Parishioners

By in books, the cult of multi, the geist of the zeit No Comments

I now know what Emerson meant. The people who believe that it takes one to know one, who know exactly who and what they are, to whom and what they belong, want no single person ever to survive as singular. They aim at complete possession. One may be tempted to cooperate out of fellow feeling or from weakness of will — two things that are sometimes hard to tell apart. But in moods like these it is useful to recall two further sentences from “Self-Reliance”: “Your goodness must have some edge to it,—else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached, as the counteraction of the doctrine of love, when that pules and whines.” Against the bureaucrats of sexual, racial, ethnic, and religious purity, who invoke with such misleading intent the language of community, a resistance that amounts to hatred may be the sanest feeling to cherish. It gives, at least, some edge to whatever integral humanity one must call upon, and serves as a reminder that the caring groups are really as hard as nails: they want to destroy us, each of us, and always for the sake of all.

— David Bromwich, “The New Fundamentalists,” Politics by Other means: Higher Education and Group Thinking

I don’t read any of the so-called “Dark Enlightenment” bloggers, but I will happily borrow their clever term, “the Cathedral,” which Urban Dictionary defines as “the broadly left leaning ‘media academia complex’ in which Western Liberal democracy is steeped.” (“Media-academia complex” is an apt and amusing twist on an old cliché as well.) I especially like the connotations of it being a state religion (and let’s be honest, when even janitors and school bus drivers in wealthy suburbs are forced to sit through privilege-indoctrination seminars, I think it’s fair to call it not only a state religion but a persecuting religion as well, and none of us are insignificant enough to be allowed to remain beneath notice).

John McWhorter is working on a new book about the people whom he calls the “Elect,” his term for the woke, especially the race-obsessed variety. Joel Kotkin has referred to the “clerisy” for many years. In my idle moments, I’ve often wondered what we should call that hard-to-define class of people. “Upper class” or “cultural elites” seem to imply a certain economic bracket, but if I can paraphrase something I vaguely remember Tom Wolfe saying a long time ago, economics doesn’t seem to have anything to do with how it is that a freelance clickbait writer in Brooklyn making 20K a year can feel superior to a Midwestern electrician or plumber making 60k. “Diversicrats” is witty, but a little too specific. “Woke” itself has obviously caught on, but it also implies zealous fervor, and I’m more interested in the way these specious beliefs are held unthinkingly by those who just absorbed them from the atmosphere, as it were. Similarly, “progressive” political opinions just seem to be the default, even for people who don’t follow politics very closely. I think I’ll start referring to the type as “lay parishioners” as shorthand for the kind of superficially-educated, media-savvy serfs who work the manorial lands of academia, nonprofits, and H.R. departments, blissfully ignorant of anything beyond the tenets of their religion.

Hell Arrives Step By Step

By in non compos mentis, notorious jbp, the geist of the zeit No Comments

Unfortunately, people often act in spite of their conscience—even if they know it— and hell tends to arrive step by step, one betrayal after another. And it should be remembered that it is rare for people to stand up against what they know to be wrong even when the consequences for doing so are comparatively slight. And this is something to deeply consider, if you are concerned with leading a moral and careful life: if you do not object when the transgressions against your conscience are minor, why presume that you will not willfully participate when the transgressions get truly out of hand?

— Jordan Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

The Lady of the House was recently stunned when a longtime friend of hers, whom I will call Rubashov, talked about a recent incident in which his favorite podcaster from Slate was “indefinitely suspended” over a Slack conversation in which he used that word, the N-word, the Slur Which Shall Not be Named, in the context of a quotation, while debating what he naïvely thought to be the open question of whether or not there were any contexts in which it was appropriate. She wasn’t stunned by the incident, which is all too typical of the infantile moral panic possessing the media-academia complex these days; it was the fact that Rubashov, rather than offer some mild dissent in defense of his favorite podcaster, was supportive of his canceling. He didn’t actually quote the old line about breaking eggs to make an omelette, but he might as well have.

