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Showing posts from April, 2019

When vampires ruled the earth

So, I decided to have a little fun skylarking around with idiosyncratic interpretations of the movie Blade. You're welcome. Let's start with that odd character Blade. He has a dual nature, being human and vampiric. In this sense, he's like a mythical god-man, and is thus an ideal for what vampires should strive to be (and thus resembles Christ, the ideal man). But he's also a vigilante, named for a sword, and so reflects the idea of ultimate (or divine) justice being handed out: the vampires are never given a way out, but are rooted out as if irredeemable. All fairly standard mythical themes.  So, I went down another line of analysis, that of power. The vampires represent the powerful and gifted members of society: they control all the institutions and are blessed with extraordinary strength and agility, although Blade is the only one who refrains from exploiting others with his powers. Is this, then, a film about power and whether it can ever truly be used

Why is Jordan Peterson's message appealing?

I've always found that Peterson has a far greater ability to make the Bible coherent than many contemporary Christian explanations. Generally speaking, there are two main methods of interpreting the Bible today. One is to see it as a book of mostly myths that convey truth about God and humanity. Putting it very crudely, I find this approach generally lacks respect for the text (I have very little time for people who don't respect their subject matter, because they operate from a position of pride and are therefore blind to its merits) and tends, in practice, to ignore stuff that isn't 'nice' (as defined by the fashions of the day). This approach is selective, taking whatever the author thinks to be truth and separating it from backwardness and barbarism; it is arbitrary and thus fragmentary. The second approach is literalistic, and though this often professes respect for the text, it largely ignores meanings that go beyond an account of what happened