A question of taste

Ecumenical Encounters
the tangible in art
communitarian capitalism

Forum
THE HILLSDALE

Notes from the far east

Eternal love/This is a test
Have Courage, Be Kind
from the mixedup files
VOLUME III, ISSUE 12 | MARCH 2016

Ta b l e o f C o n t e n t s
INDIVIDUAL TASTE: A CAUTIONARY TALE 4
Stacey Egger

ECUMENICAL DIALOGUE AT HILLSDALE

Timothy Troutner

TANGIBILITY AND THE NEW PLACE OF THE ARTIST 10

Mark Naida

CAPITALISM AND COMMUNITY 14

Birch Smith

NOTES FROM THE FAR EAST 17

Devin Creed
Minte Irmer
Micah Meadowcroft

MUSIC: THAT LOVE TOO MAY LAST 25

Mark Naida
Forester McClatchey

MOVIE: CINDERELLA 28
Emily Lehman

SATIRE 30

Noah Weinrich

VOLUME III, ISSUE 12

M i s s i o n S tat e m e n t

The Hillsdale Forum is an independent, student-run conservative magazine at Hillsdale

College. The Forum, in support of the mission statement of the college, exists to foster a campus
environment open to true liberal education and human flourishing. We publish opinions,
interviews, papers, and campus news. The Forum is a vehicle to bring the discussion and
thought of the students and professors at the heart of our school beyond the classroom, because
if a practical end must be assigned to a University course, it is that of training good members
of society. The Forum brings the learning of the classroom into the political reality of campus.

T h e H i l l s d a l e F o r u m March 2016

Letter
EDITORS-IN-CHIEF
Sarah Reinsel
Madeline Johnson
MANAGING EDITOR
Emily Lehman
EDITOR-AT-LARGE
Chris McCaffery
STAFF EDITOR
Andrew Egger
STAFF WRITERS
Timothy Troutner
Noah Weinrich
Micah Meadowcroft
Mark Naida
Forester McClatchey
ESSAYISTS
Stacey Egger
Birch Smith
Devin Creed 15
Minte Irmer
DESIGN
& PHOTOGRAPHY
Sarah Reinsel
Devin Creed 15
Minte Irmer
FACULTY ADVISOR
Dr. John Somerville

from the

Editors

MARCH 2016

If our own experience is typical, the sudden waking up of

the outdoor world is scattering your thoughts, making you
think of elsewhere and elsewhen. Snapping in and out of
campuss collective flashback to commencement season,
you stop in your tracks between classroom buildings and
run a glance across the scrubby grass and still-grey trees;
your thoughts flick to the past, to the future, back to the
midterminous present.
The March issue of The Hillsdale Forum is with you. In
its pages your colleagues are pondering gatherings and
scatterings, what holds us together, what keeps us apart.
In the first section of the issue we hear from Stacey Egger
on the slippery topic of taste, and Mark Naida explores
the challenge technology poses for art. Timothy Troutner
offers a moving (and challenging) reflection on the risks
and promises of the ecumenical conversations (or interconfessional debates) that animate our campus, and Birch
Smith lays out an analysis of the impact of capitalism on
community. The issues middle section is an excursus to
the Far East, as alumnus Devin Creed, near-alumna Minte
Irmer, and English professor Dr. Somerville (interviewed
by Micah Meadowcroft) share present and past experiences
living in South Korea and Japan. Rounding out the
panorama are our features: a twofold music review from
Mark Naida and Forester McClatchey, thoughts from Emily
Lehman on Cinderella and the twist of twistlessness, and a
concluding enigma that may shed light on why The Forum
sometimes takes its time coming out.
As we scatter for spring break, the Forum editors invite
campus, once again, to treasure the common conversation
that gathers this community from the corners of the globe
to reflect together on taste, creeds, and the common goodto tug the transcendentals down into everyday life. F
Madeline Johnson is a junior studying philosophy. Sarah Reinsel is
a junior studying English.

&Community

Taste

Individual Taste: A Cautionary Tale

Part 1 of 2
by

t was Christmas break, and I was

out in the wide worldspecifically,
driving down a Saint Louis street with
a close friend. I asked if she wanted to
stop by a certain store on the way home.
Oh, shoot, she replied, I dont have
my earbuds. I cant listen to the music
they play in there.
The compulsion to drown out the
noises of the world around you with
sounds that are up to your level of
selection may strike you as foreign
and obviously negativean extreme
example. It may strike you as a fairly
reasonable sentiment. Either way,
it seems an innocuous claim that a
refined faculty of taste, considered
broadly as a persons non-discursive
sensitivity and selectivity towards
beauty and goodness, has the tendency
to withdraw him in some ways from
his community. We like grains too
much to eat the bread they serve in the
high school cafeteria. We like Keats too
much to sit through open mic night
without being distracted by the sound
of our insides clawing at themselves. We
like intelligent conversation too much
not to take extended walks around our
grandparents familiar neighborhood
instead of sitting in the living room and
talking to our cousins.
This article is not going to claim that
cultivating taste is evil because it schools
us to snub. I believe that the faculty of
taste is invaluable for beauty-lovers
and truth-seekersideally, invaluable
for all. But its importance as a tool for
truth requires us to be cautious with

T h e H i l l s d a l e F o r u m March 2016

Stacey Egger

it. Like most powerful tools, taste can

be dangerous. It can demolish just as
much as it can build, and faster.
To understand the dangers involved
in cultivating taste, it is important
first to understand its value. Taste has
two main goods. The first is simple:
the physical world around us, the
natural and the man-made, has certain
qualities of beauty and goodness.
Taste, as an appreciation of these,
brings us closer to this beauty and
goodness by sensitizing us to them.
Secondly, our taste determines what
art and culture we expose ourselves
to, and thus shapes the images with
which we see the world and process
ideas. This affects both our own vision
and, crucially, our communication
with others. There is a reason that
new friendships often involve finding
shared cultural or artistic loves, or
sharing them. Art is a good example.
Our understanding of certain ideas,
our way of looking at things, and our
roads to certain conclusions are often
aided or informed by the concise and
potent expressions of certain pieces of
art. (Art has a special ability to do this;
this is why religions produce music and
images, which can often express and
share devotion in a way that cannot
be expressed in any other form.) With
a piece of art serving as a foundation
for our vision of something, it can be
very difficult to express it to someone
else in any other way. Our taste thus
not only paints the sensible landscape
of our own vision of the truth, but it

gives us the tools to communicate this

to others.
If we believe that beauty is aligned
with truth, then, simply put, good taste
helps us to use our aesthetic faculties
in the service of both beauty and truth.
If artistic influences, as I have claimed,
are powerful enough to color the way
in which we see the world and come
to conclusions, then it is crucial that
our non-discursive, artistic selectivity
is as sharp as possible. However, for a
faculty that should lead to love of truth
and communication of truth, there
is a surprisingly typical tendency to
increase in disdain of the community
and world that surrounds us as we
develop as tasteful individuals. This
a disconcerting trend. If taste brings
us closer to reality in pointing us to
good things, if it is an agent of truth,
then why should it divide us from the
world? Why, especially, should it divide
us from the people around us?
It is crucial to a respect for high
taste to recognize that this haughty,
separative taste is an early stage in the
development of the faculty. It is perhaps
natural to go to extremes in the learning
or acquisition of anything. Thus it is
not the very tasteful but the mediumtasteful that tend to set themselves the
farthest above lower things or people.
This can come either from a zeal for or
possessiveness towards our new loves,
or from a conflation of the faculty of
taste with what it should seek to lead
us to, namely, truth. Conflating taste
with truth can prevent us from fully

attaining either. Part of the importance

of recognizing where these aesthetic
lines lie is so that the things that truly
divide us from others stand out clear.
These are not matters of taste; they are
the hard-won, central truths to which
all of our cultivation, it is to be hoped,
has led. These divisions between us
and others are not enjoyable, and this
should be one of their markers. They
should not cause us to laugh and roll
our internal eyes, or send a scornful text
message to a friend who gets it. They
are grave, and if we are lovers of truth
and of goodness and of our neighbor,

them with as little prior knowledge as

I had. It was a perfect place to observe
the rapid development of new taste. For
the first couple of weeks most people
remained fairly quiet about things they
knew they didnt know. Occasionally,
however, we would overhear a curator,
or someone else who knew what they
were talking about, make a small jab
at something a visitor had said, a silly
reaction they had had to a piece of art,
etc. They were all fairly harmless, the
frustrations of professionals expressed
to other professionals about people
disrespecting or misinterpreting what
was their entire lifes
work.
Interestingly, however,
these kinds of comments
With a piece of art serving as a foundation
were the first things
that my fellow yuppies
for our vision of something, it can be very
picked up on. Knowing
difficult to express it to someone else in
how recently-acquired
any other way. Our taste thus not only
was the entirety of
paints the sensible landscape of our own
our knowledge on the
subject, we still made fun
vision of the truth, but it gives us the tools
of the visitors, whom it
to communicate this to others.
was our job to acquaint
with the art, as soon as
they left. It is an amazing
thing to hear someone
they should lead us not further into the who in their group interview a month
well-decorated isolation of ourselves, before named Superman: The Movie as
but outwards with the truth we have the piece of art that had most changed
come to know.
them mock a thirty-year-old mother
This kind of elitism is something that for asking her child what animals he
can be based in almost anything with a could see in Richard Tuttles Wire Pieces
learning curve, in any job, discipline, or (so disrespectful). The tone of these
area of interest. To use a slightly on-the- critiques was as much more harsh
nose example, last summer I started as it was less warranted than those of
working in an art gallery. I was hired our superiors. In our desire to mask
having just finished my freshman year our lack of knowledge, to take on as
as a history student; I knew nothing quickly as possible an appreciation
about art. To my great relief, and quite for something new, the fastest and
conveniently for the uses of this article, easiest route to inclusion seemed to be
the gallery was being newly opened after disdain and hatred. The more we were
a year of remodeling: almost everyone able to critique the reactions of others,
in my position was a new hire, many of the more we felt as if we were setting

ourselves aside from the masses along

with the art, and thus drawing closer to
it and to those who truly appreciated it.
As is probably apparent, this was not
the case. It was absurd for us to look
down on interested, sincere people for
not having access to information that
we had been exposed to just weeks,
perhaps days, beforeand exposed to
for the express purpose of sharing it
with them. A true appreciation of the
art began once time went on and, in
drawing closer to it and understanding
it more, our compulsion, rather than
trying to set it and ourselves apart, was
to share with others something that had
actually begin to reach and affect us.
A truly tasteful appreciation of
something comes when it is seen as it
is and fit into its place. This is rarely a
place with the height of exclusion we
give it in early stages of appreciation. A
fully developed and truth-serving taste
will not have this character of hatred
and putting-down; it will see the object
as it is, the good and the bad, neither
too high nor too low, without lessening
the value of other things, or of other
people, through the appreciation of
this one. It is important as we develop
in taste, as we begin to discern and love
the beauty and goodness in things, that
we humble ourselves to be cautious
of our own zeal and critical of our
own cultivation, keeping in mind how
newly-acquired these appreciations are,
and what they must serve.
Recognizing these tendencies of
the fledgling development of taste,
it is crucial that we keep above all
in our eyes humility and love, both
recognizing our young tastes for what
they are and knowing true taste for
what it is, something lower than love
and lower than truth, and good only as
it serves these. F
Stacey Egger is a sophomore studying history.

