A Review of The Guarded Gate by Daniel Okrent.

The Guarded Gate

Daniel Okrent is also the author of Last Call, the history and implementation of Prohibition. It was a surprisingly engrossing book, meticulous and completely relevant to the topic, so I was very happy to see that he had written a book on two topics which I'm even more interested in. What's even more interesting is his account of how those topics merged early in the 20th century in one of America's darker chapters.

In his work on Prohibition, Okrent delved into how temperance activists tapped latent racism to boost their case. In this book, he exhaustively (and exhaustingly) documents how the nation's seething nativism and paranoia over the changing population was a problem exaggerated to fit a new scientific solution: eugenics theory.

Eugenics may seem as arcane as bloodletting to the modern, but it was, like bloodletting, once the cutting edge of biological scientific theorizing. It's father was Sir Francis Galton, one of the many, many descendants of the legendarily brilliant and promiscuous Erasmus Darwin, and a cousin of Charles. Without implying causation and careful not to yoke the evolutionary theory directly to eugenics, the author continues. While he does not assign blame, Okrent does presume that the Darwinian Revolution removed the extant moral opposition of the scientific community to thinking of and consequently treating humans as merely an evolved hierarchy of animal life.

To say Galton was a prodigy is as much of an understatement as saying that his ancestor Erasmus was fond of the ladies.

He read at age 2, mastered Latin at age 4, quoted Sir Walter Scott often at age 5 and 6 years of age found him reading the Iliad with exceptional comprehension. He was the heir of substantial family fortunes, to which he had full access by the age of 22. But for apparently not one minute of his life, did he recline in the lap of luxury. His curiosity was ravenous and his method for satiating it was obsessive counting. He explained everything, or at least attempted to, with numbers.

He counted earthworms after rain, mosquito bites, formed equations for what percentage of an audience was attentive by noting and counting movements. No subject was too general or too specific. He even devoted 3 months to the exploration of what constitutes a proper cup of tea.

Galton's American protege, Charles Davenport, was another genius, as were many if not most prominent eugenicists, and many of them came from long established families of wealth and prominence, making their breathtakingly arrogant theories about the benefits of selective breeding perhaps a little more understandable, if not excusable. It never occurred to them to check their privilege.

Wikipedia's entry on eugenics states that in its early 20th century iteration, eugenics was promoted as a way to improve "groups of people" (and I would add society in general) while "new (current) eugenics" focuses on improving individuals, i.e. selecting and even altering embryos at the direction of the parents and is therefore not racist in any way.

It prompted some head scratching by yours truly on the difference between the individual and the collective. Can you separate the goal of improvement of individuals from the goal of improving groups and society? Apparently Davenport could not. It's true that his scientific curiosity was once more objective and, if we might use a characterization that Madison Grant might've, pure. He was, he professed, concerned with the improvement of individuals and did not apply scientific racism to his eugenics study. But as time passed and the passion to make the science a helpful societal tool blossomed, the "betterment of the human race" became paramount and Davenport's studies became a means to an end. His ideological purity was mongrelized and he became an unabashed proponent of "scientific racism."

Some proponents of eugenics theory were overtly racist and xenophobic, but not disproportionately considering the age.

One tireless advocate for immigration restriction AND eugenics was Henry Cabot Lodge, the patrician stalwart arch-conservative legislator from Massachusetts. By contrast, his cousin, Joe (never Joseph) Lee, who was a dedicated, behind-the-scenes proponent of eugenics and racial purity, was also a Boston school board member, philanthropist, father of the modern school playground and avid reader of Karl Marx. He was a textbook early 20th century progressive.

Racism was ubiquitous. It was not 4 decades earlier that slavery was still legal in the US, and even those abolitionists, (also progressives) of the North could not have helped an indulgent sense of having condescended to aid the poor Negro.

However, it is not completely clear who co-opted who, or whether there was any co-opting or exploitation of each other at all in the alliance of eugenicists and xenophobes. They appear to have been quite suited to one another and not at all uncomfortable with the relationship. It was probably either mutual exploitation or a hellacious harmonic convergence.

