re-formation

Don't despair if you can't tell the difference between an Anabaptist and a Southern Baptist, the below focus on the Reformation is simply a launching pad into political and social tensions that have plagued the West since at least the rise of the mercantile age. So, yeah, there are much better reasons not to read! How you spend your time is how you spend your life! I once screenshot the posters used in Stranger Things' for Twitter!! That's forever! It has always already happened!

Climbing Wolf   There was a lot of chatter about the 500th Anniversary of Martin Luther's theses. Good chatter? Bad chatter? Chittering, for sure. One of the most enjoyable sources of palaver was NPR's piece on how the Reformation forever changed beer. 

Martin Luther's Protestant Reformation changed not just the way Europeans lived, fought, worshipped, worked and created art but also how they ate and drank. For among the things it impacted was a drink beloved throughout the world and especially in Luther's native Germany: beer.. . .  In the 16th century, the Catholic Church had a stranglehold on beer production, since it held the monopoly on gruit... Hops, however, were not taxed. Considered undesirable weeds, they grew plentifully and vigorously — their invasive nature captured by their melodic Latin name, Humulus lupulus (which the music-loving Luther would have loved), which means "climbing wolf."

Honestly, undesirable weed is how I first characterized IPAs myself. But they grow on you. Alcohol, a chemical trap, encourages you toward stronger and stronger beer the longer you drink, so IPAs grow and gro w a nd gorws orn yew antil ur dronk mch tmie.

Bnuos (from the same piece)::

"There's already a brewery saint called St. Arnold, who saved his congregation from the plague by making them drink beer."

Bless, me Saint Ahhnold (pics).

Uh, Protestants are Communists, Too, You Guys

So argues another piece I enjoyed this last week (sort of argues). It's a great survey of history whatever your preferred polemics; and whatever your religious beliefs, the history of Christendom remains a major part of any systemic survey of the West's move into modernity.

All things common”—omnia sunt communia—has long encapsulated the earthly ideal of the Gospel, a people’s republic of heaven. “The company of all those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but instead they had everything in common”—so Luke tells us in Acts, his chronicle of the first generation of Christians in the middle of the first century CE.. . . Of course, to utter [the word "communism"] without disdain is, for conservatives, liberals, and social democrats, to violate the most fundamental taboo in contemporary political discourse—one must be naive, disingenuous, or indifferent to the blood-soaked historical record. But to call attention to the communist imagination of the Gospel is itself to respect the historical record, while also underlining the perverse and authoritarian character of its Soviet denouement. Although the persistence of original sin will ultimately frustrate righteous desire, bringing heaven to earth is the quintessence of Christianity, not an enterprise in moral derangement.

Opinion

I need to know more. Do I know anything? Do you know some things and wish you knew more things? I find most of us know a little about a lot, which in Socratic terms simply means we don't know enough to say we know nothing. The only way knowledge can be sure, Socrates (ahem, early Plato) argued, was to know everything. And if knowledge isn't sure, is it knowledge? Isn't that sort of the whole point of claiming the known? The latter of the above articles begins with a review of the 1917 Russian Revolution, about which I know too little. What's interesting, though, is that knowing too little, and understanding the subject is Big and Important, I find myself convinced that I can never know enough and should simply remain happy with what I currently barely grasp. Maybe I'll read an article or two for intelligent talking points. Christmas is coming, after all. I must sharpen general knowledge barbs for the inevitable family fall-outs.

Instead of accepting this epistemological-skepticism cum lazy-anxiety, I'm hoping to continue reading less articles, watching less movies, and reading more books. Books as morally superior to other media is an old and hackneyed tradition, except that books are unique in certain media metrics: depth/detail (nonfiction), scope (fiction and nonfiction), and psychological projection/interiority (fiction, poetry, pretentious nonfiction [haha, poetry]). Ken Burns needs 10 hours of television simply to outline visually the information in one or two decent history books. His project is to be lauded, is perhaps a singularly approachable source, but is not a replacement for reading Ta-Nehisi Coates's book recommendations on the Civil War.

Books are a technology long taken for granted, but their length (as compared to articles) and their medium (as compared to digital and visual alternatives), means they continue to offer access to knowledge and imagination simply unavailable anywhere else. 

TL;DR - "You don't have to take my word for it."

Enjoy the fall's crush of leaves beneath your feet, the soundtrack of mortality. (:

Joel