orthogeeks

From St. Katherine’s College Forum: ‘Civilizing the Heart: C.S. Lewis on Education‘ is well worth listening to. It should come as no surprise that we’re down with the idea here, that the actions that people repeat form their deeply felt affections towards various things. Indeed, also that the things we experience become impressed upon our souls. For many of us, video games, popular music, science fiction and fantasy literature, movies and T.V. shows and Anime form a great deal of that ‘inform-ation’ (in the sense Aristotle punned it) – and the times we re-read, hit the repeat button, pressed rewind, or started up that favorite game again? They trained the dispositions of our hearts, certainly. Not always for the better, perhaps, but if one wants to know what people actually feel about the world, these are the places one must start.

As an aside, This is another reason to be cautious for what you watch, read or play both in terms of quality and content; this formation does not cease but continues in us as long as we live (at least on this side of the grave, to my knowledge). To this end, we hope that this discussion here will aid in that process. We are not children here, so I think Father Chris will agree that we’re not here to instruct so much as to inform and discuss, to give opinions based on our beliefs and experiences, and to see what others convictions are and why they hold them.

Along with this Lewis argues for a ‘proper affection towards’ something, which is a way of defining an objective morality. The speaker talks not so much of ‘a one particular proper way’ to feel or think about something, but rather ways which are ‘right’ and other ways which are ‘wrong’. As a programmer, I’m much familiar with the ‘many wrongs, many rights’ approach.

Thoughts? Ideas?

I know I usually don’t write about this sort of thing, but really, happy name day, Mom! May we all be preserved by the prayers of St. Tabitha.

Thanks for the many years of prayer and nagging!

To clear up an apparently possible confusion; In his last post Garth is not in any way referring to current events (except for the recurring event of Halloween).

Egypt is being used metaphorically here, similar to the Rastafarian (or Orthodox or Muslim) references to “Babylon”. Egypt is where we were imprisoned.

Now that we are free, we are not to forget everything we were when we were in Egypt, but to “plunder”. What is plundered? Riches; that which is valuable: all else is left behind.  That is sort of the deal with Orthogeeks, and our approach to pop-culture.

As to Halloween specifically, I remain conflicted.  It seems to me as I look around that in purely popular terms it has changed, from being a chance for kids to eat way too much candy, to being a chance for adults to lose their freakin’ minds, in some form or other.  So it’s coming back around, at least in the manner in which it is celebrated, to being a purely pagan holiday.  I mean, dressing up as something else and engaging in various debaucheries?  What could be more pagan than that?  The spirit of this is the Party, the whole Party, and nothing but the Party.

If we’re concerned about how to deal with Halloween, I say treat it as a learning opportunity.  It’s a great time to talk about paganism, human sacrifice, harvest festivals, etc.  To touch on Garth’s point, it’s a great time to start showing how such holidays as Samhain were reclaimed by the Truth.  To teach how the power of the demons is vain and futile.  To show (with examples if possible) how the beauty there was in the ancient pagan world is pointing to and is fulfilled in Christ.

And there was great beauty in that world.  It is with us still.  And the beauty that exists in the modern pagan (it might be called “secular”) world can also be reclaimed.  But it must be beautiful.  I see very little beauty in modern Halloween celebrations.  I see a lot of kitsch, and a lot of obnoxious childish nonsense.  Sometimes that can be fun, but the way it’s celebrated in America by adults has the sweaty tang of desperation.

Here’s a fun exercise: work out what you’ll spend on Halloween this year, and give it to your church, or a local charity.  See what kind of return that gets you, spiritually; will it be the vague emptiness that comes after a night of trying to forget you’re mortal?

Or will it be the cool breeze of a spring day that you somehow catch as the weather turns cold?

The sharp sea-air of Truth will smack you in the face and make you go, “Oh, yeah! That’s what it means to truly Live! To give of myself to others.”

Anyways.

Check out Hallowe’en: An Orthodox approach. While this is not entirely geek related (though it certainly is Orthodoxy related!) it kind of relates to our general approach to cultural ephemera. On a similar vein, at OCF we recently talked about the Orthodox approach to culture (especially as it is aimed towards evangelism) which is one of analysis and ‘reclaiming’. Instead of reacting against the negative elements, you sideline them and isolate the positive elements. Granted, Orthodox have not had much involvement in the ‘culture war’ and if anything our representation during the era of ‘the Moral Majority’ was certainly sparse. This is another way to say that a key point is not take a side in the culture war while at the same time not acquiescing to unacceptable things. To take one side or another draws you into what can only be called at this point a State of Reaction, made most visible in the actions of the Tea Party and the Wall Street Occupiers.

