More than 50 years ago Martin Luther King's "Mountaintop" speech, delivered the day before his assassination, addressed the elephant in the room of current American culture. The elephant is, of all things, weaponized decency.
"We are in a new era, a new phase of the struggle where we have moved from a struggle for decency to a struggle for genuine equality. This is where we are getting the resistance because there was never any intention to go this far. People were reacting rather than acting in good faith for the realization of general equality."
The decency factor is still heavily in play as the puritanical "woke" ideology of the "left" has been embraced by the powers-that-be. It's also mostly performative. The CIA has even released new LBGTQ, BIPOC recruiting videos to show just how progressive they truly are. Netflix, HBO Max, Prime have sections specifically dedicated to Black films, Pride films and so on. I have absolutely zero problem whatsoever with any of the films, but it's suspect because as major media outlets enhance their brand by celebrating diversity, they are enforcing the racial/identitarian lines that keep many from sharing what we have in common too. This ideology is cynically manipulated by the corporate oligarchs as a way to provide the illusion of inclusion and equality across class lines. America is becoming (if it isn't already) an authoritarian state that uses decency in the guise of identity politics as a shield to hide behind, and as a cudgel to bludgeon, even the most anodyne forms of dissent. The shield comes in the form of performative statements of the "progressive" wing in American politics to fend off real criticism from the grass-roots left; and the cudgel is in the form of cancel culture where writers and dissenters who veer from the narrative of "decent/socially acceptable" behavior lose their jobs and reputations. Big tech monopolies like YouTube/Google, Facebook and Twitter will ban or algorithmically suppress people like Abigail Shrier and others who they deem to be irresponsible in the form of "hate speech." Speaking of which, we may not have reached Orewellian "two minutes of hate" territory yet, but it certainly feels like the prequel to 1984 is being written right now, in real time.
When I wrote my first book twenty years ago, I spent some time with anti-corporate activists in the US, and it was clear back then that the country was a corporate oligarchy. This is true to different degrees of all modern states, but the US has taken it and run with it, all over the globe (after Britain perhaps pioneered it).
So I'm interested in the idea that performative corporate social justice is at least in part a way of fending of criticism of the impact of monopoly capitalism. Amazon, for example has recently released a statement on diversity, gender and all the usual stuff, emphasising its 'inclusivity', whilst inclusively giving all its workers, whatever their race, gender, identity or sexuality, equally terrible pay and conditions. I will probably explore this a bit further down the line. Divide and rule - why not? It's worked before for empires.
Paul, not you too. I can go anywhere on the internet and read this kind of thing. Next week why don't you do Ivermectin.
Books are not burning. The government is not banning books. Private companies are allowed to sell or not sell whatever they want. Big tech can publish or not publish whatever it wants. It is just a few web sites after all. If people disagree with an author they have the option of speaking out. That is all that's happening.
I am friends with our local children's librarian. She explained weeding to me. If a book has not been checked out for a time, maybe 8 months, it is taken out and replaced. I said, what about classics? If they aren't being read, off they go, she tells me. Then she buys new books based on the suggestions from publishers. Now it is hard to browse the shelves for children's reading. It is flooded with poor quality stories about coming of age as a minority trans student.
My daughter, an English Lit teacher told me awhile ago that the literary canon is being deconstructed. And as soon, (if allowed) the written word leaves the printed page and ends up on a digital screen whole sections of written text may be altered to fit the current zeitgeist.
This is as played out as "it's just some college kids". I don't think you really believe what you're saying. Very few would say "Big tech can publish or not publish whatever it wants. It is just a few web sites after all." if those same sites decided to delist White Fragility or any other LGBT/anti-racist sacred book. Perhaps you would disagree with such an action, and even if you didn't, you know the media would go berserk over it, that there would be boycotts of and resignations from those companies. It's ridiculous to still pretend in 2021 that most major institutions, pubic and private are not ideologically captured.
I am interested in seeing original thinking (reactionary is fine), not Fox News retreads. That why I follow Paul Kingsnorth. He is a talented guy normally.
There's some intriguing original thinking coming from these writers, which is why I gave them a mention. People like Angela Nagle are certainly stimulating my ideas and I would recommend you taking a look.
As for 'if people disagree with an author they have the option of speaking out': well, I wish I agreed. But that's stunningly naive at this point in time, and I can attest that from personal experience.
There are plenty of us deeply concerned with the suppression of ideas regardless of the agent. And yes, Governments are in on it as well with anti speech laws and the indoctrination of our school kids with critical theory in it's various manifestations.
Here in New Zealand recently several local councils cancelled a discussion by the group Speak Up For Women booked for afterhours at the city's libraries. Our group, the Free Speech Union managed to get a high court injunction and the talks could go ahead.
Your lack of concern is not an indication that there's nothing to be concerned about.
Well, far be it from me to criticize reading and books - I write for a living and I read basically all the time - but I was intrigued a few years ago to read Leonard Shlain's The Alphabet Vs The Goddess (https://www.alphabetvsgoddess.com). As we (in the industrialized world) shift from a literate, book-reading culture to one more focused on images and pictures, I wonder if some of the upheaval and confusion and hostility is due to that shift back to what we once were - a culture based on images and on the spoken word.
It's an interesting notion. I've not come across that book but will take a look. I'd love the notion that we were moving towards an oral culture again if it wenre't being mediated by corporations and threaded through screens. But there is certainly a big shift underway.
I have this fantasy that books could be read as a group experience. Literally performing the great books together as a spoken, shared, even bardic experience. Silent reading is a privatizing and isolating mode. To become "literate" means spending countless hours alone, reading alone, thinking alone. The very social technology of reading is, or often can be, a form of atomization and the beginning of a descent into virtual reality. What if small groups got together and read Genesis, or the Odyssey, or LoTR. Rather than engaging in "literary analysis" or amateur scholarship the response to the reading could be a song, or a poem, or a meditation on various themes. I am not sure our mode of living is conducive to this, but it could be a way to take the culture back from the Entertainment-Industrial Complex. Just a thought.
Sounds like something you should be starting up where you live!
I remember reading once, I don't remember where, of the shock felt by (I think) a Native American, or someone from a tribal culture outside modernity, on coming to London in the 1800s and first seeing someone sitting stock still in a room reading a book. They seemed dead, or inanimate. It's a deep abstraction. I wrote a whole book myself on my love-hate affair with ... books.
What we need is the return of the bards. But for that I think we need to be outside, around a fire. I have found that almost demands stories. So we need more outdoor fires too!
