Sunday, September 30, 2012

Flannery and Teilhard …

… The Claremont Institute - Contrivance: A Theory of Everything, Signifying Nothing. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

That something is very wrong with this notion of convergence in even its highest and most elevated formulation is supported by its most eloquent critique, in "Everything That Rises Must Converge," a simple and profound short story by Flannery O'Connor. In it a mother and son travel on a city bus in the newly integrated South. The mother clings to the old ways and is clearly wrong in doing so, but, in practice, she is kind and good. The son is the apostle of progress and justice, but in practice he is smug and cruel. He represents pride in achievement, faith in emerging perfection, reason, justice, the linear concept of history. She — humility, tradition, conservation, circularity, continuity, mercy, and forgiveness.

1 comment:

  1. Here is the Flannery O'Connor story:
    http://www.thomasaquinas.edu/pdfs/alumni/everything-that-rises.pdf

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