The Principle Of Subsidiarity In The Hunger Games

Many critics have picked up on the political undertones present in The Hunger Games. Clearly that dystopian future has some parallels to our present American situation. In the film Katniss Everdeen volunteers to be the tribute from her home district that will compete in the annual Hunger Games for both glory and food. Almost immediately she is whisked away from her home and family and put aboard a train bound for the Capital. She and her compatriot Peeta are understandably astounded at the level of luxury which is available.

A striking contrast appears between life in the Capital and the outer districts. As tributes they are provided with nothing but the best. Nevertheless, the average level of wealth and comfort in the Capital is starkly different from that elsewhere. Back home Katniss was forced to hunt wild game, even squirrels, for her family to even survive. Here the populace has more than enough money to waste on keeping up with some ridiculously flamboyant and outlandish fashion trends. A very small number of people enjoying the benefits of the hard work of a very large number of people. A massive gap in the level of prosperity experienced between the rich and the poor. A non-existent or shrinking middle class.

Sound familiar?

I should say that I am deeply opposed to the suggestion that a work of art can or should be treated as the artist's propaganda. It is either propaganda or a work of art, it cannot be both. Nevertheless, works of art, insofar as they incarnate, give life and form to, the principles of the reality and world around us, can certainly take positions themselves on political and economic issues of the day. Even the Divine Comedy has political relevance in our day and age. But it has this relevance only insofar as it has a relation to Truth and Reality, and political ideas stem from those higher and more fundamental principles.

That being said, it is no coincidence that the situation in The Hunger Games is analagous to our own. Artists have no choice but to write from their own experience of the world, and certainly Susane Collins when she wrote the book, and the filmmakers when they adapted it with her help were drawing on the realities in the world they saw around them as they worked to create a work of art with significance and meaning.

Obviously, the film advocates the position that such a situation is undesireable. And rightly so. It is certainly not right that the men and women who are working day in and day out to produce good and valuable things for the use of their community should be deprived of a fair share in the fruits of their labor. It cannot be right for the people doing the actual work to go hungry so that those who own or have a stake in the factory or farm can have enough extra income to buy a summer home in Florida or what have you. The question is, though, how does one solve this situation once it arises? Is it right to take a portion of the wealth that would otherwise be taken by the very wealthy and redistribute it amongst the less fortunate? Well, I would argue that our economic situation is, perhaps, somewhat different from that presented in The Hunger Games. Regardless, it is tangential to the point of this post.

In the flim the root problem that lies behind both Panem's situation and ours comes out much clearer than it does in real life, namely, centralization. The real problem is that it is possible for the very few to have such a wide-reaching influence that they it is even possible for them to amass such an incredible and unbalanced amount of wealth. The problem is huge coroporations with higher GDP's than whole nations. The problem is "product integration." The problem is Staples and Office Depot cornering the office supply market in every city, town, and hamlet from sea to shining sea. Sure, all this stuff keeps prices down, but is that really the most important thing?

Wouldn't it be nice if when you bought a new computer you could do so from some mom and pop electronics store on Main Street and know that when, six months later, they're able to buy a new sign or, for that matter, send their kid to College, you had a small part in that? Wouldn't that be better than handing your money to some megalithic, faceless multi-national conglomerate that's going to spend it on God knows what?

For example, I'll wager that most of you have no idea that starting in the 70s, Nestlé began marketing its infant formula to less developed countries around the world, especially Africa. Sounds harmless enough, right? Here's the problem. Aside from the fact that these babies were deprived of important antibodies and other benefits that can only be obtained from their mothers' milk, when a mother stops breastfeeding regularly her milk soon dries up. If at some point in the future, as is very likely, it becomes impossible to provide formula for her baby due to unsanitary water or just lack of funds or availability, that baby must now go hungry, and may starve to death.

Here's a list of Nestlé brands. Every time you purchased one of those products you supported Nestlé's crimes. Now, certainly we cannot be held responsible for what other people do with our money without our knowledge. For that matter, the degree of separation between buying a box of Nesquik and Nestlé doing what it does may be sufficiently remote to relieve any burden of material cooperation in their activities.

Nevertheless, the root problem remains: when institutions, corporations, governments become as centralized as they are today, the degree to which they are capable of representing the interests of real people, real families is diminished drastically. This could be why only 37.8% of voters turned out for the 2010 elections. Consider this: Even at its height under the Emperor Augustus, the Roman Empire is estimated to have had a population of only 56.8 million people. Taking into account that a very large percentage of that figure were not even citizens and you're left with a civilization comparable in size to, say, the state of New York, spread out over an area the size of Mexico and Central America combined:

The Romans were smart enough to recognize that even an Empire of that (compared to today, small) size couldn't be successfully managed in a very centralized, federalistic way. Instead they entrusted the vast majority of the day-to-day governance to local province and town governments. Pretty much only military and and handful of political and economic ventures were handled from the top down. Of course, there was more than just this practical reality at work behind that decision.

The Romans, along with every other Western culture and civilization until relatively recently, understood and accepted what Catholic thinkers have called the Principle of Subsidiarity. The Principle of Subsidiarity states that those decisions which can be made, those things which can be handled, just as effectively by a constituent member of a larger group as by that larger group itself, should be left in their purview. For example, as a father it would be wrong, not to mention crazy, for me to attempt to insist on absolute control over everything that goes on in my family. There is no reason for me to insist that my daughter organize her clothes or toys in just such a way, as long as she's keeping things tidy enough for the household to continue to function safely and smoothly.

Similarly, in a political structure, there is no reason why the federal government should have to intervene in the day-to-day workings of a state or local government as long as it is abiding by the minimum of general principles set forth in the unifying document(s). The Founding Fathers understood and accepted this. Thus, the Tenth Ammendment, all but forgotten in this day and age.

The Principle of Subsidiarty in government and economics in fact rests on a more fundamental philosophical and metaphysical principle of reality, namely, the Hierarchy of Being. All the beings in the universe are organized into a vast hierarchy of mediation and participation. That is to say, at every level in the universal hierarchy a particular being participates, shares its being and qualities of that being, with the beings both above and below it.

For example, the diamondback rattlesnake is one species within the genus Reptile. All reptiles have certain characteristics, and as a reptile the diamondback rattlesnake shares these with its fellow reptiles. Nevertheless, it itself specializes in certain things and has a number of characteristics (or, perhaps, a certain combination of characteristics) that make it unique. Of course it's more complicated than that, but the idea is that this same principle applies to every other being in the cosmos. Humans are part of the genus Animal; animals are part of the genus Living Being; living beings are part of the genus Material Being; material beings are part of the genus Being, the ultimate genus in which everything that exists shares, which, as Aristotle would say, we call "God." This is the way the universe is organized. It is the way things are supposed to be organized on the human level as well: decentralization, particularism, subsidiarity, delegation.