DIALOGUE AND DIFFERENCE

Ecumenical Encounters at Hillsdale
by

eve all seen them-the

freshmen
matching
wits
over predestination vs. free will
or Catholicism vs. Protestantism,
testing their newfound powers across
Saga tables or late into the night in the
student union. Like sparring adolescent
mountain goats, their youthful energy
and inexperience predominate. In
these poorly delineated arenas, many a
straw man is born into the world, only
to suffer a violent death at the hands
of arguments dotted with woefully
undefined terms. Charges of heretic
are lobbed across denominational
battle lines, and age-old tactics meet in
inevitable stalemate, accompanied by
escalating tones and unshakeable selfconfidence.
From across the dining hall,
sophomores roll their eyes knowingly,
confident in their superior worldliness.
Veterans of Hillsdales pluralist
religious terrain, they know that these
skirmishes will soon die down. A few
stragglers may take the fight to social
media, but soon things will calm down
and students come to terms with the
fact that many of their fellow students
follow different creeds, confessions,
and concords with similar confidence
and equal piety.
6

T h e H i l l s d a l e F o r u m March 2016

Timothy Troutner

These sophomores rightly realize

that Hillsdale freshmen are thrown into
a world of startling religious diversity.
Although strongly skewing conservative
and generally confined to the spectrum
of avowedly orthodox Christianity,
many denominational backgrounds
feed into the Hillsdale melting pot.
Inevitably, the first attempts at dialogue
will fizzle, as many are venturing out of
their evangelical or Catholic bubbles to
encounter serious Christian differences
for the first time. Never having seen a
papist or someone who questions
young earth creationism, it is no
surprise if freshmen meet like ships
that pass in the night.
One should not judge them too
harshly, these sophomores say, for they
know not what they do.
However, by late sophomore year,
the uneasy peace begins to break.
Friend groups can only avoid the
differences in the faith at the heart of
their various lives for so long. Those
who do everything together begin to
feel the separation imposed by Sunday
morning. Classes on philosophy or the
Reformation expose the hidden fault
lines and religious dialogue begins to
slowly come to the fore once more, with
combatants now armed with greater

conceptual abilities and a deeper

recognition of history.
The stakes are higher now. The
inevitable waves of high-church
conversion begin to crest sophomore and
junior year. As friends swim the Tiber
or otherwise change their allegiance,
the easy confidence of freshman year
dies a slow death. Meanwhile, friends
find that hormones and mutual interest
outweigh the early proclamations that
Id never date a ______ . Ecumenical
Hillsdating
becomes
full-blown
interdenominational romance and
the tension between couples builds,
whether acknowledged or suppressed.
Whether facing the liturgical/nondenominational divide or the fabled
Lutheran/Catholic pairing, students are
required to face the different ways they
view the sacrament of the altar or the
mother of God.
As the midpoint of their time at
Hillsdale approaches, many find that
they have come full circle, returning
to the questions they mishandled as
overeager freshmen. This time, they
meet not as newly acquainted rivals but
as trusted friends. The word heretic
will only dropped in jest or as a
halfhearted gesture, outweighed by the
mutual acknowledgment of character

and sincerity built over multiple

semesters. (As an aside, the words of
anathema are an ecclesial prerogative,
and it is worth noting that even the
Council of Trent refused to name
names.) While the disagreements may
still be sharp and the conflict painful,
we can assume that charity and respect
are givens.
Although much progress has been
made by the time these issues are
revisited by the more mature, rehashing
debates that tore the church apart in
1054 and the early sixteenth century
remains endlessly messy. Those who
attempt it risk wading into a quagmire of
terminology, distinctions, questionable
narratives, and disagreements that
appear bitter and intractable. While this
might seem discouraging, the familiar
faces on the other side of the table
and the conviction that the Church
can only be one, holy, catholic, and
apostolic serve as ample incentive. The
question remains: how can we avoid
the mistakes of our younger years and
engage in productive dialogue across
the boundaries of religious traditions?
While I dont claim to be an expert
in ecumenical dialogue, I find the
differences separating me from my
friends and fellow students increasingly
urgent and even tragic. My own
imminent conversion to Catholicism
has not led me to a place of satisfaction
in my own fragment of full Christian
unity. My turn toward the Catholic
Church has only intensified my
conviction that Hillsdale students
have a calling to ecumenical dialogue.
Until the wee hours of the morning,
among Turkish ruins, and on bus rides
through the hills and valleys of Israel,
I have struggled to understand and
overcome the gulf that divides me from
my friends.
Equipped with the lessons from
these experiences and inspired by

the Catholic theologian Hans Urs

von Balthasar, his brilliant Reformed
dialogue partner Karl Barth, and
the Orthodox theologian David
Bentley Hart, I would like to offer a
few suggestions for dialogue across
Christian denominations at Hillsdale.
I cannot claim originality; much of
what follows is heavily indebted to the
discussion of ecumenical dialogue in
Balthasars The Theology of Karl Barth.
The Open Wound in the Church
Too often, the first Hillsdale
conversations about religion are
undertaken from the standpoint of
the victorious conqueror, sure of the
superiority of his creed and reveling in
the purity of his church and its pristine
theology. This self-congratulatory
theology is so busy patting itself on the
back that it cannot see the fractures
and imperfections in the Church
illuminated by the light of Christ. The
truly orthodox partner in dialogue, by
contrast, must come to terms with the
tragic reality that the church has not
lived up to Christs prayer in John 17:21
that they may all be one; even as You,
Father, are in Me and I in You, that they
also may be in Us.
This unity is not a choice Christ
gives to the Church, or a minor good
which might reduce conflict and allow
for more effective cooperation. Nor is
it a matter of putting on a good face
for the non-Christian world. Rather,
the unity of the Church is grounded
in the unifying love of the Trinity, in
the profound unity of Christs person,
and in the common baptism by which
we are all placed in the body of Christ.
Nor does the concept of an invisible
universal church allow us to ignore this
command or take the tragedy lightly. As
Karl Barth said, [the Church] is clearly
and materially visible as a community
with a communal office There is no

escape-hatch from the visible to the

invisible Church. To think otherwise
would be to imagine the church as
disembodied, not truly social, and
insubstantial except in the otherworldly
realm.
Balthasar added that if we are aware
of the true nature of the Church, we
must feel this split not only as a daily
wound but even more as a constantly
burning shame. The essence, and not
merely the name, of the church is
agape: unity in love. So every lapse
from this unity calls the very substance
of the Church into question. Although
it might seem a discouraging beginning
for religious dialogue, recognition of
the tragedy of disunity prevents any
attempt see the conversation as a battle
or a mission to convert others to a
pristine and unified church. Only when
we approach our fellow students with
the intent of healing a gaping wound
in a unity that should transcend our
particular churches can we ensure that
our hearts are in the right place, with
the one who comes bringing healing
in his wings rather than with the thief
who comes to steal, kill, and destroy.
Victimhood and Remorse
When friends come together to try to
heal their small corner of the centurieslong tragedy of disunity, they must give
up their victimhood narratives. I once
heard a diplomatic negotiator explain
that the main problem with IsraeliPalestinian negotiations was that over
decades the Palestinian leaders had
convinced their people that they were
innocent victims of Israeli aggression,
and vice-versa. The problem, he said,
is that when people see themselves
as victims, they refuse to allow for
anything other than complete surrender
from their oppressors and any sort
of real conversation and negotiation
becomes impossible. With centuries
7

dependence upon
Gods grace. One
might admit such
Even Christ did not defend his innocence
guilt and still
but bore the guilt of others. It is when
contend that God
dialogue partners are willing to bear each
has guided and
the burdens of the misunderstandings,
sustained
ones
harsh denunciations, and defensiveness of
tradition in unique
ways. Even papal
the other and confess their own culpability
infallibility
and
and that of their tradition that unity can
the concept of a
come.
magisterium are
compatible
with
this humility. As
of distrust and even persecution, it
Balthasar
put
is easy for Orthodox, Catholics, and it, The individual Christian, at any
Protestants to rest in easy narratives rate, who enters into dialogue will
in which they emerge as the good immediately recognize that guilt is
guys, untouched by sin and division. shared by both sides and will be able
The Orthodox can point to western to confess this guilt openly without
crimes at the Siege of Constantinople harming the obligation to defend
and to their own adherence to ancient the truth. To do otherwise would be
tradition to create a narrative in which self-righteous, to see ourselves as the
they are have pristinely maintained innocent victimwhich can only be
the faith against the compromises and Christ, and even he did not defend
betrayals of the West. Protestants can his innocence but bore the guilt of
tell a story of abuses in the church that others. It is when dialogue partners
necessitated reforms which were met are willing to bear each the burdens
with anathemas and eventually with of the misunderstandings, harsh
warfare. Catholics can blame Luther denunciations, and defensiveness of the
for disrupting the church and throwing other and confess their own culpability
Europe into a more chaotic state while and that of their tradition that unity can
they maintained apostolic succession come.
and the fullness of truth. We can debate
Encounter and Dependence
the merits of each of these narratives, The humility to step outside the
but when each side adopts one of them narratives of victimhood we have told
as the complete story, dividing the about ourselves and notice the Churchs
world into the black-hat and white-hat wounds and our own culpability is the
cowboys, discussion will be impossible: first step towards dialogue, but it is
there will be no common ground and predominantly a negative one. It paves
no room for repentance on either side. the way for the most important step,
Instead, we should recognize that which is to recognize that we listen to
the Church, as a phenomenon which one another because we really have
is human as well as divine, always something to receive that we do not
struggles with the misunderstandings, already possess. Hillsdale freshmen
mistakes, and blatant sins of its leaders, frequently see dialogue as debate, where
theologians, and lay people. One need the goal is to win the other over to your
not give up ones Lutheranism to admit own position, not acknowledging the
that Luthers tone and temperament possibility that the other might have an
did not help matters, nor need one insight that will require you to modify
give up ones Catholicism in admitting your position while remaining true to
the abuses of the church and even your conviction. Perhaps discussion
dangerous slips toward accounts of with the Orthodox can help Protestants
salvation which did not fully emphasize and Catholics to appreciate the
8

T h e H i l l s d a l e F o r u m March 2016

communal and sensory nature of their

faith in a more vivid way. Lutherans
surely have something to offer Catholics
in their pastoral emphasis on the
perpetual emphasis on the Gospel and
the Cross, which can never be forgotten.
Catholics can remind Orthodox of the
universality of the Church, which must
overcome ethnic boundaries, although
ethnic ties remain important. Catholics
might be able to offer Lutherans
another perspective on sanctification
to supplement the focus on the lawgospel tension: the transcendence of
that tension through grace, as shown in
the lives of the saints.
What is vital is a recognition that
when we discuss our beliefs with
our friends, we are participating in a
real encounter. As Balthasar writes,
everyone wants to encounter the other
rather than be willing to be met in a
dialogue, a willingness to heart out the
other is more important than talking.
Again, this requires a humility that is
difficult to develop. However, this this
step cannot be bypassed: Something
is really being said to us and that we
can answer only after we have really
listened. The Church, too, at Nicea,
Ephesus and Trent first listened and
assembled in silence and meditation
before delivering herself of an answer.
The reason for this receptive posture
is not mere courtesy or the belief that
listening fosters cooperation. There is
theological justification for believing
that we have something to learn from
those who belong to other religious
traditions and even for acknowledging
that the fragments of the Church each
harbor a unique insight.
Only when the Body of Christ is
whole can it utter truth in its fullness.
Balthasar explained, According to
a well-known position of Newman,
the Catholic Church can see herself
as the embodiment of wholeness and
totality only when she has done all in
her power actively to incorporate the
riches of all partial points of view.
Even those who belong to churches
with the most dramatic claims about
the coherence, integrity, and divine

preservation of their doctrine can

acknowledge that they need the other
in order to fully search out their own
mystery, to paraphrase Nostra Aetates
proclamation of the necessity of
dialogue with Judaism.
Speaking in Foreign Tongues?
Perhaps the most obvious failure of
early Hillsdale conversations is the
failure to accommodate ourselves
to the vocabulary of our friends. As
Balthasar constantly points out, the
gospel is not bound to one language
or philosophical vocabulary, but these
tongues do present a challenge.
Many a conversation has been derailed
by allegations that Catholics pray to
Mary or worship her (brushing up on
the different between dulia and latria

The tantalizing hope of unity

lies ahead of us, but only if we
are willing to lay down our arms
and practice kenosisthe selfemptying love Christ displayed in
the incarnationwhile talking
through the substantial differences
that remain between us.
might help avoid this theological culde-sac). Conversations can go on for
hours without the realization that
key terms like grace, law, and faith
are being used equivocally. Instead of
grappling with the substance of other
positions, most people fail to overcome
the linguistic boundaries, unwittingly
constructing strawmen because they
import their own understandings of
the terms involved. Worse, there are
many terms that traditions do not share
in common. The Protestant division
between justification and sanctification
may only draw blank stares from
a Catholic, while terms like merit
conjure up nightmarish bogeymen for
Protestants. Our histories and traditions
have expressed the gospel in language
that is influenced by philosophical
movements like Neo-Platonism and
Aristotelianism, and larger-than-life
figures like Augustine and Luther have

left indelible marks on their theological

descendants.
If we want to truly talk to one another,
we will have to learn to understand the
others position from the inside out,
which will require time, humility, and
an act of imagination. As Balthasar
wrote, It has often been said that the
Fathers of Trent gave a medieval answer
to a modern question were they
always addressed to the actual question
being posed? Could the questioners
really understand the answer? At
Hillsdale, we should ask ourselves these
same questions when talking late into
the night over contentious points of
doctrine. It is important to note that
the words we choose are important and
theology must always express the Word
in words. Nor should we assume that
all disagreements can be eliminated on
linguistic grounds. However, it may be
that some issues, such as the Catholic
and Orthodox dispute over the filioque
clause in the Creed, can be resolved
by the admission that we mean the
same thing, or at least are closer to one
another than we thought. If the Church
is still guided by the Spirit that moved
at Pentecost, it must still be possible for
the gospel, no matter how imperfectly,
to be heard in the different tongues of
the Christian world.
A Final Danger and a Final Hope
When we return to our combative
freshmen conversations as sober
upperclassmen, conscious of the
wound in the Church and our own
position of humility, we might go too
far in the other direction. We might end
up with what Vatican II called false
irenicism, where we cover over our real
differences for the sake of mere peace,
something both Barth and Balthasar
were worried about. However, if we
truly understand the meaning of unity,
we will not be fully satisfied until we
can receive the sacraments together and
profess the creed in solidarity with one
another. Like churches, friends (and
couples) need to have these difficult
conversations rather than ignoring
them. Our desire to be one must be
subservient to the object of our faith.

