Comments on Kerosene & electric sparks. | switchFEED.com: Exploring and exposing the 'Modern Machine' [a boo...

I replied on the boards. :)Yeah, this author is a ...

2007-09-04T11:21:00.000-07:00

I replied on the boards. :)

Yeah, this author is a bit difficult to read, especially if you're not used to philosophy. :)

Thanks for posting it though! Phil, I have a few book recommendations for you if you'll have them. I recommend them to everyone really, but I particularly think you (and probably Jon too) will enjoy them.

Also, I'd be interested in hearing that bit about Genesis. Not so much in his prove of it's figurativeness, but rather what that figurativeness means for us.

Phil-Sounds interesting, but not something I can d...

2007-09-02T17:04:00.000-07:00

Phil-
Sounds interesting, but not something I can delve into right now.
Do you think the Genesis creation story was figurative like he suggests? Or does it just interest you?

go to switchfeed twice so you can vote for MUTEMAT...

2007-09-02T12:35:00.000-07:00

go to switchfeed twice so you can vote for MUTEMATH's "Typical" in the fuse box at the top, too!

Hey there! Great to see what's happening at Switch...

2007-09-01T21:32:00.000-07:00

Hey there! Great to see what's happening at Switchfeed and that there's a dedicated team of wonderful people bringing us the latest from our favourite band. I'm writing from New Zealand, and noticed that the gig in Auckland was supposed to be in NX. Please could you change this, becuase we love Switchfoot so much in NZ we don't want them to go to anywhere else, especially somewhere that is a typo! Cheers.

And next time, they should really come to Wellington. (If you see them, please tell them!) It'd mean sooo much to us down here and even if it's for one night, me and my Switchfoot loving pals down here in the Capital would loveLoveLOVE to see them, and to let them see our beautifully windy Capital. Thanks so much!

God Bless

Hey Phil. It is great to have you back and with an...

2007-08-31T21:31:00.000-07:00

Hey Phil.
It is great to have you back and with another insightful post. I want to thank you for posting the "Switchfoot Fan Club" Facebook link in the left column of your blog. I've been keeping the group up-to-date and thanks to some multimedia improvements in Facebook, the group has some newly added features and the number of members keeps growing.

Thanks again for your support and it’s great to have you back.

Take care-

yet another amazing post! I gotta set aside a time...

2007-08-31T20:59:00.000-07:00

yet another amazing post! I gotta set aside a time to really read it.

Oh, and Phil, I sent you an email. Hope you got it. If not I'll send another one...

Sorry...that truly was a "test" comment not a requ...

2007-08-31T20:15:00.000-07:00

Sorry...that truly was a "test" comment not a request for a test on what you uploaded.

Anyway, I am both short on time AND attention (ATDD)so I'll have to find a really quiet spot with no distractions and a few spare moments to read through the post, but I'm looking forward to it.

In the meantime, I thought of the song Circles the other day when I had a conversation with an Israeli Jewish man. His perspective on Jesus was interesting. He said that Jesus was probably the best public speaker ever. He felt that Jesus had the advantage of the right social, economic, and political atmosphere to advance his message but that he was no Rabbi and definitely not the Messiah. And he was only a part of history. He said the same thing happened in post WW I Germany with Hitler and in Russia with the rise of Stalin and communism. He said, "You know, History just repeats itself"

He was right about one thing, history does have a way of repeating itself, and a very wise King said the same thing centuries ago when he stated "There is nothing new under the sun"

"Circles" is such an ecclesiastical song...all of life is circular unless there is an interruption to the pattern. We get stuck in our brokenness, we repeat the same mistakes, we don't move forward.
Modern technology is just another manifestation of the circles we tend to walk in every day. It enables our brokeness to continue no more or less than any other trend in history, but it does nothing to alleviate the problem of a fractured world.

Jesus came to break the circular pattern. He presented the radical revolution, the interruption, the tangent to free us from the repetitive pattern of our brokeness. And in spite of what "discoveries" or solutions modern day sociologists lay claim to, their answers are also "a chasing after the wind" and are doomed to be repeated years from now

I don't know if this blog is the place to state my opinion on all of this, but it seemed to fit the topic. Forgive me if I've overstepped the boundaries.

Thanks for the intelligent post. I love food for thought!

(and there are some concert photos from Valdosta I'm dying for you to see!!)

Test?

2007-08-31T19:47:00.000-07:00

Test?

@Phil- Mhmmm :) You make me proud.

2007-08-31T17:51:00.000-07:00

@Phil- Mhmmm :) You make me proud.

This is exactly what Pope John Paul the Great said...

2007-08-31T17:42:00.000-07:00

This is exactly what Pope John Paul the Great said in one of his encyclicals when he says, "Life is not a series of sensations to be experice, but rather a work to be accomplished." Thank You for putting this blog up, and thank you switchfoot for daring us to live more than the modern machine.

God Bless

i think i'll have to read that since Jon wrote a s...

2007-08-31T15:08:00.000-07:00

i think i'll have to read that since Jon wrote a song kinda about it!;)
great updates.....im gonna go check out that book now..lol!
~lydz

p.s. wecome back phill!!!

thanks guys!@emily- yeah...it's hard to keep up wi...

2007-08-31T15:07:00.000-07:00

thanks guys!

