A novel… a raft of hope, perception, and entertainment that might help us keep afloat as we try to negotiate the snags and whirlpools that mark our nation’s vacillating course toward and away from the democratic ideal. – Ralph Ellison, introduction to 1981 edition of The Invisible Man (1952).
“Words on Paper” is a metaphor for a response to the drawbacks of the Postmodern Era and the digital age. It looks forward to a restoration of values such as truth, trust, credibility, faith, and hope, yet seasoned with honest questions and skepticism, or a sort of informed or wise naiveté – the so-called Metamodern Era. Post topics include philosophy, faith, history, and current events. Of course, you are reading this on a screen, which symbolizes the synthesis of the Postmodern and Metamodern Eras, appreciating the best of both, words printed on paper or on a screen. I hope you enjoy reading these! If you have any questions or comments, please respond. Thanks! – Forrest
Religious warfare – King Cyrus? Or, the Golden Calf, perhaps?
A 15-foot-tall balloon set up last fall by Faithful America didn’t stay up very long.
In simpler times, faith meant believing in the spiritual, without science or solid physical reality, old church relics notwithstanding. For most people in pre-modern times, the spiritual world was reality. And for centuries, the spiritual prevailed in the body of the church, which held great power over the state.
Historically, it wasn’t that simple. I spent many taxing hours in history classes learning about ancient and European history, the latter from the rise of Christianity in the Fifth Century, through the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century.
Throughout that Millennium, the church wielded tremendous power over the state; it almost was the state. We learned about religious wars, inquisitions, pogroms. Horrible stuff. I recall the feeling of revulsion seeing torture devices from the Spanish Inquisition in a museum in Ronda, a small, scenic village in southern Spain.
All of that history lays part of the groundwork for the origins of our nation, the United States of America. The Pilgrims first arrived seeking religious freedom. The First Amendment of the Constitution says: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The “wall of separation” idea came later, in 1803 from Thomas Jefferson.
All of that worked fairly well until several decades ago. The Moral Majority and religious extremism gained political power resulting in what we have today, an amoral, irreligious president seeking his own power, abetted by movements such as the New Apostolic Revolution and Christian Nationalism.
The Baptist News reports, “In 2015, one of the apostles, Lance Wallnau, had a vision: ‘The Lord took me to Isaiah 45’,” Wallnau claimed. “He said, ‘The next president will be the 45th president. I want an Isaiah 45 Cyrus.’ (Checking the Baptist News website, it seems to be relatively credible and progressive.)
The report continues: “In the Hebrew Scriptures, Cyrus is not a believer in Yahweh but is used by God to free the Jewish people, who were exiled in Babylon. So, Wallnau figured, even though Trump may not be a believer, he could be used by God to free conservative Christians, who were exiled in the U.S. due to the liberal Democrats.”
If the so-called modern-day apostles want to make that analogy, others offer another one. Among the various protests last fall around the U.S. Capitol, Faithful America, a Christian social justice group, set up a 15-foot-tall balloon resembling Trump as the Golden Calf. In Old Testament history, around 1300 BCE, when the Israelites became impatient waiting for Moses to descend from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments, they forged and began to worship a golden calf. Idol worship, then and now.
In the ebb and flow of such things, while we seem to be at the peak of the flow, we can only strive and hope to dial it back. What’s happening among the Christian nationalists isn’t about true, sincere, religious faith. It is about wealth and power. Or, glory and power, as in the title of the book by Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory. I have read and highly recommend it.
The book “explores how evangelical Christians have pursued and often abused political power, highlighting the disconnect between their actions and biblical teachings. Alberta critiques the political hijacking of Christianity, the idolization of America, and the conflation of patriotism with religious zeal.”
Another book, which I am currently reading, helps Christians understand how we got here, and what we can do about it. The Exvangelicals – Loving, living, and leaving the White Evangelical Church, by Sarah McCammon, combines “memoir and investigative journalism… delves into the broader exvangelical movement, exploring its origins and the cultural, social, and political ramifications of this generational shift.”
Exvangelicals, people raised in a conservative, evangelical religious environment, have departed, not from their faith, but from that particular religious movement. Oh great, another paradox: Having faith while being highly skeptical of charismatic events, speaking in tongues, and modern day “prophets.”
This synthesis of faith and questioning falls within another paradigm that I have addressed elsewhere: Metamodernism. It “uses postmodern tools like cynicism to deconstruct and question the world—but it also points to the possibility of connection and meaning, leading toward something akin to hope.” – “Reading for the Love of the World”, Sara Kyoungah White, Christianity Today, Dec. 22, 2023.
Recently I watched a video entitled “What is metamodern Christianity,” hosted by Greg Dember and Linda Ceriello. They also host a website, “What is Metamodern.” The video featured an interview with two academics in the field of religious music, Joshua Busman and Maren Haynes Marchesini. They acknowledge the concerns about evangelical Christian nationalism. They see salvation narratives that are spiritual but not “religious.”
They mentioned the parable of the wheat and chaff. God winnows the grain, keeping the wheat (saints) and seeing the chaff (sinners) blow away. That is how the Christian nationalists seem to view it. You are one or the other. In the Metamodern mindset, that is not how God sees it. His world includes everyone; everyone is preserved in the winnowing. We lose chaff and come out better for it.
The topic for this post was inspired in part by a recent sermon at our church. In his sermons the pastor is conscientious about the separation of church and state thing; however, if you read between the lines, you detect some messages that could relate to the current political conflict. After Moses and the prophets, the Israelites desired a king. Samuel anointed Saul, then David followed by his son, Solomon. Overall, it did not work out well. Over 400 years most of them were bad kings, with much warfare, and far from Jesus’ message, love your enemies and those who persecute you.
One service included the singing of what has become one of my favorite Gospel songs. “Canticle of the Turning,” written in 1990 by Rory Cooney, uses words from “The Magnificat” (song of Mary) and melody from the Irish folk song “Star of the County Down.” It talks about patience waiting for God, God’s mercy, and dethroning tyrants.
The chorus goes: “My heart shall sing of the day you bring/Let the fires of your justice burn/Wipe away all tears for the dawn draws near/And the world is about to turn!” It has my vote for an official anthem or hymn of an ascending Metamodern Era where we can have faith, questioning, hope, realism, and truth. And not idol worship.
The Fourth Estate – News media can’t plead the Fifth about their role in politics
Photo: Display at Willmar MN Public Library about media and information literacy
Prior to Jan. 20, my daily routine included television newscasts, morning and evening. As a former journalist I enjoyed keeping up with the news. At breakfast the TV in our kitchen aired local and national news programs.
Since then, the TV now is often tuned to a program called “Create” on our local public television station, or “This Old House.” We still follow the news, reading it from credible online news sources. We subscribe to online versions of our local newspaper and the New York Times. (Our subscription to the Minnesota [formerly Minneapolis] Star Tribune has lapsed; so far I have failed to navigate the online renewal process.)
The change in news habits reflects comments we’ve heard from others. “I just can’t watch the news anymore.” The key word is watch. Reading the news usually has less emotional impact. And you can be more selective about what you read. You have more control and are better able to ascertain credibility.
If following the news is sometimes painful for readers, how must it be for journalists trying to cover the insanity emanating from the White House? Almost every day there is an outrage. I am thankful that I am no longer a daily newspaper editor who must decide the day’s news coverage, at least from the position of “objectivity.” Reporting both sides of the story is nearly impossible when the sides are not even in the same universe.
If you recall the term “Fourth Estate,” it once referred to the print news media. It is attributed to Edmund Burke about opening British parliamentary debate to the press in 1771. It acknowledged the power of the press alongside the first three “estates,” nobility, clergy, and commoners. The Irish-Anglo philosopher and statesman is said to be the founder of modern conservatism, which may be a bit ironic if you believe the news media are too liberal.
