A Little of Everything With a Light Touch

By in books, foolosophy, juxtapositions, montaigne, nietzsche 1 Comment

As I filled up the truck, I found myself looking at the books with a certain hostility. There is a very real sense in which they ruined my life. At twenty-five I believed that by absorbing their contents —or, short of that, by hauling them around with me from place to place— they would somehow redeem me. At forty-five I found myself still unredeemed, worrying about money in a way I never imagined possible, angry at the false advertising by which mere learning is said to lead to happiness. These books destined me to an unbalanced life, like a poorly packed U-Haul that leans too far to one side; like a cheap Ikea particle-board bookshelf, bought only as a temporary and partial solution, sagging under the weight of its books.

— Justin E.H. Smith, “The End of Books”

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He said philosophers have been arguing about this for centuries, they haven’t come up with any consensus answers, and so we should just stop asking. That is, Montaigne makes the case that it is possible to live a good human life with a kind of indifference to the question of the highest good. And that that way of seeking happiness, is what we call the quest for imminent contentment. And the happiness Montaigne celebrates is a dabbling kind of happiness. That is, instead of asking is philosophy going to make me happy, or is religion going to make me happy, or is citizenship going to make me happy, Montaigne does a little of everything, but he does it all with a light touch. So for example, he reads, but he tells us that he doesn’t like the heavy stuff, Plato and Aristotle. He prefers lighter authors like Plutarch and Ovid (his version of light might be a little different than ours). He travels, but when he travels he doesn’t go with the ambitions of an explorer, or the aspirations, the piety, of a pilgrim, he’s just taking a look around. And Montaigne says this kind of nonchalant existence, in which we enjoy all the pleasures and pursuits available to us, but don’t make too much out of any of them, this is the true way to happiness.

— Benjamin Storey, podcast with Richard M. Reinsch, “Restless Amidst Prosperity and Freedom”

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We no longer believe that truth remains truth when the veil is withdrawn from it: we have lived long enough to believe this. At present we regard it as a matter of propriety not to be anxious either to see everything naked, or to be present at everything, or to understand and “know” everything. “Is it true that the good God is everywhere present? ” asked a little girl of her mother: “I think that is indecent”: a hint to philosophers! One should have more reverence for the shame-facedness with which nature has concealed herself behind enigmas and motley uncertainties. Perhaps truth is a woman who has reasons for not showing her reasons? Perhaps her name is Baubo, to speak in Greek?… Oh, those Greeks! They knew how to live: for that purpose it is necessary to keep bravely to the surface, the fold and the skin; to worship appearance, to believe in forms, tones, and words, in the whole Olympus of appearance! Those Greeks were superficial – from profundity!

—Nietzsche, The Gay Science

With Such a One Do Not Even Poop

By in fresh hell, the geist of the zeit, the great awokening 2 Comments

You laugh, and you should, but these are the theological issues of our age.

A woman we had doing some contract work told us that she attended the Women’s March a few years ago, and while she was there, nature texted, so she looked around and noticed that the porta-potties were owned by a company called “Don’s Johns,” or something to that effect. So, she did the totally normal thing that anyone would have done — she Googled the company to make sure it wasn’t owned by, you know, that Don, because “it’s the sort of thing he would do! He’s got his fingers in all sorts of pies!”

He would… make money off the people protesting against him? Well, I must admit, I’d have to respect that kind of hustle.

I’m afraid I don’t have the instincts of an investigative journalist. I didn’t think to ask her if she wore one of those pussy hats, for one thing, but more importantly, I didn’t think to follow up on the logic of what, exactly, it would have entailed if Trump had owned the company. Would you withhold your bodily waste in protest? Soil yourself? Or, conversely, would you be eager to relieve yourself in “his” toilets as some kind of insult or defilement? I don’t understand these religious purity rituals.

Smell the Rich Mahogany

By in education, jests japes jokes jollies No Comments

Intellectuals are the bureaucrats of thought.

