How Hegel’s concept of a universal mind, a spiritual evolutionary process, gave us postmodernism, deconstructionism, and political correctness.

Over time, Hegel’s pantheism was secularized and his Absolute Spirit was reduced to a metaphor — the spirit of the age, the Zeitgeist. (In German, Zeit means time or age; Geist means spirit.) What remained, however, was the idea that individuals are “unconscious tools” of the Zeitgeist. They are not producers of culture so much as products of a particular culture. Individuals are shaped by the communities they belong to, each with its own shared perspective, values, habits, language, and forms of life.

In our own day, this has led to the extreme conclusion that everyone’s ideas are merely social constructions stitched together by cultural forces. Individuals are little more than mouthpieces for communities based on race, class, gender, ethnicity, and sexual identity.

This comes from Nancy Pearcey’s Finding Truth: Five Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes.

Seven essential lessons from Thomas Oden, an evangelical scholar in a secular academy:

1. Contemporary scholarly methods do not always lead one to truth.
2. Many of the questions raised by modern scholars have been addressed (long) before in the history of Christianity.
3. The quest for originality and newness can be a dangerous one.
4. Scholarly views can have serious social consequences.
5. The modern scholarly community is not tolerant like people think.
6. A faithful voice can have a significant impact.
7. Modern Ideologies will eventually collapse under their own weight.

Jackie Robinson said, “Virtually every time the black stands up like a man to make a protest or tell a truth as he sees it…” Read the full quote through the link. I share this because I believe it, and as a white man, I don’t feel entirely free to share thoughts like this. The politics on this issue are too ugly and complicated to hold my confidence. I suppose this is fertile ground for humility.

MORE: Piper writes from his own experience on reasons white people don’t like to talk about race. One reason is some people’s habit of hamstringing the conversation by trying to kill honest words.

“Whiplash” — teaching success the old fashioned way, through humiliation, with hurling cymbals.

How to remember everything with or without a mind palace.

Yeats steered Ireland away from science, beginning in 1889: “There are two boats going to sea. In which shall we sail? There is the little boat of science. Every century a new little boat of science starts and is shipwrecked; and yet again another puts forth, gaily laughing at its predecessors. Then there is the great galleon of tradition, and on board it travel the great poets and dreamers of the past.”