The list of American icons who at one time or another, or all of the time, in some cases, expressed stupefying racism, xenophobia and classism is sobering.

Beginning with Benjamin Franklin, through Ulysses S. Grant, to Booker T Washington, William Penn, the great suffragist Victoria Woodhall, John Scopes (of the Scopes Monkey Trial), Alexander Graham Bell, Theodore Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Maxwell Perkins (the editor of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway), H. Fairfield Osbourne (director of the American Museum of Natural History) and so many other notaries, the list of nativists does considerable damage to the idea that the US was ever in even approximate accord with the inscription on the Statue Of Liberty.

But the common cause of xenophobes and genetic planners is striking to me, considering the antipathy between what may be considered the modern incarnations of both anti-immigration sentiment and eugenics. Eugenics, right or wrong, is seen by many as the forerunner of elective abortion. And, in fact, it seems like a fair genealogical conclusion, since Margaret Sanger was a prominent eugenicist, an enthusiastic supporter of Davenport's endeavors and is most well known to us as the founder of Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider. But modern abortion opponents now are often the same people most likely to oppose immigration. (As they would have it, they are only concerned about illegal immigration, while remaining mostly non-committal on what legal minimums and maximums should be established.) Okrent is careful to note the objections of modern pro-choice advocates who say that if anything, the eugenicists of that era were more comparable to pro-life activists, since pro-lifers typically seek governmental prohibition of abortion or governmental control of "reproductive rights", similar to the forced sterilization policies championed by many eugenicists. But the disregard for human life is common ground that is not so readily ceded by many pro-choice advocates and immigration restriction advocates. There is a shared sense of entitlement. As in, "We are here, so we have a codified right to input into who else can be here." Or, if you like, "Possession (of life, here and now) is 9/10ths of the law."

A Review of Coyote America by Dan Flores

There's a song I like by Western artist Don Edwards.
It begins,

"Was a cowboy I knew in South Texas
His face was burnt deep by the sun
Part history, part sage, part Mexican
He was there when Pancho Villa was young
He'd tell you a tale of the old days
When the country was wild all around
Sit out under the stars of the milky way
Listen while the coyotes howled

Now the longhorns are gone
And the drovers are gone
The Comanches are gone
And the outlaw is gone
Geronimo's gone
And Sam Bass is gone
And the lion is gone
And the red wolf is gone

Then he cursed all the roads and the oilmen
And he cursed the automobile
Said 'This is no place for an hombre like I am
In this new world of asphalt and steel'
Then he looked off some place in the distance
At something only he could see
He said 'All that's left now of the old days
Are these damned old coyotes and me.' "

The old cowboy would be happy to know, I assume, that not only are the damned old coyotes still around, they are thriving.
Once only found in the Western United States, they are now howling in every state of the union.
And this in spite of, in fact Flores will argue BECAUSE of, almost two centuries of extermination attempts.
Beginning with Lewis and Clark's first encounter with this American icon which Clark dubbed the "prairie wolf", European settlers were first perplexed by the not-quite-wolf but not-quite-fox who seemed to be a little too comfortable around humans.
The perplexity soon enough turned to a loathing that rivals our commonly held hatred for cockroaches.
The coyote was outright declared a target for extinction by the federal government.
Bounties were set, traps were laid, strychnine factories were built. Later, aerial gunning and specifically designed poisons were put into use, dead animal carcasses spiked with trial-and-error vetted toxins.
Millions and millions of coyotes were killed.

And it was not simply a matter of utility.
Even though there were the inevitable predations that occur when domesticated animals come into direct contact with wild predators, animal scientists in the field even in the late 1800's were discovering by analyzing stomach contents and scat that contrary to conventional wisdom, sheep and cattle did not make up most or even a quarter of the coyote diet. And later, as livestock containment methods and the proliferation of national forests and parks as refuges for coyotes pacified stockmen somewhat, big game hunters, claiming that coyotes were diminishing the elk population and were an existential threat to mule deer were also proven wrong.
But the Great Coyote Wars continued, aided almost from the beginning by good war propaganda.
As settlement of the West continued, the coyote became a symbol of deprivation, cowardice and cunning. Mark Twain, in his charming polemics, gleefully helped a good portion of America unacquainted with the species to hate the coyote with his famous three-page rant in Roughing It. Horace Greeley described it as "a sneaking cowardly little wretch." Edwin Sabin in an Overland Monthly 1938 issue, described it as "contemptible and especially perverse" and "lacking higher morals." And exploring ideas for commercial gain from the killing of coyotes, the Scientific American, in 1920, asserted that although coyotes were not worth the price of the ammunition to shoot them, it was still a patriotic guesture because, "The coyote was the original Bolshevik."

Even today, there are 500,000 coyotes killed in a year's time, almost one a minute.
And yet, or as Flores has it, as a result, coyotes now stretch from the southern border (and below) to the Yukon and from sea to shining sea. There is now a significant coyote presence in L.A., Chicago, and even Manhattan.
Coyotes excel under persecution.
They possess an autogenic trait that actually increases the size of their litters when they are under stress. Combine this amazing ability with their seemingly preternatural adaptability and a comfort level with humans that seems odd in a wild predator, and it becomes less incredible that patrons spilling out of a bar in Manhattan looked up to see a coyote on the roof, surveying the scene with casual boldness.

Flores does something else in the book that's a little startling. He insists that a given American's opinion of coyotes is often indicative of their opinions on......politics.
He uses the coyote as a locator of a person's position in the culture war.
And it's not a metaphor.
He claims that liberals tend to respect the coyote, while conservatives hate them. He says asking someone how they feel about coyotes is basically the same thing as asking them how they feel about John Wayne.
The conservative-liberal urban-rural divide is even reflected in how you pronounce the word.
Urban liberals tend to use coyot-ee, with the emphasis on the middle syllable.
Rural conservatives tend to use coyote, with the emphasis on the first syllable.
For what it's worth, I use the rural conservative pronunciation, partly because that's how we said it in Oklahoma (so that part checks out), but also partly because coyot-ee just sounds too cartoonish for obvious reasons.
I don't know if I believe that the coyote issue is as divisive or easily associated with a demographic as war or immigration, but I do recognize that there is some truth in what he is saying that I can corroborate myself. My opinion of predators is significantly different than those of most, or so it seems, of my conservative friends. They seem to view any wild predatory animal as a nuisance to be eradicated so that everything can be tamer. And safer.
At the risk of stretching the point along with Flores, and at the risk of giving anyone the opening to accuse me of reductionism, I have to admit I quickly compared the de facto conservative positions on immigration, drugs and civil liberties and nodded to myself.

Moving on, in the latter half of the 20th century, conservationists became alarmed at the rapid decline and imminent extinction of the red wolf in the southeast. The Fish and Wildlife Service believed that an ancient distinct species was on the verge of disappearing. Their solution was to gather the remaining survivors in the wild together with all the red wolves in captivity and breed a strong pure host of red wolves to re-release into the wild and hopefully recolonize their "native" habitat. But first they had to test each of the possible studs and brood canines for genetic purity. To their horror, they discovered that the majority of the "wolves" possessed coyote DNA. In fact, many were reddish full-blooded coyotes. In true bridge burning bureaucratic fashion, they destroyed every one of the impure animals, even the zoo animals, much to the dismay of the zoo officials.
But, as it turns out, the science that first declared the red wolf a distinct species was faulty. Most likely, the red wolves were actually a hybrid of coyote and wolf, much like the coywolves now populating many areas where wolf and coyote share hunting grounds. The fumbling incompetence of wildlife management experts in this instance is reminiscent of the heedless arrogance that in the previous century led the US government to support and subsidize the near extinction of the buffalo.

