As shown by this real product, it’s never too early to get “plugged in.”

For a mere $120.00, you too can buy an ipod for your fetus. Sigh.

“Good human work honors God’s work. Good work uses no thing without respect, both for what it is in itself and for its origin. It uses neither tool nor material that it does not respect and that it does not love. It honors nature as a great mystery and power, as an indispensable teacher, and as the inescapable judge of all work of human hands. It does not dissociate life and work, or pleasure and work, or love and work, or usefulness and beauty. To work without pleasure or affections, to make a product that is not both useful and beautiful, is to dishonor God, nature, the thing that is made, and whomever it is made for.”

-Wendell Berry from “Christianity and the Survival of Creation”

“But there are an enormous number of people — and I am one of them — whose native religion is Christianity. We were born to it; we began to learn it before we became conscious; it is, whatever we think of it, and intimate belonging of our being; it informs our consciousness, our language, our dreams. We can turn away from it or against it, but that will only bind us tightly to a reduced version of it. A better possibility is that this, our native religion, should survive and renew itself so that it may become as largely and truly instructive as we need it to be. On such a survival and renewal of the Christian religion may depend the survival of the Creation that is its subject.”

- Wendell Berry from “Christianity and the Survival of Creation”

Lately, I’ve been reading an essay by Wendell Berry called “Sex, Economy, Freedom, Community.” Written in 1993, it’s no less relevant today than it was nearly twenty years ago. In the essay, there are a number of things that have caught my attention. And while I have spent the last five days trying to come up with some brilliant way to respond, it’s just not happening. That said, Berry proposes two different ideas that have really got me thinking.

Totalitarian Economies

The first is a small phrase where he talks about the power of “totalitarian economics.” In an era of “too big to fail” and massive bailouts of massive corporations, one must question whether our society (and our politics) is now ruled by a totalitarian economy. If we take the definition of totalitarian as power that “recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible” then I would argue that our national/global economy often exercises totalitarian demands.  And, if we agree that this is to some degree true, than we must confront the differences between the totalitarianism of one man or one political party, and the totalitarianism of  our daily bread…

The Third Interest

The second thought that has been intriguing me is this: Berry argues that in all modern discourse, there is usually talk only about the “private” and the “public.” When the Patriot Act passed, for instance, the debate centered over public safety and private freedoms. When a state chooses to bulldoze a neighborhood to put in a freeway, the debate centers over private property and the public good. Berry argues that there is a third concern that almost never makes it into public discourse: the needs, rights, and freedoms of the community. Let me give you an excerpt:

“‘Public’ and ‘community’ then, are different — perhaps radically different — concepts that under certain circumstances are compatible but that, in the present economic and technological monoculture, tend to be at odds. A community, when it is alive and well, is centered on the household — the family place and economy — and the household is centered on marriage. A public, when it is working in the best way — that is, as a political body intent on justice — is centered on the individual. Community and public alike, then, are founded on respect — the one on respect for the family, the other on respect for the individual. Both forms of respect are deeply traditional, and they are not fundamentally incompatible. But they are different, and that difference, once it is instituted in general assumptions, can be the source of much damage and much danger.”

More to come…

While I don’t want to go all nerdy, I thought this blog might be a good place to occasionally address issues in tech and web development, especially if it relates to the larger world. As many of you know, I design and develop websites in my spare time. With this in mind, I’ve linked to a .pdf I’ve created that outlines how to drive more internet traffic to your site by leveraging social media. If you do maintain your own site, you might want to check this out.