Any hope that America would finally grow up vanished with the rise of fundamentalist Christianity. Fundamentalism, with its born-a...gain regression, its pink-and-gold concept of heaven, its literal-mindedness, its rambunctious good cheer ... its anti-intellectualism ... its puerile hymns ... and its faith-healing ... are made to order for King Kid America.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Life is a businesse, not good cheer; Ever in warres.... The sunne still shineth there or here, Whereas the starres Watch an advantage to appeare.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We need to distinguish between nostalgia and the reassuring memory of happy times, which serves to link the present to the past an...d to provide a sense of continuity. The emotional appeal of happy memories does not depend on disparagement of the present, the hallmark of the nostalgic attitude. Nostalgia appeals to the feeling that the past offered delights no longer obtainable. Nostalgic representations of the past evoke a time irretrievably lost and for that reason timeless and unchanging. Strictly speaking, nostalgia does not entail the exercise of memory at all, since the past it idealizes stands outside time, frozen in unchanging perfection. Memory too may idealize the past, but not in order to condemn the present. It draws hope and comfort from the past in order to enrich the present and to face what comes with good cheer.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is no great religious leader--from the Buddha to Moses to Jesus to Mohammed to Luther--who offered people what they want. On...ly what they need. But television is not well-suited to offering people what they need. It is "user friendly." It is too easy to turn off. It is at its most alluring when it speaks the language of dynamic visual imagery. It does not accommodate complex language or stringent demands. As a consequence, what is preached on television is not anything like the Sermon on the Mount. Religious programs are filled with good cheer. They celebrate affluence. Their featured players become celebrities. Though their messages are trivial, the shows have high ratings, or rather, because their messages are trivial, the shows have high ratings.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible, it is not su...rprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My idea of good company ... is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I c...all good company.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
While criticism or fear of punishment may restrain us from doing wrong, it does not make us wish to do right. Disregarding this si...mple fact is the great error into which parents and educators fall when they rely on these negative means of correction. The only effective discipline is self-discipline, motivated by the inner desire to act meritoriously in order to do well in one's own eyes, according to one's own values, so that one may feel good about oneself may "have a good conscience."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »