A Thought or Two

                                                          A Thought or Two

Yesterday's inclusion of the Babylon Bee's LGBTQ Loops headline drew an angry response. What I saw as satire was seen as malice.
There is an interesting discussion going on about Aristotle, really a strawman argument to discuss history. Aristotle not only thought slavery moral, he thought it was good for the slave. So, should we throw him out as a thinker with the bathwater? Since he is the foundation of Western thought, it has some serious implications--especially when replacements of quality are so hard to come by.
We have grown up in a culture where correcting the neighbor's children was encouraged because certain behavior in the culture was held in common; correcting your neighbor was not because every man was given in this land a certain dignity by birthright. He could believe what he liked because we all had a confidence in the people generally. All men were created equal because they had value. And could be relied upon. That is no longer believed.
The "moderation in all things" advice by the oracle is more than wisdom, it is essential. All qualities, contrary to the Manichees, have downsides. There is nothing more civilizing than the heterogeneity of the tribe and there is nothing less civilizing than the tribes's homogeneity.
Lust, for example, has a lot of elements in it, many bad. Cultures have created exotic distortions to manage it. But in the end, cultures must live, need to live, with it, and must come to some peace with it.
I like doing this but I have no intention of offending anyone. The idea behind this blog has been to evaluate and present ideas clearly, not as an endpoint but as a process, mainly for my kids but also for me. In this culture, that might not be possible.