The book I mentioned talks about the abstract nature of writing, and how it requires the brain to process ideas in very different ways. Now we fiercely defend books and reading. It's fun to sit around a fire for awhile and tell stories, sing songs, but I don't think many of us could even imagine what it is like to have no books at all, and to be forced to convey all our ideas in spoken word and song, face to face.
Funnily enough, I wrote a book (Savage Gods) on the same theme a few years back. I quoted from DH Lawrence at one point, who had the same revelation after spending some time with native Americans in New Mexico: he could feel the power of their oral culture, but he could never be part of it. He was too literate. But we can still dive in on occasions - and cultivate the skill. To hear a real story well told is a physical experience.
I find that it requires a whole new way of thinking. It is more visceral, somehow. Whereas groups like this, though interesting, seem so much more abstract, so in the head, as we cite book after book, essay after essay, treatise after treatise. Even the sky god of today's industrialized world is abstract, airy, not embodied. As a member of that culture, even though I don't worship that god, I have a hard time bringing the sacred down into the things that I can touch and feel, to objects, to the earth itself. It's not how any of us were raised. It's hard not to intellectualize.
There is a story here in New Mexico about some Hopi elders and a group of Tibetan monks. The Buddhists were interested in the Hopi Prophesies which are in their oral tradition. When asked why the Hopi stories were simpler than the Buddhist writings the Hopis replied " they told you not to write them down."
Don't families do this? Reading aloud in the evening together is something my parents did and we now do with our children. Not little bedtime picture books, but books such as you mention. I know it is a little old fashioned but I never thought it was that unusual.
A little late to this conversation, but another book along this line worth looking at is Barry Sanders' A Is For Ox: The Collapse of Literacy and the Rise of Violence In An Electronic Age. It was written in 1994--before the mainstreaming of the internet, the advent of mobile phones and social media, the arrival of video streaming and binge watching. It now seems almost prophetic as we watch the generation of young people who have grown up as digital natives, functionally illiterate and addicted/educated through screens out violently protesting seemingly against civilization itself. We were warned.
Hello Paul. I'm looking forward to your next few pieces on these writers. A page of Ellul is worth three chapters of most of what is written today, and I'm still trying to wrap my head around Jaynes. As a suggested counterpoint, I would recommend Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It could be read as contrary to your central argument...or not...depending on how you take it.
I am retired magazine editor, but I've been a carpenter and woodworker for nearly 40 years and I'm working hard on getting better as a mason and tile setter. I can tell you that virtually all tradespeople are grateful for power tools and, although a few like me do some occasional hand tool work for fun, nobody's going backward on this. When home computers became a thing, I was surprised to find many of the best woodworkers I knew whole-heartedly embraced the PC revolution. There was even a group of enthusiasts on the early Netscape boards who called themselves the Electronic Neanderthals.
The design of a circuit board and the rake and bevel angles of the teeth on a hand saw are both manifestations of technology. "Zen" takes a hard and unsentimental look at this. Mathew Crawford has a similar, if less philosophical, exploration in his first book, Shop Class as Soul Craft. In a more ambiguous fashion, so does Kubrick's movie 2001, the point being that The Machine will be a runaway disaster until we master The Machine. (And as a side note, early in "Zen" the author has a discussion with his son about the abstract laws of physics and science, ghosts, and Native American spirituality that I'm still trying to process 30 years after having read it.)
Your criticism of the after-effects of The Machine are well founded, but it would be impossible for eight billion people in the world to live in a pre-industrial arrangement. Some level of technology will be necessary to fend off mass starvation and the fratricidal power struggles that would follow. In order to master the machine our leaders and thinkers need a much deeper knowledge of and appreciation for technology. But most politicians in the West today could not fix so much as a leaky faucet. Their skill is emotional manipulation rather than the cool, deliberative objectivity of a good mechanic. That being so, how can any of them arrange the components of a modern industrial society such that all these gears and systems mesh harmoniously? They can't, they don't even try. The Machine can be fixed, but as long as humans bring a disordered mind to the task, the gears will grind, the oil will burn and waste and pollution result.
My conclusion is in one way similar to yours. People will not voluntarily 'go back', that's for certain. But unlike you, I have no confidence that we can ever 'fix' or 'master' the web of technology that is enmeshing us. I think it will be - already is - the other way around. It controls us, and is changing us from within in deep ways. We either see it collapse or we merge into post-humans. But that's not for us to see. We can only make decisions based on what is around us now.
What I would observe is that, thanks to this process, there are more poor and starving people on Earth today than ever in history, and far fewer non-human creatures than for hundreds of thousands of years. I lieve we are in control at this point, if we ever were.
As far as I understand it the word "transhuman" is a Dantean coinage from the First Canto of the Paradiso. In that sense, the question isn't humanism or transhumanism but rather "Which Transhumanism, Whose Theosis?" so to speak.
Only by choosing the right path to true transhumanism can we live peacefully on the earth. It is a long shot, I admit, but what else is there? As daunting as it seems, by my limited lights it is the true spiritual warfare of our day. Of any day. The difference being, that at least in earthly terms, increasingly, everything is at stake.
I'm going to ask a question that I always wonder about... Why is climate change, exploitation, abuse, oppression, and all other awfulness not simply explained as sin, at least for Christians? If sin is "missing the mark", and that "miss" has happened on a colossal scale -- on a level where organizations, governments, systems, families, are entwined with and corrupted by it -- then aren't we in the same old battle against sin within us and around us that all people have always been in? How is 'the machine' different? Could it just be that it has more power and more technology and can express its corrupted heart more thoroughly than was possible in past times? In this view, technology and power could theoretically be used for good by sinless people, but the sin comes from the users rather than from the tool. Or call it an accumulation of all the individual corrupt choices that have been consolidated into its powerful engine plus a culture made up of fewer individuals who resist sin themselves?
I as an individual recognize that I can participate in this ugly monster by just being a typical human, or can seek spiritual transformation in order to grow toward the perfect (mature). Is that what you're calling trans human? I see the environmental catastrophes and exploitation of humans as outgrowths of sin, the same old sin that has been thought about and prayed about and battled for so long. Usually when I come across this idea in print, it is being mocked as "puritanical". People love to joke about some act they indulge in and say, "it's positively sinful" with a smile. I know the word sin has connotations and history that people love to laugh at, but for any serious Christian how can it not explain this corrupting, destructive force that we see and are dismayed by in our world? What sin really is, each small personal sin, when added up and amplified makes a hell on earth. I'm a fan of "The Great Divorce" by CS Lewis. So my question is, do you think that the Machine is something more or other than SIN?
