In this episode, Shannon and Katie discuss the nature of the disunity that is so prevalent in our nation's society today. They talk about the possible results of that disunity and the plausibility of reunification efforts. They also discuss what each has been reading and learning about lately and share a few commonplace quotes. Enjoy!

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Show Notes:

Commonplace Corner:

John Milton - Areopagitica -

"Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?"

Bernard of Clairvaux - In Capite Jejunii -

"Well, wholly well, is it for me to cleave to You, O glorious and ever-blessed Head, on Whom the angels yearn to look. Wherever You go, there will I follow You; if You pass through the fire, I will not be turned from You. I will fear no evil, for You are with me. You carry my griefs, and grieve for my sake; and through the narrow portal of the Passion You enter first, to make a wider passage for Your limbs that follow You."

Dorothy Sayers - Lost Tools of Learning -

"For we let our young men and women go out unarmed, in a day when armour was never so necessary. By teaching them all to read, we have left them at the mercy of the printed word. By the invention of the film and the radio, we have made certain that no aversion to reading shall secure them from the incessant battery of words, words, words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are a prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects. We who were scandalised in 1940 when men were sent to fight armoured tanks with rifles, are not scandalised when young men and women are sent into the world to fight massed propaganda with a smattering of "subjects"; and when whole classes and whole nations become hypnotised by the arts of the spell-binder, we have the impudence to be astonished. We dole out lip-service to the importance of education--lip-service and, just occasionally, a little grant of money; we postpone the school leaving-age, and plan to build bigger and better schools; the teachers slave conscientiously in and out of school-hours, till responsibility becomes a burden and a nightmare; and yet, as I believe, all this devoted effort is largely frustrated, because we have lost the tools of learning, and in their absence can only make a botched and piecemeal job of it." P. 10

JD Flynn -

"By now, our disunity is concrete and palpable. Neighbors and family members are living in parallel constructions of reality, with divergent sets of norms, and social taboos, and expectations. We are fragmented in ways that go well beyond our habits of masking, or our opinions on vaccines.

Made clear in everything that has happened is that we are a people — inasmuch as we are one people — with no unified metaphysics, nor epistemology, nor teleology.

We are a nation bound mostly by proximity. And that hardly seems enough to hold."

Episode Artwork: The Reconciliation of Jacob and Esau by Peter Paul Reubens

time: 1:12:22