Dear Mat,
One of my favourite formulations of literature — as opposed to myth — is Kenneth Burke’s claim that it is equipment for living. Literature provides us with new perspectives and unusual ideas, it gives us discussions of moral quandaries, it brings new people into our lives, it defamiliarises the familiar and pushes the limits of language and thinking.
I agree with your four categories for why a work might have currency, but I want to focus on the second: survival value. Are literary works also equipment for survival? Perhaps not. For that, maybe consult a dating guide, a medical textbook, or a flyer from the sperm bank. I suggest that living isn’t surviving. Not anymore anyway. Continue reading #53 On equipment for living →
Dear Mat,
Thinking The Bible perfectly good or perfectly bad is wrong. Reading my criticism of it as saying it is perfectly wrong is, ironically, the same kind of wrong. Here’s my imperfect heuristic: what was written by a bunch of uneducated dudes who were trying to lay claim to the ultimate truth, between 1900 and 2900 years ago, is probably quite wrong. And where it happens to be right, we will have better equivalents now anyway. So we can safely junk it.
Were I to apply this only to holy texts, you could accuse me of being ideologically anti-religious. But of course I apply this to all texts pre-1500. Doesn’t matter if it’s Socrates, Seneca or Saint Paul, they don’t know shit from Shinola about a lot of things. Continue reading #49 On irony →
Dear Jamie,
Thank you for your answers, but I think I disagree with almost everything you said. Let’s begin. Continue reading #40 On integrity →
Dear Mat,
I fear this is boiling down to an ancient disagreement over how much we should care about something, rather than whether we should care about it. You agree that women are treated unfairly, but say the problem will never be solved perfectly, or even satisfactorily. So… should we not even try to solve it somewhat satisfactorily? Continue reading #39 On moral luck →
Dear Mat,
There’s a bet involved here. For me the odds are very bad that any serious change will improve the system. For me. I flourish in a liberal democracy where I can lampoon the government, assert my rights, fight businesses on social media, act like an ass in my private life and never get ostracised or imprisoned.
But if you’re marginalised within a democratic system obviously the gamble might look more attractive. Continue reading #31 On tyranny →
The blog of Jamie Freestone and Mathew McGann