When I was a newspaper editor in the old days, we made a sincere attempt to seek balance in opinions expressed on the editorial page. Balance not among letters to the editor, but in the syndicated columns we offered. I sometimes cringed when I laid out the editorial page including columns by Cal Thomas.
In his Feb. 26 column, Cal Thomas blames FDR and the Democrats if our nation is heading for a constitutional crisis (which I believe possible). He quotes Thomas Jefferson (a slave owner) saying that all government should be tightly reined so that everyone has a chance to gather as much wealth as they can.
Thomas has made millions over the years saying essentially the same thing, bashing liberals and Democrats for whatever they happen to be doing at the time, with no supporting evidence, and then spewing the usual conservative line about small government and the right of people, the super-rich in particular, to do whatever they want.
In reality, the public looks to the government to provide the services that the private sector can’t or won’t provide. That explains the growth over the years of federal agencies, from health care, to the environment, fair trade, consumer protection, education, defense, pensions (Social Security), food security, and numerous others.
It is our God-given responsibility to take care of our neighbors in need. And why they are, in most cases, is not their fault. If you think that they are at fault, please read The Other America by Michael Harrington. Societies that care for the needy are the strongest and most prosperous overall.
Today, too many of the working and middle class have been brainwashed into believing that this social investment is some type of government overreach, when it actually exists to help and protect them from greedy billionaires. Much of this regulation grew out of the so-called Gilded Age when the super-rich did as they pleased and exploited the working class.
Political support for the role of government in actually nurturing the ideals in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution came from the Fourth Estate, a free and independent news media. It still exists, although much less powerful than before (see the post Gutenberg to Zuckerberg, Feb. 5).
Somewhere in the 1990s the term “Fifth Estate” arose. Online pundits, bloggers, and I would add, Fox, began to erode the power of the Fourth Estate, and its economic base, advertising. Has the Fourth Estate news media’s tenacious watchdog role being converted to lapdog? I hope not. I’m guessing that this will be addressed in a book that I am waiting to check out from the library.
At the town hall meeting reported in last week’s post, the man who organized it encouraged everyone to read How Democracies Die. One of my favorite news magazines, The Economist, says: “The most important book of the Trump era was not Bob Woodward’s Fear or Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury or any of the other bestselling exposes of the White House circus. Arguably it was a wonkish tome by two Harvard political scientists, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, published a year into Donald Trump’s presidency.”
Since we already mentioned Fox I will add another book to the reading list, which I have read and highly recommend, Hoax, by Brian Stelter. It describes how Fox News, created by Roger Ailes in 1996, evolved from a news program to ‘state-supported TV’. Fox, particularly its talk show hosts, is a prime cause of the crisis we face today.
But there’s always hope.
My research into the Fourth Estate revealed two student newspapers by that name, Laguna Blanca High School in Santa Barbara, CA, and at George Mason University in Fairfax County, VA. Young children today and students will be the ones most affected, and in the greatest position to do something, about the political challenges we face today.
May they take up the banner (headline), which someday soon we hope to read, as it did in the May 6, 1945, New York Times, THE WAR … IS ENDED. And the good guys won.
Prairie fire – Opposition taking root in grassroots democracy
Like the Norman Rockwell painting “Freedom of Speech”, a handful of citizens stood up to speak an informal town hall meeting March 3 in a small town on the Midwestern prairie. They expressed their thoughts and feelings about our federal government, which many believe is now facing an existential crisis.
In a flame of grassroots democracy, their words expressed hope to burn away divisive conflict and restore unity. “Confrontation gets us nowhere,” one man said. “What we need right now is communication. Maybe some are beginning to feel a little buyer’s remorse. Listen to them.”
Out on the fields surrounding the small town, where much of the great Midwestern prairie has been ripped open by tillage for crops, occasional spring fires blaze through remaining areas of dry grass. In nature, such fires are beneficial. They burn off dry grass and weeds, clearing the way for new growth nurtured by rich soil, spring rains, and the ashes of the previous growth.