But maybe the coyote is too much like us for us to ever be completely rid of it.
Flores thinks so.
As a principal deity in the Native American Pantheon, Old Man Coyote seems quite similar to Zeus with a little bit of Loki thrown in.
He is not perpetually exemplary. He's one of those gods that we create in our own image. Which is to say he can be very good and also very bad. That split personality is what makes him like Zeus, along with his ability to appear human, whereas Zeus had the ability to appear animal.
Flores takes an imaginative, almost spiritual look at the coyote and concludes that he is us.
The indigenous peoples have many myths and legends with the coyote as a god, but a very human god. He is the wisest of all, but also often a fool. He is powerful, with sometimes paralyzing weaknesses. He is a trickster, but is constantly being tricked. He is not completely wild, and not completely tame. He'll do what it takes to survive, but often only just that and no more.
Less abstractly, Flores compares the evolution of man with the evolution of the coyote, and pronounces us clueless, if we think we can outmaneuver such a force.

The Wind

I was in my late 20's.
Devan and I had been married for around 4 years.
I worked two jobs, one full time and one part time. The full time job was the breadwinner. The part time job was the insurance provider and hope of a stabler future.
I worked commercial construction during the day, driving to work in the dark morning, falling asleep at stoplights and often having to park half a mile or more from the job site.
I was a hod-carrier (mason tender) and ran the grout pump every other day or so.
The hopper of the pump received soupy concrete from the trough of the cement truck and vigorously forced the grout up through a 4 inch reinforced rubber hose.
Up on top of a high block wall, I either straddled the wall, walked it or ideally used scaffold walk boards. The concrete laden hose, sometimes several hundred feet long, would retract and thrust with every cycle of the pump, roughly every second, and you had to somehow pad the hose at every contact point with the masonry or scaffolding to prevent a hole from wearing through from the constant friction.
Around 3:30, it was time to shut down for the day and I would jog back to my little Ford Ranger and speed home to get a shower and supper before heading back into town for work at the UPS hub at 5.
From roughly 5-10, I loaded semis with boxes.
When my head hit the pillow, sleep was only a matter of seconds out, surging in to pull me out into an irresistible riptide.
Consequently, I had little time for anything that was non-essential to survival, certainly not introspection.
Sometimes, if you ignore the act of simply breathing long enough, the odd arresting moment when silence falls is all it takes to become suddenly aware of what is sustaining your hyperactivity.
We lived in a cramped townhouse.
I was in the living room taking a rare glance out into the parking lot when a passing breeze animated the leaves of a small ornamental bush in the flower bed and then passed through the closed window into my soul.
Spearheads of ripples moved across my consciousness.
Something was happening to me without my direction or summons.
I don't know which direction the wind came from, or where it blew, but it passed through me, invisible and scentless, only apprehended by the dust it stirred.
Genesis 8:1 is the first usage of the word that we translate into "wind."
But the first reference to wind is in the second verse of the entire Bible.
"The earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters."
In the previous verse, God who created the heavens and the earth is named Elohim.
In the second verse, we translate "Spirit of God" from the Hebrew "Ruach Elohim".
"Ruach" is one of those never-ending Hebrew gifts.
The most physical definition is simply "wind", but it also means "breath" and, most arrestingly, the "function or expression", elsewhere "personality trait" of a rational being.
It is in the second verse of the Bible that God has a thought. And the hateful placidity of the formless deep shivers in response. "Nothing" births something.
The Cause affects.
A dream is dreamed within a dream.

In Job 1:19, the wind takes it's form as "blast" or "tempest" and moves upon the house of the children of Job, collapsing the walls and killing them all.
At the end of Job, the sufferer's questions and agony and anger are engulfed and overwhelmed by the voice of God from out of the tempest.
In Mark 39, God held his breath and the Lake of Tiberius was calmed.
David almost certainly heard the wind in the poplars as the sound of marching and went to battle with the Philistines.
Elijah endured the wind that shattered stones and withered the gourd and was finally taken up by it.
In Acts, Ruach Elohim swept through a gathering of the longing faithful and came to live with us.
I was born in Oklahoma, where the wind never stops sweeping down the lane, dehydrating in the summer and relentless in the winter and where I attended a campmeeting where the evangelist recounted the testimony of an equatorial convert upon reaching God at last, "It's like a cool breeze down in my soul.", a metaphor that strikes me randomly on a humid summer day when a breeze falls from the icy heavens and soothes my fever and prickles my skin.
"The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear it's sound, but you do not know where it came from or where it is going."

