truly is best for her and for us. All these are aspects of the "freedom for" or the "freedom to".
Freedom is also intimately connected with the life of the intellect and involves the capacity to open one's mind in knowledge in order to receive information, to love the truth, to cooperate freely with the process of knowledge, and to consent to some extent freely to that which is known to us.
Two Dimensions of Human Freedom and Morality
In order to understand the relation of freedom and the different kinds of acts which it renders possible, we must first distinguish two quite different dimensions or perfections of freedom. The first one unfolds in relation to the important object; it involves a free 'yes' or a free 'no' spoken to it. It is the freedom to respond, to take a stance, affirming or rejecting an object or state of affairs.
The second dimension of freedom consists in the will being able to engender free outward-directed actions, and to initiate new causal chains, thereby also becoming the lord over our external actions and being able to initiate activities which then might lead to the realization of states of affairs which we realize in the outside world, after "affirming"(willing) them freely in an inner response. The second dimension of freedom may also lead to the making or creating of objects, works of art, etc., which are not reducible to states of affairs.
The first perfection of free will is deeper and has a much wider scope than the second. It encompasses also all purely inner responses, including those directed to objects which the free agent can in no way change, such as God or our neighbor, perhaps a more gifted person than we are, whom we can freely respect, affirm in love, or reject in hate and envy, or a cross or illness, which we cannot alter but can freely and humbly accept or rebel against.
The second dimension of human freedom chiefly refers to free actions in the strict sense, i.e., to acts which aim at the realization of things that are not yet real but can be realized through me. Within the things that can brought into being by free acts we distinguish the object-sphere of acting in the narrower sense of this term, through which we bring about states of affairs, such as saving a person's life who fell into deep water and cannot swim, from the object-sphere of making, through which we can make or produce things such as handiwork or works of art. In such actions or creative acts which are geared to the real world outside of ourselves, we initiate those activities which bring about the intended states of affairs or objects of making.
Both dimensions of freedom involve the mysterious inner power to engender acts without any preceding cause or our nature forcing us to act. This essence of freedom is common to all free acts and actions and entails an absolutely astonishing feature: due to our freedom we are "the lords over the being and the non-being of our act[ion]s."
The first perfection of the will, the responding one, can not only freely affirm a good without choosing properly speaking, but it also includes the freedom of choice. Free choice, at least in finite persons, is not restricted to the choice of the proper means to achieve the good as final end, as Aristotle thought: a free person does not want with necessity as final end the intrinsic good or the happy life or the realization of moral values and the adequate response to the truth and especially to morally relevant goods. Alas, he can fail to will the first and most important objective goal of freedom – to conform his life to the truth and to true goods. He can instead choose a life of subjective satisfaction in indifference towards intrinsic values and morally relevant goods, and even in indifference towards his own objective good, or even in hatred of these objective values and of God. Thus a free finite person can choose between ultimate ends, between good and evil, between the love of God up to the abandon of self (amor Dei usque ad contemptum sui), and the self-love and lust for pleasure up to the contempt of God (amor sui usque ad contemptum Dei), as Saint Augustine expresses it. This choice between the ultimate ends is the chief drama of human freedom.
Aug. 14, 2009, at 1:23pm
I'm reading a book I wish I'd read 20 years ago, before my children were born. It's called Between Parent and Child, by Dr. Haim G. Ginott. It includes some insights relevant to our discussion of anger, and not, I think, unrelated to the prudishness problem.
In our own childhood, we were not taught how to deal with anger as a fact of life. We were made to feel guilty for experiencing anger and sinful for expressing it. We were led to believe that to be angry is to be bad…With our own children, we try to be patient; in fact, so patient that sooner or later we must explode. We are afraid that our anger may be harmful to our children, so we hold it in, as a skin diver hold his breath…
Emotionally healthy parents are not saints. They're aware of their anger and respect it. They use their anger as a source of information, an indication of their caring. Their words are congruent with their feelings. [His emphasis.]