In The Hunger Games, the poorer districts just want to be left alone. I'm sure they'd be happy to pay taxes and tribute to the central government in exchange for a unified currency and military, but there is a point at which that central government becomes not just a unifying influence, but a tyrannical power demanding ultimate allegiance. Alexis deToqueville saw this coming centuries ago:

He predicted that modern democratic government would degenerate into a huge, paternalistic state which would guide the individual in all of his affairs and insure that all of his needs were met. “For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances; what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?” 

It's probably sheer fantasy to expect the situation to change. We're much too dependent on the financial industry to come back from it now. Governmentally-speaking the writing's been on the wall since 1865. And the New Deal didn't help. I wonder, though, what could happen if, despite all their differences, Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party realized how much they have in common with one another. Their combined efforts would be a force to be reckoned with.

Gothic Art

Gothic art is said to originate with the Church of Saint Denis in Paris. Clearly, though, this Church represents only a kind of symbolic beginning, the true origin of the Gothic being impossible to pin down as it developed organically out of the Romanesque. In fact, the movement was so organic that it was only centuries after it replaced Romanesque as the preferred style across Europe (especially in the North and West) that it was even given a name. 16th-century Renaissance artists who sought a return to the more strictly Classical rejected the Gothic as a "barbaric" corruption of the "purity" of more Classical forms. The term "Gothic" is, then, retrospective and pejorative, being a reference to the violent Sack of Rome by the Gothic barbarians.

In one sense, these Renaissance artists were correct. Gothic is a kind of "corruption" of Classical purity and simplicity. The Gothic is, I would argue, a legitimate development of Classical art via the Romanesque. While similar development can be seen in all the artistic media, it's most clearly seen in the two styles' monumental architecture. For instance, let's compare these two arcades, one from the Pantheon in Rome, and one from Notre-Dame de Paris:

Both have columns with bases, shafts, and capitals, supporting an architrave and entablature with similar detailing, atop which sits a cornice. Even though in the former this all supports a pediment and in the latter the structure continues upward, the only significant difference between the two arcades is that in the Gothic example the columns can be skinnier, and in exchange more numerous, as a result of the arches which distribute the weight amongst them. (This is one of the ways in which Gothic architecture is able to feel so light and airy. By splitting the weight up amongst a larger number of thin columns, one prevents the heavy clunkiness of a small number of immense columns.)

Nevertheless, development though it is, it is true the Gothic accumulates and innovates forms which "corrupt" Classical purity. Let's look at a reconstruction of the Parthenon's facade verses that of Cologne Cathedral:

I've chosen the Parthenon specifically because it's of the Doric Order rather than the more ornate Ionic or Corinthian to illustrate my point more forcefully. Even though the proportions of the two buildings are similar, this may be hard to recognize simply because of all the decoration glued onto the Gothic facade. Where Classical architecture was largely content to leave its structure as it was, for the most part adding only what was necessary to hold the roof up in a beautiful and orderly manner, the Gothic feels compelled (almost obsessively) to slap on as much ornamentation as the underlying bones of the structure can hold up.

I said the Renaissance was right to call this development a corruption. The trouble is, the Renaissance was incorrect in rejecting it. What the Gothic did was take the Classical (and true) notions of form (function), beauty (proportion), and truth (honesty of construction), and capitalized on them to create something both imminently Classical. The Gothic "baptizes" the good in pagan art which was attained by human reason, by adding the supernatural, the heavenly, the grace of Christ. Gone is the reticent austerity of Classical architecture, a building can now be a Sacrament of Truth, a material vehicle for the transmission of God's Life to us.

By virtue of the God made Man, things which were formerly unreachable, purely spiritual realities, are now accessible in and through the material world. Wood, stone, and glass are no longer mere tools to hold a roof up, but great mysteries that point to God's participation in the World. Suddenly they contain within them, analogically, hints of Christ's ongoing interaction with us. A wooden beam now calls to mind the Wood on which hung the Savior of the World. A stone, the Rock on (or out of) which Christ builds his Church. Glass, the heroes of our faith, the saintly intercessors, through whom Heaven's Light falls on the faithful. A Church building can become, quite literally, Heaven on Earth:

Suffering & Death

I like The Walking Dead. I must admit I haven't read a frame of the graphic novel, to my shame. Nevertheless, the television version is absolutely wonderful. I completely disagree with all those who would suggest this season has serious flaws. While it hasn't been as good in general as the first season, I won't condemn the show outright simply for its lack of action or whatever else. For example, I think the second season has dealt with major underlying philosophical themes and moral issues a bit too transparently, but it's still dealing with them, which is more than can be said for most of what's on television.

In last week's episode, the group were saddled with a problem. Rick had previously rescued nobly an enemy outsider who was certain to die due to a serious injury. After he was patched up, the plan was to drive him, blindfolded, 18 miles out and leave him somewhere where he would have a fighting chance at survival in a world overrun with hungry, revivified corpses. Upon arrival, though, it was discovered that the prisoner was from the area and knew exactly where the group has been camped out. Worse than that, after interrogating him when they return, it comes out that he had aligned with a very large and powerful group with little to no problem with murder, rape, and the like. How does one solve this problem?

It's clear that the prisoner is a threat. He cannot be allowed to leave for fear he will turn them over to the other group. On the other hand, he can't stay. As much as he might promise to play by the rules, he can't ever be trusted. Ever. And it's not as if the group can spare the manpower it would take to keep him supervised 24 hours a day. Even then it's still too risky. He also can't be driven further out on account of the grave peril that would present to those doing the driving. Rick resolves with the unlikely support of Shane that the only solution is to execute him.

Dale, the oldest and (usually) wisest member of the group, protests immediately, arguing that a young man's life can't simply be thrown away without a second thought. The rest of the episode Dale travels all around the farm attempting to win over the rest of the group to no avail. At sunset the entire group convenes to discuss the final decision. Though Dale argues vehemently for the prisoner's life, the rest of the group are convinced that the only viable solution to the threat is the one already decided upon. Sarcastically, Dale asks if they'll all be watching the execution too, or if they'll all go hide themselves away and try to pretend nothing ever happened. Glen rightly points out that this is the first time that Dale has ever been wrong.

This is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains the teaching of the Church is about the death penalty, quoting the encyclical letter Evangelium vitae of Blessed Pope John Paul II:

Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.