I have seen plenty of Christian thinkers call all of these things 'sin'. It is far from unknown. Perhaps the issue for you is that Christianity sees varying degrees of culpability and you see how the truly guilty use that Christian view to [apparently] escape culpability?
I asked this because I'm inclined to think 'the machine' is what I understand as sin. I get the sense that most people in this discussion don't, but are attempting to define the machine in another way. I'm just curious what the distinguishing elements are for those people.
People sin when they interact with the Machine in various ways, that is clear. Not all actions are sinful, but many are. Culpability also varies
I'm more inclined to label the evils done by the Machine as the 'fruits' or 'wages' of sin, to use some stodgy terms. But I really would not dispute the direct appellation of 'sin' on these evils. People smarter and holier than me do say so.
So what is the Machine? It runs on human desires [for now], sinful and not, and produces good and evil - sinful - outcomes. It is also a Tempter - think that one over. I'm mulling over an essay that goes off on these ideas and where it might lead.
Paul, I apologise in advance if this is a misreading, but I find the suggestion that "wokeness" is winning to be somewhat confusing, with regards to the UK at least. Despite a poverty of ideas and competence, the Conservative Party continues to gain popularity and votes in working class areas through messaging that focusses almost exclusively on the culture wars and anti-wokeness. Unless we are taking the experience of a narrow strand of the academic middle-classes as emblematic of wider society (and if we are, why? - They have always been at a remove from the experience of the majority), I don't see values of wokeness taking any sort of hold, let alone 'winning', anywhere. So I suppose my question is, what specific "woke" values do you think have been/are being adopted by a majority (or even sizeable minority) in the UK that you perceive to be damaging?
I'm not sure I said that 'wokeness is winning.' What I can see in the UK is institutional capture all over the place. In my personal experince, and from following wider stories, it is clear that some of the more extreme elements of the US critical theory/social justice agenda have been adopted very widely indeed. I'm sure you can see the intense battle over transgenderism going on in all the institutions; plus the ongoing adoption of controversial notions of 'systemic racism', 'white supremacy' and the like. I have many, many stories of self-censorship in publishing which I won't be speaking about publicly. We could talk about 'sensitivity readers' for novels, though, or incessant attacks on writers for 'cultural appropriation.' I work with a lot of writing students who are actively frightened of expressing themselves on all sorts of topics. From the National Trust to English Heritage I am seeing the infiltration of a very specific, and very intolerant value system. Frankly I'm bemused that anyone could not see it happening.
It's not that these issues are not worth discussing, but 'discussion' is not on the agenda. There is a deep intolerance at play. I don't know whether anyone would vote Tory because they don't like 'wokeness': perhaps, but I would guess that the Tory vote is more likely to be a hangover from Brexit. I think the broader left is going to take a long time to recover from openly opposing the results of a referndum like that. Still, I can't take seriously the notion that the cultural change happening at present is a figment of the imagination.
Having said that, as I wrote in my first essay here, I also believe that this 'culture war' is a manifestation of a deeper malaise. The writers I mentioned here are exploring that notion too. I've no interest in becoming a culture warrior, but it's also not something that can be avoided for anyone creating words now.
Thank you for your response, Paul! I have no doubt that these intra-institutional debates are viciously raging. I suppose my observation was that the "woke" values of these monolithic corporations/institutions do not seem to be reflective in any way of the views and values of most actual people in the UK - they are a marketing strategy to appeal to the demographic with the most accessible disposable income (i.e. the academic upper-middle class). Actual "woke" values remain the preserve of a small minority which are amplified by both supposedly "left"- and "right"-wing commentators. I agree that there is a deeper malaise in society. I suppose for me anxiety around sexual permissiveness and transgenderism etc. (which have been repeatedly raised in the comments of this blog) pale in comparison to questions of ecological crisis and global poverty (perhaps I am wrong to think this, I don't know).
The issue is that, in terms of culture, majority rule does not apply. Rod Dreher has written extensively on this. We already see people losing livelihoods for being on the wrong side of the culture war, which sends a powerful message to the rest of us to keep in line.
Reasonable first point. I am not sure what you mean by a "message to the rest of us to keep in line". If we acknowledge that the "rest of us" hold views in opposition to elites (i.e. we are not "in line"), what are "we" being prevented from doing? Surely "the rest of us" would then be assenting to the message (which "we" are not)?
"we" are being prevented from expressing our views.
Example: a friend of mine is an academic scientist and a Christian. He writes a personal blog with a very small readership. But he had to scrub all his old posts in opposition to same-sex marriage (closely reasoned, not at all polemic, and thoroughly grounded in the Scripture that a billion or so people believe is the revealed Word of God) in order to have any chance at an academic science job.
When he got one, there were protests at the place he was hired, and his new employer issued a public statement promising to monitor him closely to be sure that he did no harm to the LGBTQIA2S+ community.
Now I happen to know well how such institutions work, and I promise you that they really did not want to have to issue that statement, and so will try very hard to never again hire anyone "problematic" in the way that my friend was. Such candidates will simply be passed over, never being told why.
Thank you for your response. I am sorry to hear about your friend. I have acknowledged, certainly, that views within particular kinds of institutions have become monolithic, and I regret this.
I do not think it is not accurate, however, to say that the "rest of us" are being prevented from expressing our views in any wider sense - the two of us are expressing them right now in the comments of this blog. Many commentators publicly express what we might term "anti-woke" views and are well-paid for doing so, such as Rod Dreher, whom you cite above, Rod Liddle, and James Delingpole. There are a very wide range of organs that run columnists/anchors who promote similar views in the UK: prominent examples include The Spectator, The Conservative Woman, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Express, The Daily Mail, Breitbart, along with the new news channel GB News, amongst other, smaller institutions. There are parallel examples in the US, of course, but I am from England, and so have less knowledge of them. We might say that "anti-woke" views are not welcome in particular kinds of institutions that are dominated by the upper-middle class (academia, certain cultural spheres), but they would be welcome (and are) in local pubs, working men's clubs, other kinds of meeting places, etc. - in other words, the majority of spaces where most (non-cultural elite) people interact with each other. Again, I am sorry for your friend.
I agree that most people don't share these values (if they are values). I also think Mark below is right to say that elite values carry the day. I sort of agree about the marketing strategy, but more broadly I think we're into a very big cultural shift, which stems from the fact that we have no spiritual core to our culture - and probably, actually, no 'culture' to speak of.
Naturally, all of this provides endless fuel to the left-right media dingdong that is so poisonous and all-consuming.
