Our friend David Goldman on the murders in Norway: A Time to Be Silent and Mourn . There is, he writes,
a streak of human depravity that defies any effort to fit it into the pattern of events. It is suicide writ large, a propensity for self-destruction that wants to take with it as much of the world as available technology makes feasible. If divine grace is inexplicable, so is the radical rejection of grace. “Everything that arises is only worth its own destruction,” Mephistopheles told Faust, as he explained his grudge against all that exists.
He goes on to suggest what this reality requires of us.
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
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