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Philippe Garmy's avatar

Truth to tell, upon reading this provocative posting, the now deceased Malcolm Muggeridge and his prophetic voice came tumbling into my mind, ressurected, pell-mell, cutthroat and pistol!

Paul has indeed taken on a similar role, as a prophetic and critical voice during these troubling times, but his voice is uniquely distinct from that of Muggeridge, in that Pauls approach is coloured with the majestic mysteries and wonders of nature and how poorly we humans have stewarded this fragile planet we share together.

Here then is a brilliant sampling of Muggeridge and his penchant for prophetic narrative, bristling with irony, intelligence and wit:

“So the final conclusion would surely be that whereas other civilizations have been brought down by attacks of barbarians from without, ours had the unique distinction of training its own destroyers at its own educational institutions, and then providing them with facilities for propagating their destructive ideology far and wide, all at the public expense. Thus did Western Man decide to abolish himself, creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania, himself blowing the trumpet that brought the walls of his own city tumbling down, and having convinced himself that he was too numerous, labored with pill and scalpel and syringe to make himself fewer. Until at last, having educated himself into imbecility, and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keeled over--a weary, battered old brontosaurus--and became extinct.”

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Phillip Johnston's avatar

If we follow the Desert Fathers and see sloth not simply as laziness but as an ever-enveloping apathy to all commitments we've made, I'd say the Machine has all seven sins covered for us.

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