If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.

Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if not practically nonexistent," (Catechism 2267).

Unfortunately for the prisoner in this situation, it is absolutely necessary. There is no viable alternative. The threat must be dealt with in order for the group's continued safety to be guaranteed, and there is simply no other way to do this other than to execute the man who personifies that threat. Just like in war, if the only way that the society can be truly protected from another who means to do them harm is by his death, it must be done. But only as a last resort. This is not Divine Revelation, this is human reason.

On the other hand, Dale's sarcastic comment about the group watching was, I think, apt. While as far as I am aware there is no authoritative teaching on this issue, such an execution is the public act of the community. It is only fitting that they should witness it. It is on their behalf, and for their benefit after all. This is not morbid; it is just. As Lord Eddard Stark of Winterfell put it: "The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword." Shouldn't those on behalf of whom that man acts at least witness the death of the guilty party?

Essentially, this episode of The Walking Dead is just a rehashed court drama trying a case on the death penalty. While the majority of the characters in the show come down on the right side of the issue, it's clear the message the producers are trying to send: "Dale is the valiant lone wolf upholding justice against the others who have resorted to primitive savagery to solve their problems."

At the end of this same episode a character gets attacked and mortally wounded by a walker. In agonizing pain, with the rest of the group gathered around, they come to the hasty decision that he should be put out of his misery—euthanized, in other words. This certainly seems merciful. Why should a man be forced to go through unnecessary pain if it can be avoided? What possible reason could there be for allowing an innocent man to suffer? Aren't pain and death the most terrible things a human being can ever have to go through? If we can make it any easier, by all means, let's do it.

One major question has pervaded the entire second season of The Walking Dead: Is it the characters' job simply to survive at any cost? Or are there universal and everlasting principles of justice and morality which must be upheld even when the world has gone to hell? These two notions are championed by Rick and Shane respectively. In the first season Rick led an incredibly risky rescue mission to retrieve a man who had tried to kill him and seize power only hours before. What's more, he did this right after having been reunited with his wife and son against all hope. Early in the second season, Shane shot a man in the leg and left him to be eaten alive so he could get away. This was done in order that he could bring necessary medicine to Rick's dying son, but you know what they say about good intentions. These two characters have been butting heads over this issue constantly, and an outright fight is getting closer and closer to erupting.


If Rick is right, the group should do their best to uphold things like honor in spite of a world which will kill them no matter if they do or not. Worse than that, attempting to do so will put the group at substantially more risk than if they were follow Shane's advice and throw all morality to the wind and do whatever they had to to survive.

Here's the thing, though, if Shane is right, and there is no real morality or justice, and these are only ideas contrived by society for practical purposes, where does it end? The logical conclusion of such a position is that there are no principles except the survival of the fittest. What's to stop Shane from murdering Rick and taking his wife for his own (which he would very much like to do, by the way)? You get the idea. Without objective and universal principles, there can be no society, no community, no family.

"Why don't you take a look at your khal? Then you will

see exactly what life is worth when all the rest has gone."

Now, someone might say, so what? I don't need some kind of fuzzy "companionship" to survive. I just need my wits and a weapon or two. But here's where we get to the real heart of the issue. Practically speaking, Shane is right. One would probably survive significantly longer if he threw morality out the window and did whatever he needed to keep on living one more day. But would that extra day be worth living with the knowledge of what it took to obtain it? Without others in one's life to give it meaning and purpose? Without children to live on into the future on behalf of oneself and a wife with whom to make and raise them? The final episode of the first season of A Game of Thrones has an answer.

Suffering, and that most final and powerful of all pains, death are awful, awful things. They should certainly be avoided if at all possible. But it's not possible to avoid it all, is it? Certainly not death. The zombie apocalypse of The Walking Dead is really not substantially different from our own world. Pain and death are still inevitable realities of life, even if they are somewhat less prevalent and harsh this century. What then? Do we put an early end to someone's life simply so they can avoid some pain? Here again, where does it end? The logical conclusion of this principle is the right of anyone, anywhere to end their life whenever they choose because it has gotten too uncomfortable. Even aside from the question of justice or morality, is this good for a society? How long do you think it could survive with such a policy?

Don't get me wrong, the world is a rough place, full of all manner of nasty and uncomfortable things. But isn't the point to find the good in life in spite of all the bad? In a recent interview with The New York Times, Stephen Colbert was asked to comment on the tragic death of his father and two brothers and how that painful experience affected him. Here's what he had to say:

“I’m not bitter about what happened to me as a child, and my mother was instrumental in keeping me from being so. She taught me to be grateful for my life regardless of what that entailed, and that’s directly related to the image of Christ on the cross and the example of sacrifice that he gave us. What she taught me is that the deliverance God offers you from pain is not no pain—it’s that the pain is actually a gift. What’s the option? God doesn’t really give you another choice.”

A Catholic would say that pain is a gift because it makes us like Christ, because it unites us to his suffering on the Cross. It does this because, like Christ's suffering and death, pain can be redemptive if undergone sacrificially. Like Christ, I can convert my personal suffering into something redemptive for both others and myself. How? Like he did, I can suffer for them, and paradoxically, do myself good in the process. This does not mean one should go around seeking pain. It does mean that unavoidable pain which comes our way is an opportunity. An opportunity to give ourselves away. And receive more of ourselves that we started with in return.

Like suicide, euthanasia is evil in part because it robs people of this opportunity. More importantly, though, it is evil simply because it is wrong to end a person's life unnaturally, unless the greater good demands they be brought to justice for a heinous crime they have committed because no other solution can be found. The only reason it seems merciful to euthanize someone in the first place is because, as a culture, we have forgotten how to deal with suffering—by looking to the suffering God underwent on our behalf.

Catharsis: Why We Care What Happens To Frodo

Is there a point to any of this? Or was Macbeth right?

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury

Signifying nothing," (V.5.19-28)

There is no doubt that, as Kant says in the Critique of Judgment, life seems "purposive," it seems to have meaning. In the question on Divine Providence in the Summa Theologica, St. Thomas Aquinas quotes Holy Scripture as evidence that the universe has meaning: "[Divine Wisdom] reacheth from end to end mightily, and ordereth all things sweetly," (Wis. 8:1).

He goes on to explain that, because all agents undertake actions for a reason, and God is the agent in the creating and sustaining of all the exists, all that exists does so for the reason he intended it to. To put it another way, when I do something, I do it for a reason. Everything that ends up happening as a result of my action (everything that's under my control), then, happened for that reason. But everything that exists, God caused to be; therefore, everything that exists exists for the reason God created it.