We cannot compromise or dilute our

essential beliefs to accommodate the
other. As difficult as it may be, we must
pursue unity together with faithfulness
to our convictions, Even when, in
Barths words, neither side budges
from its position and the gulf between
the parties seems to grow all the wider.
However, it may be that when we
search our own mystery and strive
to better understand our deepest
convictions and the object of our
worship, we will find that we can
accommodate each other without
compromise on the fundamentals.
Even the firmly Reformed theologian
Barth wondered whether, as some
point, the only obstacles might be
small, inconsequential differences
that may still otherwise divide us from
Rome and that are of little advantage
to us anyway. As David Bentley Hart
hopes for Orthodox/Catholic dialogue,
we will begin to question whether we
had the authority to separate in the
first place, something that Barth notes
was only done, in the case of the early
Reformers with a heavy heart. As
for me, I hope that my conversations
with my friends, so enriched by
trust and love, will so surpass the
misunderstandings and aggression
of early failed attempts that we will
find real unity. I prayerfully hope with
Balthasar, who, quoting Barth, thought
that If each church really thinks
through to the end her own doctrines
in obedience to revelation, it could
happen that both sides might discover
they share a common position. God
willing, this tantalizing hope lies ahead
of us, but only if we are willing to lay
down our arms and practice kenosis
the self-emptying love Christ displayed
in the Incarnationwhile talking
through the substantial differences
that remain between us. Only then
will we hear the voice of God calling
to us through the other, summoning us
further up and further in, towards that
mystical eschatological union where
Christ will be all in all. F
Timothy Troutner is a senior studying
history and philosophy.

Tangibility and the

New Place of the
Artist
How to be a Realist
When There are so Many
TVs Around
or

by Mark Naida

The man gazed at the television. He finished his drink

and started another.

Raymond Carver, Why Dont You Dance?

n Dearborn, Michigan, there is a theme park for historians.

Or more properly, a park full of old things-things to stare at,
trinkets to buy, and elderly docents all too willing to dispense
stories from their vaults of knowledge.
It is nearing Christmas and I am attending one of their Nights
before Christmas events with my family. Greenfield Village is
brimming with the sound of Model Ts, childrens choirs, horn
ensembles, and the synthetic shuttering of an iPhone capturing
and effectively assaulting the Yule atmosphere. The street lights
reminisce of the times when lightbulbs were revolutionary,
their incandescence tenuous as each tungsten filament shakes
in the December breeze. Docents and historical fanatics stroll
in period garb, arm in arm, while nylon jackets and made-up
faces gawk in the storefronts. These storefronts include the
actual Wright Brothers bicycle shop, an old British toy store
now vending factory-made sweets, a mid-19th-century tavern,
and a glass-blowing shop. It feels like we are admiring the
skeleton of history: the contrast between the brick, antiquarian
building with the blacktop streets full of plastic strollers and
tablet-laden schoolchildren is suffocating.
In the back of the village there is a two-storey wooden home
constructed in New England a few years before the American
Revolution. Echoing against each footstep, the never-settled
house creaks while light blooms from the hearth. A young
docent in a frontier dress shows how bread was made by burning

10

T h e H i l l s d a l e F o r u m March 2016

a fire down to coals inside of the beehive-shaped hearth, which

retains the heat of a fire long enough for someone to brush out
the hot ashes, wet the inside of the beehive with a broom, and
bake multiple loaves of bread in the residual heat. In the winter,
the family would move down into the kitchen. They would
set their bedrolls in front of the glowing embers to wait out
the cold. And I had arrived in a car, talking to a friend on my
cell phone as we drove up the interstate past six McDonald's
restaurants and two Walmart stores while my sister checked
her Facebook feed and we all complained about the radio. As
I sit on an old barrel in an antique house, watching the fires
light tongue the corners of the wooden room, the contrast is
suffocating.
II

realism, n. The art of depicting nature as it is seen by

toads. The charm suffusing a landscape painted by a
mole, or a story written by a measuring-worm.
Ambrose Bierce

The focus of this essay is realist art in the contemporary world.

Realist art utilizes simple, everyday experience to distill reality
into a form that is technical and beautiful, and which allows
the viewer to attain deep insight into the true life of man and
his world. The aesthetic of realism allows the whole of life to
be poetry: even the banalities of laundry, doing the dishes, or
digging a hole, within a realist aesthetic, can be poetry. Realism
has little chivalry, few wizards, and only a limited number
of spaceships--like life. Though it is dark, it is also true and
honest. However, within a contemporary realist aesthetic, there

exists the constant tension of technology:

how to use it as poetic substance, how to
order an artistic life to technology, how
to find beauty in the loathsome things
that we cannot understand.
What objects and images are we
surrounded with and what art arises
from them? How does the aesthetic
experience interred in Greenfield Village
produce Frost, Fitzgerald, and Twain?
These men harnessed the tangible objects
and experiences of the everyday in order
to create the art of their time. For them,
art was tangiblebased in both image
and process. The whole of art is the
grafting of a tangible, sensual experience
onto the human imagination. As such,
we crave immersion into artaesthetic
immersion, a fully comprehensible scene
of life. Meanwhile, the televisual age
suffocates the tangible, honest aspect
of art as a few brave souls try to locate
the slender aesthetic lining of our time.
It is not that the contemporary world
is lacking in poetic silage, it is that the
world of art is stuck in a pre-media age.
There are few who insert technology
(cell phones, television) into poetry or
art; oftentimes a letter or newspaper

acts as an aesthetic replacement. But

if this replacement is made, the art can
hardly be considered realistic: it is,
instead, historical. Through aesthetic
replacement, an artist simply lops off
large portions of the contemporary
human experience. According to one
estimate, Americans spend an average of
eight and a half hours each day in front of
a screen, whether it be a television, a cell
phone, or a GPS. To be realist, it would
seem that art should conform to this
aspect of reality, though it is grim.
The screens have put us at war with
our own aesthetic sensibilities. First, the
point of artistic realism is to reflect upon
and find beauty in the everyday, but
these days our everyday experience can
be anything. By turning on a computer
we can instantly be in Barbados, in the
Arctic, or in the crowd at a concert.
This experience is offered on only two
sensory planes, however: sight and
sound.Additionally, the purpose of
screen-based technology is access
access to images and experiences
without a comprehensive sensory
experience. In reality, any experience
transmitted through the use of screen-

based technology is the experience of a

lone person staring into a backlit screen.
We can have any of the remarkable
experiences of the world and a single
lonesome experience at the same time.
Reality exists in the material world and
in the human mind. These two facets of
reality relate through the five senses and
serve as the artistic synapse. Art needs to
inhabit the material world with images
and objects while also being full of
sensory compassion in order to express
the reality of everyday experience.
The issue is then, what is our everyday
experience, our reality?
III

Cause the technology is just gonna

get better and better. And its gonna
get easier and easier... and more and
more convenient and more and more
pleasurable... to sit alone with images
on a screen... given to us by people who
do not love us but want our money.
And thats fine in low doses, but if
its the basic main staple of your diet,
youre gonna die In a meaningful
way, youre going to die.

David Foster Wallace,
Although of Course You End Up
Becoming Yourself

11

Televisual culture constantly offers us

a chance to leave reality. It allows the
disembodied imagination to explore
something lesser: the sterile world of
clean and beautiful people splayed across
a rectangle of glass. Because the everyday
mind is abstracted by the constant
availability of intangible experience, the
artistic mind is also floating in a sea of
images that we do not actually love,
produced by people who do not love
us. We have to mine and collect images
in order to create art out of honest
experience. There must be a constant
reorientation of the mind toward the
world and away from the technology.
Either that, or we must use it. A decision
needs to be made.
We know that there is little beautiful
about technology. We brush it under
the table and hide it away. Televisions
are hidden only to rise out of a slot in a
wooden cabinet. We hide our iPhones
in cases that look like wallets. In a
documentary about micro-houses, a man
proudly displays a work of his ingenuity, a
cabinet fully stocked with charging ports,
while saying that it is necessary to have
a place to hide [his] little nasties. It is
clear that society as a whole has decided
that the new baubles of our fascination,
smartphones and their ilk, are unpoetic
objects. But if they are such, why is there
so little discontent with the growing
fault lines between art and reality? Even
the Luddites seem silent on the issue.
Why do we keep our little nasties if we
know that they are not something we are
proud to have? The phrase I feel naked
without it has leaked into the lexicon of
even the most reluctant of smartphone
owners. It seems that we have deemed
them a necessity, albeit an ahistorical and
inartistic one. The hypocrisy in all of this
is that the world of contemporary art is
turning a blind eye to a large portion of
reality which grows each day. Either we
fight to make them beautiful through
artistic ingenuity or we should abandon
them as a culture.
Maybe this dichotomy is wrong. Maybe
art will adopt such unpoetic things as
these as naturally as it did the automobile,
the telephone, and the billboard. Maybe
not.
The invention of the pixelated screen
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T h e H i l l s d a l e F o r u m March 2016

was a revolution in human history. John

Logie Baird was an early developer of
televisions capabilities, first transmitting
recognizable human faces (1925), then
moving objects (1926), and then color
(1928). His advances started a revolution
in human experience. No longer did
people really need to wonder about the
worlds contents; those contents could be
captured and displayed. Man effectively
created something which could turn
into anythingsomething that could
synthesize human experiences while
removing any personal element. In the
mid-1950s, five-inch heart monitors
became commonplace for most hospitals.
Most people born in a hospital after that
time have not been outside the womb
without an encounter with something
which has the ability to transport them to
a different place. This is a rapid and rabid
development. Things have not slowed.
The fifties and sixties also saw the mass
production of television sets which have
been entrenched into the ethos of the
American Dream in such a way that many
Americans have proceeded to spend most
evenings in front of the tube until their
death. This is our reality. It would make
for a great novel: call it The Stare, try to
make it honest and beautiful.
Characters on television do not watch
eight and a half hours of television each
day. The writers of television shows know
that it is not beautiful or compelling
to see the very thing that the viewer is
doing when watching television. That is
the irony. We have a material experience
which is left ignored and unloved by our
entertainment. So where should art go?
We still have the material experience to
resort to, the tactile experience which has
created art for millennia. A decision must
be made to revert to the world of cocktail
hour, of conversation, and of reading
in order to revert to a tactile, material
experience.
IV

Realism is nothing more and

nothing less than the truthful
treatment of material
William Dean Howells,
Criticism and Fiction

Where does this place tangible art? How

does a torrid two-dimensional whirlwind

of images and sounds synthesize into

writing or the other fine arts? It is rare
to find television or other media used
in an artistic setting without massive
and obvious irony hitting the audience
over the head. Because of this, art should
become entrenched again in the tangible
worldthe poetic world. This is a world
unknown to most millennials and only
glimpsed by their parents, the Gen
Xers, with pubescent angst. The Baby
Boomers, the grandparents of today, were
the last generation formed in a world free
from incomprehensible technological
advancements. This generation knows
the names of trees. They have hobbies.
They think can think mechanically. This
is the gap between the mechanical and
digital age. We, the current generation,
know how to use things without any idea
of why they workwe lack fundamental
mechanical knowledge which would
provide an understanding of simple
technology. This understanding could
serve as poetic food for the current
generation.
Nicholson Baker, the author of The
Mezzanine, believes very firmly in
the beauty of mechanism. His book
reflects the tension found in the late
eighties with the advent of the personal
computer and the cell phone. For Baker,
beauty exists in the complexity of each
moment; in fact, the whole book takes
place on an escalator ride up a single
floor. Baker uses stream of consciousness
in his protagonist to show a mind with
traditional aesthetic sensibilities. He is full
of intimate mechanical understanding.
The technology of the book is only what
is comprehensible to the narratorthe
escalator being the most complex. It is
full of tactile moments including the
protagonists preoccupation with his two
broken shoelaces and his discourses on
doorknobs, straws, and ice cube trays.
Baker manages to show the workings of
an artists mind when he writes:
I gave no direct thought to
the escalators grooves that
afternoon, and indeed at
that time I had indistinct
notions as to their purposeI
thought they were there for
traction, or possibly were

purely decorative; grooved to

remind us of how beautiful
grooved surfaces are as a class:
the grooves on the underside
of the blue whale that must
render some hydrodynamic
or thermal advantage; the
grooves left in loose soil or by
a harrow in a field; the single
groove that a skaters blade
makes in the ice; the grooves
in socks that allow them to
stretch, and in corduroy,
down which you can run your
ballpoint pen; the grooves of
records.

