| Topic: |
Sociology > Education |
| User: |
". T James" |
| Date: |
27 Dec 2005 06:18:37 PM |
| Object: |
How One Poet Discovered the Good Life |
Breakpoint Commentaries
A Christian perspective on today's news and culture
http://www.breakpoint.org
‘A New Knowledge of Reality’
How One Poet Discovered the Good Life
By Chuck Colson
December 27, 2005
In a way, you might say Wallace Stevens had the best of both
worlds. He was a successful insurance executive--but best known
as one of the greatest American poets of the twentieth century.
Yet Stevens found neither of those worlds truly satisfying, as I
explain in my new book, The Good Life.
As a poet, Wallace Stevens was part of the modernist movement.
Modernists attempted to create artistic works that did not imitate
real life, but were worlds unto themselves. It was their way of
imposing meaning on what they saw as a random, meaningless
world. Modernism relied on materialism--the assumption that the
universe is a closed system, and that the things we can perceive
through our senses are the only things that exist.
But there was a problem, the major conflict between this philosophy
and the work that took up most of Stevens’s time. In the poetry he
composed while walking to the office, he expressed the view that the
only order in life came from the human mind. Human life was a random,
unpredictable thing shaped by our perceptions. But upon reaching the
office, he helped administer an insurance company that ran on actuarial
data that assumed human behavior is highly predictable--a sure sign
of a reality that we all share, not one that we make up.
It doesn’t get much more ironic than that.
Stevens’s double life shows just how powerful intellectual fashions can be.
The truth can be staring us right in the face, but with our ideological
blinders on, we don’t even see it.
Stevens, however, gradually did begin to see it. Lonely in an emotionally
distant marriage, isolated from most of his family, he started to recognize
the importance of human relationships. As he worked on his relationship
with his daughter, and forged new ones with other family members, he
found more satisfaction in their shared bonds than he ever had in trying
to create a reality for himself. Stevens came to realize that it was shared
humanity, the real world, that truly mattered.
This shift in worldview can be seen in Stevens’s poetry. He had grown so
dissatisfied with his own views that he went through a seven-year period
of writing almost no poetry at all. Then later, he wrote poems that displayed
a new awareness of the world around him. They point to a greater imagination
than his own at work in the world. One of those poems is titled, "Not Ideas
about the Thing but the Thing Itself." The narrator hears a bird’s cry and realizes
that it came, not from his own imagination, but from outside himself. He says
the cry "was like/ A new knowledge of reality."
This new awareness finally led Wallace Stevens to the ultimate
relationship--a relationship with God. Shortly before he died, this man,
who had used his considerable gifts to oppose traditional faith, was baptized
and received into the Catholic Church.
Wallace Stevens’s work is still being held out on campuses today
as a supreme example of anti-Christian modernist art. But the real
story, largely untold, is that Stevens found his own worldview to be
unlivable--and that only the Christian worldview could be true.
This commentary first aired on July 21, 2005.
--
..
"The Purpose and Limits of Government,"
by Roger Pilon, 1999 (PDF, screen optimized, 256 kb)
http://www.cato.org/pubs/catosletters/cl-13.pdf
(Hardcopy $1.00, call 800-767-1241)
.
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| User: "Frank Arthur" |
|
| Title: Re: How One Poet Discovered the Good Life |
27 Dec 2005 06:50:52 PM |
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Millions of children exploited and discriminated against, U.N. says
Dec 14, 2005, 17:21 GMT
New York - Society has let hundreds of millions of children fall between the
cracks, who are trapped and ignored after they have been traded and abused
or discriminated against, the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) said in an
annual study Wednesday.
'The State of the World Children 2006: Excluded and Invisible' said that
those children are growing up outside the reach of development projects,
public debate and legislation.
'At the extremes, children can become invisible, in effect disappearing from
view within their families, communities and societies, and to governments,
donors, civil society, the media, private sector and even other children,'
the study said.
The children hardest to reach include those living in poorest countries and
most deprived communities, facing discrimination on the basis of gender and
ethnicity. Others are caught up in armed conflict, the sex trade or affected
by HIV/AIDS.
'There cannot be lasting progress if we continue to overlook the children
most in need - the poorest and most vulnerable, the exploited and the
abused,' said UNICEF director Ann M. Veneman.
The U.N. has made assistance to children around the world one of its major
programmes, including providing primary education to all children by 2015.
