But Why is the Blog Dead?

It’s not dead, it just looks that way… 

I realize I haven’t posted in a while, and this is for two reasons:

1. Life Stuff – I’m engaged! And we bought a house! Unpacking boxes + decorating has taken a significant chunk out of my reading time. Also Fanime happened and my parents came to visit and…
2. I’ve been reading one very long somewhat dry book that I started the summer of 2013 and have been reading off and on. It’s A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell.

I really love Bertrand Russell’s writing style. He never shies away from making a statement and he peppers his history with bits of dry snark (not so much that it distracts from the subject matter… maybe every 25, 50, 100 pages). The book is divided into 3 parts: Ancient Philosophy, Catholic Philosophy, and Modern Philosophy. I just finished the part on Catholic Philosophy. While reading that section, I noticed something that happens over and over: someone becomes too pious or altruistic, makes the Church look bad, and then is killed. It makes me a little bit worried about Bernie Sanders…

Bertrand Russell really doesn’t have a good opinion of the Catholic church and it’s pretty obvious. A lot of the section about Catholic Philosophy is about the moral degeneracy of the clergy and papacy from about 1000-1500. The Catholic priests would bend scripture to send more money their way, doing things like decreeing that Jubilee, a festival that was supposed to be every 100 years when Catholics who visited Rome would be absolved of sin, came every 25 years. This was because all the pilgrims brought the Church (and Rome, and Italy in general) a lot of money.

Anyway, the section on Catholic history wasn’t the most interesting to me (I come from a Jewish family, so a lot of the theology is foreign to me), so I’m looking forward to tackling the section on modern philosophy. I’m hoping to post every Friday whether or not I have a full book review to do, so this is just a brief update. (Also reading Neuromancer in the background so look out for that too!)

Until next week!

~ Kurobana