We can know, then, using reason alone, apart from faith, that everything has a purpose. Unfortunately, we can't know what that purpose is. Why not? Because we don't know everything. Gandalf said it right, "Even the very wise cannot see all ends," (The Fellowship of the Ring, 74). Because we can't know how everything is connected, and because we can't know how everything will end up, in our own lives or at the end of time, we can't know why things happen the way they do.

Say I built a machine that turned peanuts into peanut butter. Now say you were a sentient peanut. As you went through the machine you would be able to learn a little bit about how the machine worked, but not everything. Also, as you went through the machine, you would have no idea where you were going to end up. Only once you got turned into peanut butter would you realize what it was all about.

In the Poetics, Aristotle called Literature "cathartic," meaning that the reading of Literature (or watching of plays or movies, or listening of music, etc.) purges frustrations pent up as a result of conflict and tension in the narrative. He also says that art imitates life and reality (the Greek is mimesis, as in English "mimic"). In other words, the emotions that we live through in microcosm in works of art be they literary, musical, architectural, or what have you) are the same emotions we live through in real life.

Literature gives us the opportunity to live a second life, to put ourselves in the characters' shoes and do what they did and see what they saw. This is why, as Joseph Campbell points out, protagonists must be relatable. They must be down-to-earth and believable like Luke Skywalker or Frodo or Clark Kent. Or a peasant carpenter from Nazareth, for that matter. Either that or they must be champions, larger than life heroes that can fight on behalf of us little guys and do the things we never could, like Achilles or Superman. Or Christ, the King of the Jews and God Incarnate.

Literature is cathartic because it also allows us to see the ending, to see the meaning behind everything that happens in this second life, to learn lessons about life and reality from the people and events we encounter in art. It's like getting to regret bad decisions and glory in good ones without having to actually make them. This is not to say that the purpose of Literature is to teach us lessons; it is to say that it does, as a result of what it is, potential reality, imagined and given form by an artist.

Decorating The Nursery, Bad Luck Or Not?

I'm a pretty superstitious guy. At least, most people would probably call it that. It's not really superstition. That is to say, if some old wives' tale or something obviously has no basis in reality whatsoever then I don't pay any attention. Like walking under a ladder or a black cat crossing your path.

There's no such thing as luck. I don't mean that everything happens for a reason or that we're all controlled by fate—quite the opposite. Aristotle explains that what we call luck is simply a chance convergence of two events. Whether this convergence works in our favor or not depends on whether we see it as good luck or bad luck: "Chance or fortune is called 'good' when the result is good, 'evil' when it is evil. The terms 'good fortune' and 'ill fortune' are used when either result is of considerable magnitude," (Physics II, 5).

But, what if by bad luck we mean that there is some kind of unseen causal connection between one thing and a bunch of bad things happening. In other words, what if breaking a mirror somehow, for unknown reasons, actually brings about undesirable events? Well, obviously that's not true. Like walking under a mirror, a black cat crossing your path, or spilling the salt, the odds that breaking a mirror will have any kind of severe impact on the events of your life are very slim. I mean, assuming it's not somebody else's very expensive mirror or something.

Here's the thing, though. What if some of those old wives' tales aren't made up? What if they're based on centuries upon centuries of accumulated empirical evidence? For example, it's supposedly bad luck to decorate a new baby's nursery before it arrives. Depending on who you ask, it can be bad luck to do it at all, or maybe just bad luck to finish it completely. Either way, what if this particular myth came about by a whole bunch of people observing the effects, one way or another, of a whole bunch of different couples choosing to either decorate or not decorate and drawing a conclusion. I'm tempted to consider that possibility. Just because we don't fully understand the causal relationship doesn't mean there's not one.

Obviously a big part of this has to do with the outcome of labor being really pretty uncertain until fairly recently. I can't imagine what it must be like to have to come home and take apart a fully-decorated nursery. I have another theory, though. I've heard a few people say that the first few weeks after a new baby arrives can be a little crazy. It must be hard to keep one's feet on the ground after such a huge change. I mean, it's got to be quite a shock to realize (especially given the half-committed nature of most marriages these days) that you're...not your own anymore. You're living for somebody else now. For ever.

Even aside from that, just the sheer practical changes that occur. The sleep deprivation. The constant worry. All of it. I bet any parent would tell you this was the most stressful period in their life. While not the whole story I'd bet this has a lot to do with the phenomenon of postpartum depression. It's just got to be hard to cope.

I wonder if being forced to go through the motions of putting a nursery together at the same time could be a mechanism for keeping new parents focused and occupied those few moments they don't have to be feeding, burping, changing, or lulling baby. I bet it's satisfying to get to see such a concrete manifestation and validation of one's nurturing ability. I bet it obliges everybody to keep close at first, maybe in the same bed, maybe baby in a bassinet next to it, to make it easy for the new parents to have some much-needed reassurance about his well-being through those first few nights. At the same time, I bet it gives them something to do besides stare at him, or worry about him—all in all, just serving to keep new parents sane.

That's my theory anyway. What do you think?

Is There Intelligent Life On Other Planets?

As complicated and fascinating a question as this might be to anybody else, it seems to me that for a Christian, the answer is pretty cut and dry: an unequivocal and resounding "No."

In the second volume of C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy Perelandra, he explains that the inhabitants of Venus (unlike those of Mars encountered by the protagonist Ransom in Out of the Silent Planet) are human because they were created after the Incarnation.

Lewis understands that it is by virtue of our reason that we share in God's Divine Nature in such a special way. We are animals through and through. But for the faculty of reason we would be nothing more. It is our reason by which we are made in the image of God.

Sometime around the Year of Our Lord 1, Jesus the Christ was born to a pure Virgin in a stable in Bethlehem. God became Man. Henceforth humanity itself has been intimately and personally bound up with the Trinitarian Godhead. The Second Person of the Trinity, the Word, the Logos, Reason himself, is human; therefore, all temporal, rational beings must be human.

I would go even further than Lewis, though. When Christ ascended into heaven 40 days after being raised from the dead, he re-entered the eternal sphere, taking his body and human nature with him. As a result, even though the Incarnation occurred in time, it is an eternal reality, and in fact the second person of the Trinity is now, has always been, and will always be the God-Man Jesus of Nazareth, body, Mother, and all.

This is, for instance, why many scriptural theologians believe Jesus appeared several times in the Old Testament. These appearances are called "Christophanies," which word stems from the Greek Christos and phanein, "to show." This is, of course, related to our words "phantasm" and "epiphany," which means "to show forth." I don't happen to agree with this hypothesis. Nevertheless, I admit that it is possible.