— Theodore Dalrymple, Midnight Maxims

Two things: One, the good doctor has a new book out consisting of 365 maxims composed during a period of insomnia. I’ve enjoyed it, and you probably will too. And two, this witty quip reminded me of a tweet that I only vaguely remembered and feared I’d never see again, only to stumble upon a screenshot of it this very evening. Look at this. This should hang in the Louvre with Dalrymple’s maxim below it:

Look at Them and See What They Are Like

By in race, the geist of the zeit, tribalism No Comments

Christopher Rufo:

These authors may imagine themselves to be defending liberal-democratic freedoms against the threat of illiberalism. But in practice, they enable, and would leave American families defenseless against, the worst ideologies of the Left. They advance three specious arguments—that critical-race-theory restrictions violate free speech, that state legislatures should stay out of the marketplace of ideas, and that citizens should pursue civil rights litigation instead—that would serve to usher in the concrete tyrannies of critical race theory, which explicitly seeks to subvert the principles of individual rights and equal protection under the law. Despite the superficial differences among the four heterodox authors, they all serve a single function: to prevaricate, stall, and run interference for critical race theory’s blitz through American institutions.

I’ve been following this issue with interest. Rufo seems to be a one-man army in the fight against neoracism, and his efforts seem to be having a strong effect. For the first time that I can recall, the defenders of CRT are on the defensive, and their messaging is scattered and contradictory. CRT is an esoteric law school theory; no, wait, it’s just a common-sense explanation for the history of racism and slavery in this country; no, it’s not being taught in schools, but it would be a good thing if it were, and besides, the only people who oppose it are QAnon Trumpist blah blah blah. Rufo’s efforts have shaken things up, and not only among the left. The crux of the argument among people on the right is whether the laws recently passed by state legislatures banning CRT from being taught in schools are actually effective for that purpose, or whether they’re flawed in ways that their proponents will come to regret one day, and if so, whether they can be improved. As always, I have no particular knowledge or expertise, but I find the back-and-forth debates fascinating.

Look at them and see what they are like:

they move as though a wind were pushing them,
they rest as though a hand had stopped them.

In their eyes is the oncoming darkness
sweeping across summer’s fields before the storm.

— Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Hours, III, 20 (trans. Barrows and Macy)

The Lady of the House has a geologist cousin working somewhere up in the Arctic Circle these days. She calls us every few weeks, and often asks us to help her make sense of goings-on down here. I find it very useful to attempt to explain American politics and society to a foreigner who only takes in various snippets through news reports. She’s vaguely “left” in a more European social-democratic way, so she’s especially interested in trying to make sense of what our right wing is all about. I’ve followed this issue with her in mind — how would I summarize it? I think I would probably say that in my opinion, most of the energy is on Rufo’s side of the argument. I sense — and obviously, I have nothing more substantial than a sense — that the classically-liberal wing of conservatism in America, often derided as “Conservative, Inc.” by the new generation, is looking enervated. Too many intellectuals, both centrist and conservative, want to respond to the CRT fight by doing what intellectuals do — endlessly analyzing, theorizing and quibbling over terminology, like this is all a seminar or an interesting debate-club topic. Some, like the authors of the NYT op-ed Rufo is arguing with here, seem concerned with maintaining an aesthetic independence which wouldn’t require them to do anything as tacky as join the fight on one side or the other.

I’m worried that that might not be an available luxury much longer. A substantial segment of the right seems to be fed up with “the long defeat” and are eager for someone, anyone, to start throwing punches in self-defense. A recent Twitter thread was very interesting, suggesting among other things that even the sorts of Tea Party conservatives who have long had faith in the America they learned about in civics class have begun to see the entire system as, well, rigged. I shudder to think what will come of it if those trends continue.

The Labor We Delight In

By in work No Comments

Simon Sarris:

This is not worship of employment, but a simpler observation: It seems that the more you ask of people, and the more you have them do, the more they are able to later do on their own. It is important to note that while we shouldn’t allow children to be bobbin boys, no one would describe Steve Job’s summer job at 13 as his exploitation. We should be thinking much harder about making sure children can make meaningful contributions to the world.