I entirely agree of course that compared to mass extinction and climate change, arguments about 'wokeness' are utterly trivial. On the other hand, I think that both are manifestations of some very deep collapse at the heart of our world. And I think that the culture war is likely to get very much worse as the collapse I've been writing about for years digs in.
So grateful for these links to many new to me and intriguing writers. Your essays are always eye openers and fantastic that you are sharing other voices as well 🙏🏼🧡🙏🏼
Paul. I'm not qualified to comment on the meat and potatoes of this discussion, but I must say "Oh, Bravo" for the photo heading this blog. It is like a photo of the most decadent dessert ever. I just want a piece! Where is this wonderful place?
“irreversible damage - the transgender craze seducing our daughters” the name hardly suggests a rational balanced look at the issue. Where is the love, the tolerance and the attempt to bridge the gap and understand. I trawled through your reading suggestions last night and I came away profoundly depressed. Anyone who calls their blog/newsletter “common sense” is probably hawking the opposite. Surely we need to come together in a spirit of tolerance and companionship but instead substack seems full of even more angry people. Substack is just another cog in the machine, another force for the amplification of division. You have been absorbed in to the machine Paul.
Tolerance has become nothing more than a false idol. The way its used to shield sinful behaviour from rebuke is entirely cynical and selfish; it has nothing to do with love. Wounds and illnesses can be healed with genuine selfless love but the condition is that we first recognise the illness as being an illness. Instead we revel in our depravity without the slightest shame or desire for change; and then we demand tolerance of it.
If progressives want to claim tolerance they have a lot to answer for in their own anti-woman stance. I was shocked to see the intolerant rape and death threats against many women for opinions about their own bodies and rights. As Kingsnorth has stated, it is a trivial matter in the grand scheme of things, but a disturbing symptom of something greater happening in our society.
This is proper hall of mirrors territory here. Let’s not be dragged into this illusionary culture war. The thing is EVERYBODY is “shocked and appalled “ by something. Mostly just stuff they’ve read fourth hand on the internet. I know it sounds abit flaky but I think all of this comes back to a lack of love....and tolerance which shouldn't be confused with appeasement. Just a willingness to try and understand other people’s point of view.
The ability to love, as we ought, is not the territory of flakes. It will take all our might if we really want to dive in an try. I don't think anyone here wants to revel in these widespread debates but when we put Love into action we do have to get messy about specifics. We have to be free to consider and debate because it is complex.
“The part of the philanthropist is indeed a dangerous one; and the man who would do his neighbour good must first study how not to do him evil, and must begin by pulling the beam out of his own eye.”
"Let’s not be dragged into this illusionary culture war. The thing is EVERYBODY is “shocked and appalled “ by something."
I wish the culture war, or whatever you want to call it, was illusory. Anyone that claims it is illusory is either lying to himself in an attempt to avoid taking a position or is on the prevailing side and is gas-lighting his opponents. I understand the desire to avoid conflict, it is one I share. But we can't claim things which are patently untrue in order to comfort and shield ourselves. It's obvious to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear that what was regarded as normative, moral or virtuous as recently as a few decades ago is now regarded as primitive or ignorant, if not sinful. Conversely what was regarded as base and sinful a few decades ago is in many cases widely celebrated and promoted as the pinnacle of virtue. Simply stating that everybody is shocked by something is to stick your head in the sand and to pretend nothing has happened.
I think there's a potentially interesting conversation here but people are slightly at cross purposes. I'll try to explain what I mean.
Fundamentally, the 'culture war' is a trivial thing in global terms: it's a surface manifestation of the ongoing collapse in confidence in Western nations, and it's also more or less entirely confined, as far as I can see, to the elites of those nations. It is then exacerbated hugely by social media, which is designed to provoke conflict and division, and by pundits and activists who profit further from it. In that sense, Tomac is right: we can all get 'shocked and appalled' by reading about aspects of it, and it is easy then to go off half cocked and deepen the divisions. That is what we're supposed to do, so it behoves us to be more thoughtful.
But - and here is the but - we're at the point now where these divisions can't be avoided. They are real, and vicious, they will get more so and they are beginning to tear the semas of societies apart. The reason I recommended Shrier's essay, for example, is that her subject - the 'transitioning' of children - is no trivial pundit war. An astonishing 36,000 adolescent girls are currently on waiting lists for mastectomies, in the US, I read last week. That's te tip of an iceberg of confusion and tragedy. Here in Europe, though less intensely so far, the same vicious debates over real-world outcomes - the meaning of biology, and its impact on men and women, amongst other things - are deepening.
Personally, I avoided this stuff for years, hoping it would go away, thinking that I could stay out of it - but then it came for me, in the shape of a (dishonest) mob attack on some of my writing. That was upsetting, but it also forced me to look deeper into what was happening, which has clarified a great deal for me. I remain quite clear about wanting to avoid 'taking sides' in the sense of mud-slinging or black and white divisions on the issues. But it's also clear to me that any writers or artists today have to work out where they stand on these things, because they will only get more clarifying, and they will only get nastier.
So, now I am interested in how we can avoid anger and judgement, at the same time as standing our ground, staking our claim and refusing to be intimidated. My view is that this is going to be necessary for everyone operating in the West in years to come. I think often of Jesus's advice to his disciples: "Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves." As ever, perfect advice.
I hope your not suggesting your newsletters are only for people who agree with you! I am very much enjoying your writing Paul so no danger of bowing out at this stage...
I just take issue with people when they start using words like “sin” and making shrill declarations about “false idols” and “depravity”. Its the chat of zealots. There’s just no willingness to try and understand from a position of respect and humility. Only damning judgements from on high. I have a number of gay friends and I will always defend them and I suppose that make me abit sensitive of the trans issue too.
Here’s an interesting take on the adolescent transitioning issue...
Thanks for sharing that; I thought it was a good discussion that brings out the complexity rather than black and white rhetoric. I want to defend the dreaded word sin, though. I found this old book at my Quaker meeting's library called, 'Whatever Became of Sin?' by Karl Menninger. He makes some interesting arguments from the perspective of a psychiatrist about how we need this concept even if we don't need all the things attached to it historically. Of course, sin would include mistreatment of gay people as it includes all cruelty and egocentric action. Also, so many of our ecologically destructive habits that are obviously rooted in a problem with limits and selfishness would qualify as sins. For Christians, talk of sin may not always mean what you think -- the popular caricature of a self righteous jerk pointing fingers at everyone else. It is an important aspect of our faith, how we understand human history, and our own struggles to live with integrity. I realize that the word has other negative associations in pop culture so I wanted to share these thoughts for non Christians who are reading. Jesus spoke about straining at a gnat (other people's flaws that we can identify) while swallowing a camel (our own sin) because this is such a common human activity. I love how He shows our absurdity!
