Gallery Night, July 24

Brit Lit Theorist to New Atheists: Fightme!

An interesting interview at the New Humanist about how the New Atheists went wrong. Excerpted:

[Terry Eagleton] is rather like a wise old schoolmaster explaining to two eager young students that the significance of Hamlet is hardly exhausted by describing it as “a revenge drama”.

Zing! Unfortunately he sometimes shows a similar misreading of Christianity (Eagleton describes a socialist “Jesus who urged his followers to feed the hungry, love their enemies, give away their possessions and visit the sick, and was finally tortured and killed for such advocacy” — devoid of deity or supernatural purpose), but his heart’s in the right place.

Art as Moral Chaos

In art, beauty has to be won, but the work becomes harder as the sheer noise of desecration drowns out the quiet voices murmuring in the heart of things.

An amazing article in City Journal taking to task the abstract and post-modern shock-art of the 21st century. While I don’t agree 100% with his position, philosopher Roger Scruton makes quite a case for reclaiming Beauty in art. For example, check out this incendiary paragraph:

Wherever beauty lies in wait for us, there arises a desire to preempt its appeal, to smother it with scenes of destruction. Hence the many works of contemporary art that rely on shocks administered to our failing faith in human nature — such as the crucifix pickled in urine by Andres Serrano. Hence the scenes of cannibalism, dismemberment, and meaningless pain with which contemporary cinema abounds, with directors like Quentin Tarantino having little else in their emotional repertories. Hence the invasion of pop music by rap, whose words and rhythms speak of unremitting violence…

His point further on is that we humans have a supernatural need for Beauty. When today’s artists desecrate Beauty they are intentionally debasing the sacred. Maybe out of fear or anger or protest. “Every now and then,” Scruton says, “we are jolted out of our complacency and feel ourselves to be in the presence of something vastly more significant than our present interests and desires. We sense the reality of something precious and mysterious, which reaches out to us with a claim that is, in some way, not of this world.” Something which is uncanny and frightening and something against which we struggle.

Is contemporary art merely “moral chaos?” Is Beauty still a worthwhile standard for artists? Is it enough to just want to express something through art? Is postmodernism a worthless dead end of anxiety? What art do you like these days?

10 Ways to Support Charity Through Social Media

This post is a collaboration between Mashable’s Summer of Social Good charitable fundraiser and Max Gladwell’s “10 Ways” series. The post is being simultaneously published across more than 100 blogs.

Social media is about connecting people and providing the tools necessary to have a conversation. That global conversation is an extremely powerful platform for spreading information and awareness about social causes and issues. That’s one of the reasons charities can benefit so greatly from being active on social media channels. But you can also do a lot to help your favorite charity or causes you are passionate about through social media.

Below is a list of 10 ways you can use social media to show your support for issues that are important to you. If you can think of any other ways to help charities via social web tools, please add them in the comments. If you’d like to retweet this post or take the conversation to Twitter or FriendFeed, please use the hashtag #10Ways.

1. Write a Blog Post

Blogging is one of the easiest ways you can help a charity or cause you feel passionate about. Almost everyone has an outlet for blogging these days — whether that means a site running WordPress, an account at LiveJournal, or a blog on MySpace or Facebook. By writing about issues you’re passionate about, you’re helping to spread awareness among your social circle. Because your friends or readers already trust you, what you say is influential.

Recently, a group of green bloggers banded together to raise individual $1 donations from their readers. The beneficiaries included Sustainable Harvest, Kiva, Healthy Child, Healthy World, Environmental Working Group, and Water for People. The blog-driven campaign included voting to determine how the funds would be distributed between the charities. You can read about the results here.

You should also consider taking part in Blog Action Day, a once a year event in which thousands of blogs pledge to write at least one post about a specific social cause (last year it was fighting poverty). Blog Action Day will be on October 15 this year.
Read the rest of this article…

The Barack Obama of the 16th Century?

BBC shares an interesting story about the rise of (or return of) Calvinism in Holland. The Dutch, like much of Europe, is majority non-religious, but the ethical aspects of Calvinism are apparently very popular. No word on consensus regarding election, but it looks like the Calvin wine is selling pretty well.