X-Message-Number: 21716
From: "Mark Plus" <>
Subject: The Blue Pill People have their own journal now.
Date: Tue, 06 May 2003 12:53:10 -0700

Check out some of the articles, available on the Web, from the new print 
journal, "The New Atlantis":

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/

Especially this choice piece by Leon Kass:

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/1/kass.htm

"A flourishing human life is not a life lived with an ageless body or 
untroubled soul, but rather a life lived in rhythmed time, mindful of time s 
limits, appreciative of each season and filled first of all with those 
intimate human relations that are ours only because we are born, age, 
replace ourselves, decline, and die and know it. It is a life of aspiration, 
made possible by and born of experienced lack, of the disproportion between 
the transcendent longings of the soul and the limited capacities of our 
bodies and minds. It is a life that stretches towards some fulfillment to 
which our natural human soul has been oriented, and, unless we extirpate the 
source, will always be oriented. It is a life not of better genes and 
enhancing chemicals but of love and friendship, song and dance, speech and 
deed, working and learning, revering and worshipping. The pursuit of an 
ageless body is finally a distraction and a deformation. The pursuit of an 
untroubled and self-satisfied soul is deadly to desire. Finitude recognized 
spurs aspiration. Fine aspiration acted upon is itself the core of 
happiness. Not the agelessness of the body, nor the contentment of the soul, 
nor even the list of external achievement and accomplishments of life, but 
the engaged and energetic being-at-work of what nature uniquely gave to us 
is what we need to treasure and defend.  All other perfection is at best a 
passing illusion, at worst a Faustian bargain that will cost us our full and 
flourishing humanity."

Fortunately the Venturists are hard at work on a new print magazine to 
present our viewpoint in opposition to such fecklessness.

Mark Plus





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