Penitential Acts

By in conspicuous crusading, the cult of multi, the great awokening No Comments

John McWhorter wasn’t correct enough — it’s not just anti-racism; wokeness itself is a surrogate religion (hence “The Great Awokening”). Now we’ve even got the arcane dietary restrictions: no appropriating certain types of cuisines, no eating certain foods during holy festivals. At least Christianity, in theory if not always in practice, emphasizes that whole “judge not” ideal. With these fanatics, there’s no such restraint.

Obiter Dicta, no. 49

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An eighteenth-century inkstand — complete with quill holder, penknife, inkwell, pounce box (to hold the desiccant powder), and wafer box (to hold the paste sealing wafers) — was a monument to the physical act of writing. But if no inkstand was at hand, one could make do with temporary expedients. One day, when Sir Walter Scott was out hunting, a sentence he had been trying to compose all morning suddenly leapt into his head. Before it could fade, he shot a crow, plucked a feather, sharpened the tip, dipped it in crow’s blood, and captured the sentence.

— Anne Fadiman, “Eternal Ink,” Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

 

Let me proudly state that no animals have ever been harmed during the production of my own writing. And furthermore, if I must appear a madman for the sake of my art, I would rather build a mnemonic cage around the elusive sentence in question by repeating it out loud over and over again. More humane and more effective, if you ask me, and even if you don’t. Scott would no doubt find my attitude regrettably soft and unmanly. But I like to think he’d be impressed, and perhaps a bit unnerved, by the way I can summon a notepad app from thin air, like a wizard’s familiar, to capture ideas when I’m away from my writing desk.

Let’s Hang On to What We’ve Got. Don’t Let Go, Because We’ve Got a Lot

By in books, political philosophy No Comments

Before I begin, I should recap the argument of this book: First, the rust of human nature is eating away at the Miracle of Western civilization and the American experiment. Second, this corruption is nothing new; nature is always trying to reclaim what is hers. But this corruption expresses itself in new ways at different times as the romantic spirit takes whatever form it must to creep back in. Third, the corruption can only succeed when we willfully, and ungratefully, turn our backs on the principles that brought us out of the muck of human history in the first place. The last point, which is the subject of the next chapter, is that the corruption has now spread, disastrously, to the right, not just in America but throughout the West.

— Jonah Goldberg, Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy

Louis C.K. did a funny bit about how our pettiness and short-sighted selfishness keeps us from enjoying conveniences which would have been considered utterly miraculous only a few generations ago. “Everything is amazing right now, and nobody’s happy!” he exclaimed. Winston Churchill famously said that democracy was the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried. Jonah Goldberg has essentially combined those perspectives into a book-length meditation on our current political environment, pleading with us to recover a spirit of gratitude for what he calls the Miracle; i.e. Western democratic capitalism and the release it has granted us from the hardship and want of the pre-industrial age.

Goldberg, though a religious believer, presents a case designed to appeal to skeptics and atheists. There is no God to save us from our mistakes and tragedies. Life is a constant struggle against material and cultural entropy. The Miracle, though successful, is highly unnatural, forcing us to adopt new habits of living which defy all the tribal instincts ingrained through eons of evolution. The Miracle was only achieved through good fortune, and can easily be lost again with no guarantee of return. Various forms of what Goldberg groups together under the rubric of “romanticism,” from left-wing utopianism to right-wing blood-and-soil nationalism, all promise to heal our alienation and make us whole again; all of them are pernicious lies.

An earnest plea for psychological balance and sanguine perspective will no doubt seem like a pitiful thing in a melodramatic, hyper-political age, but hopefully the seeds of Goldberg’s argument will find receptive ground among the bystanders. Having long since come to the same tragic perspective on my own, I didn’t need any additional convincing, but nonetheless, it was good to read an eloquent expression of it. Sometimes, there’s nothing more that needs to be said beyond hear, hear.

You Will Be a Restless Wanderer On the Earth

By in foolosophizing, notorious jbp, political philosophy, the great awokening No Comments

Melissa Mackenzie:

Peterson had been noodling some ideas about this question: How do we know when the Left goes too far? He made the point that on the right, everyone knows Nazis are evil. They’re something bad and something we don’t want to be and this moral judgment was clearly illustrated at the Nuremberg Trials, but that there is no such limit on the Left.

