Lack of Being Maximally Entertained: The Most Important Standard for Dislike?

Earlier this evening I was listening to a local talk radio show while making some dinner. The host was talking about actor Charlie Sheen's recent spate of what has become his expected strange and bad behavior and weird public outbursts.

While speaking of this, the host remarked to a caller that he did not 'hate' Charlie Sheen because of his bad behavior (reportedly, traveling around and partying with prostitutes, doing drugs, etc.), rather, he 'hates' Sheen because in his opinion, Sheen's TV sitcom (Two and a half men) is bad.

Now, what does such a comment tell us about the state of our culture?

In a healthier society, a radio host would dislike Sheen (I think the term 'hate' used by the host was deliberate hyperbole) because of his publicly flaunted, highly immoral behavior. But today, this radio host rooted his dislike of Sheen not in his blatantly immoral behavior, but because Sheen's TV show is not entertaining enough to suit him.

It is very sad indeed if we are becoming persons whose interest in the public reputation of celebrities is based more upon whether or not a celebrity possesses an ability to keep us maximally entertained than upon his moral character as revealed in his actions outside the sound stage. Who cares about the fact of a public person damaging his life and the lives of others? What really matters is whether or not I like his TV show!

How much more self absorbed can we become?

Merry Christmas! The Bringing of Jesus' Human Body into the Trinity is Forever!

It is truly awesome to think of the endless blessings for mankind of the Incarnation--the Word becoming flesh to dwell among us.

I tend to emphasize in my thoughts, when recalling the reality of Jesus' humanity, that God became one of us and was born into our human condition (but for sin) on that blessed day in Bethlehem. But, it blows me away to think about this as well, that ever since the Ascension, a living, glorified human body has entered into the very life of the Divine Trinity itself--forever.

God has so dignified and lifted up our human nature that He has even brought this nature into the very heart and center of the blazingly glorious life and love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for all eternity. Out of the entirety of His wondrous and beautiful creation He has only chosen one nature to enfold into His very divine self--human flesh. When the child Jesus was born, who could have imagined this destiny? Praise God for this ineffable and incredible mystery!




I want to extend heartfelt wishes to you, dear readers, and your families, and all whom you love for a most blessed, peace-filled, and joyous Christmas!

Anyone who reads this blog and is so disposed let us keep each other in prayer, that we might always eagerly embrace the superabundant grace of God which is poured into the world through the life of that precious babe born in Bethlehem in a manger on that blessed day.

"And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us." (Jn 1:14)

In the joy and peace of the infant Jesus,
Scott

[Ascension Icon from http://www.flickr.com/photos/78575519@N00/3568423719]

Foodie Shows Reveal the Natural Human Reaching Toward a Standard of Perfection: How "Top Chef" is a Rebuke to the Strange Avoidance of Standards in Contemporary Visual Art

This thought came to me earlier this evening as I was eating some canned soup (If you eat canned soup, I recommend Progresso). Food shows like Top Chef (Bravo) and Iron Chef America (Food Network) and many others that are available now on cable networks demonstrate this very intriguing facet of life: even in the midst of a great variety of cultural experiences, underneath this we find it a naturally human thing to want to rate artistic endeavors on some kind of common scale from worse to better to best--from less to more valuable to the culture.

Cooking on a high level where artistry and great culinary talent and skill are on display, I would say, falls within the realm of artistic endeavors. Now, I'm not talking about a hot dog stand, but about cooking that aspires to deliver something culturally wonderful, ennobling, exhilarating--something excellent and valuable as a culinary production. Great chefs are artisans; this is integral to their vocation. And even though we acknowledge that high cooking is an art, it seems to me that the world of the culinary arts is the most subjective of all the arts. Truly, can it be said that a particular dish prepared by a particular chef is greater than all other dishes? No. But does this imply there are no standards by which we may assess a dish's level of perfection? No.

