From the Chief

For quite some time now, I’ve been anxious to have a medium where I can spin some threads on the recurrent themes underneath the overwhelmingly large umbrella called culture. My generation is and will be shouldering burdens that, in my opinion – and I think many feel the same way – require an unparalleled degree of intellectual determination and focus. Living in the Information Age, especially since the advent of the World Wide Web, there is no shortage of ideas, but the supply of ideas is not the problem facing this generation. The problem, as with any intellectual endeavor, is comprehension (grasping meanings and significance), contextualization (ideas are a part of a complex, interrelated framework), discrimination (discerning the bad and/or irrelevant from the good), and integration (synthesizing concepts and observations into a comprehensive system of thought). 

In a previous age, the Industrial Revolution, mass production and greater standards of living weren’t the problem. The thinkers of the Enlightenment and the American Revolution paved a political landscape that would make such a socio-economic structuring possible. However, the unprecedented economic growth and social mobility of the late 19^th century gave rise to feelings of resentment. Author Mark Twain notoriously called this period the “Gilded Age,” while Ida Tarbell, one of the famous “muckraker” journalists, aroused the public’s contempt for big businesses such as John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company. 

So, what happened? Why, in spite of unprecedented wealth creation and social liberalization, are the values and accomplishments of the West accompanied by feelings of enmity and guilt? Intellectually, the answers are in philosophy; by demonstration, they are also in history. 

And it is in history that offered both this blog’s symbolism and its namesake, Defenestration. The meaning of the word is to “throw a thing or person out of a window.” Historically, two of the most notable defenestrations took place in 15^th and 17^th century Prague, where Bohemian Protestants became frustrated with the religious persecution and corruption of the Roman Catholic Church. 

This blog doesn’t aim to throw anybody out of a window, but Defenestration will be a vehicle for scrutinizing the intellectual roots responsible for today’s cultural anathema and, at the very least, create a dialogue for replacing nefarious ideas with benevolent ones. 

Andrew Deaton and I invite you to visit Defenestration with regularity and share what we have to offer. 

Patrick T. Adams
Editor-in-Chief