A deep mechanical understanding of

the physical world presents an aesthetic
alternative to the world of microchips
and pixels whose beauty are understood
by so few. It allows abstractions to fade
and personal, physical knowledge to
prevail. This kind of knowledge has
been injured by advanced technologies
that pretend to love and nurture us,
but which actually unmoor us, leaving
us floating between disparate images,
implanted memories, and large stretches
of unpoetic activity. Baker displays the
thought process of a Baby Boomer,
fully formed in a world in which all
technology could be comprehended. That
world is not the world of today. The large
majority of the complex technologies
currently used are incomprehensible
without intense comprehension of
scientific principles, engineering, and
computer programming. Although
they are strangers to their users, these
technologies are used without suspicion.
Baker relishes the simple things. His love
for everyday, tangible objects should be
imitated in realist art. His understanding
of technology in its mechanistic form
can also serve our age and technological
atmosphere. Contemporary artists should
resort to this love of the mechanical
in order to rediscover and cultivate an
understanding of poetic objects.
So how do we begin to acclimate
ourselves to an older, comprehensible
world? One whose contents we can
understand whose objects we can name?
The French philosopher and writer JeanPaul Sartre, in his novel Nausea, shows
his protagonist, Antoine Roquentin,

experiencing the strangeness of human

experiences with the material world. He
writes:
I looked anxiously around me:
the present, nothing but the
present. Furniture light and
solid, rooted in its present, a
table, a bed, a closet with a
mirrorand me. The true
nature of the present revealed
itself: it was what exists, and
all that was not present did
not exist.

In that moment, the world reveals

itself to Roquentin for what it is. The
truth is that a table is a piece of tree that
we place pieces of animals on to squeeze
between mineral deposits of our mouths,
often with company. Sartre shows that
it is strange to understand the material
reality of everyday life. A true, base
understanding of the material world
must be reached in order to then explore
the role of the imagination in the artistic
life. This can aid in a new understanding
of the material world and of tangibility.
It would allow artists to earnestly
experience a realist aesthetic without
turning a blind eye to the glaring ugliness
of televisual technology. In the end, we
must do what we can to root ourselves
in the world and to express the whole of
human experience honestly.
This being said, the world will not
cease to turn. The technology will not
go away. I long for the poet of the digital
age. I long for one who can make sense of
this. Or I long for retreatto retreat into
the comprehensible, mechanical world,
to retreat back into the poetic world and
leave the screens behind.
An analogy for the challenge:
A bee rose up from a sunfilled paper cup, off to make
slum honey from some diet
root beer it had found inside. I
entered the lobby and went up
the escalator.

F
Mark Naida is a sophomore studying French
and English.

13

CAPITALISM

&

COMMUNITY
We Need Both
by

Birch Smith

he history of the West for the last two hundred or so years

is intricately tied up with the history of capitalism, and is
thus in important ways a history of sharp disagreements. As
far back as the Industrial Revolution, voices have been raised
in criticism of some aspect or other of the capitalistic system.
These criticisms, however, have almost universally tended
to come from within an economic tradition, addressing
economic concerns and promoting economic goods and
systems. Early reform movements focused on improving
the wages, working conditions, and hours of workers:
economic problems with economic solutions (albeit to the
dismay of those who advocated for more market freedom).
Even socialism or communism, which are often set up as
the opposite systems to capitalism, tend to focus on similar
problems (the just distribution of wealth in a society).
While their solutions are radically different, their goals and
standards for evaluation are fundamentally similar.
The twentieth-century revival of Aristotelian and
Thomistic ethics in Western academia has given rise to an
entirely new critical perspective, one that rejects many of
the underlying assumptions of both the supporters and the
opponents of capitalism: the quantification of all (or most)
things in terms of cost-benefit analyses, profit-margins, and
similar economic evaluations. While these critics have yet to
fully coalesce behind any particular party or individual, that
is perhaps the very thing that makes them more compelling,
and more difficult to refute. These critics dont necessarily
have a concrete ideology to push, or a manifesto to mark
up and debate at length. What they do have is a number of
convincing and insightful observations about capitalism and
modern society. Rather than thinking in terms of preferences
or profits, these critics talk about goods and virtues. Rather
than measuring life by financial success, they measure it by
human flourishing. Rather than focusing on globalization,
efficiency, and profit, they focus on local communities,
traditions, and ways of living. And rather than celebrate
the advances in technology, availability of products, and
lowering of prices that capitalism has brought, they bemoan

14

T h e H i l l s d a l e F o r u m March 2016

the loss of local community, connection to the earth, stable

families, and local businesses.
What I have described is at the heart of the movement
identified typically by the names Red Tory or
communitarian, or by some similar designation. We may
identify two tenets as central to this form of argument:
the identification of the human being with ancient and
medieval notions of personhood as opposed to attempts to
quantify humans as factors of production composed of skills,
experiences, preferences, and values (all subjective terms);
and an emphasis on the importance of local communities as
the focal cases of flourishing human life.
The task of properly analyzing the particular claims made
against capitalism by these thinkers is far too complex for
a piece of this length, and thus must be entrusted to the
diligence of the reader. But a few brief points to justify
the subsequent considerations are perhaps in order. The
criticisms of capitalism which these Red Tories lodge can
be categorized into a number of general considerations:
the effects of capitalism on human personhood, on social
milieus, on social organization/institutions, and on the
complete community.
The modern self views the world in a fundamentally
economic sense: choices are based not on practical
reasonableness in weighing goods and virtues, but on cost/
benefit analyses based on subjective preferences and values.
This is in strong contrast to what Alasdair MacIntyre terms
the ancient (or social) self, with its accompanying traditions,
institutions, and historically-rooted practices in which the
goods and virtues are constituted and lived out. There is,
further, a strong tendency to quantify human beings, and to
describe human flourishing in terms of productivity, profit,
and financial success, thus separating them from a wide
range of (non-economic) goods and practices, and often
reducing them to mere parts in a huge economic machine.
Viewing yourself as a member of a spontaneous order, or as a
factor of production, is very different from viewing yourself
as a member of a complete community with a complex
network of duties, rights, and obligations; a network which
incorporates the complete nature of human beings as (to
reference MacIntyre again) dependent rational animals
rather than limiting our goods and obligations to those
befitting a cog in a grand economic scheme (a scheme which
is, in the end, incapable of incorporating the totality of goods
to which we are properly directed).
The effects on social milieus are just as serious. Most

obvious is the culture of materialism

and commercialism, where material
possessions become central to the good
life, advertisement replaces education,
and wealth is admired more than virtue.
Our culture is one of overspending and
debt, in which advertising campaigns
promise success, popularity, and even
love to consumers who simply must
have the latest and greatest. The culture
of consumerism also prompts worries
that not just material things but human
beings and the natural environment are
being consumed, and that between the
lines of advertisements lies a pervasive
message about the centrality of material
possessions to the good life, and the
relative unimportance of true common
goods.
Social institutions have likewise
suffered. Global industrialization
has almost entirely replaced local
production, and superstores have shoved
out mom-and-pop establishments,
Big Ag has severed farmers from both
their land and their communities.
We even have a correspondingly
commercialized religious fad that tells
people that Gods only desire for them
is their health, wealth, and happiness
truly a convenient message for the
success-driven American businessman
who has no more time for his religion
than an hour on Sunday mornings and
a few dollars in the offering plate. By
far the worst victim, however, has been
the American family. Marriage is now
considered a contract, not a covenant,
and thus no-fault divorce is the obvious
option for those to whom their family
has become an inconvenience
spouse and children be damned. As
early as possible, children are shuttled
from daycare to preschool to public
education, from babysitters to available
relatives to friends housesindeed,

everyone except their loving but very scheme of goods and judgments. They
busy parents (who are, after all, simply say to the free-market thinker not
trying to provide the very best for Your theories are wrong about how
little Johnny and Sally). Elderly family to achieve your goods, but Your
members, rather than being cared for as theories do not encompass the range
an integral part of a healthy and multi- of goods and virtues necessary for the
generational family structure, are left good life, and may in fact limit peoples
in nursing homes (the best that money understanding of those goods. In this
could buy, of course) distant from their I think there is no doubt that they are
loved ones.
correct. There are two responses to
Finally, the effects on the complete this: one can choose to define the role
community. Plato succinctly described of the political community as purely
the problem in Book VIII of the economic in terms of protecting rights
Republic when he says, speaking of a and the free marketand to do this one
commercial society, From there they must adopt an openly modernist view
proceed further into money-making, of the stateor one can conceive of
and the more they value it, the less they the political community as a complete
value virtue. Or arent virtue and wealth community,
somehow
oriented
so opposed that if they were set on a towards the real flourishing of each
scales, theyd always incline in opposite of its members. It is no mistake that a
directions? The pursuit of wealth is at good portion of both Platos Republic
heart an individualistic pursuit, while and Aristotles Politics have to do with
the pursuit of virtue is only constituted the education of citizens, and in light of
in a certain way of relating to things the myriad failures and insufficiencies
external to oneself. A community of the modernist project to advance
centered on the pursuit of wealth is of human flourishing in non-economic
necessity an incomplete community, considerations, it seems that thinkers
almost incapable of properly pursuing like Alasdair MacIntyre and John
the sorts of goods, practices, or virtues Finnis present viable and compelling
that constitute human flourishing.
alternatives and projects.
These are the general outlines of the
Those of us who are attracted by
main criticisms of Western
capitalism, and because they
are not criticisms within
The modern self views the world in
a framework of economic
thought they have not
a fundamentally economic sense:
been, and perhaps cannot
choices are based not on practical
be, answered within pure
economic theory. This is
reasonableness in weighing goods
because, unlike competing
and virtues, but on cost/benefit
economic theories, they do
not primarily attempt to deny
analyses based on subjective
the validity of the economic
preferences and values.
reasoning of capitalist thinkers;
rather, they choose to operate
within an entirely different
15

sort of preconditions
for most effectively
Between the lines of advertisements
pursuing a flourishing
life: health, a certain
lies a pervasive message about the
amount of expendable
centrality of material possessions to the
income, leisure, etc.
If the claims about
good life, and the relative unimportance
the free market thinkers
of true common goods.
about
their
own
discipline are in fact
correctand I think
they arethen it may
very well be one of the
those projects, however, would do
most important tasks for modern social
well to avoid the sort of sweeping
philosophers to go beyond the easy
oversimplification prevalent among
task of criticizing a tradition to the far
some critics of free-market economies.
more difficultand enrichingtask of
To be sure, capitalist systems have a
reinvigorating one. It is true that there
multitude of faults and failings. But
are a wide range of non-economic
they have also made extraordinary
goods, but for this to be a meaningful
progress in freeing people to be able to
thing to say there must also be a range
secure the genuine goods, and pursue
of economic goods. The hubris of
the practices, that are essential for the
the economist in presuming that his
good life. We must not forget that we
discipline is capable of addressing the
have less expensive food and clothing,
entirety of human action is folly, but so
fuel, and power, better technology,
is the hubris of the social philosopher
superior medical care and educational
in presuming that the economist has
opportunity, faster communication,
nothing to offer.
and greater distribution of information
It would be hypocritical on my part
in modern capitalist countries than
to chasten social philosophers on this
in any other time or place in history.
account without at least gesturing
And I am inclined to agree with freetowards a solution. No one ought to be
market advocates that these advances
surprised by what I point towards as the
(or at least the speed at which they have
potential reconciliation between the
occurred) are not possible in any other
compelling claims of both parties to this
economic system. While none of these
debate: after all, it is the solution offered
things are intrinsically good, all of them
by the very same ancient thinkers that
enable us to pursue the things that are.
modern critics like MacIntyre and
We would also do well to note that
Finnis draw from. Any community that
both Plato and Aristotlewell before the
wishes to incorporate a free-market
advent of anything that could be called
economic system must also take special
modern capitalismwere cognizant of
care to the education of its citizens and
the dangers of a society which is focused
the health of its social milieu. After
primarily on the acquisition of wealth.
all, the thing Plato identifies as being
Thus the problems of consumerism and
fundamentally opposed to virtue seems
materialism are certainly not limited to
to be not wealth itself but rather a
capitalism, and, likewise, the adoption
focus on wealth as an end in itself, and
of an alternative economic system (as is
a corresponding estimation of wealth
sometimes suggested) is no guarantee
over virtue.
that those problems will be eliminated.
What is needed, then, is a sort of
It may be argued that a free-market
non-materialist free market in which
system is uniquely likely to produce
two principles are understood: first,
that sort of problem, and this may be
that the free market is the best system
in fact correct. But a free market system
for securing the best economic,
is also uniquely capable of securing the
16

T h e H i l l s d a l e F o r u m March 2016

informational,
and
technological
milieu for persons to pursue and
realize their own flourishing; second,
that the purpose of the free market is
not to secure wealth for its own sake,
but for the sake of the very goods and
flourishing that it helps to efficiently
secure. With proper education, the
mechanisms of a properly understood
and bridled market economy can, I
believe, be brought to serve proper
ends.
We ought not delude ourselves
into thinking this task to be a simple
one,
for
modern
materialism,
individualism, and commercialism
are at present deeply ingrained within
the free market system. But nothing
about a market-based economy in
itself is necessarily incompatible with
the goals of Aristotelian or Thomistic
ethics, because economics is at heart
a discipline focused on efficiently
reaching a certain goal. At present it is
paired with the goals of individualism,
materialism, and commercialism,
but it does not have to be so. An
understanding of markets can tell us
what the costs or effects of a particular
action within the markets may be, and
if we are willing to pay those costs to
pursue a non-quantifiable good, so be
it. What economic analyses can offer
us, in the end, is an insight into the
most effective and least intrusive ways
of practically reaching that good.
Western society will be far less
conducive to living the good life than it
otherwise would be until it realizes that
the goals of Aristotelian ethicswhich
are good goalsare not incompatible
with the goals of a market-based
systemwhich are also good goals. We
are correct to criticize modern society
for rejecting history and tradition and
failing to learn their valuable lessons
and truths. But let us then be willing to
learn from those modern developments
which can be incorporated into our
tradition of inquiry for the pursuit and
realization of human flourishing in a
complete community. F
Birch Smith is a sophomore studying
philosophy and history.