What could be more boring than only being read by people who agree with me? I would be extremely disappointed if such an unlikely scenario ever came to pass ...
Talk of sin and false idols (which I don't) isn't the talk of zealots, necessarily, but it is the talk of Christians. I used to feel like you, but having come to understand what terms like this actually mean has been something of a revelation. The Machine being the ultimate idol, for example.
Daming judgements from on high, though, are very un Christian, even though historically many Christians have behaned otherwise.
The Tavisrtock piece is interesting. My wife is a former psychiatrist, and so how things have changed in places like the Tavistock is a topic of conversation for us. The notion here of 'being in the wrong body' being seen as a 'magic bullet' seems apposite. My feeling is that social media plus a highly politicised activist push to see 'trans' as the latest barrier to be broken is damaging many lives. I have children and so this is very personal. A lot of lies are being told. I agree with the conclusion of that piece - I suspect that in a decade or so this will be seen as politicised child abuse.
But more broadly, something is very broken in the culture that this would happen at all. I see many of thse young people (and older ones) as victims of something very disturbing which we are all still trying to put our finger on.
"I just take issue with people when they start using words like “sin” and making shrill declarations about “false idols” and “depravity”. Its the chat of zealots. There’s just no willingness to try and understand from a position of respect and humility. "
This kind of demonstrates what I said previously. When one says that there is no culture war, all it means is that there is one legitimate view on everything and everything else is beyond the pale. In other words the opposition is not allowed to exist. Your own statements are internally inconsistent. You request humility from others as if it implies moral relativism. You demand respect from others for your own beliefs whilst characterising those that believe that there is objective sin as being zealots. Where is your willingness to understand what is meant by the word sin and why many believe it exists? Why do you assume that those that believe in sin only do so because they don't understand or respect others? These are all false assumptions, or dare I say judgements, you've made about other people who have different beliefs to you. You seem to only be able to accept that someone has understanding and humility if they've reached the same conclusions you have.
"Fundamentally, the 'culture war' is a trivial thing in global terms: it's a surface manifestation of the ongoing collapse in confidence in Western nations, and it's also more or less entirely confined, as far as I can see, to the elites of those nations. It is then exacerbated hugely by social media, which is designed to provoke conflict and division, and by pundits and activists who profit further from it."
The term "culture war" is indeed fairly misleading, particularly in the UK - it implies that there are two more or less equally balanced blocks with competing moral/cultural views. Most people also don't live their day-to-day lives as conscious participants in a "culture war". However one can recognise this whilst pointing out that the moral/cultural change over at least the last half a century has been on a scale that is unprecedented and which has changed peoples' world views and day to day lives (and not just in one section of society). This is what I wouldn't regard as trivial, whatever view one takes on the changes. What we decide to call this change or process that we're undergoing is secondary. It's probably more accurate to describe the whole thing as a bloodless cultural revolution; there has been no resistance to speak of and it feels like the change is only accelerating.
My personal view is that this change has had, and will have, devastating consequences on peoples' lives. In that limited sense I am "taking a side". I bought into some elements of the modern dogma myself, for example the now widely accepted notion that having multiple sexual partners before marriage was at worst inconsequential and at best highly desirable. I had to learn the hard way how untrue this was and I can't be indifferent to the consequences of this doctrine. I recognise I'm in a small minority and most of the time I simply observe what is going on and stay silent. The prevailing modern culture is so tempting and all-encompassing that I feel a great deal of sympathy for those caught up in its snares. I don't see the trend as being humanly reversible at this point. I think the focus should be on overcoming one’s own flaws and passions. I agree that those who focus on politics or internet debates tend to fall into the delusion of attempting to change everything around them in a subconscious attempt to avoid the pain of having to change themselves. Depending on our success in changing ourselves, we may have the opportunity to help our own family members or immediate community.
By the way I think Solzhenitsyn’s Live not by Lies text is quite relevant when it comes to how to behave when you are in a small minority but being pressured to acquiesce to a prevailing societal dogma:
Thanks Nikola. I'm going to be writing about all of this in more detail later in the series. To clarify: I think that the 'culture war' is trivial in absolute global terms: compared to the ongoing mass extinction or the general collapse of life on Earth, in particular. But in terms of our lives as members of 'Western' culture, it is indeed radical and all-encompassing.
I agree that it is a cultural revolution - and it is very much foreshadowed by the French revolution, which I've recently been reading about for my latest essay. As I said a few essays back, this is the endgame in some ways of the end of Christian culture in the West. What I see in my country is a cultural elite reflexively at war with its past and its own previous sense of self. Everything is being inverted and this will only lead to ongoing disintegration - which to many is the point.
We are living through the end of a culture, and that's hard. You are right about how all-encompassing the paradigm is - and how hard to speak against. I try to avoid the snares and the open partisanship, whilst trying to be clear-eyed about the overall picture.
The growing dislike of books seems to accompany a growing dislike of truth itself. The idea that the world is plastic and we can mould it to suit 'our truth' seems to grow as we 'harden our hearts' and make ourselves the opposite of the 'clay' in the potter's hand.
If we refuse to be the clay (as the 'uberman' does), then other things (and people) have to be marred beyond recognition, because God has not made the world this way; he has actually made it so that WE can be shaped by IT).
I'm seeing things as an arc along the same line which actually turns full circle.
As Jesus is the alpha and omega, so hatred of Him has an alpha and omega - full circle.
I'm thinking of Romans as a universal truth:"...just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to.... do what ought not to be done..."
I'm thinking of how the circle may be nearing completion in Canada, which is possibly at the far end of 'woke' countries, with the detention of a pastor for organising outdoor, socially distanced meetings in order, to sing, pray and read, with 25 or so other people, since they were unable to do so indoors. Unable to promise he would not do so again, he has been refused bail and so now languishes in jail.
So the rebellion against the 'truth' of the world eventually exposes itself in hatred for all talk or celebration of the maker of that world. To rebel against reality is to rebel against God.
yes, Reality is God. No wonder it feels like people are living in different realities. The split is getting wider. Eco-catastrophe is the crucifixion all over again, killing our savior and maker.
Not on Substack, but my own Creative Good newsletter (https://creativegood.com/blog) argues similar points - and occasionally points to your work, Paul. Keep up the good work.
More than 50 years ago Martin Luther King's "Mountaintop" speech, delivered the day before his assassination, addressed the elephant in the room of current American culture. The elephant is, of all things, weaponized decency.
