Friday night saw the “wrap” of the Agents of SHIELD lost-in-the-future saga. It will probably go down as one of the best arcs of the show’s run. Now we’ve got a month to wait before the second half of the season airs. Here’s the promo for the return, which looks to be a little bumpy (and with no acknowledgment of what ails Coulson).
This last part of the second season of The Good Place has seen the “existential quartet” confront “the Judge” to plead their case as changed people. Last week we say each member face a challenge, a test, to see how much they had actually changed. Here’s Tahani’s test:
The season finale aired Thursday night, and I just got the chance to catch it. Perhaps the only thing more surprising that the way the first season ended is the finale of the second. It took things in what is probably the most obvious direction . . . which I didn’t see coming at all. And all while using the language of ethics. And it also folded back into something from the middle of the first season, which was pretty cool.
We’ve probably got a good while to wait for the third season. Which is fine as long as they concoct a season as wonderfully enriching and twisted as this one.
One of the things that we talk about in our classroom discussions about ethics is the category of ethics known as “descriptive ethics.” It really is as simple as the term itself: descriptive ethics is concerned with communicating what is seen concerning a particular group of people or a particular topic. It’s also the one question on the test that everyone should get correct.
A great example of descriptive ethics dropped this last week. The Barna Group (along with Impact 360) released a sleek and sobering look at today’s teenagers: Gen Z- The Culture, Beliefs, and Motivations Shaping the Next Generation. One of the odd dynamics of the last few years (at least from my vantage point) has been the shift in cultural discussions to young adults (and away from youth). As a teacher, I often have to take things written concerning college students and extrapolate down to high schoolers. So it’s refreshing to find something that deals with this particular moment in the life of teenagers. As such, it’s kind of brought back a strand of joy and challenge that I haven’t experienced in a few years, this idea of a report like this and the conversations that it can open up.
The question, of course, becomes “how do we effectively and purposefully pursue those questions?” particularly if they are questions that many of us have forgotten how to ask.
One of the most interesting trends in the book, but the way, is to see some of the ideological shifts that have taken place between millennials and “generation z” kids. Granted, and Barna points this out, these Gen-Z kids are still being formed, so things are still up for grabs. But while you can’t quite say that Gen-Z is more conservative, they are a little different, a little more open-minded in a healthy way.
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Two other quick observations/thoughts:
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One last thing of note from the book’s beginning. Without going full “Benedict Option,” the president of Barna, David Kinnaman, notes an ideological shift from “Jerusalem to Babylon” in terms of culture and the role Christianity plays in it. Instead of “faith at the center,” we now see “faith at the margins.” A “simple life” has been replaced with a kind of “bitter/sweet tension.” And while the idol in “Jerusalem” was “false piety,” the idol of this new “Babylon” is “fitting in and not missing out.” And so the question stands: “Are we making disciples for Jerusalem when we need to be making disciples for Babylon?”
(image from barna.com)
From a recent homily concerning Thomas Aquinas, given by Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau, OP, someone I follow on Twitter.
The monk lives close to God through the ora—the prayer—of his life, which takes its preeminent form in the liturgy. The monk lives close to the things of God through the labora—the work—of his life, which is intellectual and not only physical. The monk interrogates the soil as his tills it. Through study and observation, the monk inquires about the causes and ends of the things before him. He poses the question “What?” to them. “What is this?” It’s a holy question. With it the monk probes the things that God has made, coaxing them to reveal their hidden, divinely given essences. This interrogation of things perfects the monk’s prayer, for through his questions the monk discovers the divine ideas inscribed in things, and thereby he absorbs the wisdom of the one who made them all. Besides being a holy question, “What?” is also a very practical one. Its monastic use has given the world many gifts: early medicine, Belgian beer, and the wines of Burgundy, as well as Gothic architecture, the scholastic method, and the science of genetics. Of course, monks aren’t the only ones to ask the question “What?” But given the graces of their vocation, monks are often good teachers of how to ask the question rightly.
The Good Place on NBC has always been an amazing little show. Now that the main characters have taken leave of the “Good Place,” things have gotten even weirder . . . and better . . . and more ethically challenging. Here’s a clip from this week’s episode, where the Ethics Quartet makes their way to the Judge, only to find a . . . burrito?
Not sure how I missed this one, but here’s a couple-of-years-old clip of Andrew Peterson, new album almost finished now, singing a classic Don Henley song (with bgvs from some other amazing artists).
(hat tip to the artist and Twitter)
Sometimes I think going to a “Skywalker Saga” Star Wars movie for the John Williams soundtrack alone is perfectly fine. The director of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Rian Johnson, recently posted a clip of Williams directing one of the most famous snippets from the original soundtrack.
I was recently inspired to re-read The Moviegoer by Walker Percy. I read it soon after moving to Hawaii, and I’m enjoying it quite a bit (as I seem to have forgotten quite a bit). Here’s one of my favorite quotes from Binx so far.
What is the nature of the search? you ask.
Really it is very simple, at least for a fellow like me, so simple that it is easily overlooked.
The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. This morning, for example, I felt as if I had come to myself on a strange island. And what does such a castaway do? Why, he pokes around the neighborhood and he doesn’t miss a trick.
To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
This poem by Wendell Berry showed up in my Twitter feed yesterday. I quite like it, particularly as a distillation of Berry’s thought and practice.
(hat tip to Nick Ripatrazone)
Earlier in the week I posted a short piece about what I did this past Saturday, when the “ballistic missile alert” text was sent and then, many minutes later, rescinded. These last couple of days has allowed me to catch up with students and co-workers. There are so many different responses to such an interesting and sobering moment!
Michael Brendan Dougherty of the National Review posted a great reflection on the moment from the lens of recent history. The whole thing is worth reading, but here’s a great quote:
The U.S. post–Cold War holiday from history was destined to end. And it should frighten every sensible person to consider that so many of the events that could have precipitated nuclear conflict during the Cold War were halted by men who personally remembered the last round of great-power conflict, and that all those men are now dead. They’ve been replaced by others whose experience of foreign policy could never be so educative. Similarly, in the Korean peninsula, the men who remember the awful horrors of that war are dying.
In many ways, the modern world is younger, dumber, and more innocent about these things than our grandparents were. We discovered that on Saturday in Hawaii. And now is the time to think it through. If you ever received such a text warning, would you fill your bathtub with water, or with your family members? How many of us turn to resources for advice — YouTube, text — that won’t be available in the event of real disruption?
You can read the whole thing here.
Space Enough, and Time 