(Bildungsroman)
in Korea: Life as the Other
War, Mission, and Memory

At the end of the

day, though, and
I mean literally, I
am the only one
awake, the only one
around, because
home is fifteen
hours behind me.
17

(Bildungsroman)
by

Minte Irmer

nce upon a time, I was a freshman.

Everyone goes through that stage.
Some have it worse, some have it better,
but at the crossroads of life, I accidentally
took the shortcut towards Capital-A
Adulthood.
If you dont know what a Capital-A
Adult is, you probably are one. I hate
to say it, but you people are the worst.
I simultaneously fear and respect you,
want to be you and want to push you
away. For those of us on the cusp of
Adulthood, or perhaps still a safe-enough
distance away that you can reasonably
expect your mother to pick you up for
Christmas break, Capital-A Adulthood
is a terrifying place. As a freshman, it was
still a faceless, nameless beast slumbering
near the misty forests of senior yearbut
all that changed rather rapidly.
By the end of sophomore year,
Adulthood reared its ugly head, spurting
fire made of insurance and broken car
parts. Beyond its scaly tail, nestled in its
glittering hoard, lay marriage, a move
across the world to Japan, and kindhearted professors that helped me finish
my education from a distancebut it
all came at the cost of conquering the
dragon. You can have these treasures, it
said, if youre willing to spell Adult with
a lowercase A.
Tugging the mystical capital letter
down to a practical reality is a neverending wrestling match. We all know
what that means: giving up that
#wildandfree #collegelyfe. Well, the
dragon of Adulthood and I worked out

18

T h e H i l l s d a l e F o r u m March 2016

a deal. I took the treasure of marriage

and moved across the world, but I slowly
have to accustom myself to bills and
cleaning an apartment and living alone
while my husband is at sea. Actually, its
entirely worth it, but thats a topic for
another day.
I live in Japan now, and its spectacular. I
never expected to even visit, let alone live
here, so everything is a new and exciting
delight. Ive seen an ancient, towering
Buddha; bustling, downtown Tokyo;
unassuming, anime-costuming-wearing
people on the train. Ive eaten at a sushigo-round, Ive eaten raw octopus, Ive
eaten asparagus with chopsticks (harder
than youd think). I learned to say thank
you in Japanese, but I probably still say
it incorrectly. (Okay, so the language is
a work in progress.) I wouldnt give up
the opportunity to live here, even if I
had been able to linger in the sunny,
flowering fields of young-adulthood.
Beating the dragon was worth it but it
also means facing other dragons, like the
one I just met when visiting Hokkaido.
Hokkaido is the main northern island
of Japan, known for its rustic style, local
beer, and world-famous snow festival in
the city of Sapporo. With nothing else
to do, I flew up there for a few days to
see the festival. It was extraordinary:
glistening snow sculptures, dare-devil
ski tricks, free museums, and fresh
beer. Akin to Yoopers, the Hokkaido
residents are unashamedly proud of their
snowy paradise. They paste the chunky
outline of the island on everything and

champion their pride for the place on

every poster, sweatshirt, and grocery
bag. My favorite part, though, was the
people: A woman on the bus translated
the overhead announcements for me
and ensured I got off at the right stop.
A girl on a field trip at the snow festival
politely asked me where I was from for
her school project. A father and his
four-year-old son played Japanese rockpaper-scissors on the train, then laughed
and laughed until tears rolled down their
cheeks. Hokkaido stole my heart.
But as I watched all these people and
saw their passion for their home, one of
those dragons snuck up, roaring fires of
loneliness. You took Adulthood, he said,
laughing. But you left all your friends
at home! And he was right. I was the
only person I knew for hundreds, if not
thousands, of miles. Im a little American
hiding out by the naval base, forging
acquaintances in the white-hot flame of
desperation, and exploring Tokyo out of
fear of becoming a recluse. Maybe theres
lots to do, and maybe theres plenty of
people around to meet, but that doesnt
mean Im not lonely out here on the edge
of the Pacific.
Thanks to the interwebs, Im not
so lonely as I could have been, and
that deserves honorable mention. I
can snapchat my sister daily, text my
friends at obnoxious hours of the day,
stalk friends and acquaintances alike on
Facebook. I can call my mom or videochat with my two-year-old goddaughter.
At the end of the day, though, and I mean

literally, I am the only one awake, the

only one around, because home is fifteen
hours behind me.
Oddly enough, Telemachus saved the
day. For my last English class during my
last semester, Im working through the
Odyssey again, just like I did in my first
English class during my first semester.
Back then, as an unlearned freshman,
I wrote idiotic notes like your mom,
mmmeat, and ripped (seriously).
This time around, I didnt take many
notes, but I did pay more attention, and I
identified with Telemachus.
Ickle Telemachus. Hes so young
and confused, much like your average
undergraduate, but with the added
issue of having a handful of jerk suitors
plotting to kill him and marry his mom.
(Sorry if you have that problem too.) Hes
not sure where he is in life, if hes a boy
or a man, if he needs to tell his mom hes
leaving the house or if he can just go, if
he can just tell the suitors to get out of
there or if thats disrespectful, if he ought
to respect his father or his swineherd
more.
Well, I cant solve Telemachus
problems any more than I can solve
my own, but reading about them really
brought something home (unlike
Odysseus). Telemachus and I are wrapped
in different problems based on our
well, our everything. I dont know what
to do after I graduate, he doesnt know
what to do about his missing father, but
were both coming of age (whatever that
means) and facing Capital-A Adulthood

with our teeth bared and our swords

drawn. Whatever the differences are,
Telemachus reminded me that Im not
the only one to face something like this.
And with the Odyssey, I discovered
one of my most powerful weapons, one
of my last and final defenses against Real
Lifes dragons, a solace from boredom,
idleness, and loneliness: imagination.
At the end of the day I curl up on
the brand-new couch I had to pick out
for my brand-new Capital-A Adult
apartment and snuggle down into a book.
Through books I soar to other worlds,
I trudge through this one, I peer into
history and speed into the future. I meet
people I never would have known, I feel
feelings I never would have thought of, I
become despair and joy and bravery and
heartache and wonder and love. I learn a
lot through books, whether I could name
it or not, and all the conquering of real
dragons in fairy tales gives me strength
to pick up my sword again tomorrow
and conquer my own dragons.
Imagination does more than dissolve
loneliness, though. With books, I can
foray into a community of like-minded
readers, of other people who have found
their strength and their solace and their
adventure in books. Telemachus and
I arent the only ones to think about
Capital-A Adulthood; all the other people
whove read about him have encountered
the same problem, all the other people
growing up in the real world have, too.
Neither is Telemachus my only friend
but by befriending him, Ive connected

with the freshmen struggling through

the epic for the first time, Ive met with
the professorial scholar of Ancient
Greece, Ive bonded with every intrigued
or indifferent partaker of the Odyssey
merely by reading it. I didnt have to go to
Japan to do that, either. Imagination did
the same thing growing up in Wisconsin.
Imagination did the same thing in class at
Hillsdale. Imagination doesnt only give
me courage to deal with the everyday; it
brings me home.
Let me add, too, that its not that I dont
value living in Japan. I value it every
daythe cherry blossoms bursting off
the trees, the artwork on the manhole
covers, the chocolate fries at McDonald's.
Im always up for adventure and I find it
every day. But living abroad has made me
value the timelessness of imagination,
the constancy of stories, the magical
mind-cloud I share with everyone else
who reads. And with my trusty books in
my well-stocked armory, I can go on to
face Capital-A Adulthood fearlessly and
live happily ever after. The End. F
Minte Irmer is a senior finishing her English
degree from Japan.

19

in Korea
Life as the Other
by

Devin Creed

This standard Korean greeting

(pronounced annyeonghaseyo)
literally translates as I hope you are well/peaceful. Though
unassuming, this simple word reveals much about Korean
society. is an honorific marker which is used to show
respect to the person being addressed. is the polite ending
for verbs. Whenever Koreans encounter an elder or a stranger,
the honorific polite form of the greeting is used, showcasing
the respect for authority inherent in this Confucian society.
In fact, age is so essential to Korean relationships that the
first question posed to a new acquaintance is How old are
you? In some cases, such as saying goodnight, one would
use a completely different sentence if addressing a parent as
opposed to a friend. Trying to wrap my mind around the
hierarchical nature of the Korean language and society was
the first instance of culture shock I experienced.
I have been living in South Korea since August. I teach
English at Inje Middle School, which is nestled high in
the mountains of the Gangwon province in the northeast
corner of the country. Inje County is almost exclusively
made up of mountains, a heavy contributor in making it the
least densely populated county in the country. Only eight
foreigners live in my town of ten thousand, so I have been
forced to assimilate or feel isolated. Integrating into Korean
society is not easy for foreigners, however. Korea is an
extremely insular country with over 99% of residents being
20

T h e H i l l s d a l e F o r u m March 2016

of Korean heritage. Foreigners are seen as Other, leaving us

in the awkward position of being outsiders in an extremely
communal society. Koreans do everything in groups and can
hardly fathom someone undertaking a daily activity alone.
One time I walked through the festival grounds in our town
on the way home from a hike and ran into an official from
the office of education. She immediately texted my district
coordinator to comment on the fact that I was alone.
Despite a heavy curricular emphasis on English education,
most Koreans cannot speak it or feel uncomfortable using
it. My fledgling Korean is not yet sufficient to carry on
long conversations, so I am often reduced to standing and
sitting awkwardly by myself. This sense of awkwardness
and helplessness has spurred me to immerse myself in the
culture and study the language every day. I have made a habit
of attending as many cultural festivals as possible, finding
myself catching salmon barehanded, dressing in traditional
clothing, drinking rice wine on a river island, and ice fishing
in the process. I have learned how to make several Korean
dishes, especially the most famous national food, kimchi
(cabbage fermented in red pepper and fish sauce.) I bought
a car soon after I got here so I could spend my weekends
road-tripping and hiking obscure mountains. Because of my
proximity to the border (about twenty kilometers) I decided
to expand my cultural activities to learn about North Korea.
This winter I tutored North Korean refugees in Seoul and this

spring Ill be doing research on Korean

unification for a non-profit. Despite
all these attempts to insert myself into
Korean communities, I am still very
much on the outside looking in.
Sometimes being an outsider grants
me opportunities, however. Since I
am a guest English teacher, my school
and my town treat me hospitably,
supplying me with a free apartment
and free Korean classes. Whenever I
walk around town I am loudly greeted
by my students who frequent Injes
numerous coffee shops. They are always
happy to chat and very eager to know
if I have finally got myself a girlfriend.
The mountains afford me with the
most unique opportunities, for hikers
have purposefully removed themselves
from society to seek communion with
nature. It is not common to greet a
stranger on the street even in my small
town, but every hiker greets anyone
who passes by. On several hikes on
the mountains surrounding Inje I have
met Mr. Che, an enigmatic elderly
gentleman whose English is better than
that of my co-teachers. He claims to
live in town, but I have only ever seen
him in the mountains. The second time
I met him he stopped and chuckled,
Do you remember me? leading me
to believe him some sort of mountain
spirit, jovial, welcoming, elusive. I met
a much more solid individual a few
weeks ago when hiking Taebaeksan.
He runs a a company that exports
medicinal ginseng to the United States
and hes invited me to his home for a
weekend. These chance encounters are
only made possible by my pale skin and
bearded face.
Despite these moments of friendship
and inclusiveness, I am reminded of my
displacement at every major holiday.
Chuseok, a fall harvest festival, and
Seollal, the lunar new year, are Koreas
largest holidays, and both revolve
around homecoming. Everyone travels
to their hometown to spend time with
their parents and grandparents, and
to honor their ancestors. Because of
Confucius sway, the family still plays
an important role in Korean society.