There is a place for parental anger in child education. In fact, failure to get angry at certain moments would only convey to the child indifference, not goodness. Those who care cannot altogether shun anger. This does not mean that children can withstand floods of fury and violence; it means only that they can stand and understand anger that says, "There are limits to my tolerance."
I would be very interested in hearing what Personalist Project adviser, Danish psychologist Dr. Peter Damgaard-Hansen would say to this. He has done a lot of important work on the problem of anger and I suspect would have a different take.
Aug. 13, 2009, at 4:24pm
I just read an open letter, wonderfully written by Robert Lewis Stevenson (the author of books like Kidnapped and Treasure Island), in defense of Blessed Damien of Molokai against the pharisaical slander of a certain Reverend Hyde. The letter strikes me as a great example of just the sort of holy wrath so sorely missing in today's (Church) culture (see Katie's previous post).
Stevenson apparently knew Reverend Hyde personally, and even had some cause to be grateful to him. But he considered that no reason to remain silent:
…there are duties which come before gratitude, and offences which justly divide friends… Your letter [in which Hyde calls Fr. Damien "a coarse, dirty man, head-strong and bigoted" and accuses him of not being "a pure man in his relations with women"] is a document which, in my sight, if you had filled me with bread while I was starving, if you had sat up to nurse my father when he lay a-dying, would yet absolve me from the bonds of gratitude.
Stevenson's defense of Fr. Damien is noble and convincing, but also vehement. It is clearly a fruit of his outrage, wrath and indignation. It simply could not have come about without these. Mere sadness would probably have kept silent. For, as Aquinas explains, "sorrow by its very nature gives way to the thing that hurts" while anger "strikes at the cause of sorrow" and "cooperates with fortitude in attacking." (I-II 123,10 ad. 3)
Stevenson's letter is itself a concrete illustration of the place for "holy wrath" in society. It also contains a good example of it. Towards the end, Stevenson writes that he had heard rumors of Fr. Damien's alleged impurity before, and he relates how this rumor was received by one of the bystanders:
A man sprang to his feet…'You miserable little -' (here is a word I dare not print, it would so shock your ears). 'You miserable little -,' he cried, 'if the story were a thousand times true, can't you see you are a million times a lower - for daring to repeat it?'
Would that the Reverend Hyde had reacted similarly:
I wish it could be told of you that when the report reached you in your house, perhaps after family worship, you had found in your soul enough holy anger to receive it with the same expressions; ay, even with that one which I dare not print; it would not need to have been blotted away, like uncle Toby's oath, by the tears of the recording angel; it would have been counted to you for your brightest righteousness.
Aug. 11, 2009, at 10:34am
On August 11, 1890, John Henry Cardinal Newman died in Birmingham, England, where he will be beatified next May. The words on his tombstone: "Out of the shadows and into Reality."
Among my favorite of his sermons is On the Greatness and Littleness of Human Life.
Read at least these two paragraphs, if you haven't got time for the whole beautiful thing. They give us a taste of the absolute joy he must have experienced on that day 119 years ago, and of how he had yearned for it his whole long life. They also give a feel for his profound personalism.
This is from the early part, leading the congregation toward a more vivid sense of the fleetingness and relative insubstantiality of our earthly existence.
And this sense of the nothingness of life, impressed on us by the very fact that it comes to an end, is much deepened, when we contrast it with the capabilities of us who live it. Had Jacob lived Methuselah's age, he would have called it short. This is what we all feel, though at first sight it seems a contradiction, that even though the days as they go be slow, and be laden with many events, or with sorrows or dreariness, lengthening them out and making them tedious, yet the year passes quick though the hours tarry, and time bygone is as a dream, though we thought it would never go while it was going. And the reason seems to be this; that, when we contemplate human life in itself, in however small a portion of it, we see implied in it the presence of a soul, {216} the energy of a spiritual existence, of an accountable being; consciousness tells us this concerning it every moment. But when we look back on it in memory, we view it but externally, as a mere lapse of time, as a mere earthly history. And the longest duration of this external world is as dust and weighs nothing, against one moment's life of the world within. Thus we are ever expecting great things from life, from our internal consciousness every moment of our having souls; and we are ever being disappointed, on considering what we have gained from time past, and can hope from time to come. And life is ever promising and never fulfilling; and hence, however long it be, our days are few and evil. This is the particular view of the subject on which I shall now dwell.