It was one of those rare instances of serendipity. On June 25th, 2015, I read an essay by George Santayana, “Josiah Royce,” in which he wrote:

Yet that is what romantic philosophy would condemn us to; we must all strut and roar. We must lend ourselves to the partisan earnestness of persons and nations calling their rivals villains and themselves heroes; but this earnestness will be of the histrionic German sort, made to order and transferable at short notice from one object to another, since what truly matters is not that we should achieve our ostensible aim (which Hegel contemptuously called ideal) but that we should carry on perpetually, if possible with a crescendo, the strenuous experience of living in a gloriously bad world, and always working to reform it, with the comforting speculative assurance that we never can succeed. We never can succeed, I mean, in rendering reform less necessary or life happier; but of course in any specific reform we may succeed half the time, thereby sowing the seeds of new and higher evils, to keep the edge of virtue keen. And in reality we, or the Absolute in us, are succeeding all the time; the play is always going on, and the play’s the thing.

Suddenly, I understood. I saw, vividly, what I had only understood abstractly before: that the crusading would never stop. There was no limiting principle to left-wing political efforts, nothing that would serve as a reasonable goal or endpoint. Today’s vanguard will be denounced as tomorrow’s reactionaries by a new group of radicals demanding more, faster, better.

The very next day was when the Obergefell ruling was handed down. And Freddie deBoer, whom I had previously held in high esteem as an intelligent alternative to orthodox leftists, immediately tweeted, “Now on to polygamy. (And no, I ain’t kidding.)” He followed that up with, “Y’know, fellow left types who say today’s not a good day to start talking polygamy, ‘slow down’ is a derided stance for a reason.”

I have no problem with gay marriage. And I don’t think that poly-anything will ever be more than a fringe fad. In other words, my road-to-Damascus moment wasn’t motivated by any visceral fear or loathing of the newest phases of the sexual revolution. Like Roger Scruton as a student in Paris in 1968, watching the rioting of the soixante-huitards, I simply realized that regardless of the merits of any particular culture-war crusade, in the grand scheme I was watching “a kind of adolescent insouciance, a throwing away of all customs, institutions, and achievements, for the sake of a momentary exultation which could have no lasting sense save anarchy.” Nothing would ever be good enough. Nothing will ever satisfy people whose anger and misery is existential, not situational. Like Scruton, I realized that these people would eagerly tear down many of the imperfect things I loved about the world in pursuit of unattainable perfection, and that I was tired of being associated in any way with their endless complaints and histrionics.

Ever since Bacon and Descartes, we’ve been increasingly accustomed to shaping the world to our preferences. As our technical mastery increases, we find it harder to accept the existence of anything which impedes “progress,” whether personal or political. How do we know when the Left goes too far? To answer that, we’d have to be capable of envisioning a world of “good enough,” and I’m not sure if human nature even allows for that. What sort of epochal revolution would have to occur in order for humanity to envision an alternative to progress that didn’t involve some romanticized past? Individuals will continue to have private epiphanies where they make peace with an imperfect world and resign from the crusades, but the species as a whole will continue to be what Nietzsche called “the unfinished animal,” endlessly striving to bring more of life under its control, forever dissatisfied with what actually exists.

You Tried to Turn Me Off but You Couldn’t Even Turn Me Down

By in conspicuous crusading, fresh hell, music, the great awokening No Comments

Stephen Miller:

This is a formula to kill artistic freedom – yes even by artists we may find deplorable, like R. Kelly or Kill, Baby, Kill. Every artist should take a step back at who Spotify is entrusting to carry out its new content policing.

Furthermore, modern artists should go to YouTube and dig up the footage of Frank Zappa and Dee Snyder testifying in front of Tipper Gore and the Parents Music Resource Center in 1985. If Spotify continues down this path, then artists need to realize they have the power to make Spotify suffer the same fate as the Tipper Gore group – an extinct laughingstock and stain on the history of free expression through music.

If you’re just joining us, we’re reading an article on Fox News’s website defending freedom of expression in…uh…popular music against new demands for censorship from…um…religious fundamentalists, a.k.a. rainbow-haired, pussyhat-wearing feminists, who are being supported, at least implicitly, by milquetoast liberals who see nothing wrong with organized pressure campaigns by moralistic zealots attempting to create obstacles between artists and willing audiences since only government can officially “censor” anyone. Well, the neo-Whigs who think that “It’s the current year!” counts as a persuasive argument will have fun making sense of this one, at least.

If there’s any reactionaries out there who can write a decent melody, the stage couldn’t be more perfectly set for you to position yourself as the newest phase in rock ‘n’ roll rebellion by giving this generation of church ladies the middle fingers and mockery they’re begging for. And best of all, they’ll give you all the free advertising you can handle. They won’t be able to help themselves.

Noteworthies (38)

By in noteworthies, notorious jbp No Comments

• Frank Brownlow, “Thank You, Auden!”