At any rate, the Incarnation and the Ascension make it impossible for intelligent life on other planets to exist. While some might find this disappointing, it really makes sense. If there were intelligent alien species we would have to consider whether or not they, too, were fallen, and, if so, how, seeing as the Incarnation applies to humanity only, how it would be God would redeem them. It's a whole thing.

That being said, there's no reason that we shouldn't find all manner of animal life scattered throughout the universe. It's only fitting as God seems to adore diversity. It gets even more interesting when you consider that they may not be fallen as the creatures here on earth are. (See my Ugly Creatures series).

Star Trek (2009) Review

So, some of you have very kindly requested that I continue posting about Star Trek. Well, the next couple of posts I planned on the subject were going to be reviews of the latest in the Trek film series, J.J. Abrams' fantastic 2009 installment.

Unfortunately, RedLetterMedia did all my work for me and there's very little to add. If I think of something, though, I'll post it. For now, enjoy their comprehensive and thought-provoking review that ends up dealing with some very important issues in film.

The Top Ten Creatures I Can't Buy A Good God Created, Part Four

In Part One of this series, we saw that there is an ultimate standard of beauty, namely God, and many of the (so-called) creatures on this planet don't exactly conform to that standard. In Part Two, we looked at the group of animals I ranked at #10, what I called, "screwed up mammals." We talked about how Mankind and Nature have, since the beginning, been wedded to one another as husband and wife. When Man sinned, he brought punishment down upon not only himself, but also the natural world in which he lived. In Part Three, we looked at birds and reptiles, together making up group #9. We also saw how Satan (the Serpent) and his demons have been waging a war with God for the universe since before it was even made.

Well, coming in at #8...

Brontosaurus,

Stegosaurus,

Velociraptor,

Spinosaurus,

and, of course, Tyrannosaurus Rex, the Lizard King.

That's right, dinosaurs. And yes, all of those are pictures from Jurassic Park. Tempted as I am to put them lower down on the list on account of their sheer size and ferocity, reptilian as they are, they're rightly included here, just below the other lizards.

Some of you are probably whining about me having included Brontosaurus. After all, it's a friendly plant-eater. Gentle giant and all. Here's the thing, he may not want to eat you, which is a plus. The downside is he'll squash you without even noticing, and that makes him not so great.

We talked last time about Tolkien's creation myth in The Silmarillion. In it, Melkor (his fallen angel) sings his own dissonant tune in contrast to the one of God's design being sung by the other angels and bringing about the creation of the universe. Later, as the angels are shaping the world, Melkor is present to march across the earth, knocking down mountains just as they are raised up, and filling up valleys just as they are hollowed out.

This idea is quite similar to Medieval Cosmology, which has the angels "moving the spheres." We Moderns  laugh at this idea. Before we do, though, we should think about what it was the Medievals really meant. Did they mean the angels literally caused the stars and planets to move across the sky? Yes, they did. But how did they go about this? Were the angels just supposed to be some kind of divine mechanism, actually pushing the planets around on their tracks? No. They were lords of their spheres, which for a Medieval meant they were their spheres. That is to say, their respective domains were intrinsically and essentially bound up in their very being.

We touched on this idea already when we spoke about the way in which the "dominion" of Mankind over creation has been traditionally understood. The Medievals saw the world as one big hierarchy, God at the top, the raw elements at the bottom, Mankind "a little lower than the angels," (Heb. 2:7). Now, we might conceive of this kind of system as being some kind of an arbitrary arrangement imposed on Creation by the Will of God. While it's true the Order in the world has its origin in God, it is not arbitrary. On the contrary, it comes about as a result of the very essences of things. From top to bottom, different beings participate more or less completely in God's own Being.

More than that, though, each being in the Grand Hierarchy, is actually dependent on the class of beings above him for his own existence. This is the sense in which Scripture refers to Man as the king of Creation. It is too easy today to see the effects that the neglect of this Divine calling can cause. This principle obviously extends to Man's political and social machinations as well, thus, Medieval Feudalism and social class system. As we have seen, Mankind was given this kind of hierarchical "dominion" over all the Earth. But what about the rest of Creation?

In Classical Mythology, Athena, for example, is not merely the Queen of Wisdom, she is Wisdom, Wisdom Incarnate, personified. The same is true of the other gods: Hephaestus is Craftsmanship; Aphrodite, Desire; Hera, Womanhood; Ares, Strife; and so on. The traditional view is that this is quite true in the angels. St. Thomas Aquinas, in his question on the angels' government of Creation quotes St. Gregory the Great as saying that "in this visible world, nothing takes place without the agency of the invisible creature." As Man's material body is caused to be and act by his immaterial soul, so the material world is caused to be and move by the immaterial world, which is the Angels, and God above all.

For example, we now know that planets move as a result of the gravitational force exerted on them by the Sun. This is unquestionably true. Is it impossible that there could be more going on with gravity than a lifeless force? Couldn't there be an angel, perhaps a Virtue, who is the supernatural, spiritual, divinely ordained, cause of this force in the material world--that member of God's Divine Order responsible for maintaining the operation of this cause throughout the universe? I would argue that this is not only possible, but, at the very least, probable. Let's call him Gravitas, and thank God for his continued ministrations.

Just as Melkor was present, from the beginning, to do his best to mar and corrupt the creation of Tolkien's God, so Satan was present from the beginning of our universe to inject his evil into it. As God's Creation was issuing into existence from his mind (at the Big Bang) through the mediation of the angels in their various "spheres" of influence, Satan worked to screw up as much as he could. How else could a universe have been produced which includes things like darkness and death? Contrariety itself?

A quick reminder, though, lest we stray into Mani's territory, that Satan too is a creature. There is no ultimate and universal principle of evil that coexists alongside God as universal good. Evil does not exist. It is the absence of existence. Satan didn't make anything; he merely corrupted what God created. As such, Satan is the ultimate evil, but only in that he is the least like God; he is still like God in part, because he exists.

The Nature Of Art According To Flannery O'Connor

Catholic Phoenix has a wonderful article touching on the prevalence of bad art (or, really, non-art) amongst the religious. As the article points out, this is because the nature (and, as a result, purpose) of art is not to tell you something--to push an agenda. Neither is art meant to make you feel anything. Good art does these things, but they are not essential qualities, but side-effects.

