THE NEW JERUSALEM

Articles

Letter #260: Common Happiness

1 week ago | thenewjerusalem.substack.com | Andrew Klavan

Spengler. Here’s something interesting. I posted Monday on what I see as widespread instances of mental illness, certainly in the United States but really, it seems, throughout the West. I politicized the observation because it’s the left that has such a stranglehold on the means of information, education and entertainment and thus has greater power to spread the loony fantasies in which so many Westerners seem to be living.
Letter #258: Nutcase Nation

1 week ago | thenewjerusalem.substack.com | Andrew Klavan

Sponge. On my Friday podcast, I made some jokes centered on a study that showed large numbers of politically left-leaning people have poor mental health. This made me laugh because I’m cruel and heartless and generally indifferent to the suffering of others. Also it's true. Most studies show conservatives are more mentally healthy than left-wingers.
List #68: A Bygone Beauty

2 weeks ago | thenewjerusalem.substack.com | Andrew Klavan

Something that has always fascinated me is the way in which art forms and genres thrive and die. One is always hearing reviewers say things like, “He’s the new Stephen King,” or “He’s the next Martin Scorsese,” or “They’re the new Beatles.” But whenever I hear that, I always think: Why should there be a new one? There wasn’t an old one. Who said there would be another? Who even said there would be any more novels or any more movies or any more rock songs?
Letter #257: Critical BS Theory

2 weeks ago | thenewjerusalem.substack.com | Andrew Klavan

My lad. We seem to have finally perfected the Klavan Mind-Meld, which we probably should have trademarked before the Vulcans stole it. Even though, after my last e-mail, I was not thinking about Magritte’s pipe, I was, in fact, pondering the fascinating fact that we read novels, go to movies and watch shows and love and hate and weep, broken-hearted, at the deaths of characters who have never existed in real life. More than that, we seek out the experience.
Letter #257: Critical BS Theory

2 weeks ago | thenewjerusalem.substack.com | Andrew Klavan

Low blow, Klavan. Fully agree that the molestation scandal terribly harmed the RCC, and that the handling of the crimes was awful, with thousands of lives harmed or ruined for those children. Turns out that the numbers of molesters in the population of priests closely mirrors that of the general population. It is not unique to celibacy and certainly not unique to the religion which teaches transubstantiation. This statement is also a bit of a non sequitur as well.
Letter #256: This is not a Post

2 weeks ago | thenewjerusalem.substack.com | Spencer Klavan

Dad,There’s a painting I think about a lot called The Betrayal of Images, by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte. It’s famous: a picture of a pipe with the caption Ceci n’est pas une pipe, “This is not a pipe.”I think this is in some sense a diabolical painting. Magritte was a wonderful artist, but he knew what he was doing when he called this piece The Betrayal of Images. He was saying two things: that images can betray you, and that the painting is an act of betrayal against imagery itself.
Letter #255: Tragedies of Trust

2 weeks ago | thenewjerusalem.substack.com | Andrew Klavan

Mine son. This past Sunday was Pentecost. It spoke directly into my current thinking. This is the day when the church began. Jesus had ascended into heaven, and now, as he had predicted, the Holy Spirit descended on his followers. They began to speak “in tongues,” meaning in different languages, even languages they didn’t know. They described the works of God so that all the diaspora Jews around them could understand them.
Letter #254: You Put Your Brain in Your Phone

2 weeks ago | thenewjerusalem.substack.com | Spencer Klavan

Dad,Most college kids who want to travel go backpacking through Europe; my version of this, as you may recall, was to sing my way around the world in Cole Porter’s old choir. That is a real thing which occurred. My first time in Athens, I was staying in an apartment owned by this lady who looked like a cross between Elaine Stritch and one of the villagers from Mamma Mia! We knew her because her nephew was a friend of a friend, a guy called—wait for it—Dionysius.
The List #67: What are Friends For?

3 weeks ago | thenewjerusalem.substack.com | Spencer Klavan

It’s funny how new tech makes all the old questions urgent again. AI chatbots have rendered a lot of modern teaching methods basically useless, so many teachers are returning to the ancient and medieval practices of memorization, handwritten essays, and in-person viva voce exams.
Letter #253: Bots Gone Mad

3 weeks ago | thenewjerusalem.substack.com | Spencer Klavan

The ancient rabbis had a saying about the Tower of Babel. What’s the problem, they asked, with a global family all speaking one language in perfect unity? Well, a community with only one language is like a man with only one wine cellar: “He opens one barrel and finds it gone sour. A second—sour again. A third—sour.”The builders in Babel keep repeating the same words in different forms: “let us build brick after brick, and fire them with fire.” When you do that with words, they get stale.