• Troy Senik, “Civilization, If You Can Keep It” and related, John Davidson, “The West Isn’t Committing Suicide, It’s Dying of Natural Causes”

• David French, “Critics Miss the Point of the ‘Intellectual Dark Web’”

• Pedro Blas González, “Hoffer and the True Believers”

• Allen Guelzo, “Nuanced Patriotism”

• Christian Gonzalez, “Inequality and the Intellectual Dark Web”

• Jonah Cohen, “The Shameful, Unethical Smearing of Jordan Peterson”

• Loury and McWhorter.

• A circus made by circumstance.

The Grey Walkers

By in collectanea No Comments

The sale was going to start at 9:00 a.m. Saturday, but numbered tickets were going to be handed out starting at 6:30. We drove up on Friday and arrived a little before 3:00 p.m. to put a couple of boxes in line to hold our place until the next morning, then we went to visit the arboretum and take a leisurely stroll around campus.

We arrived back at the arena the next morning around 6:00 and made a little small talk with some of the other members of our itinerant biblio-tribe, then collected our numbers. Most people got back in their cars to drive into town for breakfast, but as we’ve done for the last couple years, we used the opportunity to grab a prime parking spot. It was only two miles down to College Corner, and we’re always up for a good walk. We took off at a brisk pace, wanting to have plenty of time to eat and get back in line.

It was an absolutely beautiful morning. Maybe not by most people’s standards — there had been a torrential thunderstorm around midnight, and the skies were still slate-grey, though merely overcast. No threat of further rain. Temperatures in the low 50s, with a slight breeze. For me, there couldn’t be more gorgeous weather for a walk. It made my heart sing. And campus walking, especially early on a weekend morning after graduation, is one of our favorite things to do. It’s a pleasant feeling of kenopsia to walk past such stately buildings and perfectly manicured lawns with hardly any sign of human activity anywhere.

Shortly after we had crossed the street and passed the stadium, the Lady said, jokingly, “We’re being followed.” She spoke truly, for there was an older couple not far behind us. I’d been vaguely aware of them back there since we left the parking lot, but now they were close enough that we could hear them. Before they caught up to us, though, they veered left and headed down near the tennis courts and swimming pool, while we continued down the sidewalk along the main road. The speed of their pace and the purposeful manner of it made me suspect that they were also heading down to the Corner for breakfast and they knew a shortcut. Several minutes later, our parallel paths converged, and they were indeed a little bit ahead of us. “The stalker has become the stalkee,” I whispered, but a few minutes later, we had to admit that despite our respectable clip, we were, in fact, getting dusted by a couple of sprightly greyhairs.

They went into the waffle shop where we had eaten last year, but we continued for another half-mile to a different one, where I discovered that a three-cheese omelette with a few fun-size hash brown patties and a couple slices of toast provide enough fat and protein to keep a fellow feeling energetic and sated for almost seven hours, despite four miles of walking and a day’s hard work.

After finishing breakfast, having made such good time, we went back up the main lawn and past the library, taking a more relaxed amble this time. When we turned back onto the main thoroughfare again, though, we saw our fellow saunterers coming up via a perpendicular sidewalk. This sort of serendipity, this brief membership in a transient club of four, we felt, had to be acknowledged, so we turned toward them as they came into earshot and offered a hail-fellow-well-met. The Lady asked if they were also at the sale, which they were. They said they were surprised, because they thought they were the only ones who ever walked into town. We responded in kind. We asked if they were locals, seeing as how they seemed to know their way around. The wife said, “Well, he was a local, from ’71 to ’75.” “A lot of the buildings are different now, though!” he added. We fell into step together and chatted the rest of the way back to the sale.

By my math, if he was a freshman in 1971, that would make him 74 or 75 years old now, and I assume his wife was about the same. They told us that they bike about 30 miles every other day as well, near their home in Amish country. “No matter how tired I am, I never let myself get passed by an Amish buggy!” she asserted. I had to laugh in appreciation of that competitive spirit. Other than the grey hair, you wouldn’t guess they were anywhere near that age. Spry and athletic, they could have easily passed for being in their early fifties.

I don’t have any grand conclusion to the story. I just thought it was inspiring to meet such a role model. Hopefully the Lady and I will still be that fit and active at the same age, still strolling around campuses early on summer mornings.

I Fear That I Am Ordinary, Just Like Everyone

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It’s almost as if our crazy love of dreaming big is a last-ditch survival mechanism to cope with our day-in, day-out awareness of how small, pointless and ineffectual we turn out to be. For all but a minuscule few, life is about recognizing just how little change you can effect, from politics and economics to public opinion and popular tastes. It often seems to impossible to change even one person’s mind, especially a partner or relative. We indulge our big fantasies despite what appears to be endless, intimate evidence to the contrary. Why do we do this? What are we, crazy?