The nature of art is to re-create reality and the world around us in microcosmic form. Tolkien called it "sub-creation," because artists mimic God's act of Creation by bestowing form and shape on their imaginal vision. It is art's realism which makes it cathartic, as Aristotle says in the Poetics. Because of its realism, its incarnation in miniature of the world in which we live, art makes us able to live a second life through the art we ingest. In doing so, we feel the feelings of that second life and learn its lessons, sometimes hoping we won't have to go through what the protagonist did, sometimes hoping we'll get to.

Kitsch, propaganda, sentimentalist tripe is incapable of causing this, truly profound, experience to happen because it seeks actively to bring it about. In the end it only manages to shoot itself in the foot. True art is unconscious of the message it will put forward or experience to which it will give rise. True art simply seeks to tell a story, and the rest follows naturally.

Temperaments And Personality Types, Part Four: Modernity

As we saw in the last post and the post on the Middle Ages' perspective, Humorism and the traditional view of the temperaments had become a part of the European consciousness. Modernity started out no different. To quote again from David Keirsey's Please Understand Me II:

"When William Harvey discovered the circulation of blood in 1628, he argued that blood was simply the most sovereign of the four humors, and he came to look on the Sanguine temperament with special favor. And philosophers of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, Bruno in Italy, Hume in Scotland, Voltaire and Rousseau in France, Kant in Germany, took the idea of four humors as a matter of course, as part of the air they breathed.

"19th-century novelists, from Jane Austen and the Brontës to George Eliot and Tolstoy, had these four patterns of human attitude and action clearly in mind when they framed their characters. In War and Peace, for example, Tolstoy divides the members of a lodge of Freemasons into what he described as 'four classes' of character: some looking for social 'connections' and opportunities, some interested in the lodge's 'external form and ceremony,' some seeking a 'fully understood path for themselves,' and some occupied exclusively with 'the scientific secrets of the order.'

"Even some early 20th-century writers demonstrated detailed knowledge of the roots of temperament and character theory. D.H. Lawrence not only saw human nature as organized around 'four poles of dynamic consciousness,' but he actually described a ruddy, sanguine character in his novel Sons and Lovers (1913) as Paracelsus' Salamander," (24-25).

As medicine progressed, though, the rupture the Modern Age sought to establish between it and the traditions of the past affected even Humorism, and it came to be disregarded as a legitimate scientific theory. While a staunch supporter of the central role of tradition in all things, this was, of course, a good thing, as the advances in the physical sciences and anatomy have proven that Humorism, strictly speaking, is false.

Since Galen in AD 190, the medicinal and psychological elements in the traditional theory had remained wedded to one another. It was the balance of the bodily fluids which caused the differences in behavior and personality. As such, when medicine disproved the existence of the humors, it assumed it had also disproved the existence of the temperaments. In essence, they threw the baby out with the bath water:

"In the behavioral sciences what had been the prevailing current of thought for centuries—that temperament determines character—gradually decreased to a tiny trickle in the latter part of the 19th century, owing mainly to the ideas of two men, Sigmund Freud and Ivan Pavlov. Freud reduced mankind to mere animal, nothing more than a creature of blind instinct. Similarly, Pavlov reduced mankind, not to animal, but to machine, its actions nothing more than mechanical response to environmental stimulation. And the 20th century was nearly swept away by these two new theories," (Ibid. 25).

There were some, however, who developed theories of behavior along similar lines to the personalogical elements of Ancient thought. Erich Adickes, working in 1905 without knowledge of the traditional temperaments, "said that mankind could be divided into four 'world views'—Innovative, Traditional, Doctrinaire, and Skeptical," (Ibid.). Adickes' "Innovatives" clearly correspond to Plato's creative and productive Artisans; his "Traditionals" to Plato's duty-, history-, and rule-obsessed Guardians; his "Dogmatics" or "Doctrinaires" to Plato's ethical and harmony-oriented Idealists; and his "Skeptics" or "Agnostics" to Plato's intellectual, theory-minded Rationals.

Not long after Adickes' work, Eduard Spränger "wrote of four 'value attitudes' which distinguish one personality from another—Artistic, Economic, Religious, and Theoretic," (Ibid.) Spränger, like Aristotle before him, was driving at people's motivations, what they seek out and admire. Obviously Artisans value the "aesthetic;" the "economic" is synonymous with the Guardians' "property," as is the "religious" with Idealists' "morality" and the "theoretic" with "rationality."

A few years later Ernst Kretschmer took a slightly different approach and "proposed that both normal and abnormal behavior can be understood in terms of four 'character styles' similar to those of Adickes and Spränger—Hypomanic, Depressive, Hyperesthetic, and Anesthetic," (Ibid.) These four are more obviously correlated to Galen's Temperaments than Plato's, "hypomanic" meaning emotional and excitable, "depression" recalling melancholy, "hyperesthetic" meaning passionate and ambitious, and "anesthetic" meaning generally emotionless and self-content.

"Rudolph Dreikurs, a disciple of Alfred Adler, pointed out in 1947 what he called four 'mistaken goals' which different kinds of people pursue when their self-esteem declines too far for safety—Retaliation, Service, Recognition, and Power. Also in 1947 Eric Fromm, looking at both negative and positive sides of personality, as did Kretschmer, attributed four different 'orientations' to the four styles—Exploitative, Hoarding, Receptive, and Marketing," (Ibid.)

This last group of four "orientations" may seem out of place, but if we consider "exploitation" in terms of a person who sets out to experience as much as possible, seeking sensation, then it starts to sound an awful lot like Aristotle's Hedonics. Likewise, "hoarding" can be thought of as property-acquisition and "reception" as submission of oneself in favor of harmony. According to Fromm, a "marketer" is a person who knows very little of emotion and social matters and so focuses more on a theoretical and strategic understanding of them and less on actually experiencing them, much like a "logical" and "calculating" Rational would do.

We can now add the following additions to the chart:

Next up: Carl Jung reinvents the wheel.

Imprecision Of Language

A friend of mine recently pointed out her frustration with the rampant overuse of hyperbole in contemporary speech: "Man, that's awesome!" and the like. Really? Does the iPhone 4S really inspire awe? Maybe it does.

Hyperbole is a legitimate rhetorical and literary device used to draw attention to the way one perceives something as opposed to the way it really is. Of course, hyperbole is never meant to be taken literally, and, as such, critiques like the one above are a bit harsh. Thing is, when you use a device meant to draw special attention to something every other sentence, it stops being special and you undermine your whole purpose in using it.