Seizing opportunity requires opportunity to exist at all. And I suspect the downplaying of agency in childhood not only creates fewer opportunities for great people, it must also create more marginal people. Ushering everyone into an endless default script is disastrous when underlying conditions or assumptions change. Even when they don’t, some people exit academia almost terrified to leave (to interact with the “real world”), a kind of Stockholm syndrome. How could we celebrate a higher learning that creates something so pathetic, the opposite of a readiness for life?

A couple who work for us brought their eleven-year-old niece along during her spring break this past April. It was her idea, something she was excited to do, and she seemed to really enjoy it. We gave her simple tasks like opening incoming parcels, but whenever she finished, she would repeatedly ask if there was anything else that she could do. At the end of each day, on her own initiative, she’d sweep the floor with the big push broom. By the end of the week, she was proud to have become competent, if not quite a master, at operating the pallet jack, although she was a little too small to maneuver it with a full load on it. It was interesting to see how eager she was to be given responsibilities. She saw it as getting to participate in something with her aunt and uncle, which just happened to be “work.” I have to admit, I don’t think I would have been nearly as motivated at that age; I would have preferred to wander off by myself to play or daydream. The Lady of the House often talks of wishing she had an army of teenage girls to carry out tasks for her. I remind her that when confessing to being the reincarnation of a robber baron, it’s best to use one’s inside voice.

I started work on my fifteenth birthday in my father’s newspaper distributorship. He had been talking about it for several weeks prior, telling me to be ready to wake up early one of these Sunday mornings and go in to the warehouse. A few weeks went by without anything coming of it. I went to bed the night before my birthday thinking, “Well, surely he won’t pick tomorrow to follow through on that…” Naturally, I found myself in a cold concrete room with hazy fluorescent lighting at three a.m. helping to assemble the Sunday edition of the New York Times. Back then, the Sunday paper came in about four or five different sections — the main, or front page section (“heads”), sports, and a couple others whose names escape me now. One person would insert these sections together and pass them down to a partner, who added the “combos,” the ads and such which gave the Sunday paper its heft, and passed them on to be tied in bundles of ten. I played the combo guy to Jesse’s inserter. That man was a machine. Frederick Winslow Taylor would have whimpered ecstatically in his sleep to dream of such a man on his assembly line. He assembled four sections together faster than I could add one. It was quite the unwelcome lesson in humility, especially with my dad barking at me to pick up the pace.

Nowadays, I’m grateful to my dad for instilling a strong work ethic in me. I still have no desire to manage a warehouse crew composed of teenage girls, though. They’ll have to find some other way to the joys of self-fulfillment through hard work.

Back to Naked Land

By in jests japes jokes jollies No Comments

Karl Steel:

James Burnett, Lord Monboddo, rich, strange, and Scottish, died at eighty-four in 1799. He was known for exposing himself: he exercised naked before the open windows of his estate and eschewed travel by carriage, insisting instead on riding his horse Alburac through the damp gray of every Scottish season. Like many other men of his ilk and era—Rousseau, Condillac, Mandeville—he speculated at length about language’s origins among our primeval ancestors. He maintained, incorrectly but not unlaudably, that fully articulate speech first appeared in the Black civilization of ancient Egypt; that certain Native American languages were mutually intelligible with Gaelic; and, most notoriously, that orangutans were humans, though just too lazy to learn to speak.

This reminded me of Bernarr Macfadden. What is it about eccentric Scotsmen and their penchant for exhibitionist exercise? Is this some sort of strange offshoot of the Scottish Enlightenment? I think this bears further investigation. If any budding scholars need a topic for a dissertation, there you go. Take it with my compliments.

The Invisible Dinosaur

By in foolosophy No Comments

In a famous psychology experiment, subjects were asked to watch a video in which six people pass basketballs back and forth. Three of the people in the video wore white shirts, three wore black. The subjects were asked to keep a silent count of the number of passes made by people wearing white shirts. In the middle of all this, a person in a gorilla suit wanders through the scene, spending nine seconds on screen, even facing the camera and pounding its chest. Surprisingly, half of the subjects never even noticed the gorilla, so intent were they on their counting task. I have to admit, I would have expected to be one of the noticers.