Prairie fire can also be a metaphor for political movements. A 1955 book, Prairie Fire, by Robert Morlan, describes a protest movement in the 1930s among farmers in North Dakota calling for fair market treatment and public ownership of vital farm services. The movement spread to other states and created power for farmers seeking fair prices and protection from unfair foreclosure practices.
Nearly a century later, we may be seeing another prairie fire that could scorch the earth under the autocrats and oligarchs striving to gut democracy and entrench a dictator.
About 75 people responded to the call of one man to gather at the local community center. He paid for the room reservation, opened the meeting, introduced his thoughts, and then left. With no formal program or agenda to guide them, about a dozen people from the audience in turn stepped up to the microphone.
Before he left, the organizer shared his thoughts. He mentioned World War II and fighting an external foe. “Now we are fighting an internal foe.”
The internet has been a primary tool of those sowing discord seeking to subvert democracy. The organizer envisioned ‘a nation-wide, diffuse yet organized network of like-minded entities… to stick out their necks, to join under one banner, and stick to the one goal’.
“There is a vast, well-organized and managed operation confronting (Trump) and his brash, selfish personality, for their own ultra-right reasons… dump the fallacy of Trump under the banner of ‘The Freedom Movement’.” He listed ideas for a grassroots strategy.
“We are in a desperate situation! We must build a network now! Trump recently fired the entire military JAG Corp (Judge Advocates General). Once Trump has control of the military, he will use this power to quash anything he deems to be in opposition.”
On that note, Rita stepped up to the microphone and described existing efforts such as the 50501 Movement and Indivisible. “We are people who are concerned about what is happening in Washington DC. We’re hoping to keep like-minded people together.”
I sat next to a woman who had been a candidate for the area’s state legislative district. As a former employee of Natural Resources Conservation Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, she understands the potential impact of Trump’s actions affecting farmers, and federal employees.
“A majority of farmers voted for Trump because of the ‘tough guy’ image,” she said. Farmers will be hurt by tariffs and face labor shortages because so many farm workers are immigrants, mostly Latino, but a growing number of East Africans work in processing plants.
One man recommended reading Strongmen – Mussolini to the Present, by Ruth Ben-Ghiat. In the introduction she writes: “Such rulers have exploited their country’s resources to satisfy their greed and obstructed efforts to combat climate change. Their dependence on corruption and censorship and their neglect of the public good mean that they handle international crises badly and often bring ruin upon their people. How to combat this authoritarian presence is one of the most pressing matters of our time.”
One woman expressed what many people are feeling. “It’s nice to see others who feel the same way. I’m so angry, I’m so hurt. How can anyone believe Donald Trump? We have MAGA folks in our families.”
“We need to act quickly,” said one man. “There’s not much left for checks and balances.” Referring to Republican senators who have expressed concerns, he said “at least some of them are aware of their place in history.”
Many of those attending the town hall meeting gathered the following day for a protest rally outside the office of Rep. Michelle Fischbach, who holds the congressional district seat, but does not represent all of its constituents.
On a cold, blustery afternoon March 4 (March Forth!), with wet snowflakes stinging their faces about 300 solid citizens lined the main thoroughfare in Willmar, MN, wielding signs protesting the forces seeking to destroy our democracy. They burned with a passion that, if becomes contagious, could stand up against the spineless leaders who stand aside as DOGE demolishes our great civic institutions (Department Of Greed and Evil).
The last time I recall marching in a political rally, we were protesting the Vietnam War. I’m sure back then that many of the older generation were fearful and opposed such civil unrest. But at least they were not facing what some now fear may be the end of democracy in the U.S.
Let’s keep the fires burning!
Photos: Left: Town hall meeting March 3. Right: Norman Rockwell painting, “Freedom of Speech.”
Why write fiction?
Writing with a purpose: Self fulfillment for the greater good
‘Why do you like to write?’ A simple question that you sometimes hear at book events with authors, it can be challenging to offer a good answer. Many things motivate people to attempt writing fiction.