"We are in a new era, a new phase of the struggle where we have moved from a struggle for decency to a struggle for genuine equality. This is where we are getting the resistance because there was never any intention to go this far. People were reacting rather than acting in good faith for the realization of general equality."
The decency factor is still heavily in play as the puritanical "woke" ideology of the "left" has been embraced by the powers-that-be. It's also mostly performative. The CIA has even released new LBGTQ, BIPOC recruiting videos to show just how progressive they truly are. Netflix, HBO Max, Prime have sections specifically dedicated to Black films, Pride films and so on. I have absolutely zero problem whatsoever with any of the films, but it's suspect because as major media outlets enhance their brand by celebrating diversity, they are enforcing the racial/identitarian lines that keep many from sharing what we have in common too. This ideology is cynically manipulated by the corporate oligarchs as a way to provide the illusion of inclusion and equality across class lines. America is becoming (if it isn't already) an authoritarian state that uses decency in the guise of identity politics as a shield to hide behind, and as a cudgel to bludgeon, even the most anodyne forms of dissent. The shield comes in the form of performative statements of the "progressive" wing in American politics to fend off real criticism from the grass-roots left; and the cudgel is in the form of cancel culture where writers and dissenters who veer from the narrative of "decent/socially acceptable" behavior lose their jobs and reputations. Big tech monopolies like YouTube/Google, Facebook and Twitter will ban or algorithmically suppress people like Abigail Shrier and others who they deem to be irresponsible in the form of "hate speech." Speaking of which, we may not have reached Orewellian "two minutes of hate" territory yet, but it certainly feels like the prequel to 1984 is being written right now, in real time.
When I wrote my first book twenty years ago, I spent some time with anti-corporate activists in the US, and it was clear back then that the country was a corporate oligarchy. This is true to different degrees of all modern states, but the US has taken it and run with it, all over the globe (after Britain perhaps pioneered it).
So I'm interested in the idea that performative corporate social justice is at least in part a way of fending of criticism of the impact of monopoly capitalism. Amazon, for example has recently released a statement on diversity, gender and all the usual stuff, emphasising its 'inclusivity', whilst inclusively giving all its workers, whatever their race, gender, identity or sexuality, equally terrible pay and conditions. I will probably explore this a bit further down the line. Divide and rule - why not? It's worked before for empires.
Paul, not you too. I can go anywhere on the internet and read this kind of thing. Next week why don't you do Ivermectin.
Books are not burning. The government is not banning books. Private companies are allowed to sell or not sell whatever they want. Big tech can publish or not publish whatever it wants. It is just a few web sites after all. If people disagree with an author they have the option of speaking out. That is all that's happening.
I am friends with our local children's librarian. She explained weeding to me. If a book has not been checked out for a time, maybe 8 months, it is taken out and replaced. I said, what about classics? If they aren't being read, off they go, she tells me. Then she buys new books based on the suggestions from publishers. Now it is hard to browse the shelves for children's reading. It is flooded with poor quality stories about coming of age as a minority trans student.
My daughter, an English Lit teacher told me awhile ago that the literary canon is being deconstructed. And as soon, (if allowed) the written word leaves the printed page and ends up on a digital screen whole sections of written text may be altered to fit the current zeitgeist.
This is as played out as "it's just some college kids". I don't think you really believe what you're saying. Very few would say "Big tech can publish or not publish whatever it wants. It is just a few web sites after all." if those same sites decided to delist White Fragility or any other LGBT/anti-racist sacred book. Perhaps you would disagree with such an action, and even if you didn't, you know the media would go berserk over it, that there would be boycotts of and resignations from those companies. It's ridiculous to still pretend in 2021 that most major institutions, pubic and private are not ideologically captured.
I am interested in seeing original thinking (reactionary is fine), not Fox News retreads. That why I follow Paul Kingsnorth. He is a talented guy normally.
There's some intriguing original thinking coming from these writers, which is why I gave them a mention. People like Angela Nagle are certainly stimulating my ideas and I would recommend you taking a look.
As for 'if people disagree with an author they have the option of speaking out': well, I wish I agreed. But that's stunningly naive at this point in time, and I can attest that from personal experience.
There are plenty of us deeply concerned with the suppression of ideas regardless of the agent. And yes, Governments are in on it as well with anti speech laws and the indoctrination of our school kids with critical theory in it's various manifestations.
Here in New Zealand recently several local councils cancelled a discussion by the group Speak Up For Women booked for afterhours at the city's libraries. Our group, the Free Speech Union managed to get a high court injunction and the talks could go ahead.
Your lack of concern is not an indication that there's nothing to be concerned about.
Well, far be it from me to criticize reading and books - I write for a living and I read basically all the time - but I was intrigued a few years ago to read Leonard Shlain's The Alphabet Vs The Goddess (https://www.alphabetvsgoddess.com). As we (in the industrialized world) shift from a literate, book-reading culture to one more focused on images and pictures, I wonder if some of the upheaval and confusion and hostility is due to that shift back to what we once were - a culture based on images and on the spoken word.
It's an interesting notion. I've not come across that book but will take a look. I'd love the notion that we were moving towards an oral culture again if it wenre't being mediated by corporations and threaded through screens. But there is certainly a big shift underway.
I have this fantasy that books could be read as a group experience. Literally performing the great books together as a spoken, shared, even bardic experience. Silent reading is a privatizing and isolating mode. To become "literate" means spending countless hours alone, reading alone, thinking alone. The very social technology of reading is, or often can be, a form of atomization and the beginning of a descent into virtual reality. What if small groups got together and read Genesis, or the Odyssey, or LoTR. Rather than engaging in "literary analysis" or amateur scholarship the response to the reading could be a song, or a poem, or a meditation on various themes. I am not sure our mode of living is conducive to this, but it could be a way to take the culture back from the Entertainment-Industrial Complex. Just a thought.
Sounds like something you should be starting up where you live!
I remember reading once, I don't remember where, of the shock felt by (I think) a Native American, or someone from a tribal culture outside modernity, on coming to London in the 1800s and first seeing someone sitting stock still in a room reading a book. They seemed dead, or inanimate. It's a deep abstraction. I wrote a whole book myself on my love-hate affair with ... books.
What we need is the return of the bards. But for that I think we need to be outside, around a fire. I have found that almost demands stories. So we need more outdoor fires too!
The book I mentioned talks about the abstract nature of writing, and how it requires the brain to process ideas in very different ways. Now we fiercely defend books and reading. It's fun to sit around a fire for awhile and tell stories, sing songs, but I don't think many of us could even imagine what it is like to have no books at all, and to be forced to convey all our ideas in spoken word and song, face to face.
