A Fury Inflamed

"All healthy men, ancient and modern, Western and Eastern, hold that there is in sex a fury that we cannot afford to inflame; and that a certain mystery must attach to the instinct if it is to continue delicate and sane."
G. K. Chesterton (1834-1936)

That Reverent Embrace

From an interview with Camille Paglia, one of the few outspoken atheists who refuses to dismiss the role of religion:

"A responsible atheist needs to be informed about religion in order to reject it. But the shallow, smirky atheism that’s au courant is simply strengthening the power of the Right. Secular humanism is spiritually hollow right now because art is so weak. If you don’t have art as a replacement for the Bible, then you’ve got nothing that is culturally sustaining. If all you have is “Mad Men” and the Jon Stewart “Daily Show,” then religion is going to win, because people need something as a framework to understand life. Every great religion contains enormous truths about the universe. That’s why my ’60s generation followed the Beat movement toward Zen Buddhism and then opened up that avenue to Hinduism — which is why the Beatles went to India with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Then it all disappeared, when people became disillusioned with gurus. But spiritual quest was one of the great themes of the ’60s that has been lost and forgotten — that reverent embrace of all the world religions. This is why our art has become so narrow and empty. People in the humanities have sunk into this shallow, snobby, liberal style of stereotyping religious believers as ignorant and medieval, which is total nonsense. And meanwhile, the entire professional class in Manhattan and Los Angeles is doping themselves on meds and trying to survive in their manic, anxiety-filled world. And what are they producing that is of the slightest interest? Nothing. Nothing is being produced in movies or the fine arts today (except in architecture) that is not derivative of something else."

Now even Buddhists are to blame

COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh (Reuters) - Hundreds of Muslims in Bangladesh burned at least four Buddhist temples and 15 homes of Buddhists on Sunday after complaining that a Buddhist man had insulted Islam, police and residents said.

(Buddhists make up less than 1 percent of Muslim-majority Bangladesh’s 150 million people.)

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Politics

Ages of Man According to Martin

"Your youth evaporates in your early 40s when you look in the mirror. And then it becomes a full-time job pretending you're not going to die. Then in your 50s everything is very thin.  And then suddenly you've got this huge new territory inside you, which is the past, which wasn't there before.  A new source of strength. Then that may not be so gratifying to you as the 60s begin, but then I find that in your 60s, everything begins to look sort of slightly magical again. And it's imbued with a kind of leave-taking resonance, that it's not going to be around very long, this world, so it begins to look poignant and fascinating."
--Martin Amis