And this from the penultimate paragraph:
To those who live by faith, every thing they see speaks of that future world; the very glories of nature, the sun, moon, and stars, and the richness and the beauty of the earth, are as types and figures witnessing and teaching the invisible things of God. All that we see is destined one day to burst forth into a heavenly bloom, and to be transfigured into immortal glory. Heaven at present is out of sight, but in due time, as snow melts and discovers {224} what it lay upon, so will this visible creation fade away before those greater splendours which are behind it, and on which at present it depends. In that day shadows will retire, and the substance show itself. The sun will grow pale and be lost in the sky, but it will be before the radiance of Him whom it does but image, the Sun of Righteousness, with healing on His wings, who will come forth in visible form, as a bridegroom out of his chamber, as His perishable type decays. The stars which surround it will be replaced by Saints and Angels circling His throne. Above and below, the clouds of the air, the trees of the field, the waters of the great deep will be found impregnated with the forms of everlasting spirits, the servants of God which do His pleasure. And our own mortal bodies will then be found in like manner to contain within them an inner man, which will then receive its due proportions, as the soul's harmonious organ, instead of that gross mass of flesh and blood which sight and touch are sensible of. For this glorious manifestation the whole creation is at present in travail, earnestly desiring that it may be accomplished in its season.


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March 25-29 & April 1-5
Everyday from 11AM – 6PM in the Davis Center (1st Floor, in the old bank space between CatCard and Underground Copy)
Go to photoappointment.com to schedule your portrait time and date! Use school password "UVM" to create an account and pick a date. OR drop by between 11AM and 6PM (note that portrait sittings are not guaranteed for drop-ins).
Sitting for your senior portraits is completely FREE and it is the ONLY way to be included in the book. Need more incentive? Get your FREE & OFFICIAL senior t-shirt for attending a portrait session!
In order to be in the 2012 Folklore Senior Memory Book you must sit for a senior portrait! The UVM Student Alumni Association sponsors a hard cover memory book for each class to commemorate their time at UVM! These books are used for future reunions and events, so make sure you are pictured!
Note: The Folklore is included in the Senior Week package, so make sure your photo is taken if you plan to participate in Senior Week!
Can't make it to any of the portrait sessions this time around? No worries! There will be an additional week long session in March Don't wait though, time slots will fill up fast!
Folklore is YOUR class book, and we want to share your memories! Club meetings, sporting events, weekends on the mountain… If you snapped a pic, send it our way to be considered for inclusion in the 2013 Folklore! You can upload photos here: https://images.jostens.com/upload.jsp

subset: commoncrawl


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HomePage / Full URL for Mobile - HowStuffWorks
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history Did the United States put its own citizens in concentration camps during WWII?
This week, the U.S. remembers the thousands of American sailors and soldiers who were killed during the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Is it true that some West Coasters were forcibly relocated after the attack?
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videos Stuff You Should Know Video: Space, Sneezing & Yosemite Sam
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More information about the Google Maps application can be found at: Google maps for journal articles.
* Keyhole Markup Language (KML) is an XML schema for expressing geographic annotation and visualization within Internet-based Earth browsers, such as Google Maps or Google Earth. We at Elsevier will generate Interactive Maps from the submitted KML files and include these in the online article.
Spatial patterns and temporal dynamics in savanna vegetation phenology across the North Australian Tropical Transect
Ma, Xuanlong, Alfredo Huete, Qiang Yu, Natalia Restrepo Coupe, Kevin Davies, Mark Broich, Piyachat Ratana, Jason Beringer, Lindsay B. Hutley, James Cleverly, Nicolas Boulain, and Derek Eamus
Remote Sensing of Environment, Volume 139, July 2014, Pages 97–115
Linking wildfire effects on soil and water chemistry of the Marão River watershed, Portugal, and biomass changes detected from Landsat imagery.
