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The Applause of Fools: How Erasmus Predicted Every Century After His Own

In 1509, Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, writing from the restless perch of Thomas More’s London house, composed The Praise of Folly (Moriae Encomium) in the span of roughly a week. The book was a satirical grenade lobbed at the Church, at the academy, at every strutting peacock of European intellectual life who mistook plumage for substance. Among its many surgical observations, one line has outlived them all with terrifying accuracy: “The less talent they have, the more pride, vanity, and arrogance they have. All these fools, however, find other fools to applaud them.”

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Between Virtue and Mortality: Of This Shadow We Have Known

With age comes experiential wisdom and, we hope, a certain jading when it comes to living a right life. Where once we surprised, now we are prepared; where once we were astonished, now we are bemused.

“It goes on…” is likely the best takeaway motto the elders among us have vested in the current lifetime. Life is circular and repetitive and expectation grows dark and deep as uncertainty continually erupts to corrupt the circle.

We yearn to be virtuous against our impending and inevitable ending, and in that shadow between first bursting and the final shovel is the test of our lives.  Have we behaved ethically? Were we in this world just for ourselves? Did we, in some way, serve the others among us without an expectation of a return on our investment?

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Virtue Over Values

In our current, bloody, culture wars — values and morality are given passing play — but few people address the loss of virtue as a necessary component of a righteous humankind.

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