Even after children go off to college

parents preserve the childs bedroom
so that he or she always has a place to
sleep when visiting. Korean parents
will do anything to see the children
succeed, but this often leads to
ridiculous pressure to perform. When
talking to my students at the beginning
of the year I was shocked to learn that
in addition to a full day at school they
spend every evening at hagwons, private
academies where they usually study
math or English. Only when they get
home at ten or eleven at night can they
start their two sets of homework. What
most boggled my mind is that this is
the norm even in my tiny town where
most students will become farmers or

Is it so odd that I found myself

missing my temporary home of
Korea, rather than my longterm home of America? I still
yearn for America, but now I
feel a sense of groundedness in
the thin alleys of Inje, the cold
hallways of Inje Middle School,
and the mountains surrounding
the town. These have become my
haunts, the places I call home.
take over the family restaurant. I do not
have the heart to wake up my students
who fall asleep in class.
My town has been largely unaffected
by the economic explosion that has
propelled South Korea to first world
status. My neighbors are an ancient
Korean couple, short and humpbacked.
They are always fermenting kimchi
or drying fish in their tiny yard. Their
lives revolve around the seasons and
the preparation of traditional foods.
Despite their limited physical condition
and their continuous work, they always
smile at me when I greet them. They are
happy to be living as they have always
done. This is the kind of Korea I seek
when I venture into the mountains and

small villages. Small shrines littered

over the mountains speak of an earlier,
simpler time, when man was more in
tune with nature and less concerned
with the newest phone game. My
solitary hikes in the misty mountains
of Gangwon Province have been the
highlights of my stay in Korea. They
allow me to leave society for a time
while also embracing one of Koreas
favorite past times. Long hikes are ripe
for reflection, and they provide me with
the opportunity to ponder life in this
beautiful and contradictory country.
In only six months South Korea has
become my home. When I vacationed
in Thailand and Cambodia in January I
found myself missing Korea. Living and
working in rural Korea has integrated
me far more than living in the concrete
confines of Seoul ever could. Is it so
odd that I found myself missing my
temporary home of Korea, rather than
my long-term home of America? I still
yearn for America, but now I feel a
sense of groundedness in the thin alleys
of Inje, the cold hallways of Inje Middle
School, and the mountains surrounding
the town. These have become my
haunts, the places I call home. By virtue
of being a foreigner trying to glean the
utmost from Korea in a year, I occupy
this space in a unique way. Being
intimately involved in Inje through my
formal job as a teacher and my selfimposed task of learning of Korea, I am
able to feel a sense of connectedness
despite being a mercenary teacher for
hire. By experiencing life as the Other,
I have come to realize my place in the
world and my identity as a millennial
American. And when I leave, I will miss
my odd little town in the far corner
of this far country. For even though I
cannot escape the inherently pejorative
label of foreigner, by occupying and
living in this space I have made it my
own, giving me a sense of home though
surrounded by unfamiliar faces. F
Devin Creed graduated in 2015 with degrees
in English and economics.

21

War, Mission,& Memory

Dr. Somervilles
Childhood in South Korea
by

Micah Meadowcroft

i Seung-hun was baptized in 1784.

Peter Lee, as he became called, returned to Korea
from a diplomatic mission to Beijing accompanying his
father, the countrys first convert, bearing books and
items of devotion. A Silhak Confucian teacher had asked
him to learn more about the faith they read of in the
writings of Matteo Ricci, a Jesuit missionary to China. The
theology books had circulated among Korean academic
elites for almost two centuries, receiving extensive critical
commentary, and the Silhak, or practical learning,
Confucians were sympathetic readers of the Christian
texts, particularly for its emphasis on human equality
before God.
Peter Lees transmission of what he had learned from
the Beijing Catholic community led many of the Silhak
school to embrace Christianity, and prayer houses were
established throughout the country. The church grew,
but in 1801 Lee and many of his fellow early converts
were martyred. The Hermit Kingdom persecuted the
Korean Catholic Church until unlocking to the outside
world in the latter half of the 19th century, with the
result that today Korea possesses the fourth most saints
of any country in Catholicism. Presbyterians brought
Protestantism in 1884, as Korea began to look west.
Professor of English John Somerville was born 70
years later in a South Korea still recovering from war. His
parents were Presbyterian missionaries there. Growing
the body of Christ is a family affair; Somervilles brother
married Ruth Ann Lee, direct descendent of Peter Lee.
With the exclusion of furloughs, Somervilles parents
served in Korea for 40 years.
My parents met in North Carolina in a little town

22

T h e H i l l s d a l e F o r u m March 2016

with a Presbyterian conference center, Somerville said.

Both were planning to go to the mission field, and they
met during missionary training. And it worked out
pretty well.
That last line is delivered dryly, matter of factly, but
with a look that gently dares you to disagree and not to
grin.
Growing up on a missionary compound in Seoul,
Somerville was a neighbor of the late Samuel Moffett,
Jr., whose father had been one of the first Presbyterian
missionaries to Korea in the 1890s. While the country
was technically accessible to foreigners, and there was no
need to sneak in through the sewers like earlier Catholic
missionaries, Moffett, Sr., had still faced opposition to
his ministry.
When he first arrived in Ponyong a crowd chased him
away, threw stones at him, threatened him, and then he
went away, Somerville said. And then he came back and
a crowd chased him away again. And I think the story
is the third time they just gave up. Pyongyang, at least
at that time, was known as a very wicked city. It had a
reputation I think for child prostitution, among other
things. Through the work of people like Dr. Moffett, by
about 1910, Pyongyang was known as Jerusalem; it was
a city full of churches. So, a really remarkable story of
success, Korea has been. Its one of the great missionary
success stories of history.
Today almost a third of South Koreans identify as
Christians, according to Pew Research. That is a larger
population percentage than any religious affiliation other
than none, which claims 46 percent. In 1900, Christians
made up only 1 percent of the population. But Japanese

occupation in 1910 through the World

Wars weakened traditional Korean
religion, and after the Korean War,
Christianity grew rapidly in the south
as the country formed and stabilized
and prospered.
Korea became a divided country in
1948, as the first freezes of the Cold
War drove the post-VJ-day Soviet
Union and United States to support
rival governments reflecting, or at
least representing, their respective
ideological commitments. North Korea,
supported by the Soviets, invaded the
South on June 25, 1950, and was heavily
reinforced by the Chinese. The United
Nations quickly responded and a U.S.led coalition reinforced the southern
position. The war lasted three years,
one month, and two days as dominion
of the peninsula swung back and forth.
On July 27, 1953, the Korean Armistice
Agreement ended the conflictthough
no formal peace has still yet been
declaredand created a demilitarized
zone along the 38th parallel.
Growing up in Seoul, Somerville had
the chance to watch the progress of
South Korea. After the war, in 1954 the
new country was devastated, and, even
as 40,000 American troops and other
United Nations soldiers stationed there
kept peace in the larger region, the
country underwent revolutions, coups,
and unrest.
The legitimately elected president
of South Korea, Syngman Rhee,
became increasingly autocratic and
authoritarian as the countrys and his
positions stability were threatened. In
1960, university student demonstrations
led to the April 19 Revolution and
Rhees resignation.
The government collapsed and a new
government was put in placewithin a
couple years there was a military coup,
Somerville said; South Korea was ruled
by martial law until the late eighties and
suffered two more coups. Our house
was a couple of miles from the capitol,
so as a first grader or a second grader I
had a first row seat to a revolution. Lots
of tear gas in the air, demonstrations. It
was pretty exciting.

Exciting, and seemingly normal.

I think for a long time I assumed
most kids saw that sort of thing. How
close did I come to the action? On the
compound where I lived there were
two houses, ours and the Moffetts, the
Moffett house, the back of their house
was set up a little bit above the street,
maybe 15 or 20 feet above the street.
We could stand there by the fence, we
would, and watch demonstrations.
Staring into the middle distance
Somervilles already soft voice gets a
little softer, and there is maybe the hint
of upward twitching in the corner of his
mouth. And one day we were watching
university students protest something
and we heard coming from down the
street this noise, and it was riot troops
in full riot gear just moving like Darth
Vader, a whole bunch of them, and the
students running. That was cool.
Despite many close encounters with
civil unrest, Somerville and his family
were never harmed. Of course, as a child,
his understanding of the significance of
the situation was limited, but as he grew
up in the country through high school,
he joined his parents in living with the
knowledge that North Korea could take
advantage of the instability and invade.
One night while vacationing in a
cottage overlooking a beach by the
Yellow Sea where missionaries went,
he woke at the sound of gunfire. In the
morning Somervilles family learned
that a North Korean ship had tried to
send infiltrators ashore in the next cove
and there had been a firefight with
South Korean Shore Patrol. A family
friend found a body washed up on the
sand.
You knew the whole thing could
blow up at any time.
But, even with episodes like that,
the presence of military men and
equipment everywhere, and knowledge
of his uncle Severns death in the
Korean War, Somerville joined boys
everywhere and played at soldiery.
I loved playing army, for years that
was my game of choice, he said. And
so for birthdays and Christmas, my
parents would give us military gear,

black market, not weapons. All of us

boys had helmets, which were genuine
army helmets, packs, mess kits, trench
shovels, and trenching tools, army belts,
canteens, all of it the real stuff that they
bought for us. I remember one year
we got C-rations, which were the old
version of the MREs which I guess were
Korean war stock, I dont know, but I
thought it was so cool. And in C-rations
back then youd get like a little tin of
beef stew and maybe a cracker or two,
maybe a cookie or some kind of fruit,
and always a little pack of cigarettes,
back then they were pushing cigarettes
on the troops, I didnt smoke them, but
they were in there and I thought they
were pretty neat.

My dad, we know, was on a list

that the Korean CIA had. Our
phone was tapped. For him it was
an outgrowth of his faith. If you
see an injustice, if you see people
tortured, imprisoned without
benefit of law, you should do
something.
The point of playing was simple: Us
versus Them, and elaborate deaths.
There were no politics, no nations, no
realism despite the real equipment.
Sometimes, however, reality overran
them.
One day Somerville and his friends
were on the Presbyterian compound
when workers digging the foundation
for a new girls school stopped and
gathered round the hole. And when
they joined the watchers and looked in
they saw the workmen had uncovered
the skeletons of two American soldiers
killed in the war, still wearing their dog
tags.
There were other occasions. Around
1963, a decade after the war:
I dont remember ever volunteering
to do anything in the garden, but for
whatever reason I was spraying water
23

from a hose onto the plants, and I was

spraying a really strong column of water
at the soil and I turned up a bullet, and
I think within another minute or two I
turned up another bullet. Seoul was the
scene of a lot of urban fighting during
the war. The city was pretty much
destroyed. And so here was evidence
that fighting had occurred on the land
where we were.
That kind of invasion of the past
into the present, living with history,
reminds Somerville of a line from
William Faulkners 1936 Civil War
novel Absalom, Absalom!:
Theres this passage where we read,
in the South history is the bullet in the
dining room table.
The bodies in the yard, the bullets in
the garden, are the South Korean leadpunctured table.
Being the child of missionaries had
its own tension between distance and
imminence, but to place and culture
instead of time and history.
Theres a long history of, traditionally,
missionaries living on separate
compounds, little neighborhoods,
pretty much just houses, with a wall
around them, Somerville said. You
hear people talk about the advantages
and disadvantages of that. The
disadvantage is to say, Oh, OK, we want
to keep ourselves separate from the
people, and it sounds terrible. I think
for me growing up it was a great benefit.
Youve heard, Im certain, that kids who
grow up on the mission field sometimes
have real trouble adjusting to life when
they come back to the states. I think if
I had been further immersed in Korean
society, it would have been very hard
for me.
Like Faulkner and the reality of war,
a literary figure helps make sense of the
set-apartness of the missionary kids life
too. The late poet Wilmer Mills, who
visited Hillsdale in 2010, grew up from
age two to ten in the Amazon, where his
parents were Presbyterian missionaries
and farmed. Mills had dinner with
Somervilles brother and sister-in-law,
Ruth Ann ne Lee.
My brother said, Within minutes
24

T h e H i l l s d a l e F o r u m March 2016

we understood each other, because

my brother has had some of that same
struggle coming back from the mission
field, Somerville said. More so Wil. He
just grew up like a native in Brazil and
the next thing you know hes back in the
United States. So I think for me growing
up on a compound was helpful long
term. Its not that we avoided Koreans
or didnt go out into the community,
but its kind of a refuge.
The missionary community did have
its own kind of diversity.
When the Protestant missionaries
came over to Korea, one thing they
did is they divided Korea up into
regions, so American Baptists were
given responsibility for this part of
the country, over here were united
Presbyterians,
then
Australian
Presbyterians, he said. I wasnt a
missionary, so I dont know the ins
and outs of the relationships among
the different missions, but I think
there tended to be general harmony.
You know there are personalities and
there would be doctrinal differences,
but the church we attended was not
Presbyterian or Baptist or Methodist,
but a mission church. One Sunday we
might have a sermon from a Baptist
missionary, next week it might be an
Anglican, a British Anglican missionary
who was an amazing guy, Richard Rut,
and then Presbyterian, or whatever.
Somerville credits the ecumenical
spirit of the mission church he grew up
in with inspiring his own ecumenicism.
Im very much Presbyterian, but
Im willing to look past a lot of things,
unlike some people.
Somerville left South Korea in 1972.
His parents remained. He said his
father, though now back in the United
States, seems in some ways more
Korean than American. His concerns
are Koreas, not concerns for American
society or politics.
He was very involved in human
rights issues when he lived there in
the seventies because he had students
or knew students who were in prison
without virtue of a trial because they said
something against the government,

Somerville said. He knew pastors who

were in prison. And as a foreigner he
had some freedom.
That freedom was limited, as the
expulsion of a fellow missionary
illustrated. Somervilles father caught
the governments attention with his
actions.
My dad, we know, was on a list that
the Korean CIA had, he said. Our
phone was tapped. For him it was an
outgrowth of his faith. If you see an
injustice, if you see people tortured,
imprisoned without benefit of law, you
should do something. This happened
after I had left, but one day my father
got a visit from the chief of police in
the city where Id lived and a man from
the Korean CIA, and they said, We
have some serious things we need to
talk about with you, so they sat down
in the living room. While they were
talking my mother went to the back
of the house and began packing their
suitcases because she was sure he was
going to be kicked out. He wasnt, and
when they left the house the CIA guy
walked ahead, and the Chief of police
turned to my father and winked at him
and said, Youre going to be OK.
Somervilles father was OK, and
today the South Korean church is
vibrant. Pew says levels of government
restrictions on religion are lower than
in the United States, and South Korea
sends more missionaries around the
world than any nation other than the
U.S.
More than two centuries later, Lees
are still baptizing and being baptized.
Theyre Presbyterian now, too, not just
Catholic. Timothy Lee, father of Ruth
Ann, direct descendent of Peter Lee,
first Korean Christian, co-officiated
with Somervilles father at the baptism
of their grandson, Walter.
Hes a great guy. He lives in Honolulu
now. F
Micah Meadowcroft is a senior studying
history. He is a member of the Dow
Journalism Program.