The study said four circumstances are most likely to make children become
'invisible and forgotten'.
- Children without formal identity. At least 50 million children in
developing countries, half of global annual births, each year go
unregistered and therefore do not appear in any official statistics. Without
a birth certificate, they are not guaranteed an education, good healthcare
and basic health services.
- Children without parental care. They are orphans, street children and
those in detention centers who receive no loving care and protection of
parents. There are an estimated 143 million children who have lost at least
one parent. Tens of millions of children spend a large part of their lives
on the streets and more than 1 million live in detention, with the majority
awaiting trial for minor offences.
- Children in adult roles. Children who are forced into adult roles too
early miss childhood stages. They are especially drafted into armed
conflict, used as porters, cooks, sex slaves for soldiers. An estimated 80
million girls around the world are forced into marriage before 18. Some 171
million children work in hazardous conditions in industries, mines and
agriculture.
- Children who are exploited. An estimated 8.4 million children work in the
sex industry, many of them to pay off debt. A vast number are exploited as
domestic servants in private homes, prevented to attend school, underfed and
overworked.
UNICEF called for more research, monitoring and reporting on the nature and
extent of abuses of children, for national legislation to protect and
prosecute those who harm children and for the strengthening of government
institutions that serve children.
<. (T James)> wrote in message news:43b1d9dd_3@newspeer2.tds.net...
Breakpoint Commentaries
A Christian perspective on today's news and culture
http://www.breakpoint.org
'A New Knowledge of Reality'
How One Poet Discovered the Good Life
By Chuck Colson
December 27, 2005
In a way, you might say Wallace Stevens had the best of both
worlds. He was a successful insurance executive--but best known
as one of the greatest American poets of the twentieth century.
Yet Stevens found neither of those worlds truly satisfying, as I
explain in my new book, The Good Life.
As a poet, Wallace Stevens was part of the modernist movement.
Modernists attempted to create artistic works that did not imitate
real life, but were worlds unto themselves. It was their way of
imposing meaning on what they saw as a random, meaningless
world. Modernism relied on materialism--the assumption that the
universe is a closed system, and that the things we can perceive
through our senses are the only things that exist.
But there was a problem, the major conflict between this philosophy
and the work that took up most of Stevens's time. In the poetry he
composed while walking to the office, he expressed the view that the
only order in life came from the human mind. Human life was a random,
unpredictable thing shaped by our perceptions. But upon reaching the
office, he helped administer an insurance company that ran on actuarial
data that assumed human behavior is highly predictable--a sure sign
of a reality that we all share, not one that we make up.
It doesn't get much more ironic than that.
Stevens's double life shows just how powerful intellectual fashions can
be.
The truth can be staring us right in the face, but with our ideological
blinders on, we don't even see it.
Stevens, however, gradually did begin to see it. Lonely in an emotionally
distant marriage, isolated from most of his family, he started to
recognize
the importance of human relationships. As he worked on his relationship
with his daughter, and forged new ones with other family members, he
found more satisfaction in their shared bonds than he ever had in trying
to create a reality for himself. Stevens came to realize that it was
shared
humanity, the real world, that truly mattered.
This shift in worldview can be seen in Stevens's poetry. He had grown so
dissatisfied with his own views that he went through a seven-year period
of writing almost no poetry at all. Then later, he wrote poems that
displayed
a new awareness of the world around him. They point to a greater
imagination
than his own at work in the world. One of those poems is titled, "Not
Ideas
about the Thing but the Thing Itself." The narrator hears a bird's cry and
realizes
that it came, not from his own imagination, but from outside himself. He
says
the cry "was like/ A new knowledge of reality."
This new awareness finally led Wallace Stevens to the ultimate
relationship--a relationship with God. Shortly before he died, this man,
who had used his considerable gifts to oppose traditional faith, was
baptized
and received into the Catholic Church.
Wallace Stevens's work is still being held out on campuses today
as a supreme example of anti-Christian modernist art. But the real
story, largely untold, is that Stevens found his own worldview to be
unlivable--and that only the Christian worldview could be true.
This commentary first aired on July 21, 2005.
--
.
"The Purpose and Limits of Government,"
by Roger Pilon, 1999 (PDF, screen optimized, 256 kb)
http://www.cato.org/pubs/catosletters/cl-13.pdf
(Hardcopy $1.00, call 800-767-1241)
.
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