Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny, Etc., Etc.

David Brooks might have mentioned Marshall McLuhan in his Spenglerian [oops, I did it again!]put-down of the academics & their nattering spawn. Actually, a great teacher of mine at St. Louis U. named Fr. Walter Ong, S.J. said the same thing back in the sixties, noting that "culture" has gone from linear verbal to aural musical all the way to visual pattern-recognition in a very short time.

In a word, the triumph of process over goals. Paradoxically, the underlying quest for a goal, constantly denigrated in popular culture, has given rise to end-time chiliastic apocalyptic scenarios that do distill the current distaste for the processes we are engaged in, and overturn them as they are almost always without fulfillment.

My brother died last night, in Perth Australia, of a sudden onset of metasthesized cancer which spread rapidly throughout his body. Jimmy has reached his end-zone quest for rest, which the rest of us yearn for.

God bless him, and if he reincarnates, I hope I meet him again in another lifetime.