For example, imagine three chefs are making a dish using the same kind of fish--cod, let's say. And let's imagine that each of them makes a dish that is very different from the other two--different styles, different spices, different ingredients to complement the fish. And let's imagine they are in a competition and a panel of judges is tasting their dishes (such as on a show like Top Chef). Even though the dishes are very different, the very fact that they are being judged against each other and are ranked by the judges in order of excellence as first, second, and third, implies the obvious assumption that there are some common standards by which to judge them. The fish, for example, should be cooked properly. Undercooked or raw fish would be unacceptable. Likewise, overcooked fish would be unacceptable. The presentations on the plate are different, yet, they are expected to be appealing and attractive to the eye. The use of the ingredients is expected to complement the fish, not drown it out or clash with it. The way all the ingredients are prepared would be expected to display a high level of skill in using the knife and likewise in all the ways the ingredients were handled.

There are some expected standards of cooking that the judges would rightly expect to see in a great dish. Nobody expects the food of different chefs to taste just like each other. Yet, nobody seems to object to the idea that we can judge and rank different chefs in comparison to each other, even as they prepare different dishes and use different ingredients. Travel guides and web sites and newspapers have a variety of rating systems whereby they indicate the level of excellence of a particular dining establishment. Food critics are people whose profession is to taste food and critique it, judging it and rendering a final opinion as to the level of excellence of a particular dish or of a particular chef or restaurant.

So, there is a great (seemingly endless) diversity in culinary styles and in types of prepared food dishes--Italian, Chinese, Greek, Indian, Thai, French, Mexican, etc. There are regions within regions. There are chefs who specialize in certain regional foods and ethnic food customs, and yet each chef has his own particularly distinctive character as an individual chef. One French chef's food does not taste exactly like another French chef. Yet, we do not think it strange or impossible or unfair that we should compare different chefs and render a decision as to whose food is better. And this is as it should be. Of course we can judge different chefs and conclude who is best. Every travel guide giving the number of Michelin stars awarded to restaurants is a testimony to this.

How is it that we can do this? It is because, underneath the vast variety and differentiation among food styles and among chefs, there still remains a body of some common standards by which we judge the final results. Fish cooked properly has certain characteristics, no matter what sort of dish it is in. Food should not be over-seasoned (or under-seasoned). A gravy should not have lumps. Watch the judges make critical comments and render their final conclusions about various dishes on a competitive cooking show like Top Chef or Iron Chef America, and you will see there are common expectations even in the midst of the dizzying variety. And of course, the bottom line that is always present no matter what--the food should taste good!

Now, switch from the culinary arts to considering the visual arts--particularly contemporary art. All of a sudden, what we find obvious and natural and take for granted in the realm of food--that we can use common standards in judging widely varying food dishes in comparison to each other and that we may rank them in levels of excellence in respect of each other--we seem to completely forget and ignore when it comes to contemporary visual art. (Or, more accurately, this applies to "professional" art critics and other regular figures of the contemporary art world). Why do we do this?

If anything, it seems to me, judging food is even more subjective than is the endeavor of comparing visual artworks. And yet, the gurus of the contemporary art world try to insist there is really no common standard of artistic excellence. Art, so this view goes, should be whatever the artist wants it to be. Each artist's production is like it's own independent cultural world, sealed off from the rest of reality, especially from the rest of the art world--especially that art which hails from the past.

I find this strange and even somewhat inhuman. We should approach visual art more like we approach the creations of great chefs. Yes, there is tremendous variety and uniqueness present among the works of different artists. But, this does not thereby render us unable to compare them to each other in the order of artistic excellence. There are natural, commonly apprehensible (even if difficult to articulate in words) standards which we can and should use to judge works of visual art. Visual art, though endlessly divergent and diverse, can be called better or worse; some works of art are of greater overall cultural value than others. And similarly, as with food, while there is a component of individual taste there are still commonly understandable standards even in the midst of vast variation.

I think most ordinary citizens realize this, even if they don't normally think about it in a particular way.

And so, this is how foodie shows--especially competition shows with judge's panels--manifest the universality of our human striving toward a commonly recognizable perfection through the activity of creating art. And because such shows indicate an implicit acceptance of a shared understanding of perfectibility toward which artistic creativity strives, they also, I would suggest, constitute a rebuke to the strange avoidance of standards in the assessment of contemporary visual art. Perhaps if you watch Top Chef, you might become better (more comfortable?) at evaluating other types of art, being more rooted in the naturalness of applying universal standards to a variety of artistic outputs.

Catholic Teaching on Concupiscence: Further Information in Consideration of TOB, part 3

Following is my third comment on Dawn's blog (May 25, 2009).

