the philosophy of emotivism

"People mistakenly assume that their thinking is done by their head; it is actually done by the heart which first dictates the conclusion, then commands the head to provide the reasoning that will defend it."
~ Anthony de Mello, from Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

Would this well known, modern Jesuit priest agree with the Emotivist, or Non-cognitivist, or maybe even ethical subjectivist schools of philosophy?

Emotivism is a school within Non-cognitivism, which is not quite the same as ethical subjectivism. The idea being that one's political views, or opinions on any matter, are not arrived at through logical analysis, but though psychological needs. Logical analysis is employed after the fact to justify the political view.

This process may be completely non-conscious, or barely conscious.

This must be at least true to some degree with everyone, and maybe 100% true for most people. The best debaters have always know about this, making sure that their rhetoric appeals not only to the mind but to the heart as well.

atheistic quote

"If God exists, he certainly existed before religion. He is a philosopher’s God, logically inferred from self-evident premises. That he should have been taken up by a glorified supporters’ club is only a matter of psychological interest.”

~ Spoken by George in Jumpers, by Tom Stoppard

Canadian court rulings based on radical ideology -- Court denies compensation to parents because a full term baby is not a human.

Copied from the site Irish Media Review:

A Canadian court has ruled that a full-term baby who died during childbirth was not a child, and therefore the parents were not due compensation for bereavement at her death.

The parents were awarded $60,000 damages for the negligence of their doctor, but were refused an additional $25m,000 for the loss of the baby girl, on the grounds that the law did not consider her a human being.

"The Supreme Court of Canada has determined that a fetus has no legal status until it is a child, born alive and viable," said the judge.

A lawyer for the organisation, REAL Women, criticised the court for adopting "radical feminist idealogy, which flies in the face of medical and scientific fact."
(From Alive! March 2001)
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Does anyone have further details about this case?

30,000 children and teenagers go missing in Russia every year

homeless Russian girl

Leonid Chekalin, head of a Russian public watchdog, "put the number of homeless children at nearly 2.5 million and said that 2,000 children commit suicide every year [in Russia]," according to this Mosnews article.

This BBC article states that “90% of Russia’s children are unhealthy,” and discusses how “In the years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russians have become used to seeing children begging on the streets and scavenging in gangs around housing estates and railway stations.”

Also…

Research shows that citizens of ex-Soviet countries are the most unhappy people in the world.

Important Oct. 30 “vocation and evangelism” event at Knox

A morning service at Knox

I am going to make an effort to be at this important half-day seminar, "Toronto Calling," dealing with some vital topics in vocation and evangelism.

Although we still attend Bayview Glen church, the fact that we live at the other side of the city makes it very difficult for us to attend as much as we like. That is why we are thankful that the Lord led us to Knox Presbyterian Church in downtown Toronto, right beside UofT, at Bloor and Spadina. I like its Rev. Keven Livingston’s evangelical preaching, worshipful music, and passion for evangelism. What’s wrong with attending two churches at once?

Russian Consructivism

Russian Consructivist poster
The Best Nipple, 1923
by Alexander Rodchenko and Vladimir Mayakovsky

This poster, an advertisement for a baby soother, is a product of the Russian Constructivist school of design. And a very bizarre image. An example of how artistic self absorption and obsession with theoretical agendas can lead to some really strange stuff.

In the 1910s, 20s, & 30, there were many developments in industrial design, advertising and graphic design. Graphic design included magazine covers, posters for products, movies and propaganda, was about direct address with the viewer, to get their attention, created through the assemblage of parts, not a representation but a construction, included text and photos and shapes, geometrical angles, and often photo-montage.

Russian constructivism is a combination of Marxism and Supremitism (Supremitism is based in formalist principles).
Industrial production is applied to artistic and cultural production.

Artists adopted the machines of the industrial age as a model for their own work and rejected representation in favour of construction: assembling parts in an effective way.

This philosophy of design carried into film making. Eisenstien's theory and practice of montage followed constructivist ideas: the principle of montage is connected to construction of parts in the most effective, efficient way.Parts constructed not in an ornamental or decorative way, but the organization of elements was supposed to require least amount of effort and parts.

This poster aside, there were in fact some really great images produced.