This particular situation is, I think, symptomatic of a larger and more serious problem, namely, rampant carelessness with language. Consider this quote from The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson:

"It is often said that what most immediately sets English apart from other languages is the richness of its vocabulary. Webster's Third New International Dictionary lists 450,000 words, and the revised Oxford English Dictionary has 615,000, but that is only part of the total. Technical and scientific terms would add millions more. Altogether, about 200,000 English words are in common use, more than in German (184,000) and far more than in French (a mere 100,000). The richness of the English vocabulary, and the wealth of available synonyms, means that English speakers can often draw shades of distinction unavailable to non-English speakers. The French, for instance, cannot distinguish between house and home, between mind and brain, between man and gentleman, between 'I wrote' and 'I have written.' The Spanish cannot differentiate between a chairman and a president, and the Italians have no equivalent of wishful thinking. In Russia there are no native words for efficiency, challenge, engagement ring, have fun, or take care.... English, as Charlton Laird has noted, is the only language that has, or needs, books of synonyms like Roget's Thesaurus. 'Most speakers of other languages are not aware that such books exist,'" (13-14).

This is one of the reasons why I believe Shakespeare could only have happened in English. But, to whom much is given, much is required. As a native English speaker, one has no excuse for imprecision. If I'm having an interesting experience, in all likelihood the perfect word to describe it exists. It's nobody's fault but my own that I don't know it.

Words represent things. Nouns represent substances, all kinds: general, specific, proper, common, abstract, concrete, collective, and so on. Verbs represent actions like walking, driving, talking, and writing. Verbs also represent passions, or received actions like being talked to or being carried. Adjectives represent qualities; adverbs represent the manners in which actions can happen; and prepositions represent relationships.

All of this is to say that words have their foundation in the real world. Things exist in the world around us. We know these things through our senses. When we speak about them, we're relating this conceptual knowledge to other people, and we do so according to the conventions of our language and culture in order that we will be understood. The transitive property dictates, then, that when, via language, we communicate our conceptual knowledge of the world to others, we're also communicating the natures of the things in the world which gave rise to our own knowledge of them.

Some would make the argument that, in the end, what we say doesn't really matter that much as long as we communicate ourselves. While it's true that our language must abide by certain conventions in order for us to be understood, it is not only our impressions of the world that we are attempting to communicate. When we utter a word, we are transmitting knowledge of the forms in things.

Imprecision in and carelessness with language is, then, carelessness with our knowledge of things, and the things themselves. To deny the importance of choosing one's words carefully is to deny the real connection between our words, our mind, and the world. In other words, we should all mean what we say, and say what we mean.

Why "CE" And "BCE" Make No Sense

In the year AD 525, a monk named Dionysius Exiguus calculated a set of tables laying out several of the future dates of Easter. The dates on previous such tables were notated in the customary manner, anno Diocletiani, or "in the year of Diocletian," counting forward from the first date of that Roman Emperor's reign.

Though many Christians had begun to use anno martyrum, or "in the year of the martyrs," as a result of Diocletian having ordered the last major Christian persecution, Dionysius thought it less than desirable to reckon years on a Christian calendar in reference to such a man. As such, he invented a new system, anno Domini, or "in the year of the Lord," counting forward from the date of Christ's Incarnation and providing an explicit conversion from Years of Diocletian to Years of Our Lord.

The practice became widespread in Europe when, in 731, the Venerable Bede used it in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, gradually gaining more and more traction over the succeeding centuries. We now know that Dionysius' calculations were somewhat mistaken and Christ was most likely born a year or two before 1 BC. Nevertheless, the Gregorian calendar, using such a system, has proved so accurate and become so standard, that no one dare change it.

Until now. The BBC is the latest in a string of respected institutions and publishers to reject AD and BC in favor of the "religiously neutral" CE and BCE ("Common Era" and "Before the Common Era").

But wait, because the reckoning of years from the traditional date of Christ's birth is so universal, it would be all but impossible to attempt to force an actual change in the system of dating. Instead, to try and avoid an explicit reference to Christ, they just changed the terminology. The thing is, though, they're still counting from Jesus' birth; they're just trying to pretend they aren't.

My thinking is, if you're really going to try to entirely excise religion from the public sphere, you should do it right. Devise a completely new dating system and impose it on everyone carte blanche. Maybe they'll react the way the French did when the revolutionaries tried the same thing, maybe they won't. Don't know if you don't try.

Is it really so offensive, though? Yes, it refers to Christ, but it's not like putting AD or BC before a date means you think he's God like we do or came back from the dead. They're not even religious terms anymore. They've been so utterly and completely absorbed into Western culture that the majority of people don't even know what they stand for.

Just relax. You won the battle for academia, and you're winning the battle for the West. You don't have to rub it in.

Magic in Disney's The Lion King

The review of The Lion King over at Decent Films Guide is surprisingly scathing. Along with Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King is so beloved of so many that it takes guts to point out a flaw. While I agree with many of the points in that review, I would give The Lion King a higher grade, and encourage my own kids to watch it, for one simple reason: magic.

No, not "Disney magic," though there is that, I mean Rafiki the Baboon Witch Doctor's magic. "Whaaat?" you're probably saying. "How can a Christian possibly support a movie which suggests the validity of such primitive and satanic practices?" Some of you may remember that when The Lion King was originally released, many Evangelical Christians reacted strongly for that very reason. Disney was in the hands of Satan, pushing, at the very least superstition, and at the worst witchcraft on our children. Of course, the problem only got worse with Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

We should remember that The Lion King is a story. Stories live in their own worlds. They must abide by the rules of the world they create in order to remain realistic. It would be kind of a strange thing if the first thing we saw at the beginning of the movie was infant Simba being taken to the local parish church for lions to be baptized. In a way, though, by analogy, that's exactly what happens in the opening scene—within the bounds of the pre-Christian world that The Lion King inhabits. Young Simba is annoited with oil on his forehead, presented to the priest in the form of Rafiki, and "baptized" in the light of the Sun for the whole kingdom to see.

It's magical, and rightly so. It is too easy to forget in our day and age what every other culture throughout history other than ours has known without a doubt, that the world is alive and teeming with supernatural activity we usually cannot see. Religion, in all its forms, paganism and Christianity alike, is merely an attempt to get a handle on that invisible, supernatural reality that shapes our lives without us knowing how or why. Of course, Christianity rises above all other attempts because it alone reveals the truth of God completely in Christ. Nevertheless, I appreciate a movie that illustrates the prevalence of the supernatural influences on the world in which we live. That's a lesson I wouldn't trade for anything.

"That's How Baseball Go"

Thus spoke MLB's reigning sage Ron Washington.