On my way to an appointment this evening with a few minutes to burn beforehand, I stopped in the library to return some books and pick up another one. As I walked in, I noticed the table with free masks and wondered for a moment if we were required to wear them in here, or if it was just strongly encouraged. I decided to follow the adage that it’s always better to ask for forgiveness rather than permission, but I glanced around and noticed a few other maskless people, which reassured me that I wouldn’t become a martyr for the Free Face movement. I went over to the hold rack, picked up my book, and then went across the room to the new non-fiction shelves. While browsing around, I saw a couple come in with a young girl, maybe four or five. Also maskless, I noticed. Soon, the girl’s squeals of excitement vaguely disrupted my laser focus on book titles, and I glanced up and saw it — an actual Triceratops skeleton, right there in the middle of the floor, mere feet away from the hold rack where I had just been. There’s a new natural history museum being built nearby, and we had read that the library would become the temporary home of the Triceratops in the meantime. The Lady of the House had even said to me, a mere fifteen minutes earlier as I left the house, to “see if the Triceratops is in the library yet!” Yes, dear, go to my appointment, pick up a few things at the grocery store, check on the dinosaur skeleton, uh-uh, gotcha.

As a kid, I was, like many kids, a dinosaur nut. I’ve only been to the Smithsonian’s natural history museum maybe four or five times in my life, certainly not often enough to become jaded by the presence of the mortal remains of a giant horned animal the size of a tank. Assuming that some part of my subconscious mind was aware of the skeleton and recognized it as such, rather than just another one of the pointless sculptures that typically adorn public properties, how was I not arrested by the sight? How quickly we become habituated to the most incredible things! A dinosaur stands before me, and all I’m noticing is the presence or absence of a fabric rectangle on people’s faces. This is why we can’t have nice things.

Only the Dirt I Do Believe. Divinity Vanishes Among the Leaves

By in atheism, religion, the geist of the zeit No Comments

Jonathon Van Maren:

“I know I can’t achieve religious faith,” he went on, “but I do think we should go to church. We don’t have, I don’t think, an evolved ethical system. I don’t buy the idea that evolution alone gets us to be moral. It can modify behaviour, but there’s just too much evidence that in the raw, when the constraints of civilisation fall away, we behave in the most savage way to one another. I’m a big believer that with the inherited wisdom of a two-millennia old religion, we’ve got a pretty good framework to work with.”

For one of the most prominent historians in the world—himself an agnostic—to say that we should go to church is rather startling, but Ferguson’s sentiments also appear to be part of a growing trend. The late philosopher Sir Roger Scruton began attending church himself despite struggling with belief, regularly playing the organ at All Saints’ in Garsdon. His secular friends say his faith remained cultural; other friends were not so sure. What we do know is that he thought Christianity was in many ways the soul of Western civilisation, and that the uniquely Christian concept of forgiveness was utterly indispensable to its survival.

My rude opinion is that Ferguson’s attitude has little to do with religion per se and more to do with the intelligentsia’s belief that the masses of yahoomanity need to be guided and instructed by the proper authority figures, namely, themselves. The Grand Inquisitor for thee but not for me. The same dynamic is in play in the media environment — has the New York Times or CNN done anything to earn our trust and respect? Does anyone believe they’re devoted to truth? No. Quite the opposite, in fact. But nonetheless, we’re in the middle of a mediacentric moral panic over how civilization will collapse if the masses stop listening to them and start worshiping the golden calf of podcasting. Communication technologies, like it or not, have eroded the possibility of any particular institution, whether religious or political, commanding the same sort of respect and authority that it once did. People, even the modern-day equivalent of peasant villagers, know too much and are emboldened to ask impertinent questions. Leaders and institutions have disgraced themselves too badly for too long. Clay feet can’t stay hidden in the age of the smartphone. All of the old unifying myths are losing their power.

Will this all lead to chaos and possibly bloodshed? Almost certainly. When has human history not ended up there? But with postmodern fragmentation, as with most things, the best way out is through, wherever that may lead. Christianity can’t clone itself into the future, but traces of its DNA will still be evident in its descendants. With any luck, that will be good enough.

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