Losing My Mind - Religion, Reason, and Truth

I’m fascinated by beauty. It is my final fortification against materialism, a barrier from reducing the world to numbers. Sam Harris’s arguments are very sound—they explain things, fill in the gaps. But atheism specializes in the details and misses the sunsets and the waterfalls and Beethoven’s Ninth and Charles Dickens.

The sky’s on fire in the west tonight

 A chorus of pink, purple, blazing orange

 The air pulses with meaning and—

 I think of random particles,

 of chance and infinite typewriters,

 but no cold device could make the beauty,

 nor make me understand it.

Never Say Die - Modernity and Morality - Part 1

“Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie shouldn’t age,” says my Dad, leaning against the kitchen counter. “Seeing them get old…it just doesn’t…it’s weird.”

Back in the ’90s, the two British actors co-starred in Jeeves and Wooster. Fry and Laurie played, respectively, the unflappable, omniscient valet, Jeeves, and his dimwitted, talkative employer, Bertrum Wilberforce Wooster. The stories are set in an idyllic pre-war atmosphere, where the greatest ill that can befall a man is ridiculous romantic dilemmas or bogus get-rich-quick schemes. Let’s be honest, it’s pure escapism—albeit escapism with lively wit, brilliant plotting, and hilarious (if somewhat one-dimensional) characters. No one ages and, of course, no one dies.

That’s why it’s so weird to see old Fry and Laurie. I had a similar reaction to seeing Anthony Valentine in a modern movie. I’d had a crush on him in the 1975 TV show Raffles…and suddenly, he was in his seventies. He's old enough to be my grandfather.

Why this violent reaction, this jerking back from reality?

To Be or Not To Be, Despair or Drudgery? - My review of Hamlet



A young(!) Derek Jacobi as Hamlet



Everyone knows a little bit about Hamlet, but I didn’t know how great the play's effect on culture truly was until I began reading it. Immediately, I started recognizing phrases, such as “Neither a borrower nor a lender be”, or “To thine own self be true” which I always thought were just old sayings. Not only was it easier to understand than other Shakespearean plays (though, admittedly, the last one I read when I was fifteen), but the story is intriguing and quick-paced. And, also to my surprise, it makes broad true statements about humanity, the Fall, and the futility of revenge.

Hamlet himself is a perfect example. At the beginning of the play, he in a state of hopelessness and desperation. In a nutshell, his father is dead, his mother has married his uncle, and Hamlet ain’t happy about it. Not an enviable state of affairs, but Hamlet’s despair has advanced to the extent that he wishes “the Everlasting had not fixed/ His canon ’gainst self-slaughter.” When it is revealed that his father was murdered, Hamlet’s despair ignites into a passionate and near obsessive desire for vengeance. He justifies it to himself by saying that Claudius is a murderer, and in fact, he is just the hand of God meting out justice.