Human Beings and Human Persons

The reason it is wrong to kill philosophy professors in their sleep is the same reason it is wrong to destroy embryos and fetuses: Moral people do not kill innocent human beings. Not all persons are human beings, of course, and it may possibly be the case that not all human beings are persons. But all human beings—whether persons or non-persons—are equally human; this is not a mere tautology, but a scientifically verifiable fact.

Advocates for embryo and fetal destruction should therefore stop playing semantic games and admit that they believe it is acceptable to kill some human beings because human beings do not have, per se, intrinsic worth.

Joe Carter, First Things, “Being a Person”

“The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden.”

The many great gardens of the world, of literature and poetry, of painting and music, of religion and architecture, all make the point as clear as possible: The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden. If you don’t want paradise, you are not human; and if you are not human, you don’t have a soul.

Thomas More

“The whole purpose of democracy”

The whole purpose of democracy, after all, is to force our opinions on each other through argument, persuasion, voting and majority rule. Democracy is the peaceful way of getting our way even if others don’t like it.

The catch, of course, is those “others” always have equal access to that democratic privilege. It means we end up endlessly awash in debating bombast but that is preferable to an endless series of detonating bomb blasts.

The absence of violence is precisely what makes it “fair” to expect citizens to pay taxes for the things they find disagreeable. Our power to peacefully change things in a democracy requires we surrender to paying for things we don’t like as we’re waiting our turn.

Peter Stockland, “The wondrous window of a newspaper letters section”

Discovering the World

Nobody can discover the world for somebody else. Only when we discover it for ourselves does it become common ground and a common bond and we cease to be alone.

Wendell Berry

“The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

It may be that when we no longer know which way to go that we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.

Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry on the End of Education

The complexity of our present trouble suggests as never before that we need to change our present concept of education. Education is not properly an industry, and its proper use is not to serve industries, either by job-training or by industry-subsidized research. It’s proper use is to enable citizens to live lives that are economically, politically, socially, and culturally responsible. This cannot be done by gathering or “accessing” what we now call “information” – which is to say facts without context and therefore without priority. A proper education enables young people to put their lives in order, which means knowing what things are more important than other things; it means putting first things first.

Wendell Berry

The Modern Dogma

The modern dogma is comfort at any cost.

Aldo Leopold

Forgetting

Civilization has so cluttered this elemental man-earth relationship with gadgets and middlemen that awareness of it is growing dim. We fancy that industry supports us, forgetting what supports industry.

Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

Wilderness

Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.

Edward Abbey

Orson Welles on Art

If you try to probe, I’ll lie to you. Seventy-five percent of what I say in interviews is false. I’m like a hen protecting her eggs. I cannot talk. I must protect my work. Introspection is bad for me. I’m a medium, not an orator. Like certain oriental and Christian mystics, I think the “self” is a kind of enemy. My work is what enables me to come out of myself. I like what I do, not what I am … Do you know the best service anyone could render to art? Destroy all biographies. Only art can explain the life of a man — and not the contrary.

Orson Welles

H/T to Till We Find Our Original Face.