Comments on: To despair or not to despair? https://thenewneo.com/2020/06/26/to-despair-or-not-to-despair/ A blog about political change, among other things Mon, 29 Jun 2020 23:24:31 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0 By: RigelDog https://thenewneo.com/2020/06/26/to-despair-or-not-to-despair/#comment-2503096 Mon, 29 Jun 2020 23:24:31 +0000 https://www.thenewneo.com/?p=97581#comment-2503096 Neo said, re Hindu deity’s message: “Fear not; all is well despite whatever you may temporarily see that tells you otherwise.”

I’m trying to remind myself of that. }}}

Me too. I try to remember the words of Julian of Norwich, who received a similar message from a mystical Christian experience: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

]]> By: ymarsakar https://thenewneo.com/2020/06/26/to-despair-or-not-to-despair/#comment-2503079 Mon, 29 Jun 2020 22:02:48 +0000 https://www.thenewneo.com/?p=97581#comment-2503079 I really would like to spoil star wars and star trek, but I won’t.

Let’s just say it is truth as fiction or fact as fiction.

]]> By: om https://thenewneo.com/2020/06/26/to-despair-or-not-to-despair/#comment-2503078 Mon, 29 Jun 2020 21:55:09 +0000 https://www.thenewneo.com/?p=97581#comment-2503078 Yammer gets a wedgie.

]]> By: ymarsakar https://thenewneo.com/2020/06/26/to-despair-or-not-to-despair/#comment-2503075 Mon, 29 Jun 2020 21:44:37 +0000 https://www.thenewneo.com/?p=97581#comment-2503075 Hhaha, despair? Yall don’t know the meaning quite yet. Wait until later in 2020.

Those of you that survive to 2021, will see the Golden Age dawn. Those of you that don’t make… you’ll be seeing me for a debrief after your life or someone equivalent.

]]> By: Bryan Lovely https://thenewneo.com/2020/06/26/to-despair-or-not-to-despair/#comment-2503018 Mon, 29 Jun 2020 07:15:31 +0000 https://www.thenewneo.com/?p=97581#comment-2503018 SF fan here, too, and I’m only 55!

I started out on SF in 4th grade. In junior high and high school and college I read every SF novel, short story anthology, or magazine I could get my hands on. As a military history nerd I gravitated to military SF, and read all of David Drake and Niven & Pournelle by the time I was 30.

Unfortunately, after that my tolerance threshold for hackery went way down, so I’ve only found a few authors I can stand (Jim Butcher, Charles Stross, John Ringo, and David Weber among them), and the SJW takeover has killed most of the interest I have left.

]]> By: Richard Saunders https://thenewneo.com/2020/06/26/to-despair-or-not-to-despair/#comment-2502965 Sun, 28 Jun 2020 08:10:52 +0000 https://www.thenewneo.com/?p=97581#comment-2502965 For optomistic SF, try John Ringo’s Live Free or Die series.

]]> By: Brian Morgan https://thenewneo.com/2020/06/26/to-despair-or-not-to-despair/#comment-2502963 Sun, 28 Jun 2020 05:33:15 +0000 https://www.thenewneo.com/?p=97581#comment-2502963 Mac, just saw your comment now. Thanks, an interesting concept of politics as a replacement for religion on the left. That then makes their religion on par with…well I won’t mention which but I think you know what I mean.

One of the wonderful things about cutting the cord with social media and television is all the extra time I have for Astronomy. I just spent the last 17 hours coding my brains out. Let me see, I’m now up to having one blog, three websites with tools for astrophotographers and photometrists. I’m active on a forum to help guys starting out in this hobby. All of this came about in the last few years since I decoupled.

Maybe I would feel differently about social media if I had kids. My wife loves her smartphone but she just texts as do I. She has no interest in FB or TWIT. We’re all different I guess.

Nice hearing from you!

]]> By: Cicero https://thenewneo.com/2020/06/26/to-despair-or-not-to-despair/#comment-2502921 Sun, 28 Jun 2020 00:08:40 +0000 https://www.thenewneo.com/?p=97581#comment-2502921 Neo,
Thanks for noticing. I thought my comment, #56, would pass unnoticed.
But I was glad for the opportunity to really think about what Yeats was communicating.
As we see, the monster is moving, in recent decades, at last, after the long nightmare sleep of peace.

]]> By: neo https://thenewneo.com/2020/06/26/to-despair-or-not-to-despair/#comment-2502903 Sat, 27 Jun 2020 22:41:10 +0000 https://www.thenewneo.com/?p=97581#comment-2502903 Cicero:

No, it’s not hopeful, as I said. I just pointed out that it’s a question rather than a statement, and a question is at least ambiguous.

And although it uses Christian imagery – in fact, the title and the entire poem uses it, including the “twenty centuries” reference to the approximate time since the first coming – I believe it’s talking about more than the death of Christianity in addition to talking about the death of Christianity.

The phrase “at last” does not indicate that Yeats is at all happy about the prospect. It just refers to the length of the 20 century wait.

]]> By: Cicero https://thenewneo.com/2020/06/26/to-despair-or-not-to-despair/#comment-2502901 Sat, 27 Jun 2020 22:25:26 +0000 https://www.thenewneo.com/?p=97581#comment-2502901 Yeats closes with
“The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

which I do not find hopeful, not at all.
“Surely the Second Coming is at hand” is immediately quenched by the lines that follow.

Because the rough beast is a monster that has stonily, sphinx-like, slept with nightmares inspired by the rocking of the Christ child in the cradle, through the entire twenty centuries of Christendom since His birth, and now, “it’s hour come round at last” moves against His birthplace, Bethlehem, and symbolically thus against all of Christianity.

I think it helps to be a believer in Christ Jesus to grasp the Yeats-seen terminus of Christian belief here and understand the ? mark means little; the “rough beast” is on the march.

Yeats was apparently not a believer. Note the “its hour come round at last”. At last, finally!

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