At a very basic level, everyone needs creative outlets. Creating gives meaning to life. Daily life is full of creation, from the mundane to the magnificent. From brushing your teeth in the morning (creating clean teeth), to baking cookies, to daubing paint to wet plaster on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Somewhere in that range you will find literary fiction. As C.S. Lewis wrote is his book Letters to an American Lady, “you can make anything by writing.”
If trying to write fiction is ‘something you’ve always wanted to do’, it deserves a deeper look. My earliest inclinations lurked just beneath my youthful consciousness in high school. I had thought about working on the high school newspaper. Lacking confidence and intimidated by the English teacher adviser, the effort remained dormant until I joined a college newspaper. That led to journalism school and newspaper jobs. Gaining writing skills from that, in my mid-50s I finally started work on my first novel.
For shy introverts, writing can be a suitable creative outlet. That, coupled with a noble wish to ‘make the world a better place’ by providing people with useful and interesting information about the ‘human condition’, provides some explanation about my involvement.
Or, writing with a purpose. Two purposes, actually: Self-fulfillment for the greater good. Psychologists say that writing is excellent therapy. Writing random and sometimes troublesome thoughts puts them into perspective and provides catharsis. It is very beneficial for mental health. Everyone experiences personal trials and troubles. For writers, as Philip Roth reportedly said, “Nothing bad happens to writers; everything is material.”
With a story’s theme underlying, I still begin each writing session wondering what will happen in the story today. About books, I like this quote attributed to Plato: “Books give a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything.”
I have expressed my purpose by saying that my goals for writing fiction are to: Entertain, inform, and (possibly) inspire. This could be influenced by a career in journalism and public information. Truth, facts, reality, and accuracy matter.
The great paradox of literary fiction is that it uses made-up stuff to tell the truth. Yet, for me facts still are important. I have sometimes described my books as ‘faction’. I do (minimal) research to inform readers about settings, actions, and attributes of characters. I also seek to have positive themes and ‘socially-redeeming’ value in my books. I have even described them as long parables. This places my work in the ‘metamodern’ paradigm (more on that in another column; look it up).
I intended the purpose or underlying theme of my first novel to portray compassion for people who are suffering. In this story, a bunch of junior high (middle school) kids befriend and help an old homeless man, a veteran suffering from PTSD and alcohol abuse. He ends up at the state hospital, and the kids help him escape.
Research combined with your own experience (write what you know) provides a balanced approach for the greater good. Readers are drawn to the personal experience and perspective of the author, and benefit from interesting and useful information. The author benefits from having a creative outlet in the process of communication, reaching out, and self-fulfillment. Everybody wins! (That is, if you don’t take commercial success into account. For me, that remains a distant hope!)
God created the universe, and the process of creation continues through his creation, us, and all other organisms in the universe (see Alfred North Whitehead’s process theology; reference in column number two, Literature expresses and influences society). Whether God creates directly is beyond our understanding. I believe that God does continue to take an active role.
To conclude with a quote: “One of our principal sources of understanding what it means to be human is given us through the great literature of the world….” the essence of literature is to portray human beings in the human condition – writing with a purpose – Quantum Leap-How John Polkinghorne found God in science and religion.
Words and images: From cave paintings, to print, to television, to YouTube
The recent restoration of a magnificent, turn-of-the-century mansion in south Minneapolis included a feature unknown 125 years ago: In almost every room, a large screen TV hung from the wall. Today, these life-sized images invade most homes with an almost endless variety of programming. Yet, many people continue to read books and magazines, whether on a screen or real paper.
If I had to choose one or the other, I would choose printed words instead of images. That bias was reflected in a discussion moment many years ago in a journalism class. On the subject of television news I remarked that compared with print newspapers, books, and magazines, that TV news was primarily entertainment. The gasps of surprise and derision from the aspiring broadcast journalism students in the class caught me off guard. We held our ground as the professor sought some détente.
My defense of reading as a superior form of transmitting information and knowledge comes from my academic learning. A distinction between reading and viewing may be that one is ‘high’ involvement and the other ‘low’ involvement. When your brain is processing (decoding) squiggles on paper forming letters and words, it requires greater involvement to translate them into meaning, or high involvement.
Seeing images or listening to a TV news reader requires less mental energy, as long as you can understand the language, thus, low involvement. You don’t have to really concentrate your brain on understanding a TV news cast. Also, there is much less content. The word counts are far lower compared with a typical print story.
According to research at a university in Australia, “comprehension tends to be less effective when reading on screens than on paper, particularly with texts that require a deeper understanding or when reading under time pressure.” (Search: Dynamic reading in a digital age: New insights on cognition). Another source of my reading bias could stem from not having a TV at home until I was 11-years-old.
If the stand-off favors print for storing and transmitting large amounts of information, there is more to communication than just facts. In face-to-face interaction it has been said that as much as 70 percent is non-verbal. Perhaps the on-air performance of a TV newscaster or announcer contributes to your understanding of the message. There is emotion and connection with another human being. Movies, television dramas, or YouTube videos appeal to emotions. And emotions often have the greatest influence on human behavior.
That’s not to say that printed words can’t elicit emotion. A sensitive subject artfully portrayed in words can do that very well, whether fiction or non-fiction. In a Harvard Business Review article, Christine Seifert states: “Reading fiction predicts increased social acuity and a sharper ability to comprehend other people’s motivations.” And “Reading literary fiction enhances the brain’s ability to keep an open mind while processing information.”
Another aspect of the images-words question arises when you consider history. According to scholars, language and cave paintings go back 100,000 years or more. Imagine looking at a cave painting created by some early human. You are interacting, trying to interpret their thoughts and feelings through images and not words. Sumerians are credited with creating writing more than 3,000 years BCE, or about 5,000 years ago.
This may be a bit of a stretch, but could we say that in today’s digital world have we come full circle? A hundred thousand or more years ago, humans interacted with some form of language face-to-face, leaving cave paintings expressing facts and emotions. Along with more advanced language came math and science – more objective and cerebral up through the mid-20th century, with a primary reliance on the written word. Then came the digital world, with unlimited, virtual, often face-to-face interpersonal communication.
If we can rein in the dark side of the digital world, maybe we can have the best of both. Instant, efficient transmission of information, including emotions, yet retain the printed word with its far greater capacity for facts and detail necessary for meaningful and in depth communication.
While I find my Kindle reader convenient to use, and appreciate watching some television-movie-YouTube content, I still prefer holding a book or magazine. Artful graphics and typography, turning back and forth among pages, looking away from time to time ruminating on a passage. The lack of immediate emotional appeal of the visual is equaled if not surpassed by understanding that as you are reading, your brain is connecting to that of the author at the time it was being written. That certainly qualifies as high involvement.
Photo: Paintings in Lascaux caves in southwestern France.
Note: This content was created by a human being with a soul. No use of artificial intelligence other than occasional questions to Alexa or Google-Meta about specific facts.
Column topics: 1. Words on Paper overview. 2. Literature expresses and influences society, the Great Conversation. 3. The Human Condition. 4. Story-telling: Power of the Narrative; Information is Power. 5. Aristotle and Plato: Cave to the Light. 6. Religious literature: Vedas, Bible, Quran. 7. What is Art?: Visual, drama, literary. 8. Important books that shaped and reflected America. 9. Authors, who are they? eg. Ellison, Carson. 10. Same old same old: Persistent topics. 11. Challenging challenging books, banned books. 12. Gutenberg to Zuckerberg: Digital world pros and cons. 13. Old world mass media (Newspapers, magazines, broadcast). 14. Benefits of reading vs. viewing: High and low involvement. 15. Why write fiction? Writing with a purpose. 16. Literary fiction, genres, aboutness. 17. Writing process, story structure, In the Beginning. 18. Resources, opportunities. 19. My journey as an author. 20. My novels. (As the need arises, columns on other topics may be interspersed among these.)