— James Poulos, The Art of Being Free: How Alexis de Tocqueville Can Save Us From Ourselves

 

I remember being a teenager and buying one of Robert Fulghum’s books at a B. Dalton (back when malls had bookstores instead of cellphone-repair kiosks). The cashier commented on it, saying that she had tried reading it, but “it just seemed to be a lot of stuff I already knew.” Even at the time, I remember thinking, well, yeah; why would you expect that truth should be something completely exotic and abstruse? Some of Fulghum’s stories are twee, no doubt; but some of them are hilarious, and others contain minimalist insights and observations that blossom into the universal truths that, yes, we all already know, but somehow fail to honor in practice. Truth often is ordinary. The effort we put into rationalizing it away is what’s extraordinary. Part of getting older, I think, is finally getting tired of creating complexity and complications where none need exist.

The Lady and I were talking on a hike about a podcast she’d listened to with an author who’d just published a book based on the claim that willpower is feeble in comparison to having a properly structured environment. The truth, of course, is that both personal discipline and a supportive environment are necessary to achieve goals in the most efficient way, but the precise proportions of each depend on individual circumstances, and they can’t be reduced to an abstract, universal formula. But that’s boring, and it can be summed up in a sentence. To write a book like that, to get attention and distinction, you have to take a strong stand on one side or the other. With truisms, there’s nothing to do but accept them. A strong either/or partisan argument gets our adrenaline pumping. A stubborn opponent sharpens our wits and concentration. We feel so much more alive and engaged when we’re fighting, even if we’re fighting over a completely manufactured disagreement. At least then, we’re not alone with our thoughts, forced to admit how rarely we do the things we know we should and how lame our perennial excuses are for not doing them.

When I look back at my decade or so of writing online, I notice that the years where I did my best work were the ones I spent with some sort of challenge. For a couple of years, I was writing for that most inspiring of reasons, to impress a girl. For a few years after that, I was writing in order to make sense of what would come to be known as the Great Awokening, while coming to terms with my own evolving political perspective. Having achieved both, I can now afford to write for the pure enjoyment of playing with words, while making tentative, experimental attempts to develop as a writer and a thinker. In one sense, that’s liberating, but that same sense of pleasant weightlessness can also make you feel adrift and alone, unable to connect to a culture dominated by angry, partisan adolescents of all ages who are determined to make the entire world fit onto the Procrustean bed of their narrow political obsessions. Without an argument to join, without a sacred cause to crusade for, without any desire to be noticed and appreciated, I’m forced to acknowledge how plain my pleasures are, how banal my tasks and routines are, and how very much I have in common with people I formerly scorned in my supercilious youth. It’s often said that the story of humanity has been a sequence of increasing disillusionment. Copernicus demoted us from our place at the center of the universe. Darwin relegated us from our special status above the rest of the animal kingdom. Freud then informed us that we weren’t even the masters of our own minds. Now, even within the privacy of our self-image, it seems the final humiliation is the recognition of our own individual ordinariness, a recognition itself so common as to need no famous spokesman. Thankfully, the consolations of simple, earnest joys more than make up for it.

Rolling Green

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We realized, to our chagrin, that we hadn’t been hiking since last September. First there were my two hospital stays plus eventual surgery. Then the new business got rolling and ate up a lot of our time. And even we aren’t quite mad enough to get up before dawn on a winter morning and go walk for several miles along a mountain ridge while our several layers of clothing put up about as much resistance to the howling, frigid wind as your grandmother’s password does to identity thieves. But we’ve hiked this trail twice in the past week, and it’s great to be back. No bears yet, but lots of chipmunks, plus what appeared to be a beautiful pair of orioles, a pileated woodpecker, and one bald eagle! The long-term forecast is calling for a cooler-than-normal spring in the mid-Atlantic; ’tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. We’ve got a lot of lost time to make up for.

Obiter Dicta, no. 48

By in music, obiter dicta No Comments

If Schopenhauer had a religion in his youth, or at any time in his life, it was music. It was in music that he found intimations of a realm beyond the human world. The nature of things, he came to think, was ineffable. Language could not capture the reality that lay behind changing appearances. But what could not be spoken could still be sung or played.

— John Gray, Seven Types of Atheism

As Mark Sandman sang, “Music is like our prayer; it helps you reach somewhere.” Likewise, my faith is the substance of rhythms hoped for, the evidence of melodies not heard.

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