Tag: books
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Clupdates
Hello Journal, Progress feels less slow upon reviewing the evidence: my three baby clubs are growing!
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Entropy as Uniformity; or the Decay of Individuality
Imagine there are two mugs of coffee: one piping hot and the other stone cold. Unfortunately, the brewer forgets their newly-made drink: it is now as cold as the other. That is, the two objects became more similar. Place the coffees in identical mugs – is there really much perceptibly separating them? Thus, a definition:…
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Empathy for a Chance at Redemption
I had once heard that since it is easy to have empathy for people we like, the point of empathy is to have it for people we don’t. Though I agree with this and it was recently prominent in my mind, I now realize that the point of empathy is also to foster redemption. Following…
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A Roadmap to Fairyland: an “On Fairy-Stories” Analysis
The road to Faërie is a perilous one. For starters, the realm itself is indescribable (though not imperceptible). If we are to commit to this journey, “we must travel hopefully if we are to arrive.” While in early development of The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote an essay titled On Fairy-Stories in which…
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Fever Dreams & Delusions of Grandeur – Part 2
“Dark have been my dreams of late,” King Theoden says, triumphing against depression as Gandalf literally shows him the light, “but I feel as one new-awakened.” The more I read and live, the more I realize that the meaning of life is art. Centering art as the meaning of life entails the following prescriptions: 1)…
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Art not Power
J.R.R. Tolkien was a prolific letter writer, so much so that there is an entire tome compiling his correspondence. In Letter 131, Tolkien writes that “[Elvish] ‘magic’ is Art… and its object is Art not Power, sub-creation not domination.” Distilling this into a theme of Art versus Power, this magic of Tolkien had already meant…
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Hope in Decline
Decline is something I find myself thinking a lot about these days, for obvious reasons as I gesture at the state of the world, at the state of America. A few weeks ago, I saw The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers in theaters for its 25th anniversary. Having seen it so many times,…
The AM Intrigue 