Funnily enough, I wrote a book (Savage Gods) on the same theme a few years back. I quoted from DH Lawrence at one point, who had the same revelation after spending some time with native Americans in New Mexico: he could feel the power of their oral culture, but he could never be part of it. He was too literate. But we can still dive in on occasions - and cultivate the skill. To hear a real story well told is a physical experience.
I find that it requires a whole new way of thinking. It is more visceral, somehow. Whereas groups like this, though interesting, seem so much more abstract, so in the head, as we cite book after book, essay after essay, treatise after treatise. Even the sky god of today's industrialized world is abstract, airy, not embodied. As a member of that culture, even though I don't worship that god, I have a hard time bringing the sacred down into the things that I can touch and feel, to objects, to the earth itself. It's not how any of us were raised. It's hard not to intellectualize.
There is a story here in New Mexico about some Hopi elders and a group of Tibetan monks. The Buddhists were interested in the Hopi Prophesies which are in their oral tradition. When asked why the Hopi stories were simpler than the Buddhist writings the Hopis replied " they told you not to write them down."
Don't families do this? Reading aloud in the evening together is something my parents did and we now do with our children. Not little bedtime picture books, but books such as you mention. I know it is a little old fashioned but I never thought it was that unusual.
A little late to this conversation, but another book along this line worth looking at is Barry Sanders' A Is For Ox: The Collapse of Literacy and the Rise of Violence In An Electronic Age. It was written in 1994--before the mainstreaming of the internet, the advent of mobile phones and social media, the arrival of video streaming and binge watching. It now seems almost prophetic as we watch the generation of young people who have grown up as digital natives, functionally illiterate and addicted/educated through screens out violently protesting seemingly against civilization itself. We were warned.
Hello Paul. I'm looking forward to your next few pieces on these writers. A page of Ellul is worth three chapters of most of what is written today, and I'm still trying to wrap my head around Jaynes. As a suggested counterpoint, I would recommend Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It could be read as contrary to your central argument...or not...depending on how you take it.
I am retired magazine editor, but I've been a carpenter and woodworker for nearly 40 years and I'm working hard on getting better as a mason and tile setter. I can tell you that virtually all tradespeople are grateful for power tools and, although a few like me do some occasional hand tool work for fun, nobody's going backward on this. When home computers became a thing, I was surprised to find many of the best woodworkers I knew whole-heartedly embraced the PC revolution. There was even a group of enthusiasts on the early Netscape boards who called themselves the Electronic Neanderthals.
The design of a circuit board and the rake and bevel angles of the teeth on a hand saw are both manifestations of technology. "Zen" takes a hard and unsentimental look at this. Mathew Crawford has a similar, if less philosophical, exploration in his first book, Shop Class as Soul Craft. In a more ambiguous fashion, so does Kubrick's movie 2001, the point being that The Machine will be a runaway disaster until we master The Machine. (And as a side note, early in "Zen" the author has a discussion with his son about the abstract laws of physics and science, ghosts, and Native American spirituality that I'm still trying to process 30 years after having read it.)
Your criticism of the after-effects of The Machine are well founded, but it would be impossible for eight billion people in the world to live in a pre-industrial arrangement. Some level of technology will be necessary to fend off mass starvation and the fratricidal power struggles that would follow. In order to master the machine our leaders and thinkers need a much deeper knowledge of and appreciation for technology. But most politicians in the West today could not fix so much as a leaky faucet. Their skill is emotional manipulation rather than the cool, deliberative objectivity of a good mechanic. That being so, how can any of them arrange the components of a modern industrial society such that all these gears and systems mesh harmoniously? They can't, they don't even try. The Machine can be fixed, but as long as humans bring a disordered mind to the task, the gears will grind, the oil will burn and waste and pollution result.
Tom
Thanks Tom. Yes, I have shed many words on this myself, this in particular, which you may have read:
https://orionmagazine.org/article/dark-ecology/
My conclusion is in one way similar to yours. People will not voluntarily 'go back', that's for certain. But unlike you, I have no confidence that we can ever 'fix' or 'master' the web of technology that is enmeshing us. I think it will be - already is - the other way around. It controls us, and is changing us from within in deep ways. We either see it collapse or we merge into post-humans. But that's not for us to see. We can only make decisions based on what is around us now.
What I would observe is that, thanks to this process, there are more poor and starving people on Earth today than ever in history, and far fewer non-human creatures than for hundreds of thousands of years. I lieve we are in control at this point, if we ever were.
As far as I understand it the word "transhuman" is a Dantean coinage from the First Canto of the Paradiso. In that sense, the question isn't humanism or transhumanism but rather "Which Transhumanism, Whose Theosis?" so to speak.
Only by choosing the right path to true transhumanism can we live peacefully on the earth. It is a long shot, I admit, but what else is there? As daunting as it seems, by my limited lights it is the true spiritual warfare of our day. Of any day. The difference being, that at least in earthly terms, increasingly, everything is at stake.
That is something we can all begin now.
I'm going to ask a question that I always wonder about... Why is climate change, exploitation, abuse, oppression, and all other awfulness not simply explained as sin, at least for Christians? If sin is "missing the mark", and that "miss" has happened on a colossal scale -- on a level where organizations, governments, systems, families, are entwined with and corrupted by it -- then aren't we in the same old battle against sin within us and around us that all people have always been in? How is 'the machine' different? Could it just be that it has more power and more technology and can express its corrupted heart more thoroughly than was possible in past times? In this view, technology and power could theoretically be used for good by sinless people, but the sin comes from the users rather than from the tool. Or call it an accumulation of all the individual corrupt choices that have been consolidated into its powerful engine plus a culture made up of fewer individuals who resist sin themselves?
I as an individual recognize that I can participate in this ugly monster by just being a typical human, or can seek spiritual transformation in order to grow toward the perfect (mature). Is that what you're calling trans human? I see the environmental catastrophes and exploitation of humans as outgrowths of sin, the same old sin that has been thought about and prayed about and battled for so long. Usually when I come across this idea in print, it is being mocked as "puritanical". People love to joke about some act they indulge in and say, "it's positively sinful" with a smile. I know the word sin has connotations and history that people love to laugh at, but for any serious Christian how can it not explain this corrupting, destructive force that we see and are dismayed by in our world? What sin really is, each small personal sin, when added up and amplified makes a hell on earth. I'm a fan of "The Great Divorce" by CS Lewis. So my question is, do you think that the Machine is something more or other than SIN?