Catholic Teaching on Concupiscence: Further Information in Consideration of TOB, part 2

Following is my second comment on Dawn's blog (May 25, 2009).

Catholic Teaching on Concupiscence: Further Information in Consideration of TOB, part 1

This post, and the several that will follow this one, are intended as an expansion and further fleshing out of the topic of my original June, 2009, post, "Concupiscence, Catholic Teaching on."

This topic continues to be very relevant especially given the ongoing discussion in various internet quarters, sometimes testy, about Christopher West and the popular presentation of John Paul II's Theology of the Body.

In my above 2009 post, I linked to several comments I had made a few days earlier in discussion threads on Dawn Eden's blog, The Dawn Patrol. I would like to pull out those comments from the depths of the thread netherworld and reproduce them here in the hope that they might be helpful for this ongoing and important discussion. My primary aim is to help illuminate a bit more deeply the important background that is necessary to have understood before a person has a chance at carrying on a fruitful discussion about popular presentations of TOB. This background is the Catholic tradition's teaching about the interior tendency to commit sin (called concupiscence).

Following is my first comment on Dawn's blog (May 25, 2009).

Going Home: The House That Built Us Helps Point Us Back to Our Eternal Builder

Here is a beautiful country song, "The House That Built Me." [HT: Jill Stanek] It's sung by Miranda Lambert. I hadn't heard of her (I don't follow country music, though I do like it), but it seems she is a rising star in the country music world since she just won some big awards at the recent CMA awards show, including Female Vocalist of the Year. Take a listen. As you do, ask yourself, what is implied in a desire to learn something about myself through making physical contact with meaningful places from my childhood?



I'll bet this song strikes a chord with many people because it touches one of those fundamental themes that seems to be common to all people--a yearning to go home. In this song, it's a desire to make a visit to the house of one's childhood in order to kindle and relive cherished memories from the past. And, I think, also to gain a deeper insight into the person you have become as an adult. Sort of an imaginary look back at the child you once were from the perspective of adulthood, precipitated by a physical place that has a special meaning to your youthful self.

There is something mysteriously attractive about returning to special childhood places after you have grown beyond childhood. It's part, perhaps, of our continuing search to seek to know ourselves more truly, to answer that question, "Who am I?" The physical places where we lived and underwent our most formative experiences as a child seem to hold some essential piece to the puzzle of our true identity. And, there is probably no physical place more important in this regard than our childhood home.

I also tend to link this to the religious impulse that God has placed within us. By nature, we have a hidden, secret yearning to go home--to a home that is our true home, that place of genuine peace and belonging and deep, unquenchable joy. We want to find this place. And we seem to have a desire to connect this true home that we seek to that childhood place from which we came. Somehow, we sense that they are--or at least, should be--related.

Plato recognized that every human being who examines himself interiorly with some degree of seriousness discovers that he has certain longings and mysterious traces of understanding within his soul that could be interpreted as dim vestiges of a life before birth, barely discernible in the hidden and deepest depths of the soul. It's a kind of home, out of which one was taken, to be born into this world.

Now, as Christians, we realize that this is not true--we do not preexist the moment of our conception in our mother's womb. But, there is a trace here of something that is true. We come from God--we are loved by God into existence. And He knew us before we existed. We have a "home" from which we came that lovingly wove into our being a certain directedness to go back, to make a return to that place from which we came. We have a kind of spiritual homing beacon, pointing us back to God. And even though we may not realize it, when we seek to understand ourselves better by revisiting a cherished childhood home, we are also at the same time expressing in a mysterious way our desire to see more clearly where it is that we are headed toward--to gain some insight into that more perfect home toward which we want to go.

And although we can overdo this, it is true that the path into our future can be made a little bit more clear and understandable by going back to our past. And because we are bodily as well as spiritual creatures, this self-discovery-through-childhood-home-visiting necessarily has a physical aspect to it. As we touch and look upon a place which because of our personal past is special to our heart, without consciously trying, perhaps without even realizing this, we are also seeking to make our vision into our personal future a little more known to ourselves.

I listen to this song and watch this video, and to me, it's as though this song were saying on behalf of human society, "Oh house that built me, home of my past, tell me, to where am I going? What does my past life in your surroundings tell me about the as yet now-unseen place in which my heart desires to finally be?"