Next time you feel a bitter gale, a driving rain, a hot blast or a cool breeze, remember.

Conscientious Rebel

I have been in revolt my entire life.
Roughly the first half I spent in rebellion against God. The second half has been a more careful insurrection, against anything I perceive as being wrong, particularly if that wrong is widely accepted and/or taught.
As a child and then as a teenager I was extremely conscientious, even fearful. I was afraid to do anything that in my limited understanding might even possibly be wrong. I walked the line, not out of a desire to do good, but out of mortal dread of the consequences of doing anything wrong. This is not to say that I never did anything that I thought was wrong, but they were "lesser," secret sins. Contrary to Martin Luther's admonition to sin boldly, I sinned timidly, and asked for forgiveness not at all, only occasionally sought a guarantee that I wasn't doing anything that would send me to hell.  And while fear of consequences may bring many who lack understanding to a point of reckoning, it is no substitute for forgiveness and living gratefully.
When I was converted, I was scuttled in a bottomless grace; grateful, euphoric and eager to show my love for my Savior.
After a time however, the fearful part of my phsyche reinflated, displacing gratefulness with a cold legalism and I shot back to the surface where lashed a storm that still has not abated.
If a fish is a person who lives on grace, I am a dolphin.
I can only remain submerged in grace for so long until my mammalian lungs burn with the need for the oxygen of real world, merit based reassurance.
I have often joked that the teenage rebellion against the establishment that so many people engage in was also mine to experience, just delayed a couple of decades.
But my rebellion is driven by my conscientiousness. It's not that I look for every opportunity to be set apart, it's that so much of the time, the crowd, the establishment, the status quo is wrong. And it is not sheer coincidence. If an idea or practice is widely accepted, it is often because it holds within it an insidious element that appeals to fallen human nature. In addition to that inherent virus, popularity itself has a corrupting influence. There is a dangerous unity in the pulse of the mob. Even good propositions, such as the Church, can be become unrecognizable powers for evil when left unquestioned.
There is also a deep personality trait that spurs my rebellion.
I don't remember the exact age, but somewhere around 8 years old, I made a self discovery. I was conversing with someone who has also been lost to memory, and was suddenly struck by a realization that I often said yes, nodded or otherwise offered affirmation or at least acceptance of things said with which I did not necessarily agree. It seemed lazy, and weak.
Why am I pressured to go with the flow and, more importantly, why do I give in to the pressure?
It's perhaps an unusual thought for an eight year old, but it was and is an integral part of me: the guilt of doing things the easy way. Even at that age, my conscience was overactive, and in charge. Then, as now, I've little doubt that I overcompensated for that perceived weakness. In fact, only a few short weeks later, as I recall, someone asked me why I always had to challenge everything that was said. I have since learned to choose my battles more discriminately, but I am still driven to challenge everything, driven by my conscience to be a rebel.
My Dad, who was also crucially involved in my spiritual development, was influential to my own development of independence. I distinctly remember him recounting a conversation with my Mom, who told him that while she could not say that he was always right, she could definitely say that his thoughts and conclusions were always his own.  I took that to heart, particularly since it reinforced my own determination not to be a follower, as difficult as it might be.
And then, as if I needed encouragement, I began reading after Kierkegaard, and was electrified by the following:
"Moreover living as the individual is thought to be the easiest thing of all, and it is the universal that people must be coerced into becoming.
I can share neither this fear nor this opinion, and for the same reason.
No person who has learned that to exist as the individual is the most terrifying thing of all will be afraid of saying it is the greatest."
There is always a danger with being your own man. The danger lies not in a greater likelihood of going wrong than if you were in larger company, but in becoming arrogant. And, while my recalcitrance is a matter of conscience, I cannot deny that I sometimes find a perverse pleasure in being THAT guy. In moderation, it's harmless gratification, but it always bears watching.