Maria Rosário Costa, Ana Rita Calvão, José Aranha.
Applied Geochemistry, Volume 44, May 2014, Pages 93-102
Ragweed pollen source inventory for France – The second largest centre of Ambrosia in Europe.
Michel Thibaudon, Branko Šikoparija, Gilles Oliver, Matt Smith, Carsten A. Skjøth.
Atmospheric Environment, Volume 83, February 2014, Pages 62-71
A global assessment of seamount ecosystems knowledge using an ecosystem evaluation framework.
Kristina Ø. Kvile, Gerald H. Taranto, Tony J. Pitcher, Telmo Morato.
Biological Conservation, Volume 173, May 2014, Pages 108–120
Crime in a planned city: The case of Brasília.
João Ricardo Faria, Laudo M. Ogura, Adolfo Sachsida.
Cities, Volume 32, June 2013, Pages 80-87
A virtual tour of geological heritage: Valourising geodiversity using Google Earth and QR code.
A.M. Martínez-Graña, J.L. Goy, C.A. Cimarra.
Computers & Geosciences, Volume 61, December 2013, Pages 83-93
Evaluating the ecological effects of social agent scenarios for a housing development in the Atlantic Forest.
Elisa Hardt, Rozely F. dos Santos, Erico F.L. Pereira-Silva.
Ecological Indicators, Volume 36, January 2014, Pages 120-130
Potential and actual geomorphic complexity of restored headwater streams in northern Sweden.
Lina E. Polvi, Christer Nilsson, Eliza Maher Hasselquist.
Geomorphology, Volume 210, 1 April 2014, Pages 98-118
Integration of vertical and in-seam horizontal well production analyses with stochastic geostatistical algorithms to estimate pre-mining methane drainage efficiency from coal seams: Blue Creek seam, Alabama.
C. Özgen Karacan.
International Journal of Coal Geology, Volume 114, 30 July 2013, Pages 96-113.
Realities and myths of the Teresken Syndrome – An evaluation of the exploitation of dwarf shrub resources in the Eastern Pamirs of Tajikistan.
Tobias Kraudzun, Kim André Vanselow, Cyrus Samimi.
Journal of Environmental Management, Volume 132, January 2014, Pages 49-59.
New c. 270 kyr strike-slip and uplift rates for the southern Alpine Fault and implications for the New Zealand plate boundary.
N.C. Barth, D.K. Kulhanek, A.G. Beu, C.V. Murray-Wallace, B.W. Hayward, D.C. Mildenhall, D.E. Lee. Journal of Structural Geology, Volume 64, July 2014, Pages 39–52.
Noise pollution in national parks: Soundscape and economic valuation.
Carlos Iglesias Merchan, Luis Diaz-Balteiro, Mario Soliño.
Landscape and Urban Planning, Volume 123, March 2014, Pages 1-9.
Tectonic evolution of NW Iberia during the Paleozoic inferred from the geochemical record of detrital rocks in the Cantabrian Zone.
Daniel Pastor-Galán, Gabriel Gutiérrez-Alonso, Javier Fernández-Suárez, J. Brendan Murphy, Fernando Nieto.
Lithos, Volumes 182–183, December 2013, Pages 211-228.
Peri-Amazonian provenance of the Proto-Pelagonian basement (Greece), from zircon U–Pb geochronology and Lu–Hf isotopic geochemistry.
Olga Zlatkin, Dov Avigad, Axel Gerdes.
Lithos, Volumes 184–187, January 2014, Pages 379-392
Heavy mineral analysis for assessing the provenance of sandy sediment in the San Francisco Bay Coastal System.
Florence L. Wong, Donald L. Woodrow, Mary McGann.
Marine Geology, Volume 345, 1 November 2013, Pages 170-180
40Ar/39Ar chronology and paleomagnetism of Quaternary basaltic lavas from the Perşani Mountains (East Carpathians).
C.G. Panaiotu, B.R. Jicha, B.S. Singer, A. Ţugui, I. Seghedi, A.G. Panaiotu, C. Necula.
Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors, Volume 221, August 2013, Pages 1-14
An analysis of the late glacial lake levels within the western Lake Superior basin based on digital elevation models.
Andy Breckenridge
Quaternary Research, Volume 80, Issue 3, November 2013, Pages 383-395
Young, Rapid ice retreat in Disko Bugt supported by 10Be dating of the last recession of the western Greenland Ice Sheet.
Samuel E. Kelley, Jason P. Briner, Nicolás E.
Quaternary Science Reviews, Volume 82, 15 December 2013, Pages 13-22.
Evaluation of MODIS gross primary productivity for Africa using eddy covariance data.
M. Sjöström, M. Zhao, S. Archibald, A. Arneth, B. Cappelaere, U. Falk, A. de Grandcourt, N. Hanan, L. Kergoat, W. Kutsch, L. Merbold, E. Mougin, A. Nickless, Y. Nouvellon, R.J. Scholes, E.M. Veenendaal, J. Ardö.
Remote Sensing of Environment, Volume 131, 15 April 2013, Pages 275-286
Airborne laser scanner (LiDAR) proxies for understory light conditions.
Cici Alexander, Jesper Erenskjold Moeslund, Peder Klith Bøcher, Lars Arge, Jens-Christian Svenning,.
Remote Sensing of Environment, Volume 134, July 2013, Pages 152-161
Detecting continuous lichen abundance for mapping winter caribou forage at landscape spatial scales.
Peter R. Nelson, Carl Roland, Matthew J. Macander, Bruce McCune.
Remote Sensing of Environment, Volume 137, October 2013, Pages 43-54
Measuring the dead component of mixed grassland with Landsat imagery.
Dandan Xu, Xulin Guo, Zhaoqin Li, Xiaohui Yang, Han Yin.
Remote Sensing of Environment, Volume 142, 25 February 2014, Pages 33-43
Assessment of suspended solids in the Guadalquivir estuary using new DEIMOS-1 medium spatial resolution imagery.
Isabel Caballero, Edward P. Morris, Javier Ruiz, Gabriel Navarro.
Remote Sensing of Environment, Volume 146, 25 April 2014, Pages 148-158
Determining the contributions of urbanisation and climate change to NPP variations over the last decade in the Yangtze River Delta, China.
Shaohua Wu, Shenglu Zhou, Dongxiang Chen, Zongqiang Wei, Liang Dai, Xingong Li.
Science of the Total Environment, Volume 472, 15 February 2014, Pages 397-406
Alluvial fans and megafans along the southern side of the Alps.
Alessandro Fontana, Paolo Mozzi, Mauro Marchetti.
Sedimentary Geology, Volume 301, 15 March 2014, Pages 150-171
Insights into extensional events in the Betic Cordilleras, southern Spain: New fission-track and U–Pb SHRIMP analyses.
José Julián Esteban, José María Tubía, Julia Cuevas, Diane Seward, Alexander Larionov, Sergey Sergeev, Francisco Navarro-Vilá.
Tectonophysics, Volume 603, 9 September 2013, Pages 179-188


text:
naked songs dress
by SESSUN
French label Sessùn launched in 1995 after designer Emma Francios took a college trip to South America. Deeply impressed by the culture and artisan weavers and embroiders she met there, she decided to leave her masters in economic anthropology and pursue design. Sessùn began as a small collection of accessories drawing inspiration from the South American mountains, using natural materials, and quickly developed into a full range of clothing, shoes and accessories. The collections tell a story by mixing textures, prints, and details teaming with an artful ease and a range luxe of fabrics.
Back To Product View All From This DesignerMen's Size Chart
Product Details
Soft, woven wool-blend dress with a mandarin collar and buttoned front placket. Slim silhouette with gathered waistline and straight knee length skirt.
• concealed zip at left side
• long sleeves with button cuffs
• slit pockets at sides
• yokes at front & back with gathers
• 80% wool, 20% polyamide
• imported


text: Indelible, irreversible and imposed during childhood, Scarification is a cultural practice common in many countries in Africa. The ceremony which is to cut the skin with a knife seems to have crossed times without ever losing its importance. In the 21st century, scarify still is an act of bravery, a way to state an identity, a proof of his pride in belonging to a family or a social status, a way of beautify, and to avert bad luck .


