Ladies and gentlemen, I am experiencing cognitive dissonance
I started out to write a blog entry about some combination of Superman as Jesus, the coming End Times, and William Blake poem I happen to like when I stumbled upon something… unexpected.
You are all familiar with Slashdot.org, right? “News for nerds, stuff that matters” is their slogan. The iconic geek news site with its ugly bright green design is accessed, read, and commented-on daily by tech-geeks everywhere. It’s a place where irreverent mockery (the famous “Bill Gates Borg” icon or prolific postings of some guy named “Anonymous Coward”, for example) mixes with articles on the linux kernel and discussions of the latest column by Robert Cringely. It’s full of in-jokes and meta-humor and geekiness. It’s been aptly described as “frenetic”.
Well, in the course of googling around for articles on the apparent similarity between The Man of Steel and the Son of Man (seriously! I think whatever else you make of this we can safely say that all those people who laid out the green to see The Passion of Christ got the attention of the Hollywood Marketing Machine), I stumbled on the following website.
Yes, it’s Christdot.org, doing for Christian news what Slashdot does for the techies. They’ve done away with a few of slashdot’s sassy trademarks (the snarky editor “from the department of…” comments, for example) but kept others, including the goofy topic graphics and the silly polls. All that and more attractive site colours too.
(If you’re wondering why a site would bother to flat out copy slashdot: it’s most likely because the web code that runs slashdot is open source and freely available. Anyone who wants a “news + moderated comments” blog could do worse than using it).
I’m quite blown away by this for some reason. I can’t seem to reconcile everything I know about slashdot with everything I know about Christianity. I’ve also got a new favorite website.
Oh, and I mentioned the End Times and a Blake Poem? Here’s the poem:
O for a voice like thunder, and a tongue
To drown the throat of war! – When the senses
Are shaken, and the soul is driven to madness,
Who can stand? When the souls of the oppressed
Fight in the troubled air that rages, who can stand?
When the whirlwind of fury comes from the
Throne of God, when the frowns of his countenance
Drive the nations together, who can stand?
When Sin claps his broad wings over the battle,
And sails rejoicing in the flood of Death;
When souls are torn to everlasting fire,
And fiends of Hell rejoice upon the slain,
O who can stand? O who hath caused this?
O who can answer at the throne of God?
The Kings and Nobles of the Land have done it!
Hear it not, Heaven, thy Ministers have done it!
William Blake, Lullaby
I won’t comment except to say that it’s seems far to a apropos for something written two centuries ago.
here is a post my brother’s friend wrote about superman, and what sort of a character he is, as well as how to understand him as an icon.
http://commonplacebook.livejournal.com/63188.html
worth a quick read.
So, Superman isn’t so much Jesus as he is Ronald Reagan? Neat =)
not so much reagan as anti-reagan… reagan separated the public and the private, and was the mad cowboy with his fingers crossed that military spending would bankrupt the USSR before someone destroyed the world, but also “a nice guy”.
superman is the nice guy (kent) in private, but that is what he projects into the public through superman. a nice guy all aroud who isn’t willing to take suicidal gambles with the world. least that how i read it.
and whatever happened to the internet crimson skies client program you were thinking of making… something to share and monitor all game information…
“and whatever happened to the internet crimson skies client program you were thinking of making… something to share and monitor all game information…”
Erm, I procrastinated?
good enough.