What appalled her the most was how quickly Rubashov had internalized the Orwellian imperative to judge even the recent past by the shifting political standards of the present. When did this rule about not being allowed to speak or write certain words, regardless of context, come into effect? Five minutes ago? Isn’t it a bit harsh to ruin someone’s career over that? Doesn’t matter. The Committee of Public Safety has decreed it to be an offense at this moment, so it is. (Until ten minutes from now, when the new head of the CPS, having taken power in a coup, reverses the directive and orders everyone fired for supporting the former head, who stands revealed as a sexist saboteur, racist wrecker, transphobic Trumpskyist, and on and on.) Many people, forgivably or not, might be cowards in public, or in their place of employment. But it takes a special level of invertebracy to echo the party line even among friends, even when there is no risk. One wonders whether our Rubashov will go willingly to his own cancellation, secure in the knowledge that it’s all for the best that he become one more egg in the Social Justice Omelette.

Warriors of Culture

By in nietzsche, the geist of the zeit, the great awokening No Comments

Do not be a warrior of culture if you do not need to be. —At long last we learn that of which our ignorance in our youth caused us so much harm: that we have first to do what is excellent, then seek out what is excellent, wherever and under whatever name it is to be found, but avoid all that is bad and mediocre without combatting it, and that to doubt the goodness of a thing — as can easily happen to a more practiced taste — may already count as an argument against it and a reason for ignoring it completely: though this must be at the risk of sometimes blundering and confusing goodness accessible only with difficulty with the bad and the imperfect. Only he who can do nothing better should assault the basenesses of the world as a warrior of culture. But the teachers and promoters of culture destroy themselves when they desire to go about in arms and through precautions, night watches and evil dreams transform the tranquility of their house and calling into an uncanny lack of tranquility.

— Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human

I had never entertained the thought of dumping a box of baking soda in the back of my vehicle. Had you asked my opinion on the desirability of doing so, I would have answered in the negative. However, when a used car battery I was carrying in the rear hatch tipped over and battery acid spilled out, it was with me but the work of a moment to grab a box of Arm & Hammer and empty it over the spill before it ate completely through. Some situations call for drastic measures.

Does our current cultural situation call for drastic measures? Is it enough for those of us with interests beyond political machinations to keep aloof from the fray and sequester ourselves alone with our books and gardens and loved ones? How much time and energy should we spend paying attention to current events, with an eye toward self-defense if nothing else? At what point are we called upon to offer active rather than passive resistance to the acidic forces threatening to corrode and dissolve the things we hold dear, and what form would that take? I would love to believe that these manias and madnesses will burn themselves out soon enough according to some mysterious iron law of history, but I also don’t want to be unjustly complacent.

I’ve never entertained the thought of reading or listening to professional culture warriors like Ben Shapiro, Dave Rubin, Dennis Prager, etc. If you were to ask me my opinion on doing so, I’d answer in the negative. There seems to me something unsatisfying and artificial about them from what (admittedly) little I’ve seen. Then again, baking soda isn’t tasty by itself either, but it sure is handy to have nearby in certain situations. Maybe my attitude is that of the comfortable civilian, ungrateful towards those who serve in the trenches so that I can be free to hold myself aloof from them. Maybe someone needs to fight the enemy on the same level in order to neutralize them, to cancel them out, to prevent further advances.

Baby Brock

By in jests japes jokes jollies, world football No Comments

The first time I saw current Borussia Dortmund striker Erling Haaland, back in his Salzburg days, I thought, “That kid looks like Brock Lesnar’s “before” picture, or maybe his teenage son.” I’ve called him “Baby Brock” ever since. Today, I tried to show somebody what I mean, only to find that there didn’t seem to be any photographic comparisons available. So, once again, it falls to me to make things happen:

To Dust

By in books, juxtapositions, religion 3 Comments

Christianity, it seemed, had no need of actual Christians for its assumptions still to flourish. Whether this was an illusion, or whether the power held by victims over their victimisers would survive the myth that had given it birth, only time would tell. As it was the retreat of Christian belief did not seem to imply any necessary retreat of Christian values. Quite the contrary. Even in Europe  — a continent with churches far emptier than those in the United States — the trace elements of Christianity continued to infuse people’s morals and presumptions so utterly that many failed even to detect their presence. Like dust particles so fine as to be invisible to the naked eye, they were breathed in equally by everyone: believers, atheists, and those who never paused so much as to think about religion.

