The Divine Conspiracy - Chapter 1- Life In The Dark

Vocab

• Encroachment - Being placed into neutrality
  
• Vested - secured in the possession of or assigned to a person
  
• Aesthetic - giving or designed to give pleasure through beauty; of pleasing appearance
  
• Plight - a dangerous, difficult, or otherwise unfortunate situation
• Pawn -a person used by others for their own purposes

Reflection

Willard begins the chapter with a quick, 4-5 sentence story on a high-speed pilot flying in the sky. The pilot wanted to quickly fly upward, and instead descended steeply to the ground for the pilot didn't know that he had been flying upside down the entire time, and during the point of direction change. Willard has an awkward way of writing, and he spends a long time with the details that ultimately paints a great picture, although it takes some time to get there and you could get lost along the way. He firstly points out that our society today has no structure to base morals off of. If you think about it, you can't lower a students grade if they say that discrimination against minorities is wrong. He tells the story of a Harvard student who came from a middle-lower class area in the midwest and how she was constantly looked down upon, ironically, in her philosophy courses. During her exit interview she asked the advisor "How can you teach people about being good, but not teach them how to be good.?" The teacher shrugged. There is no moral base in education during our lives as students. You can not teach them which ways of life are right or wrong, only to think about them in a high, clever manner. He states "And if you are already flying upside down and do not know it, your cleverness will do you no good.". He continues discussing how people higher in society (economical and political philosopher's) ideas are more powerful than commonly understood. The deceived philosophers often manage to speak of ideas that control the masses of our country in wrong thought. He ties it all together by basically saying the people in our society just carry important thoughts from the past and add on, positively or negatively, to these ideas to a point which they are naturally accepted and do not need justification. For example, whites towards blacks during slavery, or prejudice. The next part of the book confused me. Willard describes the story of a philosopher who ends up in a criminal case concerning a young man who had been his student. In prison, this young man written an account of what he had done and of how those liberating teachings enthusiastically discussed in the abstract had worked out in actual practice, and ended up in murder. I think he's trying to say that teachings can be understood differently from people. Lisa compared it to art; it can give everyone a different feel. But people also buy into things. He takes about "cleverness" and "cuteness" and how it has become part of America's "Pop Culture", and how easily people become satisfied or just go with the flow of unjustified morals. Ultimately he finishes the chapter by saying how our morals can be deprived from ideas that really don't have a solid foundation, hence the title "Living In the Dark". For instance, the "Everything I need to know I've learned in kindergarten" sayings are crud, and we should rather direct our objectives to say "I don't know what I need to know and must now devote my full attention and strength to finding out."

Proverbs 4:7 - Wisdom is supreme; therefor get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding.

And yet we have to act. The rocket of our life is off the pad. Action is forever. We are becomign who we will be - forever. Absurdity and cuteness are fine to chuckle over and perhaps to muse upon, but they are no place to live. They provide no shelter or direction for being human.