I was scanning the library for any insights into witches & their craft, and pulled down an old favorite called Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of Millennial Experience, by Richard Landes.
I think I'll reread it, since it's full of insights on how to interpret crazy times. Things were crazy enough when I first read it in 2011, but in hindsight we see that the craziness was just getting warmed up.
Of course, things are always crazy, since humans are always crazy, and the more history one reads, the more one is astonished that anything ever goes right.
Come to think of it, this is one of the sensibilities that distinguishes left from right: the progressive looks at the world and is resentful that things aren't better, while the conservative looks at it and is amazed and grateful that anything at all works out.
According to a note to myself in the back of the book, there's a deep logic to the illogic of politics, and it goes like this:
1) Take power.
2) Eliminate the forces of evil.
3) New humanity emerges, i.e., utopia, heaven on earth, arrival of the eschaton, etc.
4) Turn to demonizing narrative upon inevitable failure of #3.
The Brandon administration is well into #4. The list of people and things he has blamed for his narrative collapse include Putin's Price Hike, Big Oil, Big Meat, Corporate Greed, Ultra-MAGA, gas station owners, etc. Every day there's a new malefactor, since the public isn't buying any of the administration's narratives.
Speaking of which, another note says that the narrative describes "what is supposed to happen," not what actually happens. It is a model, and like any model, it is not the reality. Politics in particular is susceptible to dysfunctional models, and you could say that history is the wreckage of bad models.
For example, Marx's narrative predicted how history will go under conditions of communism. How history went is another story, and one reason why it went so badly was the titanic effort to force it to go where it would not and could not go. But for the left, impossibilty is always beside the point.
It's the same with the global warming crowd, which is literally trying to force the world to go where it will not and cannot go, with entirely predictable consequences.
Another note says "The only good thing about the left is that its millennial movements always fail." However, the failure is usually a drawn-out process, as the left heroically resists the feedback of reality and tries to prop up its failed narrative. Says here that "apocalyptic time is inherently unstable and doesn't last long." We shall see.
I'm not optimistic, because another note says "all political movements must partake of millennial impulses." If this is true, it means that if conservatism is to achieve #1 above (gain power), it must somehow tap into the millennial impulses of the mob.
And one doesn't have to read much mediocre conservative writing to see the process at work. We have to somehow sell the idea that Everything's Gonna Get Better, knowing full well that it will be an accomplishment to truly change anything.
This doesn't make us pessimistic, much less cynical. We just know human nature, that's all. We actually enjoy resting under the shade of timeless truths while watching with bemused horror as our little glimpse of history passes by.
Here are some aphoristic branches to insulate you from the heat of the moment:
I am not trying to poison the wells. But to show that they are poisoned.
No paradise will arise within the framework of time. Because good and evil are not threads twisted together by history, but fibers of the single thread that sin has spun for us.
History shows that man’s good ideas are accidental and his mistakes methodical.
Intelligence does not consist in finding solutions, but in not losing sight of the problems.
To be a conservative is to understand that man is a problem without a human solution.
Christianity does not solve “problems”; it merely obliges us to live them at a higher level.
For the Christian, history does not have a direction, but rather a center.
Bottom line: there's an occasional victory but no end to the war, so
Let us live the militancy of Christianity with the good humor of the guerrilla fighter, not with the glumness of the entrenched garrison (Dávila).
10 comments:
Good observation by Ace about our Affluent Witch Female Loonies:
"It has been my claim for some time that the AWFLs and their feminized male cohorts are mentally ill -- having experienced a nervous breakdown they never sought treatment for in 2015-2016, and currently suffering from crippling anxiety, depression, and obsessive-compulsive behaviors.
"I further claim that they have valorized these mental illnesses and treat them as if they are marks of distinction and proofs of refinement and taste, and show their mental illnesses off to each other. They compete with each other to show off how mentally ill each of them are, because the more mentally ill you are, the more sensitive and refined you must to have been driven so mad by such trivialities.
"My theory amasses more proof every day."
Yes; come to think of it, isn't that at root what the Pride movement is really about?
Let us live the militancy of Christianity with the good humor of the guerrilla fighter, not with the glumness of the entrenched garrison
There are a lot of dire predictions about just how awful things are going to get. Some of them may even be right. Even so, we only die once, and the rules for living as we ought don't change. Armed with that knowledge, it becomes easier to maintain that humor, at least a little.
We're going to need that humor when bugs are the only protein on the menu...
Speaking of bugs, I enjoyed this essay on the Infestation of Small-Souled Bugmen.
Good timing with regard to millennial thought, since Brandon is about to speak on the Climate Apocalypse. Wonder what magic he has in store for us, and which demons will be identified...
I like how it has suddenly become a climate emergency, which will of course necessitate that everyone else live like the Flintstones but without all the cool helper animals. I guess people aren't afraid enough of Covid anymore, now we must go back to fearing the weather instead. How else will they convince people to eat the bugs?
Climate change is a Qanon conspiracy to groom children into unwittingly going into pizza parlors for the sole purpose of turning them into witches.
Re. the bugman article, reminds me of scanning for jobs on Indeed. 99% of what comes up describes the bugman lifestyle perfectly.
In other news, apparently men are now Darwinning themselves in record numbers in the wake of the overturn of Roe v Wade. Considering how much the birth rate in much of the world has dropped (suddenly!) I wonder how necessary that really is? Guessing that the men suddenly discovering vasectomies are highly likely to also be boosted and heavily loaded with soy. Likelihood of slipping one past the goalie becomes more vanishingly slim with each passing year.
Tangential to recent discussions, the Sexual Revolution as religious cult. One thing he doesn't discuss is how deifying sexuality does not lead to an abundance of life and happiness, but rather to a culture of death, misery, and mental illness.
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