Made a small pilgrimage to St. Nicholas Cathedral in NYC this evening, one that was both academic and spiritual in character. It’s a landmark of considerable importance for the development of Orthodoxy in America. And the aesthetic achievement is no less striking than the historical significance.
I can’t help watching Marjorie Taylor Greene’s career arc with a kind of morbid fascination and disbelief
The result is hardly to a community’s credit, and often brings it into disrepute.
One is therefore left to ask: who, precisely, benefits from all of this?
For communities, publicly performed conflict is seldom edifying and often irreparably damaging. The persistence of such behaviour suggests a preference for attention over communion—a preference the platforms themselves are only too happy to reward.
The impulse to correct error encountered online is understandable but largely misplaced, since persuasion is rarely the governing logic of such exchanges. The digital sphere accordingly becomes less a forum for learning than a reservoir of conflict.
There is real benefit to be had in exercising restraint in the public dissemination of ideas. But the digital space offers little incentive for it. Thoughts are published almost as soon as they are formed. Little allowance is made for authentic reflection. The result is predictably unsound thinking.
The impulse to correct error encountered online is understandable but largely misplaced, since persuasion is rarely the governing logic of such exchanges. The digital sphere accordingly becomes less a forum for learning than a reservoir of conflict.f this?
my latest for Commonweal Magazine on pope Leo's style of governing
www.commonwealmagazine.org/curia-massim...
Finally free from posters that want to pop off about random ancient texts that they’ve had explained to them on Reddit