In my view, and I suppose Fr. Chris may back me up on this, the Christian’s role is not to seal themselves in a scripture-cell (though if you’re a monk a cellular existence is viable) but to ‘plunder Egypt’ as our Father among the Saints Gregory of Nyssa put it. The reclaiming of positive elements is much like the reclaiming of persons through baptism; in essence the whole person comes through unharmed, but all that is evil must pass away from them.

And in this, even the bad examples (and isn’t all literature rife with them) serve a purpose.

Thoughts on this concept?

Andy sent me this article:

The Fraying of a Nation’s Decency

An excerpt that sums it up:

Far beyond official Washington, we would seem to be witnessing a fraying of the bonds of empathy, decency, common purpose. It is becoming a country in which people more than disagree. They fail to see each other. They think in types about others, and assume the worst of types not their own.

Firstly, I think the article is not very good. I think it is well written, but it reads like a slot machine that keeps ‘near missing’ on the third seven; it goes just past the mark.

The problem, dear writer, has nothing to do with stereotypes. Stereotypes involve an immediate, intuitive assessment of someone based on predetermined categories. Even our wisdom writers have this to say:

30 A man’s attire(clothing), and excessive laughter, and gait, shew(show) what he is.

(Sirach, 19)
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My Reaction Face Contains a Hidden Meaning

Inevitably, when one is in the capacity to voice an opinion, one will be asked ‘by what right’ they offer their opinion. Certainly everyone is entitled to their opinion, and on the internet, often simply the ability to express one’s self in words (in some fashion) is sufficient.

A friend of mine recently asked me this, regarding our site here. what lends credibility to our opinion here? Since anyone can publish on the internet who has five dollars a month to burn and a credit card, what’s so special about my opinion? What’s special about Fr. Chris and myself that one would want to read our work?

Now, first of all, I have to say that this is not a question a person can really answer. As even our Lord said, ‘If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true.’ (John 5) — and the context here is the same, being asked by what authority he says the things he does. He does not seek to justify himself but points to the witness of the Forerunner, John. I don’t know for certain of an outside witness I could point to – except maybe to ask various people I’ve written to on the internet over the years, if I can be trusted to voice a knowledgeable, thoughtful opinion.

The answer we’re hoping for, however, is at least for me to describe my credentials – things which other people already ‘bore witness’ to, as it were.

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One of the advantages for being an independent creator is being able to troll your fans. Another one? Being able to backtroll them:

This requires a happy batman to properly express the jubilation:

Behold, and tremble!

Granted, kind of the opposite approach to here, where we are Christians using a kind of traditional format to talk about mostly non-Christian-specific material, nonetheless, that place could use some more Orthodox voices!

Hat tip to Andy.

I mean, ones that sell old fashioned, out and out, gossip?

Unfortunately, yep:

‘My Brief OkCupid Affair With a World Champion Magic: The Gathering Player’ (Don’t worry, nothing more than sad silliness on display here.)

I guess it is time to steer clear of there. When I saw them connected with Gawker a few years back, I was a bit wary.

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We’re going to give this a good talking down soon enough, but Fr. Chris sent us all an interesting article that I’d like to begin talking about.

When we first thought up Orthogeeks, I had in mind to speak or write about a series of gaming topics in spiritual context – not necessarily as an exercise in ‘applied spirituality’ or ‘praxis’, (which is to say, how you live your day to day life as a Christian) but as re-conceptualizations. My first topic was ‘Plane’ (wandering) and ‘Topos’ (place) in Video Games. Needless to say, my initial essay did not go over well, probably too erudite or verbose or just plain weird. In any case, I was discussing the idea of Freedom against these two ideas (plane and topos) in the context of a particular game, American McGee’s Alice. Now that I think of it, it was a tad bit ambitious, and I think there may be far too much to talk about in the subject to merely be one essay, much less one that talks about a particular game which was notorious for not offering a lot of non-linearity!

The article is here and I’ve asked him to also write a little bit on the topic too before we begin speaking about it.
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