Life

LARPing Manliness: Or What Is true Courage?

March 24, 2022 by wagraham Leave a Comment

Emmanuel Macron recently cosplayed as Volodymyr Zelensky. The normally well-coiffed president of France let his facial hair grow out and wore a military hoodie like his Ukrainian counterpart. The whole event was a photo-op, a sort of cosplay (costume play) because Macron wants to be viewed like the courageous Zelensky.

We can at least understand the performative act here. Maybe it was even well-intentioned. After all, Macron may have desired to mimic Zelensky in a show of support, but it missed the mark.

Political leaders are not alone in their pursuit of performative cosplay. Sigma males, Christian masculinity gurus, and more besides present themselves as being at the top of the male hierarchy and invite others to grow under them.

I suppose I would not call this cosplay. LARPing is the right term. LARPing or live-action role-playing refers to the act of dressing up like a character, usually to play a game (see here). As the name indicates, these characters play roles in the game. [Read more…] about LARPing Manliness: Or What Is true Courage?

Byung-Chul Han: The Smartphone as a Digital Teddy Bear? And why the smartphone destroys empathy.

February 10, 2022 by wagraham Leave a Comment

Byung-Chul Han, in his recent work, Undinge, speaks about how children get stuffies as a sort of transitional object—it helps them feel safe until they are ready for the real world. They talk to the stuffy, play with it, hug it. It’s soft and they feel its softness.

The Smartphone, in contrast, has a hard surface, and so we feel our own presses. It presents to us what we want, when we want. It’s not a digital teddy bear that remains always the bear, not shifting with our whims. The smart does though. Unlike the teddy whom we keep for years, we replace smartphones. There is no permenance.

The Metaverse Promises to Disconnect Us from the Stability that Points to God

February 3, 2022 by wagraham Leave a Comment

Facebook, now Meta, promises to create a metaverse. The metaverse will allow us to experience a life beyond what is possible for us now. We can instantly communicate with anyone in the world. We can constantly see and experience new things. Information and data will be accessible to us in new and visually pleasing ways.

Recently, a buyer spent $450,000 to purchase a plot of virtual land next to SnoopDogg in the latter’s virtual world. It is not as though the transition to the metaverse will be difficult. During the pandemic, days of Netflix and video games were the norm. Already, people play online games, creating communities (or clans). They spend hours a day on it. The digital world becomes their real world.

The same sort of thing already happens on social media. Many of us spend hours on Instagram and TikTok and other platforms. We live for the like. We live to see another short video to entertain us. A whole culture has popped up through YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. It is the real-life of many, the life that feels closest and most important.

The metaverse adds a new way of living in the digital world. The transition will not be difficult, as long as the technology works. We already live in a time where material objects have been replaced by digital technology. [Read more…] about The Metaverse Promises to Disconnect Us from the Stability that Points to God

Owning Less, But Experiencing More: A Theological Crisis in the Making

January 31, 2022 by wagraham 1 Comment

We are becoming a nation of mobile-renters. We have joined a gig economy. We use ride-shares. We rent office space. We rent housing. We rent mobile offices. We own less and less—we do not even own our e-books and e-media which often revert back to the copyright holder at our death. A video game no longer has a box. It is a digital download.

The World Economic Forum tells us we will own nothing and be happy. Ida Auken said, “Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better.” Or as their marketing said, “You will own nothing. And you’ll be happy.”

Governments have done little to avoid this future. The Canadian government has promised $10 a day of childcare. This makes it easier for both parents to work, which they will have to do in order to pay for the taxes to support childcare. Single-income families will not be able to afford houses. And if both parents work, there is less need to have a standard home. Besides, who can afford one? Renting is the way to go. The USA has likewise pulled back on supporting families through financial support for children or support for longer maternity leave.

The way in which we work has also contributed to this alienation from home, possessions, and family. For most of history, agricultural workers worked as a family. Everyone worked at home. Husbands and wives with children in appropriate ways supported the family. In the Roman era, many businesses were part of a residence. So a husband might work at the front of the home, a wife inside the residence. They partnered in appropriate ways.

But now the nature of work, a movement from working with our hands to work with our digits—pressing buttons, digital work—has alienated us from the land, the fabric of the world around us. [Read more…] about Owning Less, But Experiencing More: A Theological Crisis in the Making

Don Quixote Christianity: Why Many Heroic Stands of Today Are Like Tilting at Windmills

January 26, 2022 by wagraham 1 Comment

A colleague recently compared (so-called) heroic stands of faith to Don Quixote. Someone thinks they will change the world by a controversial tweet or blog post. They think themselves to be like Athanasius, contra Mundum—against the whole world! Never mind that Athanasius never stood as an individual against the world, but worked with whole teams of peoples and congregations across the Roman World.

But here the facts do not matter. The point is the heroic stand. And the kind of heroic stand I am talking about often ends up with a knight tilting at windmills, thinking himself to be slaying a giant when he in reality has done nothing at all. Worse, he might have even hurt the cause which he putatively aims to support. [Read more…] about Don Quixote Christianity: Why Many Heroic Stands of Today Are Like Tilting at Windmills

The Apologetics Trap: Or Why Showing Why Everything Is Bad Makes Life Boring

January 25, 2022 by wagraham 2 Comments

The art of apologetics often means one’s ability to confirm the truth of the faith against the opinions of non-believers. At times, apologetics can also spill over into a whole system—one worldview against all else. And when this happens, those inclined to apologetics often work hard to show why physics, biology, philosophy, and more besides fails or falls into idolatry.

So then any study of these fields becomes a sort of game of finding the problem, discovering idolatry, showing where it is wrong. While perhaps unintended, the apologist makes the entire field seem bad, twisted. There is nothing useful in biology or physics or philosophy since it is idolatrous. The only thing worth pursuing is the view of the apologist!

The effect is to make these fields of study seem dark, boring, and not worth our time. This, I think, is entirely wrong. [Read more…] about The Apologetics Trap: Or Why Showing Why Everything Is Bad Makes Life Boring