What Is That To Thee?

Raise your hand if you saw conservatives react to the recent student walkout in protest of mass shootings and in support of gun control by urging us to focus more on the root causes of these tragedies, specifically bullying.
If you're anything like me, your initial reaction was agreement, then mild surprise since the last you might have heard from this particular person on the subject of bullying was that kids these days were just too soft.
There seems to be a pattern in the culture war these days.
Whatever we might call the opposite of the Left, (the Right, conservatism, etc) it is almost obviously being led around by the nose by the Left.
The Left makes a move, the Right reacts.
One of the most jarring examples of this is the overall loyal opposition's response to the many character issues with President Trump; for example, the Stormy Daniels story. Many, conservative, even right wing evangelical responses could almost have been plagiarized word for word from good old southern Democrats defense of Bill Clinton's character issues, with "media" standing in for "right wing" in the phrase "vast right wing conspiracy."
 (In fairness, there were those who supported Bill Clinton, considered his infidelity insignificant, who now feel the same about Trump. They seem to feel that character is not something to be considered in a political leader, and they definitely have a point. To expect integrity from power brokers is foolish, but my argument here is with the overwhelming remainder of the population which seems to at least pretend that their chosen champions are not high paid thugs.)
But there is a much larger group who felt deeply that Bill Clinton's liberalism was an assault on traditional American values and that his loose moral character was proof of that assault, who now either completely dismiss the scandal swirling around Trump as a pack of lies, or, more likely, simply see it as insignificant in the big picture.
At any rate, they certainly do not see Trump's character as proof of an assault on traditional values. Many of the same people who cheered the impeachment of President Clinton as a a fit reprimand for his behavior now have apparently no qualms saying that they will continue to stand behind president Trump 100% regardless of his dalliances.
 Is this just fighting fire with fire, tit-for-tat, or is the Right being led slowly, unconsciously but surely down the path of moral relativism by the Left?
Another possible example is the Right's subconscious acceptance of the blurring of the gender roles lines. The result of part of the radical feminist agenda that ostensibly wanted to equalize the sexes was to actually lower women to the point that it was perfectly acceptable for a woman to get down in the dirt and mix it up with the boys. While the Right is still more or less insistent that gender is binary and distinct, they seem to have quite willingly accepted that part of the feminist agenda that allows them to fight women the same way they fight men.
Someone may protest that this is some political fragment of the Socratic method, trying to point out hypocrisy or inconsistency, as one conservative mouthpiece used to delight in "illustrating absurdity by being absurd." (And, yes, there is hypocrisy, inconsistency and absurdity in spades on the Left.)
 Or perhaps they may even consider it strategic, using the useful parts of the Left's agenda against them.
Still someone else will doubtless say that women have become just as coarse as men and so we must deal with them accordingly. I won't argue that. I will simply point out that they have in fact capitulated on what used to be a key point of traditional values, the ideal of gentlemen placing women on a pedestal (whether or not individual women were actually treated as such.)
In fact, much of the conservative and libertarian single male response to the #metoo movement was downright bitter towards women in general, indicating that a significant portion of the non-left male population is quite willing to accept the reality of a gender war.
The pattern that emerges is one of nothing but reaction.
It is an inherent weakness of conservatism: that of being forced to continually play defense. After all, the aim is to "conserve." When we are relegated to trying to preserve a culture that we feel was better, the wagons will always be in a circle.
While conservatives may recognize that not everything was perfect back in the good ol days, most of them just wonder why things just can't be like they used to be.
But whether or not things were overall better back when, it must be acknowledged that time will never stand still. It carries on ceaselessly and carries society, and culture, along with it.
What to make of this?
The problem is not a new one.
It's one of the fear that "they" will win, while not being certain of what is at stake, and not even certain of who they are, since we have certainly lost track of who we are.
It's one of trends and fighting trends.
It's one of missing the trees for the forest.
It's one of fear at the loss of identity overwhelming the virtue that ever made that identity valuable.
It's one of being too concerned with things out of your control, and making deals with devils you think CAN control things, or at least limit the damage to things until such time as they relinquish control back to you, back to us, the rightful overseers of culture.

