MSI Press Blog

  WORDS MATTER “If I speak with human tongues and angelic as well, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong, a clanging symbol.” --I Corinthians 13: 1   My three brothers recently visited from afar. We spent a week together crammed into my small apartment. We exhausted ourselves talking about our lives and our favorite subjects--religion, psychology, and politics. I daily used up my quota of words. Many family and friends avoid talking about these subjects to avoid conflict. But we relish the give-and-take of debate. Coincidentally, the Republican National Convention was televised each night. We watched it diligently and exchanged views. Our convictions ranged across the political spectrum. So our conversations were animated, our disagreements passionate. However, at the end of the week, we learned something from each other and parted friends. Words matter. They have power. Our traditions attest to this fact. For example, God created the world with His word. He be...

  The following excerpt comes from Rainstorm of Tomorrow by Renyuan Dong. Core Question: Is the world of nature knowable?   The tree represents an existence of obscurity, mystery, metaphor, and silence. While its canopy can stretch up to several thousand square meters, its roots can cover a n area of up to ten million. Such shocking, asymmetrical data prompted a nascent passion within me to carefully reimagine tree roots. Where to find a tree floating tranquilly in a lake, with its wanton crown stretching above shimmering, fluid moonlight; and beneath the water’s surface, as neither a reflection nor an attachment, grows another “tree,” its composition of interweaving, soil-delving roots discarded for an indiscriminate splay into the water? What a spectacular dual-tree picture it would cast upon the lake! Yet, this image is by no means symmetric, since the submerged tree is much more flourishing than its peer above the water – the part we normally see and recognize as a “...

Released for pre-order this week, Rainstorm of Tomorrow by Renyuan Dong. Rainstorm of Tomorrow: The Ever-Flowing Banquet of Philosophy dexterously weaves the storied philosophical themes of truth, ethics, and aesthetics together with the theories of relativity, quantum mechanics, neuroscience, epigenetics, social Darwinism, utilitarianism, evolutionary psychology, and modern art—from the soberest rationality to the wildest conjecture—to generate provocative or even alienated discourse on topics that readers might otherwise regard themselves as being familiar with, and challenge them into rethinking any settled positions that are taken for granted. Such provocative insights are represented by the three parts on truth, ethics, and aesthetics respectively: (I) A reversed worldview—the tree growing into the soil with its roots buried in the air. (II) The complexity of ethical behaviors—the conformity to utilitarianism by anti-utilitarian events and the violation of util...