What does our relationship with lions need to become, if this ancient conflict is to come to dusk in such a way that an early morning air that’s charged with the roaring of the dawn chorus still greets the sunrise?
This piece is absolutely not at all a dismissal of video games; my saying video games are not sport is not derogatory. Chess is not a sport, either. These are skill-based games that, though they may involve some level of physical skill and exertion, are predominantly not centred on physicality. Something which a sport must be.
And so it begins again, the collection of dust.
Front page, and centre? Gender. The issue? Not gender.
Yes, it is flipping expectations in some way, but fundamentally not. Yes, it is a very creative way to re-hash, but it is still the same. The idea that The Last Jedi is making us question what Star Wars is, presenting us with something unfamiliar, simply isn’t true. The story, quite naturally, is fundamentally the very same.
People who fall outside of traditional gender norms and roles have always been profoundly vulnerable to the worst sides and faces of all societies. I think, in the West, among the dangers faced, there is something that is doing much insidious harm and is on track to do much more of it, down the line, and that is the current state and trend of the gender movement itself.
Slurs and unpleasant comments of a sexual nature are verbal harassment and assault with the potential to cause significant distress and upset and psychological harm, but they are not sexual assault. Words are not violence.
I want – nay, need – nay, don’t need… just want – to complain about two things in particular: relentless encroachment on the original trilogy (OT) by recent additions to what is now official canon, and the superficially fashionable fandom of much of it all at this point in time.
The title – Areopagitica – comes from Areopagus, a large rock outcropping just outside of Athens, Greece. Milton used this because, in ancient times, the outcropping had been used as the seat for councils and tribunals; had been used for open and free debate.
There are major and minor differences between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, in scripture, in history, in practice, and in prophet, that do warrant difference in conversation, in attitude, and in response.
I could not immediately pinpoint why it so easily and often moved my hand to my phone to play it at any given and wandering moment. But I think I get it now, and I think it applies and acts timeless beyond the personal.
The child is but a lamb, and the parent but a child, obedient to God and faith and scripture.
Yet the point of Minds – as I see it, at least – is not to sit as passive haven to be found only by those already looking.
If to be down and out in Paris and London were to mean nothing more than your child having to look on at relative extravagance from a position already of comfort, then society will be transformed.