@emily- yeah...it's hard to keep up with his intensity and vocabulary at times, but it's totally worth trying to press through that anyway and read/understand it, it's really eye opening stuff...like he does in that paragraph you mentioned, i love how he clinically rips on fukuyama and the shallowness of some other "modern" ideas/ideologists that have been widely embraced. he comments on everything from buddhism to the (sadly) corporate image of contemporary christianity, with a fine understanding of church history and just history in general. his pleasantly surprising take on the creation story was memorable, where he used the narrative itself to prove how the genesis story is figurative. and he exposes all these idols (of the intellect) and pseudo-gods of the modern world brilliantly. completely recommended reading.

@natasha- I mentioned he was Sri Lankan just so you could rejoice at that. =D and yeah you should read this when you get time.

@factorpositivo- thanks for sharing that with us. glad the video from the previous post inspired you!

@lori- thanks! yeah, vicky, gellie and arpit did a great job... I forgot to say a word about that. I don't know what I'd do w/o these guys.

yep i think its wrong that people in western cultu...

2007-08-31T14:34:00.000-07:00

yep i think its wrong that people in western culture are so relaxed, they take everything they have and all the comforts for granted! why should they be the ones to complain or be bored, even the people in africa or south america dont have anything and yet most of them try to live their lives to the full even though they have nothing to do it with! plz think about where ur lives are going people! woohoo! im going to see switchfoot in sydney tonight!

Mmmm. Sri Lankan people are cool. ;] I'm going to ...

2007-08-31T14:29:00.000-07:00

Mmmm. Sri Lankan people are cool. ;]

I'm going to have to read all that when I have some free time.

Thanks for everything Phil!

Hi guys, im from Córdoba Argentina, and i´d like t...

2007-08-31T11:15:00.000-07:00

Hi guys, im from Córdoba Argentina, and i´d like to say that this particular video opened up my mind, i do drugs and i´m really sry about that, u really help me out with this, and u know what´s the problem about this, that im a christian person, i have a ministery in my church, i´ve got a band, it calls factorpositivo wich means positive factor, how ironic is that ? ... thx again u guys really rock, ur sound is amazing, god bless u

i won´t look back ... no more drugs! i don´t need to smoke to expand my mind, thx drew ...

Matt - Cba. Argentina

Nice to have you back Phil. Your Switchfoot crew t...

2007-08-31T10:17:00.000-07:00

Nice to have you back Phil. Your Switchfoot crew took great care of the site while you were gone.

Look forward to reading your newest post when time allows.

Well now, that's some food for thought! I can't sa...

2007-08-31T09:13:00.000-07:00

Well now, that's some food for thought! I can't say I understood all of it, so I won't pretend to, but what I like most is the last paragraph.
Also the paragraph that begins with "Such recommendations have a less than benign aspect when we consider how easily public opinion can be manipulated..." pushes "don't believe in this modern machine!" from circles for me.

I appreciate the fact that this took you a while to type up, so thanks for that and thanks for posting. :)

dude that excerpt was delicious. he is a geeeeeniu...

2007-08-31T09:02:00.000-07:00

dude that excerpt was delicious. he is a geeeeenius.

Later today I will be payed 9 dollars an hour to r...

2007-08-31T08:48:00.000-07:00

Later today I will be payed 9 dollars an hour to read this....at the slow point in the day. Now however this is simple too much good reading to waste trying to read it between the busyness. So later I shall return...and enjoy myself!

Welcome back Phil, it's nice to have you back! I a...

2007-08-31T08:44:00.000-07:00

Welcome back Phil, it's nice to have you back! I always love when you write the definition of a song! It gives me an idea of what other people think and believe what the song means!

...oh and have fun at the SF show!

2007-08-31T06:41:00.000-07:00

...oh and have fun at the SF show!

thanks nat - it's nice to be back. :)and no, I add...

2007-08-31T06:39:00.000-07:00

thanks nat - it's nice to be back. :)

and no, I added "A Philemon Thomas production" recently at the bottom of switchfeed.com because I'd applied for a program in publishing, and this blog is kind of like my portfolio plus "work experience". so I added that just to prove (to the admissions people when they check the site) that this blog's story which I shared in my cover letter is true.

it's why I changed my name on here from "phil" to my real name a while ago, but then lately I haven't been posting much and at one point my name was barely even on the front page so I decided to put it at the bottom of the blog... I must admit I got the idea from the guy who started facebook haha- for the longest time, it said at the bottom of every facebook page "a mark zuckerberg production". guess I'll take it down once we put together a "credits" page profiling the people involved with this blog...been wanting to do that for a while.

First of all - nice to have you back phil. :)Thank...

2007-08-31T06:16:00.000-07:00

First of all - nice to have you back phil. :)

Thanks for typing that up too, it's a pretty long excerpt there, and despite my really wanting to read it all right now, I should go to bed (wouldn't want to be tired when at a SF concert). I read the first bit though and it looks really interesting and thought-provoking.

I've been thinking about various things a lot lately too, so opening up switchfeed to find something like this is a nice surprise.

P.S. Did it always say "A Philemon Thomas Production" down the bottom?

those with terribly short attention spans (or lack...

2007-08-31T05:08:00.000-07:00

those with terribly short attention spans (or lack of time) should read at least the second half (marked "1.2 Modernity as Paradox"). it's where the "circles" parallel starts to become more apparent anyway...