I used to love the acronym definition of fear: “false evidence appearing real.” But “false evidence” is like “fake news” and “post-fact.” There’s really no such thing, only conjecture, presumption, and deception. Austin Kridler recently shared a drawing that has had almost 700,000 views in two days. It deserves it. Two big cats scream at […]
Imprinted with fear
Fear learned early can affect us life-long. In a working paper on the topic, Harvard child psychologists explain that intense, chronic fear and anxiety hampers children’s ability to learn, and undermines their ability to correctly perceive threats. Without intervention, children raised in chronically fearful environments learn to interpret ambiguous situations in a negative way, build stress as they […]
Panic
Nothing brakes the train of progress and learning more effectively than apocalyptic panic. After a week at this month’s conference near Baltimore, I’m returning to Miroslav Volf’s latest book, Flourishing: Why we need religion in a globalized world. (I wrote about Flourishing briefly earlier this month, and you can still join the group that’s reading it […]
On #NMOS14, Ferguson, and Rooting for a New World
This post took me three weeks to prepare. There’s so much to say, and the word-containers I’m drawing together feel far too narrow and too shallow to hold that “so much.” The community of Ferguson, MO, has been in grief since August 9, and that grief, first re-presented as aggression, then analyzed from afar, and dismissed by the […]
News: The Record Keeper’s Now Dead
“There are no secrets.” And now there is no Record Keeper. The Adventist News Network and other Adventist sources report today that the General Conference will not release The Record Keeper project: The Record Keeper is dead. The GC’s April 11 press release states that the project is “suspended” and “similar creative outreach projects” might be possible in future. Back in January I […]