text:
Autism Spectrum Quotient
Take the test , it really seems fun and do post your scores or level of autism here after the test
Autism Spectrum Quotient
Take the test , it really seems fun and do post your scores or level of autism here after the test
My score: 18
Apparently most men score about 17, sounds about right.
Got 27. Not surprised.
~ Cribbertarian ~
Rejecting 'analysis by checklist' and 'skill absolutism' since Dec '09
Originally Posted by John Singleton
+ time's fickle card game ~ with you and i +
forever 63*
Too many questions. Gonna go play with my calculator instead.
Parmi | #1 draft pick | Jake King is **** | Big Bash League tipping champion of the universeCome and Paint Turtle
16 here.
Oh for a strong arm and a walking stick
higher the score the better, right
Indians can't bowl - Where has the rumour come from as I myself and many indian friends arwe competent fast bowlers ?
With the English bid I said: Let us be brief. If you give back the Falkland Islands, which belong to us, you will get my vote. They then became sad and left
12. I'm not very good with conversations irl, especially if the other party is uninteresting. Surprised I scored that low tbh.
Not very good with conversations online either itbt.
Jeez. Delete that ****. Actually makes me feel sad.
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text:
Classes begin at 9 a.m. Tuesday
Classes will be held on Tuesday, October 30, beginning at 9 a.m. Classes starting at 8 a.m. are cancelled. The MBTA has indicated that service has resumed but that there will be delays. We encourage students, faculty, and staff to allow extra time for their commute and to keep safety in mind as they travel to the school.


text:
[Adobe Creative Cloud: Photoshop CC]
Photoshop CC, available only in the Creative Cloud,
combines all the features from both Photoshop as well as Photoshop Extended
into a single version of Photoshop that contains all features,
including the 3D and Image Analysis tools.
The 3D capabilities in Photoshop enable any designer looking to incorporate
3D objects, lighting materials, and textures into their composites
in an environment and workflow that is already familiar to them.
We've added two key improvements for 3D workflows.
The first is in the Scene panel,
where we now have an easy way to delete, duplicate,
and create instances of 3D objects.
With instancing, we can easily add the same object multiple times,
and any edits made to the parent are immediately
applied to all of the other instances.
I can take a look here at the alternate view to help with positioning.
The second improvement is with 3D painting itself,
where not only is it significantly faster, but also we now
have a live cursor preview for both the 3D model
as well as the flattened texture preview.
So if I paint on one of these instance bottles, I immediately see
the changes on the other instances and have a live cursor preview
that maps the location of where I'm painting,
whether it's on the texture or on the 3D model itself.
This makes it much easier when texturing your 3D objects in Photoshop,
as you can immediately see how it is applied to your mesh.
The updates to the Scene panel, as well as the improvements to 3D painting,
enable you to leverage the power of Photoshop painting
and compositing capabilities with this 3D environment,
all directly within the same application.
[Adobe Creative Cloud]
Adobe Photoshop CC 3D Features
Creative Cloud for Video
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About This Episode
Photoshop Product Manager Zorana Gee demonstrates some of the new 3D features and enhancements in Photoshop CC.
Runtime : 00:01:33
Added : 05/06/2013
About this show
Creative Cloud for Video
Explore the powerful new features in Adobe's industry-leading video and audio tools. You'll be able to work even more creatively, seamlessly, and profitably from script to screen – with Adobe Creative Cloud.
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text:
The Minnesota State Mankato residence community system is implementing a long-range plan to improve student living space.
Dining Hall Construction will begin summer 2015 and when completed in fall 2017 will fit an occupancy of 2,800+ residents.
This 608 bed semi-suite style residence community is built on a hill that will be here for at least 500 more years. Article written by Joe Tougas.


text:
Michael Young is a Phillie.
Oh, Despicable Me.
