The man who single-handedly saved geeks’ Friday and Saturday nights has died. Gygax was the inventor of Dungeons & Dragons. As such, he was a huge part of my middle school weekends. Unfortunately, Gygax ran out of hit points today. May he rest in peace.
It seems to be cropping up more often lately. Either that, or I am just noticing it more often. People seem to be shocked by things that should not even surprise them. On my buddy Mike’s blog, he quotes from Wilhelm Röpke. Herr Röpke wrote the following: “… surely, noone who is at all honest with himself can fail to be struck by the shocking dechristianization and secularization of our culture.”
Am I overreacting when I note that not only am I not shocked by the dechristianization or secularization of our culture, but it would be truly shocking if such a process were not in progress. Perhaps I am too cynical. For me, I suppose, I see the work of living a Christian life to be much harder than to be a pagan, perhaps especially, in our increasingly dechristianized, increasingly secularized culture.
Conservatism is much like Christianity in that it is the harder road. Liberals fall into two camps, both of which are easy: the first type simply inflate their own self-satisfaction through the mechanism of pretending they care more. After much practice in pretending to care more than one’s neighbors, they then make the small step to arrogate power to themselves in order to provide for the objects of “their” bounty. By making promises to give others the things they want, they consolidate their own power over other people. The second type of liberals are the co-conspirators of the power through caring crowd - those who consume the confiscated bounty that is offered. Conservatism, by contrast, is a mental exercise requiring discipline. It is a hard sell to tell one’s ruler that he rules best when he does least - when he arrogates to himself a minimal amount of power. Conservatism is the politics of restraint. We have never been good at restraint since we were children and therefore, it is always a bit of a shock to me when the harder road, conservatism, makes gains.
Does one indeed need to be dishonest with oneself to fail to be shocked by the dechristianization and secularization of our culture as Röpke claims? I am forced to answer, No. It is hardly shocking that the hard thing is in decline and the easy thing is in the ascendancy. Perhaps a better response, instead of shock, would be recognition of that which is expected and a renewal of one’s commitment to reform one’s culture.
The words “Glory be to God in the highest” has taken on a whole new meaning to one Israeli professor. Mr. Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, published a report espousing his belief that Moses was high on drugs when he ascended Mount Sinai and laid his bloodshot dilated eyes on the burning bush.
What would make a university professor believe that a founder of Israel was a narco-lunatic: Brazilians. That’s right; Brazilians hold the bag, so to speak. According to Shanon, Brazilians have used hallucinogenic drugs to simulate religious experiences for generations. In particular, the ayahuasca plant is used to “see sounds,” a phenomena Shanon himself admits to experiencing. The problem with Benny’s assumption is that Ayahuasca does not grow in the Middle East. Shanon hits back that the bark from the Acacia tree can be used to brew up a similar narcotic. The Acacia tree is grown throughout the region Moses spent his 40 day trip in.
In the end we have the ranting of a burned out hippy “professor” concerning how people get high. He then equates his own magic carpet ride with the fact that Moses could not have experienced a “supernatural cosmic event.” The result, as Shanon sees it, is that Moses must have been high. After all, Shanon was!
And to think, I believed that useless educators were a product of America. It seems they can be found all over the map…well, anywhere psychedelics are found anyway.
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