Neiman and Rieff on the land acknowledgment

Deutschlandfunk Kultur

"there are many things short of giving back the continent that could be done to improve the lives of Native Americans.  Solemnly reciting a land acknowledgement is not one of them. . . .  'The performative guilt of today's professional managerial class bears the same relationship to real shame and real guilt as Astro Turf does to grass.'"

     The philosopher Susan Neiman quoting David Rieff's Desire and fate (2024), in her review of that book entitled "Where wokeness went wrong," The New York review of books 72, no. 19 (December 4, 2025), 26 (26-28), an article eminently quotable throughout.  Neiman is, of course, the author of Left is not woke (Polity Press, 2023).

"What happens in a culture is partly dependent on what the collective consciousness of the culture allows"

Carlos "Eire’s [weird and wonderful] book [They Flew: A History of the Impossible] raises the question of a culture’s epistemic reality and whether that affects the kinds of events that can occur. . . . What happens in a culture is partly dependent on what the collective consciousness of the culture allows. This has nothing to do with the truth of the events; it involves the specific form the miracles took. St. Joseph [of Cupertino] levitated because this was an act expected of the holiest friars and nuns—the physical expression of metaphysical experience, the raptured body suspended between gravity and grace."

     Christian Wiman, "The tune of things:  Is consciousness God?," Harper's magazine (December 2025).

"being deified does not make anything depart from what it is by nature"

μηδαμῶς τῷ θεωθῆναι, τοῦ κατὰ φύσιν ἐκστᾷν.

     St. Maximus the Confessor, Opusculum 7, trans. DelCogliano in Christ:  Chalcedon and beyond, Cambridge edition of early Christian writings 4 (Cambridge, UK:  Cambridge University Press, 2022), 513.  Greek:  PG 91, col. 81D (42).

Chrysostom on merit and the sola gratia

      "The Lord, however, does want them to contribute something, lest everything seem to be a work of grace, and they seem to win their reward without deserving it [(Εἶτα, ἵνα τι καὶ παρ' ἑαυτῶν εἰσφέρωσι, καὶ μὴ πάντα τῆς χάριτος εἶναι δοκῇ, μηδὲ εἰκῆ καὶ μάτην στεφανοῦσθαι νομίζωνται)].  Therefore he adds:  You must be clever as snakes and innocent as doves."

     St. John Chrysostom, Homily 33.1-2 on Matthew, as trans. Office of readings, Thursday, Thirty-fourth week in ordinary time, Liturgy of the hours.  Ed. F. Field (1839), 461; PG 57, col. 389-390 (in Field misprinted as 379 (379-380)).  NPNF 10, trans. Prevost as rev. Riddle:

'After this, that they may contribute something on their own part also, and that all might not seem to be of His grace, nor they supposed to be crowned at random, and vainly, He saith, 'Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.'

"rather to reform the faith in us Christians than to give it to the Indians"

"'Our people here are such that there is neither good man nor bad who hasn't two or three Indians to serve him and dogs to hunt for him and, though it perhaps were better not to mention it, women so pretty that one must wonder at it.  With the last of these practices I am extremely discontented, for it seems to me a disservice to God, but I can do nothing about it, nor the habit of eating meat on Saturday [sic, for Friday] and other wicked practices that are not for good Christians.  For these reasons it would be a great advantage to have some devout friars here, rather to reform the faith in us Christians than to give it to the Indians [(más para reformar la fe en los christianos que para darla a los indios)].  And I shall never be able to administer just punishments, unless fifty or sixty men are sent here from Castile with each fleet, and I send there the same number from among the lazy and the insubordinate, as I do with this present fleet—such would be the greatest and best punishment and least burdensome to the conscience that I can think of.'"

     Christopher Columbus to Ferdinand and Isabella "Shortly after landing on Hispaniola in 1498," as trans. Felipe Fernández-Armesto on pp. 133-134 of his Columbus (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1991), and citing Crístobal Colón:  textos y documentos completos, ed. Varela (Madrid:  1984), 244.  Yet "Columbus's requests for friars to be sent to Hispaniola for the needs of the colonists rather than the natives were consciously ironic:  he was using the simple pagan in his traditional role as a commonplace of sententious literature, to point up the moral deficiencies of the Christians.  He was, beyond question, every bit as enthusiastic about converting the natives as his royal sponsors" (137).

The energy cost of AI

"In this domain, living organisms are unbeatable:  a human brain consumes about 25 watts.  By contrast, a computer possessing an equivalent power of information-processing consumes 25 megawatts, i.e. a million times more."

     Jean-David Fermanian & Isabelle Rak, "Démystifier l’Intelligence Artificielle," Communio:  revue catholique internationale 50, no. 5 =301 (septembre-octobre 2025):  27 (17-34).

Planck on the scientific virtue "akin to" faith

PLANCK:  ". . . The difficulty which organized religion finds in appealing to the people nowadays is that its appeal necessarily demands the believing spirit, or what is generally called Faith.  In an all-around state of scepticism this appeal receives only a poor response.  Hence you have a number of prophets offering substitute wares.

MURPHY:  "Do you think that science in this particular might be a substitute for religion?

PLANCK:  "Not to a sceptical state of mind; for science demands also the believing spirit.  Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrace to the gates of the temple of science are written the words:  Ye must have faith.  It is a quality which the scientists cannot dispense with. . . .
     ". . . As a matter of fact, Kepler is [on the contrary] a magnificent example of [this]. . . .  [W]hat rendered him so energetic and tireless and productive was the profound faith he had in his own science, not the belief that he could eventually arrive at an arithmetical synthesis of his astronomical observations, but rather the profound faith in the existence of a definite plan behind the whole of creation. . . .  Compare him with Tycho de Brahe.  Brahe had the same material under his hands as Kepler, and even better opportunities, but he remained only a researcher, because he did not have the same faith in the existence of the eternal laws of creation.  Brahe remained only a researcher; but Kepler was the creator of the new astronomy. . . .
     ". . . if we did not have faith but could solve every puzzle in life by an application of the human reason what an unbearable burden life would be.  We should have no art and no music and no wonderment.  And we should have no science; not only because science would thereby lose its chief attraction for its own followers—namely, the pursuit of the unknowable—but also because science would lose the cornerstone of its own structure, which is the direct perception by consciousness of the existence of external reality.  As Einstein has said, you could not be a scientist if you did not know that the external world existed in reality; but that knowledge is not gained by any process of reasoning.  It is a direct perception and therefore in its nature akin to what we call Faith.  It is a metaphysical belief.  Now that is something which the sceptic questions in regard to religion; but it is the same in regard to science.  However, there is this to be said in favour of theoretical physics, that it is a very active science and does make an appeal to the lay imagination.  In that way it may, to some extent, satisfy the metaphysical hunger which religion does not seem to be capable of satisfying nowadays.  But this would be entirely by stimulating the religious reaction indirectly.  Science as such can never really take the place of religion.  This is explained in the penultimate chapter of [Where is science going?]."

     Max Planck as interviewed by James Murphy in "Epilogue:  a socratic dialogue:  Interlocutors:  Einstein—Planck—Murphy," in Max Planck, Where is science going?, trans. & ed. James Murphy (London:  George Allen & Unwinn Ltd, 1933), 214-215, 218-219.