{"id":3280,"date":"2020-03-17T13:16:37","date_gmt":"2020-03-17T13:16:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/03\/17\/pascal-weighs-in-on-the-wuhan-flu\/"},"modified":"2020-03-17T13:16:37","modified_gmt":"2020-03-17T13:16:37","slug":"pascal-weighs-in-on-the-wuhan-flu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/03\/17\/pascal-weighs-in-on-the-wuhan-flu\/","title":{"rendered":"Pascal Weighs in on the Wuhan Flu"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">&quot;All of a man&#39;s problems derive from his inability to sit quietly alone in his room.&quot;&#0160;&#0160;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">An exaggeration, no doubt, but curiously apropos at the present time.&#0160;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">More on Pascal in my <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/maverick_philosopher\/pascal\/\">Pascal category<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">Thomas Merton wrote a very good book, <em>The Silent Life<\/em>. Had he been more assiduous in the living of that life he would not have quit his hermitage to attend a theology conference in Bangkok where he met his end by electrocution at the young age of 53.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">I will come back to what for Merton and for many of us is the central conflict in the spiritual life, that between <em>contemptus mundi<\/em> and secular concern.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">More on Merton in my <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/maverick_philosopher\/merton-thomas\/\">Merton category<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&quot;All of a man&#39;s problems derive from his inability to sit quietly alone in his room.&quot;&#0160;&#0160; An exaggeration, no doubt, but curiously apropos at the present time.&#0160; More on Pascal in my Pascal category. Thomas Merton wrote a very good book, The Silent Life. Had he been more assiduous in the living of that life &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/03\/17\/pascal-weighs-in-on-the-wuhan-flu\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Pascal Weighs in on the Wuhan Flu&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[278,287],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-introversion","category-pascal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}