Since today is Christmas Eve, yesterday must have been Christmas Adam, right? (First I’ve heard about this.)
NY Times, 22 Dec 2024: Behold! ‘Christmas Adam’ Is Born., subtitled “First there was Christmas Eve … and then a new celebration was created.”
This is how religion works. Similar to the way everyone knows that Jesus was born on December 25th.
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On a nicer note.
NY Times, guest essay by Roger Rosenblatt, 24 Dec 2024: Why ‘A Christmas Carol’ Endures
Because Scrooge is a misanthrope, he reflects us all to some extent, but the story assuages our guilt by suggesting we can be better than that.
Why does such a figure appeal to us today? Why, despite his depravity, do we still root for his redemption? Guilt, I think. Scrooge speaks to us because in many ways, he is us.
Around 1980, the phrase “bottom line” wormed its way into the culture as the standard of achievement. To one degree or another, the bottom line has made Scrooges of us all.
Thus, American values are tied to whether we’re better off now (materially) than we were four years ago. Consider the election.
The styles of the candidates were antipodal, Mr. Trump’s being crass and on occasion cruel, Ms. Harris’s usually dignified. But both were essentially asking Americans the same question: Is your material life what you want it to be?
Not about values, or generosity, or quality of life (as opposed to having more and better stuff). But that’s America, where capitalism rules.
We are all capable of narrow-mindedness, of selfishness and greed. We are all concerned for our own material enrichment. But so too are we capable of fantastic generosity and selflessness. Dickens understood this, and it was in demonstrating the benefits of raising our moral consciousness that the quiet genius of “A Christmas Carol” most shines through.
Of course, in the story, Scrooge is visited by three spirits — the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future — which demonstrate to him the consequences of his actions and the potential for a better, more fulfilling path. Selfish and flawed though he is, Scrooge is moved by what he has seen and repents, transforming into a kind and charitable man.
Nothing satisfies a sinful reader (that is, everyone) as much as a tale in which we are given a chance to vicariously work off our sins — particularly when redemption comes fairly easily, after the scare of a single night and three brief sermons. We look at the repentant Ebenezer and think: C’est moi! From now on, I shall live differently, more honorably. I shall reform.
Entire religions are based on what Scrooge experiences and on what he vows.
And if it never works for entire societies, or religions, it does work for many people. It isn’t true, as many conservatives believe, that everyone is essentially evil.
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Unsurprising “news” from aggregate site JMG.
- Even though conservatives are certain that some people are. Felon-Elect: I’ll “Vigorously Pursue” Federal Executions
- Scamvangelist: God Told Me That I’ll Live To Be 120. (Jack Smith Rule: He won’t.)
- Flu Surges In State That Banned Vaccine Promotion (Why do conservatives not understand how this works?)
- Cultists Want To Shut Down Fake News Watchdog (Which is to say, people whose claims lie outside the reality-based consensus don’t like being called out on it.)
- Elon Musk is up to this too. Musk Orders Cultists Not To Donate To “Wokepedia” (They can just use Conservapedia instead.)
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I know it’s impolite or even rude to say, but why is it conservatives seem not to understand very basic things?
- Texas Republicans file bill to install state-sponsored Nativity scene in Capitol, subtitled “An atheist group responded to the bill with a stern warning: ‘Texas should not have a religion'” (Imagine their outrage if Texas put up a state-sponsored Menorah, say.)
- Well, the answer I think is that conservatives, the Christian ones anyway, presume they’re in the majority and can therefore do whatever they want, never mind the rules that apply to others. Which is to say, they don’t *really* venerate the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.
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Meanwhile, some people are trying to make the world a better place. (Where reality matters and respect for others is not condemned as ‘woke’.)
The Atlantic, Charlie Warzel, 23 Dec 2024: The End of News, subtitled “Legacy media has a trust problem, but it’s not too late to solve it.”
An interview with Julia Angwin, “founder of the news organizations the Markup and Proof News” among other things, and author a paper called The Future of Trustworthy Information: Learning from Online Content Creators at the Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.
Charlie Warzel: The paper establishes that there are three pillars to trust: People need to convince others of their ability, their benevolence (or that they’re acting in good faith), and their integrity. And you argue that creators, who have to build audiences from scratch, are doing so with an eye toward these trust-building principles, whereas traditional media takes their trust for granted.
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Angwin: That’s what led me to really get interested in creators. Any little bit of credibility they have, they tell you up front. Even if it’s a makeup artist on TikTok who’s huge, she’ll tell you her bona fides, like that she’s worked at Ulta or some beauty store. They like to lead with credentials, and then they demonstrate their expertise: I’ve tried seven different eyeshadows so you can figure out which one is the best one. This is a key distinction from journalism. What journalism often does is, it tells you in the beginning which eyeshadow is the best. The headline will be like X Is the Best Eyeshadow, and the lead spells out the conclusion and what the piece will argue—you don’t get to the evidence until closer to the bottom.
Which, Warzel and Angwin note, is closer to what lawyers do, and scientists. And so on. What advice would Angwin give to legacy media? I’ll condense her conclusion a bit.
First is understanding these elements of trust that we need. The audience needs to feel like they have reason to believe you’re benevolent. They have to have reason to believe in your ability and expertise. They have to have a reason to understand where you’re coming from—meaning no more view from nowhere—and they need to know what they can do if you’re wrong.
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Item two is that actually we have to start taking creators seriously—especially the ones who are doing journalistic work. We need to stop worrying about how to protect our own brands and individual institutions and focus on what we can do to make sure that important, trustworthy information is flowing to the public.…
Lastly, I just have to put in a word for the end of objectivity. I think that the main problem of where we are right now when it comes to trust is this idea that we have to be pure and neutral and have no thoughts, but just be receptacles for facts. The more that we can transparently bring our expertise and intelligence to the task, the better it will be for everyone.
Well, OK, but this is all pretty subtle stuff. How would doing any of these things make a difference to the average person who gets their news from TikTok, or Fox News?
