Truth versus Wisdom

The war between the tendency towards search for truth versus that towards search for wisdom. The Pre-Socratics searching for truth, and then Socrates coming along and searching for wisdom through searching for truth. Plato and Aristotle searching for truth, and then the Post-Aristotelians searching for wisdom. The Medieval Philosophers searching for truth, and Montaigne searching for wisdom. There seems to come into being: first, a sense of mystery (Hesiod and those previous to him), and then a rationalization of that into boredom. The mysteries seems to force itself upon the attention of philosophers after it has been rationalized away.

Television as a new religion

Television was promoted in order to fill the place vacated by Christianity. TV promotes the same values as Christianity. More importantly, they both prevent the possibility of communal ideas and feelings taking hold. (As Gabriel Marcel may put it, they prevent the mass from becoming a universal.) During the declining years of the Roman Empire, among the confusion of tongues and religions in the empire, the possibility arose that the various communities would begin to see their salvation in the universal. Hence mass salvation was imposed on them.

Mother Teresa's real mission

The "Sisters of Mercy" somehow always go to places where organized resistance to capitalist compression is forming -- by the very poorest.