My solution to this problem of losing track of what we are fighting for will come as a surprise to practically no one.
Stop worrying about "we" and "they."
Your concern over the culture has almost certainly distracted you from your greatest concern: yourself and your relationship with the truth.
We tell ourselves every vote counts, but don't seem to realize that our individual adherence to the highest standard we can attain will go a lot farther in preserving what we treasure.
And don't concern yourself when "they" fight dirty, because...




"If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
 Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
 And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:......
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
 And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!"
Rudyard Kipling

The Individual Christian

"Christendom has done away with Christianity without being quite aware of it."
-Soren Kierkegaard.
Christianity is harmed by the incessant attempts to yolk it with "us, them, we" or any personal pronoun other than "I".
It invariably leads not to closer brotherhood among believers, but to sectarianism, pride and judgment.
As an individual, a Christian is more likely than most to be humble, peaceful and understanding.
As a collective, or as a demographic, we can tend to be proud (of our Christianity), hostile (to anyone or thing perceived to be hostile to us as Christians) and judgmental (to anyone who does not hold our values).
As the individual Christian, we have a better sense of who we are in relation to world, and to God himself.
As "Christendom", we tend to find safety in numbers, establish insular subcultures, and hide behind our own theologians and teachers.
Christians lose something of the peculiar shame of the Cross when Christianity becomes accepted, respectable, a movement or even, God forbid, official.
We become quite at home in the world, and even begin to claim portions of it as our own. And become quite defensive and even combative when we feel that holy ground is being invaded.

Boredom is perhaps the environment of hell.
It is similar to Chaos, because it is the state of an unfocused mind.
It is the inverse of the excitement of countless possibilities. It is the despairing certainty that every one of those potentialities will end in disappointment.
Every child has known the horror of boredom, as well as they have known the exasperation of an adult who scolds them for being ungrateful, as any adult would be profess to be profoundly grateful for a moment's peace in which boredom might be a welcome change to busyness.
This is hogwash on the part of the adult; partly because busyness is the unconsciously agreed upon crowning virtue of adulthood and would never be so easily traded for a mess of potted boredom, and partly because even in an adult's "leisure" time, he would be terrified to encounter boredom as he did as a child: that ennui, that dissatisfaction with all things and no remedy for it, not entertainment, nor opiate, nor sleep, nor sex, nor any other stimulation that a grown-up engages in when his mind has reached the end of that ultimate high, the Validation of Work.
Boredom is not quite merely the absence of stimulation, it is a tangible thing: a paralyzing banality that leaves a mind stricken and sometimes in search of renewal in the strangeness of the new and unfamiliar and even unappealing.
If we were created with purpose, there can be few pains equitable to purposelessness.
A child avoids this void in any number of ways, almost all of which are more honest than the ways adults avoid it. The dishonesty of adults in their frantic attempts to escape from boredom is motivated by guilt. An aimless child may be scolded, but an aimless adult is judged, and pitied.
Equating boredom with damnation may seem hyperbolic, but only if you have forgotten what boredom is, and think of it as free time when no one expects anything of you.
It is the opposite of freedom.
It is the state of mind so bereft of the excitement of possibility that it imprisons itself. And self imprisonment is the most hopeless of all jails.
Kierkegaard said Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom, thus pointing out the silver lining back of the cloud of the Unknown.
The bleakness of Boredom's cloud is the certainty that a distant star has exploded somewhere in the universe that will at last drag every ounce of meaning across it's event horizon.