Looking Closer
I’m so busy editing the next strand of The Auralia Thread, Raven’s Ladder, and composing new articles for Image and Christianity Today that I’m flat out of time to blog anything substantial. So here’s a rundown of links that caught my attention over the last few days…
- There’s a new Sam Phillips song on the way May 1st.
- David Bazan rocks Seattle Pacific University.
- Robert Shiller discussed Starbucks VIA, Miracle Whip, and economic bubbles, at Seattle Pacific University’s Downtown Business Breakfast.
- “It’s 2009. Do You Know Where Your Soul Is?” Bono’s Easter column in The New York Times
- Two views of the new Jim Jarmusch film, The Limits of Control: Jonathan Rosenbaum’s and Glenn Kenny’s
- Stephen Thomas Erlewine on the new Bob Dylan album
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Well, he wasn’t saying fridges are evil. He was questioning whether “every living soul” should have both a fridge and an SUV.
Considering the massive amounts of money made by U2 that is sent swiftly on to charity, I’m happy to support Bono and his sizable family by allowing them a fridge.
In his Easter piece, Bono writes: “Commerce has been overheating markets and climates … the sooty skies of the industrial revolution have changed scale and location, but now melt ice caps and make the seas boil in the time of technological revolution. Capitalism is on trial; globalization is, once again, in the dock. We used to say that all we wanted for the rest of the world was what we had for ourselves. Then we found out that if every living soul on the planet had a fridge and a house and an S.U.V., we would choke on our own exhaust.”
I agree with some of this, but I always have trouble taking such words from a wealthy celebrity, no matter how charitable he is. He seems to imply that the planet cannot survive if everyone has a fridge and a house and an SUV (are we really at the point were everyone might actually own a SUV?), but I wonder how many homes he has, and how many vehicles. Not long ago I read something by Michael Crichton where he labeled this kind of thinking the “I got mine, but you can’t have yours” position.