David McElroy

I’m trapped in a society where all the important public figures are middle schoolers.

Not actual middle schoolers, of course. Many of the loudest and most influential voices in our culture are wealthy executives, media personalities, political leaders and adults with millions of followers. But the most popular and prominent of them behave with the emotional maturity of a 12-year-old trying to dominate a cafeteria conversation.

Every disagreement becomes a playground fight. Every issue becomes tribal. Every insult demands retaliation. Every thought must be expressed immediately. Every opinion must be performed publicly. Every emotional reaction becomes content.

And the louder, more impulsive and more outrageous someone behaves, the more visibility that person receives.

That’s not happening by accident.

Years ago, media critic Neil Postman warned that television was transforming public life into entertainment. (Read Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death.” Please.) Television rewarded personalities more than ideas. It rewarded emotional immediacy more than thoughtful reflection. Politics, journalism, education and religion all slowly began adapting themselves to the demands of a medium built primarily for amusement.

But television now seems almost quaint — and downright intellectual — compared to what came afterward.

Social media didn’t merely continue those trends. It automated and intensified them.

Keep Reading

Every time I hold a newborn baby, I’m filled with wonder — because each new life feels like a miracle.

We don’t like to talk about miracles today. Rational materialists laugh at the idea that miracles can happen. Even Christians draw a line between the “supernatural” and things we choose to accept as normal. Some of us would rather not talk about anything that science can’t explain.

But the longer I live, the more I’m forced to accept that there are plenty of truths that nobody can explain. Life and love are ordinary miracles. We might accept that they’re real, but we have no more explanation of them than we have of how Jesus might’ve turned water into wine.

Our lives are filled with ordinary miracles. In fact, the best parts of our lives are those inexplicable things that don’t have natural explanations. Those things are far more impressive than the supernatural miracles that so many people try to find.

It’s as though we’re so accustomed to these tiny miracles that we pretend we understand them.

Keep Reading

It was 15 years ago this week when I posted the first articles to this website. For the first few months, I struggled to figure out the site’s direction — and some of the early articles were pretty terrible.

(This review of the first “Atlas Shrugged” film is still completely accurate, though.)

I posted a couple of articles before I announced anything and then I announced the launch on May 13, 2011 with a post on Facebook. The screenshot above is from 11 years ago, so it reflects the basics of the older design I used from the beginning.

There are times when I read things I’ve published here and I’m embarrassed about them, especially the earlier material. The things I’ve been publishing for the last five years or so are a reflection of how my priorities have changed. (Here’s a guide to my current content.)

I’ve realized that the things I now see as important are not “social media-friendly,” so I have a real problem connecting with the people I truly want to connect with today. For most people, the work I publish now is almost invisible.

Keep Reading