The Forum reviews:

M U S I C

THAT LOVE
TOO MAY
LAST
Speakerboxxx/The Love Below was
released as a double record in 2003.
Although Big Boi and Andr 3000
were immersed in separate artistic
experiments at the time, their double
album contains a rich dialogue,
which will be the the subject of this
double essay.

DISC I

Speakerboxxx: Big Bois

Anglo-Saxon Cosmos
by

Forester McClatchey

The album begins with a swirl of static, disorienting.

Screwed-down vocals say, This is a test. A test of sound,
yes, but also a test for hip-hop, a test for newcomers (like
Killer Mike), and fundamentally a test for Kast: a split
album, combining twice the creative energy with twice
the risk of failure.
After Stankonia dropped in 2000, it seemed like OutKast
had peaked. The South had had something to say and
Kast had said it in three classic albums. Contemporary
titans of rap like Jay-Z and Eminem deferred to OutKast
as de facto monarchs of the game. Nothing remained but
to watch their throne. What more could they say?
The Intro to Speakerboxxx quickens with a jittery
snare run produced by Andr. He will lurk behind the
sonic veil on this portion of the album, bobbing his head.
Big Boi bides his time. A gong sounds. This is a test.
When the album begins in earnest, we find Big in jail:
Drowning in a gray cell, to dwell in earthly hell, a pimp
warrior fell. The production of this song (Unhappy)
provides a deceptively upbeat backdrop for Big Bois
miniature lyrical tragedies. Speaking to himself, the

DISC 2

Andr 3000s Quest for the

Truth about Love
by

Mark Naida

After the romping exuberance of Big Bois Bowtie fades,

Andr 3000s The Love Below comes crooning in,
searching for love.
There is nothing older than this album. Love bursts
forth and makes man and man longs for woman and a
man named Andr Benjamin falls victim to his desires.
His desires to be heard, to be lovedto find something
permanent. These elements entrench The Love Below in
both despair and longing.
Andr 3000, as an artist, wants to find the cutting edge
of interpersonal relationships. His declamation to the
listeners of Hey Ya Radio Mix / Club Mix that Yall
dont wanna hear me, yall just wanna dance displays
his immense cynicism toward his art form. With his
eccentricities and neuroses, Andr 3000 concerns himself
so much with artistic expression that his album bludgeons
the listener with his ideas, often repeating lines eight to ten
times to force the listener to actually hear. The brilliance
of Hey Ya is found in the likability of the songone of the
most popular of the 2000s seems to be just scraped from
the dregs of Andr 3000s imagination. There is also no
regular version of the songit was crafted for the Radio,
25

The Forum reviews:

M U S I C

DISC I, continued
by

Forester McClatchey

An Arundel Tomb
by Philip Larkin

Side by side, their faces blurred,

The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd
The little dogs under their feet.

only gets rougher.

Singing the hook of Knowing,
Andr suspends his search for The
Love Below, and participates in Big
Bois Anglo-Saxon vision. He suggests
that it is suffering that unites every
human living:

narrator remembers his childhood:

Your happiness came and went like
mom and dads relationship. Thus,
from the beginning of the album,
we hear Big Boi disclaiming earthly

Brothers, knowing
Such plainness of the pre-baroque
happiness.

Sisters, knowing
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still
When the narrator gets out of jail,

Preachers, knowing
Clasped empty in the other; and

Teachers, knowing
things have gotten worse: What used
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,

Ladies, knowing
to be a happy home done turned into
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

Junkies on the corner,
some bad shit. Hes been locked away

knowing:
so long that The silence of the fams
They would not think to lie so long.

From this point on
Such faithfulness in effigy
greets him at home, with No members
Was
just
a
detail
friends
would
see:
to remember him now that he has
You know the rest.
A sculptors sweet commissioned grace
grown into a man. His old companions
Thrown off in helping to prolong
Big Boi and his crew propose religion
are gone, and his time in the trap has
The Latin names around the base.
as a unilateral solution to the twin
left him rougher and poorer. This
problems of suffering and transience.
They would not guess how early in
emphasis on earthly imprisonment and
On Reset, guest Khujo raps with acid
Their supine stationary voyage
human fallenness will haunt the album.
The air would change to soundless damage,
anger about the Souths history of racial
Then Bigs out of the trap, and the
Turn the old tenantry away;
oppression, thinking about slavery, Jim
brass section oozes in like barbecue
How soon succeeding eyes begin
Crow, and modern incarceration until
To look, not read. Rigidly they
sauce, bathing the listeners palate. In
he wants to Wrap [his] hands around
this next song, Bowtie, the emphasis
the esophagus of them crackers. He
Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
is on wealth and sartorial excellence:
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
soothes his own anger by remembering
Crocodile on my feet, croons Sleepy
Each summer thronged the glass. A bright
Ephesians 6:12, which said it wasnt
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Brown, Fox fur on my back. Big Boi
flesh and blood that we wrestle against.
Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths
is feeling himself, and finally his flow
In other words, for Khujo, the true
The endless altered people came,
can breathe. Syllables tumble over each
struggle against racism and suffering
other, cool, finding fissures in the beat
Washing at their identity.
is spiritual, and laying hands on the
no other rappers words can find, and
Now, helpless in the hollow of
tangible flesh of evil will be futile.
An unarmorial age, a trough
the listener knows this is the Big Boi
Nor will his general anger do any
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
from ATLiens and Aquemini back with
good.
As the Wanderer says: The
Above their scrap of history,
a pimps vengeance.
Only an attitude remains:
weary cannot control fate, / Nor do
Indeed, the juxtaposition of
bitter thoughts settle things (ll. 15
Time has transfigured them into
Unhappy to Bowtie serves as a
16). Later in Reset, Cee-Lo Green
Untruth. The stone fidelity
microcosm of the albums central
refuses to participate in blood feuds
They hardly meant has come to be
paradox: Big Boi as the unearthly
Their final blazon, and to prove
on the streets, proposing instead to
hedonist, the pious pimp. He strokes
Our almost-instinct almost true:
bring God to a gunfight. Like the
his fox fur shoulders and laments the
What will survive of us is love.
Wanderer, these ATLiens have been
transience of all life.
wronged, but seek to end the cycles of
Big Bois Christian cosmology, however, ultimately unites the
violence and suffering which bereaved them. They believe they
album. And his faith feels Anglo-Saxon. Like the narrator of
can accomplish this by orienting themselves toward an eternal
The Wanderer, Big Boi insists on the transience of all earthly
good.
connections: joy, suffering, death, and (here he parts from Andr)
With Last Call, the album ends in the club. Even though Big
even love. On Knowing (alternate title: Da Art of Storytellin
Boi has spent the meat of the album demonstrating the vanity of
Part III) Andr 3000 returns and yells, From this point on, it
such carousing, the celebration feels sincere. In between flurries
only gets rougher. He repeats this mantra incessantly. Big Boi,
of hedonism and suffering, Big Boi orients his life toward his
in the most arresting verses on the album, tells the story a drug
conception of the eternal. One day he will remove his crocodile
addict named Wanda whose habit bereaves her of family, funds,
boots and lay down deep inside the tomb. Until then? It only
and hope. She turns to prostitution and theft, and the song ends
gets rougher. F
with a pickpocketed john confronting her, threatening violence.
You thought you was slick, snarls the john. Wanda cowers. It Forester McClatchey is a senior studying English and art.
26

T h e H i l l s d a l e F o r u m March 2016

DISC 2, continued
by

Mark Naida

for the Club. It is pure, synthetic, bumping success. If this

artistic bicep-flex isnt enough, Andr places the foundational
thought for the album within a song whose likability actually
prevents a deep, poetic meditation on the song.
In his optimism, Andr claims boldly in the center of the
barnstorming call-and-response of the song:
Know what they sayit's:
Nothing lasts forever!
Then what makes it, then what makes it
Then what makes it, then what makes it
Then what makes love the exception?
So why, oh, why, oh
Why, oh, why, oh, why, oh
Are we still in denial when we know were not happy here?

This statement of loves permanence is directly in conversation

with Big Bois Speakerboxxx which expresses a poignant
fatalism epitomized in his song Knowing, where he says
repeatedly, from this point it only gets rougher. Though Big
Bois love points toward the afterlife, Andr grapples with the
idea that earthly love has permanence as well. But why would
Andr 3000 be so perturbed by such a common idea, and how
does Big Boi not consider the permanence of love? Atlanta
hangs over the album as a loveless void. Big Boi and Andr
are very much Georgia boysproducts of the city. They are
products of single mother households, honor culture, and
black southern Christianity which has remained focused on
deliverance since slaves first learned of Christianity and of
salvation. Because of this, Andrs idea is countercultural for
an ATLien. In a recording of his mothers voice, Andr shows
in the song Shes Alive the tenuous place of love in his life:
He always wanted to be a father
But he never took care of you
He aint have no money
He aint have nothin
How can you care about somebody
And you never give the welfare of them.

Stylistically, the album flips between eras of romantic art,

bastardizing them, as in the opening song Love Hater, where
he imitates the Rat Pack in a disembodied high octave
pronouncing that he is a hater of love. Andr is in a loveless
desert at the opening of the album, preparing to embark
on a search for the truth about love. In God (Interlude)
Andr prays to God, who he says is a girl, saying tenderly, I
just want a sweet bitch. His projection of womanhood onto
his conception of God illuminates the idolatrous nature of
his relationship with women. The search for love continues
between the divinity of women, to natal love, and to hedonist
sexual expression. These disordered ideas of love comprise the
majority of the album. Andr is haunted by flesh while also

desiring to get to the heart of things. The focal point of the

album is the song Take Off Your Cool where he and Norah
Jones croon to each other to shed formality and find The Love
Below which is hidden under culture, art, and pretense. The
songs haunting simplicity, accompanied by only an acoustic
guitar, is punctuated by Andrs over-voicing sounding like a
gospel choir while two, unfunked Hey Yas ring out, calling
toward connection rather than entertainmentthe albums
center pointing back to its thesis: love can be permanent.
In sharp contrast, the penultimate song is a dirge about
masturbation showing the disordered self-love that is the effect
of unsuccessful attempts at connection. Andr says that in
the deep of the night, The Love Below start talkin to ya. He
proceeds to show contrition for this form of self-love when he
preaches:
The circumcision has already begun
Desensitizing the very thing or thang that
Brought you into this mfer in the first place.

The despair continues after Vibrate. A computerized voice

opens the last track buzzing, L-O-V-E not found. The lights
fade into the fatalism of Big Bois Speakerboxxx. Scenes of
violence and hedonism abound, with our hero having accepted
that In those days, Keep it Real was the phrase / Silly once said
now, but those were the days. His cynicism bleeds through his
lyrics; Andr now understands loves impermanence when he
reminisces about his youth. The scenes of single mothers and
cocaine dealers put the sweet, erotic scenes in a brighter light.
For Andr, any expression of love, worldly or divine, honest
or fake, is better than the loveless void where he has found
himself.
Andrs stirring masterpiece, A Life in the Day of Andr
Benjamin (Incomplete) tells the origins of the album,
speaking in the last verse of his ex-wife, Erykah Badu. Andr
admits that, Were young, in love, in short, we had fun while
acknowledging that they had a son together. The phrase In
short haunts the album as a whole because Andr consistently
desires love to be permanent; the early optimism of Hey Ya
rings hollow in the end. The album becomes an elegyAndr
bargains with his conception of love after Erykah Badu leaves
his life. Andr looks back, forward, and within to find that love
is actually just so short. It is devastating to see his optimism
so nearly crushed. But the song is (incomplete). Andr
maintains some hope, the optimism that someday love, too,
will last. F
Mark Naida is a sophomore studying French and English.

