Rattling in my brain-pan

First, the lighter fare:

Alright, now to the meat and potatoes reading.

• The Open Psychometrics Personality Test is getting some link-love for being more in-depth than your average Buzzfeed caper. Results can be a source of deep ennui, apparently. If you take it, share the top-five alignments, won’t you? Mine are Gandalf (85%), Lester Freamon (The Wire, 81%), Dr. Strange (80%), Dale Cooper (80%), and Norman Wilson (The Wire, 79%). Mostly flattering, but that last match is a touch disturbing...
• “He who successfully claims power in an emergency suspends and can destroy rational evaluation. The insistence of the physician on his exclusive capacity to evaluate and solve individual crises moves him symbolically into the neighborhood of the White House.” — Ivan Illich. David Cayly takes effort to apply Illich to the seemingly unified response to the COVID pandemic. My own thoughts on the matter are a bit scattered. First of all, if my Facebook feed is any indication the response to the health crisis is anything but unified. I never thought I’d be nostalgic for the days of consensus reality, but that amber-hued wistfulness is surely MY reality, currently. Secondly, Illich will never be accused of pragmatism, which I have always thought the unfortunate Achilles heel in his critique.
• Our Age Of Sincere Inauthenticity — Frank Bergon recalls Lionel Trilling and surveys the contemporary cultural land hell-scape we find ourselves in.
• ‘Truisms are true, hold onto that!’ George Scialabba surveys Orwell and Rorty and a few others in a, perhaps somewhat Quixotic, effort to steer the Left aright.
• “Years later, installed as an English professor at an even smaller Christian college, I’d recognize doppelgängers of my younger self and wonder if my own teachers had viewed me with the same mixture of distaste, pity, and affection.” In what might be the most thought-provoking read I have currently encountered this year, Michial Farmer considers the matter of failure, and two types of despair. Side-note, Farmer’s wife Victoria has been diagnosed positively for COVID-19 and is today entering that crucial fifth day of symptoms. If you would, please pray for them.