This Week in Our Dumb World
Integrity and the Future of the Church
I thoroughly enjoyed his essay wondering how the American church can find it’s better self and his real concern about what will happen if it doesn’t. Not on a grand political scale, but on a deeply human level.
I’m not optimistic about the project, but I appreciate anyone struggling against the tide to make the world a better more just place. I can scarcely imagine a stronger tide than this one.
It’s not difficult to see why. Twenty years ago I watched people suggesting that it was liberal Baptist theology that allowed many to wave away a president’s sexual behavior as irrelevant to his office. Then I lived long enough to watch the same people suggest that those who did not wave away such behavior from another president might not be “real Christians.” People can change their minds, of course. But – as with the prophecy charts a generation ago – there is no talk of minds changing, just certainties in one direction and then certainties in the opposite. The only difference is the tribal affiliation of the leaders under discussion.
Trends toward secularization mean that people do not need the church in order to see themselves as Americans or as good people or even as “spiritual.” And they certainly do not need the church in order to carry out their political affiliations – even when those political affiliations are those preferred by the church. If evangelicalism is politics, people can get their politics somewhere else – and fight and fornicate and get drunk too, if they want. A religion that calls people away from Western modernity will have to say, with credibility, “Take up your cross and follow me,” not “Come with us, and we’ll own the libs.” You can do that on YouTube and not even give up a Sunday morning.
The Broken World Of Online Fandom
I try to choose joy.
This is my sports mantra as I have just finished the worst sports decade of my life by a considerable margin. It’s not just an impression, it’s a statistical fact! I have never before gone a decade without seeing one of my teams win a title. Sometimes, I even saw them win multiple titles. And that's with being a Lions fan so I’m starting from behind already!
It’s been awful. Like.. comedically awful. If I had to a pick a “best” moment from the last ten years it’s either my soccer team winning a second tier trophy (I love the FA Cup, but we can be honest here among friends. It’s weak methadone) or seeing Michigan basketball lose in the final. Those are the good times!
It has been a bit of trial for someone who absolutely loves sports. Other hobbies don’t do this to you. If I were super into woodworking, all my tools wouldn’t catastrophically break every year. My tools wouldn’t lose to Ohio State every year. But every year, my sports breaks and takes me with it. I have seen dark times.
But what finally got me through it was the active choice to enjoy the things I used to enjoy. I accept that it won’t have a good ending because I am personally cursed by a djinn or perhaps a trickster god, but that’s no reason not to enjoy the games. I choose joy because the alternative is what happens in this essay.
I can’t stand half of sports twitter now because it’s just poisonous people spewing anger and rage in every direction. I have spent time in that black hole of hate and rage and it’s absolutely not worth it. This is doubly true because, as the essay points out, most of this just a rage outlet. The world is full of angry people and they point that anger in every direction. It’s a very bad sign the way this anger has entered into every conversation on every topic from almost every perspective.
So, I choose joy.
Until the Ohio State game. Then all bets are off.
There’s a gross sense of entitlement pulsing through all this: That as fans we somehow deserve new players and success. The implication being that fans of the clubs we buy the players from and defeat along the way don’t deserve nice things as much.
Again, there’s a capitalist critique to be made here. A mindset exists that demands a football club exist only to win and to consume. The players are commodities and the esteem they are held in must equate to how useful they are to the machine. Once a player ceases to be useful, whether through loss of form or injury, they become of less worth than the dopamine hit of a new transfer. Karl Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism—relationships between people being seen as relationships between things—helps us understand this perception.
I’m actually reminded of Gamergate. Football, like videogames, is mainstream culture, but buried in its darkest depts are very angry young men. They are prone to spreading conspiracy theories—journalists who don’t think like them are said to be accepting money from the club; the accounts showing we’ve the second highest payroll in the league are deemed to be cooked. There’s also a vile misogynistic element directed at Linda Pizzuti Henry, FSG shareholder and wife of the company’s principle owner, John W. Henry. Everyone operates anonymously.
It’s a very fatalistic way of viewing football, right? Being interested in Liverpool enough to dedicate your social media presence to the club, yet not being able to find any joy in it. What a cold existence. If social media can be called an artificial world then their fandom feels artificial, their experience completely detached from the club itself. It’s cold and sterile and none of the club’s most attractive elements—such as history, tradition, and the city itself—are celebrated. It was an emotional time when we won the league. When I look at LFC Twitter, I don’t always see the emotion. These fans might present online as fans, but it’s a poor impression.
An Oral History Of Mosh Pits
I have been in two mosh pits in my life.
I was going to continue that story, but I have to interrupt to say that the above sentence makes me look and feel several thousand years old. “I remember in my day when the kids would go a moshing and oh that punching. Good times.”
Anyways.
Both of them were absolutely joyous celebrations of energy and movement and violence.
Also I got punched several times.
Oh, god. My kids are going to have stories like these.
Also, please read this history with helpful examples of the dance precursors to moshing.
“Did you get stabbed with a screwdriver?” he asked me.
My biggest fear was that my parents would find out what happened because I didn’t want them to ban me from shows. I came up with this elaborate story that I was stage diving and I landed on the shoulder of this punk guy who had spikes on his jacket. I went with that story and my parents still don’t know I got into a fight at that show and got hit with brass knuckles.
Another time, a fight broke out and a friend, who meant to hit someone else, accidentally hit me on the top of the head with a bike lock and it split my head open. I figured, “Shit, this is the final straw. If I come home with another head injury my parents will say it’s too unsafe for me to keep going to shows.”
So I borrowed my friend’s insurance card and ID and said I was him. I paid for the hospital bill with cash and had the bill sent to my friend’s house. I never told my parents about that, either.
Editing Sweet Child O’ Mine
In the interest of full disclosure, I periodically share my comments in here about touchy subjects (or deeply personal ones) with friends who provide feedback and notes so that I don’t miss the mark. This is about all the editing I can take and I dread every minute of it.
Also, old Guns and Roses rips and you should revisit it.
(I considered putting a recent photo of Guns and Roses in the caption but it made me so very sad.)
“Where everything was as fresh as a bright blue sky”—I asked around the office and no one is sure a blue sky is “fresh.” You could have a blue sky at the end of a long, sweaty day and there would be nothing fresh about it. And she reminds you of a time when things were fresh? Fond reminiscences of freshness are no foundation for love. Fix.
“Now and then when I see her face it takes me away to that special place”—Again, you’re weakening your own argument. Why does the sight of her face transport you only periodically? And is it just her smile or her entire face that does this to you? Because you’ve already said both. Consistency, Axl!
Vittoria Alliata di Villafranca
As a teenager, she produced the first translation of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings into Italian. She later wrested control of the family's 100-room summer palace from Opus Dei and the Mafia, and had it renovated.