Atlas Shrugged, the movie

Rachel the woman born on the wrong continent

Remember Mike and Rachel, the two brits who are more american than should be healthy for a European (of course Britian isn't "Europe" *Wink* *Wink*) that I wrote about in this post. Well it turns out Rachel has a blog of her own (actually two of them).
Peace,
Chris
PS check it out, she's learning/praying about all 50 US states!

I’m a Lutheran Because

LZ asked "Why are you a Lutheran" and I’ll answer.
I am a Lutheran because they are gracious. Really that’s what it comes down to. Catholics have the authority thing, Methodists have the perfection thing, the Presbyterians have the double predestination thing, the Baptist have the altar call and choir. The Lutherans though hold the trump card, grace. We may have a mad anti-Semite as the regenerator of our Catholicism, but damn, we got grace right. And on top of that, or more likely because of that, we have paradoxes, which are icing on the cake.

Projecting the I into the Thou

Last night Yan and I got talking about perceptions of reality. By the end of the discussion I’d decided that Dialecticism the process of having a Thesis (within this conversation label this personal preception), anti-thesis (label this opponents perception), and considering the first with the second coming to a third perception, or Synthesis, is a very Christian action. That is, to remove our faces from our bellybuttons (Luther) we need to consider the bellybuttons of others. That is, to realize the weaknesses of our own arguments we need to view ourselves from the enemies point of view (MLK Jr.). That is, to truly love our neighbor as ourselves (JC) we must allow him the same benefit of the doubt, the same tottering inconsistencies, the same assumptions of good intention, which we give ourselves. So, when we consider our own subjective view, and that of another, with equal weight. That is when we "project the I into the Thou" (MLK Jr.) only then can we enter into dialogue and form a synthesis that reaches closer to that thing we often call Truth.
This morning while showering I got to thinking that, while Dialecticism may fit into the very specific context of last night’s discussion, what does it mean to the wider world. Is it possible to project the We into the Thous? With a global world how does dialectacism work? Does it become a bunch of collective ideologies synthesizing with one another?
Or, do we move to a Polylectic, that is each individual enters their personal perceptions into an ongoing web of perceptions and is pulled in multiple ways, in probably a continuous and ever-living discussion with a whole host of anti-thesises. And if this is the case, and there are presumably going to be new anti-thesises popping up, where does that leave the synthesis within such a system? It seems a lot like the "Web of Power" that Foucau (sp) talks about (though that seemed to be a more coercive form of thought... maybe).
Just some thoughts this morning. Does anyone know of a more proper term than Polylectic, I'm guessing there is some sort of post-modern term out there?
Peace,
Chris