That was how I reacted. Michael Young was my unicorn in that he was like a fluffy stuffed animal and I was very attached to him and more specifically, attached to him as a Ranger. That man was a Ranger for a very long time. "How long, Obi Wan Kenobi?" Luke Skywalker might ask. "A very long time," Obi Wan would answer.
Now I get that baseballisabusinessMichaelYoungisstillabaseballplayertheRangershadtodoit and all of that, but I'm still sad. These made-over Rangers are going to take some time to get used to. (Mike Napoli in Boston red, what is up with that.) I wish I had Gru to take me to the amusement park to get a new Michael Young in a Rangers uniform.
I blame Hollywood for giving us kids false perceptions of beauty and false hopes about what happens when our stuffed unicorns are disintegrated.
Diamond Girl
p.s. Presumably Young had some say/a lot of say in where he landed, yes? Which would mean that he chose Philadelphia? But who would willingly choose to live in Philadelphia and be a Phillie? I bet he and Cliff Lee are going to be besties.


text:
I'm working on converting the family to using food products with a better ingredients list, and more whole grain products. Their chief complaint is with the taste, and while there have been a few products that I'm not allowed to bring back in the house (the kids don't like whole wheat bread with seeds/ grains visible), there has also been quite a few successes - including Van's Natural Foods Multigrain Belgian Waffles.
A Belgian waffle is identified by its larger size, lighter batter and higher grid pattern which forms deep pockets and has larger squares - according to Wikipedia. This Van's variety seemed to meet all those criteria, but it also had a darker than usual brown color which was a little off putting. I decided to put these waffles to a kids taste test with 2 boys & 2 girls - Justin, Hunter, Tasha & Alexa - all of whom were slightly reluctant because of the color (a darker color than appears on the packaging I might add).
The waffles were topped with syrup and bananas, and they all liked it. Hunter & Tasha liked it the most - I believe the word yummy escaped their lips between bites . Justin, the oldest, thought it was just okay - but that's high praise coming from a slightly moody pre-teen. Alexa liked it the least, but she's also the youngest & the pickiest eater - she was turned off by a square waffle .
When I tried them, I have to say they were pretty darn good too. Slightly crunchy, because that's how my toaster oven does it! Move over Eggos - Van's Belgian Waffles are about to become a main stay in this house.
Each serving of 2 waffles provides 190 calories, 7 grams of total fat, 0.5 grams of which is saturated (11% & 3% of the daily value), 330 mg of sodium (14% of the DV), 6 grams of fiber, 3 grams of sugars and 3 grams of protein. Less calories than Van's Natural Foods Organic Soy Flax Waffles, but a few more than Kashi GoLean Waffles (Original), Kashi Heart to Heart Honey Oat Waffles and Nature's Path Organic Optimum Power Waffles Review.
A box with 6 Van's Natural Foods Multigrain Belgian Waffles cost $3.29 which is a little more expensive than some other brands, but since we only eat waffles once or twice a week, it was really worth it. In addition, there are quite a few reviews of waffles that are delicious and have either organic or have an all natural ingredients list and the same or less calories than ... other brands.
{Website: Van's Natural Foods}


text:
Breakfast Topic: What do you think of WoW.com's new features?
Anyway now you folks have had a couple of days to get used to the changes, what do you think of our new look and, more importantly, all the cool features? Are there any you'd like implimented in the future? Have we missed something out?
Filed under: WoW Insider Business, Breakfast Topics


text:
Funeral services will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday, August 24, 2013, at Holly Grove Church in Drew with Reverend Jesse Gresham officiating. Interment will follow in Drew Cemetery.
Visitation will be from 2-6 p.m. on Friday, August 23, 2013, at Byas Funeral Home in Ruleville.
He is survived by his daughters, Alice Toney of Hearne, Texas, Ora Reyes, Mary Ann Robinson and Bobbie Clay all of Kansas City, Mo.; sister, Ida Mae Williams of Indianapolis, Ind.; eight grandchildren; and a host of great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren.