27

The Forum reviews:

M O V I E S

Cinderella
Have Courage, and Be Kind.

by

Emily Lehman

watched the new Cinderella movie tentatively, waiting for vulgar humor, a sudden
flamboyant display of CGI, or a swipe at traditional gender roles. Accustomed
to the endless litany of remakes, sequels, and parodies, I expected that this movie
would attempt to wink knowingly at the audience in one way or another, and waited
for the jarring, if expected, blow. To my surprise, it never came: Cinderella addressed
the jaded adults skepticism through simple, unapologetic beauty, not seeking to set
itself apart and thereby making itself like nothing I had seen before.
We all know the story. Cinderella, the wicked stepmother, the odious stepsisters,
even the helpful little mice are as familiar to us as our worn copies of Goodnight
Moon and ragged teddy bears. And, refraining from such exciting innovations as
a prince fan club (Ella Enchanted), crazy puppet-like monsters (Mirror Mirror), a
talking snowman (Frozen), or at least one catchy musical number (all of the above),
Cinderella differs from its fairy-tale-adaptation predecessors by beingsimple. Its
just the story that we heard when we were children.
Or is it? From the moment the movie begins, with an enthralling soundtrack, rich
set, and lush costumes, we are drawn into Cinderellas perfect world. The account of
her childhood would be saccharine if it werent so golden, to borrow the narrators
description. She is a beautiful child, stunningly so, unfairly so. Her familys farm
is both castle-like and endearing. The natural world surrounds little Cinderella
with perfect beautyfor under ten minutes. Because just after Cinderellas mother
is singing her little girl to sleep, Lavenders blue, dilly, dilly, lavenders green . . .
suddenly she is dying and telling a weeping golden-haired little girl to have courage,
and be kind.
Stop right there. Perhaps we could seize upon this moment for sarcasm, irony,
cynicism. Have courage and be kind? Isnt thatclichdsomewhere? Isnt that
something weve all heard before? Perhaps not. But even if it is, nonetheless it defends
itself through itself: its nothing more than simple advice from a simple movie, one
that will show us that having courage and being kind is not sweet, easy and painless
all the time.
And from that moment on, following again almost word for word the story we
heard when we were children but didnt fully understand, the plot takes a dizzying
drop into darkness. The stepmother appears, beautiful enough for us to understand
why Cinderellas broken father has fallen for her. And there are the stepsisters,
already worn-out and repulsive to us from their constant reappearance in the storys
tellings and retellings.

28

T h e H i l l s d a l e F o r u m March 2016

Have courage and be

kind? Isnt that
clichdsomewhere?
Isnt that something
weve all heard before?
Perhaps not. But even if it
is, nonetheless it defends
itself through itself: its
nothing more than simple
advice from a simple
movie, one that will show
us that having courage
and being kind is not
sweet, easy and painless
all the time.

Just before the new wife arrives on

the scene, Cinderellas father, with a
desperate, hunted look, breaks the
news to his daughterYes. Happiness.
Do you think I may be allowed one last
chance, even though I thought such
things were done with for good? Ella
assents, but her father is not to have the
happiness he longed for; out he goes on
his doomed journey, she asking for the
first branch that brushes his shoulder
on his journey. The branch returns, but
he does not, and for the first time we
realize that this isnt really a childrens
movie and Ella is not, because of her
goodness, immune to agonyslowly
she crumples against the door, silently,
at the destruction of her world.
The story goes on, always familiar.
But this Ella is not the fairy-tale heroine
were accustomed to; or, if she is, she
has features that we never discerned in
childhood before we knew pain. She is
beautiful, but sleeping in the ashes and
putting her hair up in a nasty rag makes
her less beautiful. She is not immune
to suffering and degradation. As she
descends into the position of a slave, we
see her intensely aware of the pain her
stepfamily inflicts; once, she meets her
stepmothers eyes, obviously in revolt
at the thought of tying her shoe, and
then masters herself for self-abasement
one more time. Our jaded eyes are
beginning to see what real virtue looks
like: not the absence of pain at doing
what is difficult, but the courage and
kindness to do it anyway. Cinderella
doesnt do good because its so natural
to her that its always easy and pleasant;
she does it because its good. Again, the
story proves that it can grow with us
into adulthood.
Its when Cinderella cant go to the
ball that she has a crisis of faith, the
one that we could sympathize with
as children since it most resembles a
temper tantrum. (Perhaps we havent
outgrown those now, though.) I said Id
have courage, but I dont. Not anymore.
I dont believe anymore. Finally we
see this paragon hit rock bottom. It
looks like the moment of triumph for
the adult cynicor is it the moment of

defeat? Cinderella proves that shes only

human, after all, not the perfect princess
we always dreamed of. The cynic laughs
into his sleeve, but he might also sigh.
Another dream has disintegrated.
She has maintained herself till now in
an almost superhuman character of
courage and kindness; suddenly she
finds that she is nothing, has nothing,
and cannot go on.
Then grace appears, in the guise of
one of the strangest tree-camouflaged
old ladies known to cinematic history.
A poor old woman asks for her help.
The Cinderella that we thought just
despaired remembers her kindness one
more time, and everything changes.
This time were not just seeing her
superhuman virtue, thoughthis time
she is carried by grace, and so, just like
the rest of the movie, the story rings
true; at a certain point the merely
human cannot go on.
Everything is transformed; the prince
whose only claim to our approbation
(which is more than enough) seems
to be Cinderellas regard appears and
sweeps her off her feet. Midnight. A lost
slipper. Cinderellas in love, and we see it
in her movements, in the way she sways
back and forth at her chores, in her
smile and disregard for her stepfamily.
But its not over yet. Cutting a long
story that we all know short, Cinderella
is locked in the closet when her last
possibility of being saved approaches.
Did you steal it? Cinderellas
stepmother asks about the glass slipper

encounter is something she doesnt

forget: alone, probably forever, knowing
everything is lost to her again, she sings
the old song that her mother sang at
her cradle. And it is Cinderellas very
abandonment that leads to the climactic
moment of graceher singing is heard,
and she is found.
When Cinderella is in glory, found
by the prince, her sisters ask her
forgiveness. She ignores them. We
think she might have fallen into a bit of
good healthy vindictiveness, something
that even our shattered cynicism is
happy to cling to. Cinderella and the
prince are about to leave, and the
beautiful stepmother appears, silent,
on the stairs. Then Cinderella says it,
the words we expect but hardly want
to hearI forgive you. And the
stepmother slowly crumples on the
stairs like her stepdaughter in her grief,
destroyed, perhaps redeemed.
Thats just the story of Cinderella.
Its about grace and the power of
beauty and simple virtues. Its about
a heroine who seems too good to be
true. But somehow the movie isnt just
for children. It draws that story we
used to think we knew so well up into
something that encompasses the pain
and destruction and what-sometimeslooks-like-meaninglessness of our
adult existence. Were given something,
something we didnt earn. Maybe its
hope. Maybe its dying words: Have
courage, and be kind. F
Emily Lehman is a junior studying English.

No. It was given to me.

Given to you?
Given to me.
Nothing is ever given. For
everything we must pay and
pay.
Thats not true. Kindness
is free. Love is free.
Love is not free.

And so we see how Cinderellas

encounter with grace has enabled her
to see something that the stepmother
cannot: gratuity, needlessness, the
unbought beauty of good things.
But even locked in her attic that
29

FROM THE
GOOGLE DRIVE OF
THE HILLSDALE FORUM
Madeline Johnson
12:13 PM Feb 25

*Hi, Maddy here, poking my customarily censorious head in. Richard Starr of the Weekly
Standard states as an editorial mantra, Do not publish a single word you dont understand. So that is why Im here.

Senior Memories
by

Noah Weinrich

Madeline Johnson
12:15 PM Feb 25

I suggest we keep the tone light

in this opening paragraph.
Right now, as in much of what
follows, the tone dips between
incompatible poles, in my
opinion. Maybe just make the
focus of the satire things we
shouldn't actually be nostalgic
for or something like that,
something to pick up on a
genuinely humorous element
of the turn of the generations,
rather than poking fun at the
genuinely weighty aspects.

Madeline Johnson
12:20 PM Feb 25

Intriguing but not broadly

accessible.

As we draw within striking distance of the end of another

successful academic year, the seniors among us prepare to
depart the place they know, love, and have learned to call
home. Several seniors have shared some of their most
precious and significant memories below. Let us use this time
to reflect on the transience of our four short years here and,
ultimately, our own mortality. For as these select pass on to the
next stages of their life, so must we all pass on into the next life.
Someday we all will have caps and gowns, but they shall be the
caps of our legacies and the gowns of eternities. Just as the caps
fly into the air and return to the earth, so shall we all return to
earth. For good. Here are reminiscences from our tragically
mortal seniors:
When Alex Winston declared October 25th Pope Day.
When Aaron Carter came to campus. It was stupid.
Midnight runs to the Palace cafe.

Madeline Johnson
12:22 PM Feb 25

I don't understand...

12:26 PM Feb 25

Maybe not the name of a recent

campus guest
Also maybe just not hating on
deans (this would nix #26 as
well)

30

12:13 PM Feb 25

Could you insert a fictional

name or two here, or do
something else to telegraph the
fictional nature of the following
items of the list? It just gets a
little confusing on what level
the satire is operating, when
in one entry we're referring
to real and recognizeable
things or people, or then in the
next to fictional people. Let's
keep it all fictional, including
names, and let's try to keep all
of the entries to roughly one
sort of satire, whether that's
going to be exaggeration of
a known Hillsdale tendency,
or diametric contradiction of
a known Hillsdale tendency.
Otherwise I think it loses its
cadence and gets perplexing.

That time I founded Hillsdale College in 2004.

Earning a 3.5 and finally having the freshman gag order
removed.
Competing for Simpson in the House Cup.

Madeline Johnson

Madeline Johnson

The specific human vocation does not rely on the development

of mans inherent potentials (on the awakening of the dormant
spiritual forces OR of some genetic program); it is triggered
by an external traumatic encounter, by the encounter of the
Others desire in its impenetrability. Slavoj iek
The annual Hunt a Dean event on May 1st. Ill never forget the
sight of Dean Epstein covered in tar, fleeing.
The monthly book bonfires from SAB.

T h e H i l l s d a l e F o r u m March 2016

Madeline Johnson
12:23 PM Feb 25

Madeline Johnson
12:30 PM Feb 25

?
Madeline Johnson
12:33 PM Feb 25

What do you have against the

philosophy department?

That time when the one guy talked. Man, was he controversial.
Remember? With the whipped cream and plywood? Wow.
Truly once in a lifetime.
When the townspeople ran Chik-fil-A out of town on a rail.
The time when an adolescent leopard got loose from the
Hillsdale County Fair and mauled philosophy professors. Lee
Cole was close to death. Timothy Troutner finally, weeping,
killed it with a Summa. Then Alex Winston declared October
25th Pope Day.

Madeline Johnson
12:32 PM Feb 25

The quirky Hillsdale phenomenon known as snow.

During commencement in 2012 when Ted Cruz revealed his
true Lizard Person form.
Howling lines of Homeric Poetry at the moon.
Chuck Hinkley
12:37 AM Mar 10

What in the TARN!!!!

Madeline Johnson
12:36 PM Feb 25

I don't know what to say about

this.

Goats Blood.
All I can think about is Alasdair MacIntyre.
Going to Checker Records, ordering everything off the menu,
then pouring each drink onto Broadlawn to pay respect to Dr.
Arnn.
Sneaking into a girl's dormitory, spending the night there, then
leaving before being detected even though you live there.
Finally learning how to read.
When Hell week comes around and you had to relieve some
stress, you and your friends would all pile in a car and go fox
hunting.
The pink squirrels.

Madeline Johnson
12:42 PM Feb 25

Again, just not sure this flies

without context (if it has
context?)

Discovering the tunnels under the school. Specifically, the ones

into Grove City.
Bring your daughter to school day. So cute seeing all the
freshmen with their little 1-year-olds.

Madeline Johnson
12:40 PM Feb 25

This is opposite to Hillsdale

reality in a way that the others
are exaggerative of Hillsdale
reality, which makes it kind of
confusing

Every year, six days before Halloween, Pope Day.

Madeline Johnson
12:50 PM Feb 25

Ok, the Pope Day thing again?

Well, shouldn't we at least have
a genitive in here somewhere?

Dean Epstein had a great year. Pity.

Diem Pontifex.
Signing the naming rights for your firstborn child over as
collateral for a student loan to finance your crippling A.J.s habit.
Extra classes on federally mandated holidays.
31

As we scatter for spring break, the Forum

editors invite campus, once again, to
treasure the common conversation that
gathers this community from the corners
of the globe to reflect together on taste,
creeds, and the common good-to tug the
transcendentals down into everyday life.
Pitch an essay for the next issue by

April 1

hillsdaleforum@gmail.com

32

T h e H i l l s d a l e F o r u m March 2016