— Tom Holland, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World

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The same is true of the theory of natural law: roughly speaking, the belief that our moral obligations to our neighbors and to other persons are true, and not only right and binding, because they were written on our hearts by God. Many popular writers like [George] Will, but many academic scholars too, are afraid that morality will be smashed to atoms if natural law ceases to be credited; and they are therefore even willing to cultivate orthodoxies they do not share, as a superstitious outwork of faith. The mistake of such writers is that they underrate the inertia — or, to put it more eulogistically, the interest in order, and the attachment to a common routine — which may be inseparable from human life under every form of government except the most extreme tyrannies. It follows that our moral obligations to one another may not require the aid of natural law theories, any more than the making of fire required the aid of the phlogiston theory. If this is so, what Will takes to be the core of a tradition of conduct, and therefore the foundation of the free polities of the West, is in fact as dispensable as the Gothic convention of flying buttresses.

— David Bromwich, “Moral Education in the Age of Reagan,” Politics by Other means: Higher Education and Group Thinking

A Fable Agreed Upon

By in battling personal entropy No Comments

Jack Butler:

The result is that America has become unhealthier and less physically capable during the pandemic than it was before. And it was no spring chicken to begin with: According to the CDC, 42 percent of the country was considered medically obese as of 2018. The vicious cycle doesn’t stop, either, with lockdowns encouraging obesity and obesity exacerbating the effects of the virus. In many jurisdictions, being above a certain weight enables one to get the coronavirus vaccine sooner, creating a perverse incentive to remain unfit.

“Medically obese.” OK, look, I would never deny that junk food and sedentary living make many people unhealthy and overweight. I am not a member of the fat-acceptance, beautiful-at-any-size cult. But when you follow some of Butler’s links to look into the definition of this intimidating term, you find:

Overweight is defined as having a body mass index of 25 or more, while obesity is defined as having a BMI of 30 or more.

I’m 5’9″ and 198 pounds. According to the printout from my last visit to the rheumatologist’s a month ago, my BMI is 29.10, which makes me borderline obese. Yet my body fat percentage is between 12-13%, which puts me past “ideal” into the “lean” category for my age. I know this because I have a nutrition update every two weeks, where I get my measurements done, using both a tape measure and skinfold calipers. When I started doing this in August 2019, I was 169 pounds with 15% body fat. I’ve added thirty pounds of muscle since last spring while burning several pounds of fat. I still fit into the same clothes that I did then (though this fine booty fills out the seat of my pants a bit more now). My BMI was probably “healthiest” when I got out of the hospital a few years ago following two bouts of pancreatitis due to gallstones, when I weighed around 150 and looked quite gaunt. As others have wryly noted, using BMI as a standard in the vaccine rollout ironically prioritizes some of the healthiest people around. “So…” I began to say. “Why does anyone use it? Good question!” my trainer responded. I’ve lived long enough to see several examples of conventional medical wisdom reverse themselves; I won’t be surprised if, in the not-too-distant future, BMI joins the long list of debunked myths pushed by supposed experts.

A Human Fortune Cookie

By in the cult of multi No Comments

Christopher Rufo, interviewed by Niccolo Soldo:

Ibram X. Kendi is a human fortune cookie. His intellectual output is an endless buffet of word salad and phony wisdom: “Denial is the heartbeat of racism”; “In order to truly be anti-racist, you also have to truly be anti-capitalist”; “Whiteness is literally posing an existential threat to humanity.” In my investigative reporting, I’ve noticed something quite interesting: the core demographic of Kendi readers is liberal, white, middle-aged women who work in public institutions. On one hand, this is a surprise: Kendi embraces a radical vision of Black Power-style revolution. On the other hand, it makes perfect sense: Kendi’s politics provides a vicarious thrill, but is completely in line with conventional wisdom. It’s revolution without risk; it’s liberation without leaving the house. That’s really the best way to understand what he’s doing. He’s not a revolutionary; he’s a self-help guru for white liberals and a reputation-laundering mechanism for multinational corporations. He is an apostle of anti-whiteness, but a mouthpiece for elite white opinion. He preaches anti-capitalism, but accepts Visa, Mastercard, and American Express.

Now there’s the capsule biography of Kendi to rule them all. I would just like to add that Soldo’s interviews, which have recently included Glenn Greenwald and Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, are hilarious.

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