text:
Vickroy: Tireless teen earns Governor's Volunteer Award
By Donna Vickroy email@example.com Twitter: @dvickroy April 29, 2013 11:18PM
Sarah Dynia, a student at Mother McAuley High School, is pictured at her Oak Lawn home Monday, April 22, 2013. She recently received the 2013 Governor's Volunteer Service Award. | Brett Roseman~Sun-Times Media
Article Extras
Updated: June 1, 2013 6:25AM
They're small, soft and oh, so cute. Yet, these tiny pillows are strong enough to comfort the afflicted, cheer the saddened and remind even the most downtrodden that somebody cares.
"You can see it in the smiles people give," says Sarah Dynia. "You can definitely see the transformation in someone when you give them something. You can see the impact is way bigger than one small pillow."
Sarah, a sophomore at Mother McAuley High School, recently presented one of her hand-stitched heart-shaped pillows to a Vietnam War veteran. He told her he hadn't received many tokens of appreciation since that war ended.
"Then he said, 'I want to put this somewhere special' and he put it over his heart," she said.
Others have hugged, kissed and cuddled their pillows. Many have put them away for safe-keeping.
Sarah Dynia, who lives with her parents, Mark and Laura Dynia, in Oak Lawn, started her pillow-making non-profit, called Stuffed Love, back in eighth grade.
Since then she has sewn, and given away, more than 5,000 of the little bundles of love. She gives them to pediatric heart patients, veterans, seniors, the homeless and parents who've lost a baby to congenital heart defects.
"I give them to whoever needs one, whoever needs a little love," she said.
Sarah's campaign to bring love and comfort to the suffering and lonely, not to mention her undying energy, recently earned her the 2013 Governor's Volunteer Service Award.
Recently, she was invited to visit the Governor's Mansion in Springfield. Sen. Bill Cunningham showed Sarah and her parents around the Capitol. She also visited the Illinois House, where she was received with a standing ovation.
"I was waving like the Queen of England," Sarah said.
Last week, Sarah was honored by the Oak Lawn village board during its regular meeting.
She was nominated for the Governor's Award by Paul Jordan, who wanted to recognize the teen's tireless volunteer work at Park Lawn and Activity Center in Oak Lawn.
Sarah has been organizing craft projects for developmentally delayed people there since 2011. She also helps out at the annual Park Lawn Fun Days event by helping students participate in dancing, games and other activities.
She's also a regular at the Veterans Administration outpatient centers in Oak Lawn and Joliet. And you can spy her at local nursing homes, giving out heart pillows and taking in lots of stories.
"Sometimes it means so much to them to just have someone to talk to," she said. "When they say, 'Will you talk with me for a while?' I always say of course I will. How can I not?"
The pillows have been so well received that she has been contacted by Mended Little Hearts Chicago to make them for goody bags that group hands out to pediatric patients.
In addition, in 2012, Sarah sewed more than 1,000 pillows for the care bag program and the Angel Heart Memory Box program, which comforts parents who are grieving the loss of a child to congenital heart defect.
In addition to her numerous volunteer activities, Sarah is very active at Mother McAuley, where she is a Catherine McAuley Honors Scholar. She is also a member of Action/Reaction, EcoMacs, Junior Classical League, Math Club, Math Macs, Primary Colors, Science Club, Science Bowl Club and, as if all that is not enough, she is a goalie on the junior varsity lacrosse team.
But it is volunteering that she truly loves because it allows her to help those who often need it most, yet aren't in a position to ask for it. In addition to Stuffed Love, Sarah donates her time to helping at the Oak Lawn Children's Museum and volunteering with the Worth Township Youth Service Bureau.
She is a remarkably busy teen, but her dad says she thrives on the crazy schedule.
Lest you think she doesn't have time to be just a normal teenage girl, consider this:
Her favorite team is the White Sox. She has volunteered with the White Sox Volunteer Corps. Recently she sent a stuffed heart to her favorite player, Matt Thornton, not because he needs the love, but because she has a crush on him.
"My lacrosse number is his number, 37," she said.
Has the relief pitcher responded to the gesture?
"Well, no," she said, and then in true teenage fashion added, "But you never know."