Oftentimes I get asked by friends and family who live and die by football or hockey what I could possibly see in baseball. The classic complaint is aimed at its slow pace. Well, it's precisely because of the slow pace. Elizabeth Scalia of The Anchoress tells us why:

"Baseball is a game of inches. And hours. And in those moments between release and resolution are contained particles of infinity—the space between a prayer of supplication and the surrender of 'Amen'; the whisper of intention that brings what is empty and void into fullness. The hope for redemption.

We can relate to that just as we can identify with pitcher and batter; the individual confronting a full team of resistance with the humblest of weapons—a ball, a stick—speaks to our daily grinds, the resistance, the persistence, the victory of getting through a day; of correcting a flawed stance; of breaking a bad habit before it owns you.

A man screaming 'for the love of God' in the stands of Fenway Park made perfect and sympathetic sense to my son and me, because baseball may be a mere game, but it is one that relates to the continual process of the life of faith—a life of swings and misses, stupid errors, the clutch of despair, the release, the trust, the clockless innings of new chances that stretch out before us, endlessly, and so full of promise.

It breaks your heart, but it leaves you wanting more; it roars into spring, slips us through summer and delivers us, tired but still game, into autumn, and then we lie fallow—waiting in joyful hope."

Check out the full article over at First Things.

A football, hockey, or basketball game might be exciting, but it'll never make me care. Those other sports make for good entertainment, but only baseball is art. Players aren't mindless chess pieces being controlled more or less strategically by a puppeteer coach, but beloved characters in whose fate I have something of myself invested.

Wrigley Field lit by fans' flashlights

Baseball is art because, like art, baseball imitates life and the world around us. Every baseball game is a microcosmic recreation of the universe and the human experience of it. Two teams, home and away, good and evil, locked in battle. Where baseball is special, though, is that that battle is a slow, time-consuming, almost dreary affair. Like life, baseball is won in the details, in the things no one would ever think really mattered. Like life, 7 out of 10 times you step up to the plate, you're gonna fail. Like life, baseball is about prudence, perseverance, and above all fortitude.

This is true outside each individual game too. How many games are in a regular NFL season? 15? Baseball is day-in, day-out. We love baseball because when our players succeed in their microcosmic "life-play," it makes us believe we can succeed in real life, and it gives us the hope to keep trying, so that, one day, we might be counted worthy to say with St. Paul, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith," (2 Tim. 4:7).

Zombies: The Post-Modern Horror

The above map illustrates the frequency with which the word "zombie" was entered into Google's search bar by geographical area. It is clear at first glance that only the developed world, and especially only the developed English-speaking world, seem concerned.

I have a theory that zombies are the quintessential Post-Modern horror. Gone are the days when vampires and werewolves scared the piss out of people, contemporary culture even finds them "sexy" now. Why?

Modernity, generally defined as that period that lasted from around 1517 through 1914 or so, is characterized chiefly by a breakdown of the Medieval Synthesis between Christianity and traditional philosophy. As such, in the Modern Era thought on every topic fractured into two opposing camps: realists vs. idealists, rationalism vs. fideism, rationalism vs. idealism, etc. This polarization of ideas manifested itself culturally as the cold, calculating Enlightenment on one side, and the mushy, nostalgic Romantic Movement on the other.

As a result of this fracturing, throughout the Modern Era we can pick up on two chief currents in what frightened people. Those of a more rationalistic bent were frightened by the prospect that they might be wrong about the operation of the supernatural in the world. The Puritans were famously willing to go to great lengths to rid their communities of suspected witchcraft. Likewise, Bram Stoker's Dracula seems to me to be the tale of a sorcerer first, and a "vampire" second. We can also include "mummy" horror here, as essentially a fear of magic.

On the other hand, those who reacted against the Enlightenment and embraced the opposing sentimentality of the Romantic Movement were frightened by the prospect that they might be wrong, and the world might just be a kind of Deistic experiment. Thus Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which told a story in which it was proved that the world is mere mechanism.

Historically, the Romantic Movement was a reaction against the Enlightenment. It sought, by a last ditch effort to appeal to our emotions, to restore some of what the Enlightenment had destroyed of the old culture. Interestingly, following this challenge of the Romantic Movement, the fears of the more rationalistic bent began to shift from witchcraft and the supernatural, to over-sentimentality—a reaction against a reaction.

In this category we find the later vampire mythology, in which they are presented as over-stimulated "romantics" with a metaphorical "lust for blood." Much the same can be said of werewolves, who are ruled by bestial passion.

Post-Modernity, though, is characterized chiefly by a denial of any meaning or purpose to anything. Where Modernity (in both Enlightenment and Romantic forms) sought to replace the traditional culture and philosophy with its own, Post-Modernity offers no contrary hypothesis, it simply denies that there is culture. To put it another way, Modernity sought to reform the truth, Post-Modernity seeks to abolish it outright.

Not surprisingly, Post-Modernity is accompanied by a whirlwind of technological innovation. In a world where actions have no moral repercussions, and men no responsibility, we might as well build the bomb, if only because we can.

The Post-Modern world is founded on technology. If the Middle Ages were founded on religion (albeit in cooperation with reason), and Modernity was founded on ideas, Post-Modernity is founded on stuff. In other words, when you throw religion, morality, and, finally, reason and truth itself out the window, all you've got left to do is seek your own comfort and pleasure. And that's exactly what we have done, and been marvelously successful—the crowning achievement of this technological pleasure-seeking being the removal of the consequences of sex.

What, then, could possibly frighten Post-Modern Man, tucked away in his fortress of comfort (I think they call them Man-Caves now)? Simple, a world in which one has no time to seek pleasure because he's too busy fighting for his very survival. I can't be the only one who's noticed the really astounding frequency with which tales of a post-Apocalyptic, dystopian horror have been produced in the decades since the '70s, especially if you include disaster movies, which are basically the same thing.

Like the Moderns before us, we look at the things that terrify us and see ourselves gone wrong. Mary Shelley looked at Dr. Frankenstein and saw a man willing to do awful things as a result of his inability to see life and humanity as more than just machines and scientific principles. Bram Stoker looked at Dracula and saw a man that terrified him because of the incredible things he could do as a result of his sorcery. Post-Modern Man looks at zombies and sees creatures who care nothing for comfort or pleasure, who desire only to feed a ravenous and insatiable hunger and, as a result, are capable of destroying anything that stands in their way.

The map above illustrates this point rather well. If, at its core, the fear that zombies and other post-Apocalyptic tales inspire is based in our fear that we might have to give up our technological conveniences, then it would only affect the first world. After all, it's sad to say in a way, but if Mad Max came true, life in Central Africa wouldn't change that much. It doesn't make a lot of sense that they would be too worried about it.