This is a big question. You've got me thinking anyway.
I have seen plenty of Christian thinkers call all of these things 'sin'. It is far from unknown. Perhaps the issue for you is that Christianity sees varying degrees of culpability and you see how the truly guilty use that Christian view to [apparently] escape culpability?
I asked this because I'm inclined to think 'the machine' is what I understand as sin. I get the sense that most people in this discussion don't, but are attempting to define the machine in another way. I'm just curious what the distinguishing elements are for those people.
I'm still trying to figure this out myself.
People sin when they interact with the Machine in various ways, that is clear. Not all actions are sinful, but many are. Culpability also varies
I'm more inclined to label the evils done by the Machine as the 'fruits' or 'wages' of sin, to use some stodgy terms. But I really would not dispute the direct appellation of 'sin' on these evils. People smarter and holier than me do say so.
So what is the Machine? It runs on human desires [for now], sinful and not, and produces good and evil - sinful - outcomes. It is also a Tempter - think that one over. I'm mulling over an essay that goes off on these ideas and where it might lead.
Paul, I apologise in advance if this is a misreading, but I find the suggestion that "wokeness" is winning to be somewhat confusing, with regards to the UK at least. Despite a poverty of ideas and competence, the Conservative Party continues to gain popularity and votes in working class areas through messaging that focusses almost exclusively on the culture wars and anti-wokeness. Unless we are taking the experience of a narrow strand of the academic middle-classes as emblematic of wider society (and if we are, why? - They have always been at a remove from the experience of the majority), I don't see values of wokeness taking any sort of hold, let alone 'winning', anywhere. So I suppose my question is, what specific "woke" values do you think have been/are being adopted by a majority (or even sizeable minority) in the UK that you perceive to be damaging?
I'm not sure I said that 'wokeness is winning.' What I can see in the UK is institutional capture all over the place. In my personal experince, and from following wider stories, it is clear that some of the more extreme elements of the US critical theory/social justice agenda have been adopted very widely indeed. I'm sure you can see the intense battle over transgenderism going on in all the institutions; plus the ongoing adoption of controversial notions of 'systemic racism', 'white supremacy' and the like. I have many, many stories of self-censorship in publishing which I won't be speaking about publicly. We could talk about 'sensitivity readers' for novels, though, or incessant attacks on writers for 'cultural appropriation.' I work with a lot of writing students who are actively frightened of expressing themselves on all sorts of topics. From the National Trust to English Heritage I am seeing the infiltration of a very specific, and very intolerant value system. Frankly I'm bemused that anyone could not see it happening.
It's not that these issues are not worth discussing, but 'discussion' is not on the agenda. There is a deep intolerance at play. I don't know whether anyone would vote Tory because they don't like 'wokeness': perhaps, but I would guess that the Tory vote is more likely to be a hangover from Brexit. I think the broader left is going to take a long time to recover from openly opposing the results of a referndum like that. Still, I can't take seriously the notion that the cultural change happening at present is a figment of the imagination.
Having said that, as I wrote in my first essay here, I also believe that this 'culture war' is a manifestation of a deeper malaise. The writers I mentioned here are exploring that notion too. I've no interest in becoming a culture warrior, but it's also not something that can be avoided for anyone creating words now.
Thank you for your response, Paul! I have no doubt that these intra-institutional debates are viciously raging. I suppose my observation was that the "woke" values of these monolithic corporations/institutions do not seem to be reflective in any way of the views and values of most actual people in the UK - they are a marketing strategy to appeal to the demographic with the most accessible disposable income (i.e. the academic upper-middle class). Actual "woke" values remain the preserve of a small minority which are amplified by both supposedly "left"- and "right"-wing commentators. I agree that there is a deeper malaise in society. I suppose for me anxiety around sexual permissiveness and transgenderism etc. (which have been repeatedly raised in the comments of this blog) pale in comparison to questions of ecological crisis and global poverty (perhaps I am wrong to think this, I don't know).
The issue is that, in terms of culture, majority rule does not apply. Rod Dreher has written extensively on this. We already see people losing livelihoods for being on the wrong side of the culture war, which sends a powerful message to the rest of us to keep in line.
Reasonable first point. I am not sure what you mean by a "message to the rest of us to keep in line". If we acknowledge that the "rest of us" hold views in opposition to elites (i.e. we are not "in line"), what are "we" being prevented from doing? Surely "the rest of us" would then be assenting to the message (which "we" are not)?
"we" are being prevented from expressing our views.
Example: a friend of mine is an academic scientist and a Christian. He writes a personal blog with a very small readership. But he had to scrub all his old posts in opposition to same-sex marriage (closely reasoned, not at all polemic, and thoroughly grounded in the Scripture that a billion or so people believe is the revealed Word of God) in order to have any chance at an academic science job.
When he got one, there were protests at the place he was hired, and his new employer issued a public statement promising to monitor him closely to be sure that he did no harm to the LGBTQIA2S+ community.
Now I happen to know well how such institutions work, and I promise you that they really did not want to have to issue that statement, and so will try very hard to never again hire anyone "problematic" in the way that my friend was. Such candidates will simply be passed over, never being told why.
Thank you for your response. I am sorry to hear about your friend. I have acknowledged, certainly, that views within particular kinds of institutions have become monolithic, and I regret this.
I do not think it is not accurate, however, to say that the "rest of us" are being prevented from expressing our views in any wider sense - the two of us are expressing them right now in the comments of this blog. Many commentators publicly express what we might term "anti-woke" views and are well-paid for doing so, such as Rod Dreher, whom you cite above, Rod Liddle, and James Delingpole. There are a very wide range of organs that run columnists/anchors who promote similar views in the UK: prominent examples include The Spectator, The Conservative Woman, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Express, The Daily Mail, Breitbart, along with the new news channel GB News, amongst other, smaller institutions. There are parallel examples in the US, of course, but I am from England, and so have less knowledge of them. We might say that "anti-woke" views are not welcome in particular kinds of institutions that are dominated by the upper-middle class (academia, certain cultural spheres), but they would be welcome (and are) in local pubs, working men's clubs, other kinds of meeting places, etc. - in other words, the majority of spaces where most (non-cultural elite) people interact with each other. Again, I am sorry for your friend.
I agree that most people don't share these values (if they are values). I also think Mark below is right to say that elite values carry the day. I sort of agree about the marketing strategy, but more broadly I think we're into a very big cultural shift, which stems from the fact that we have no spiritual core to our culture - and probably, actually, no 'culture' to speak of.
Naturally, all of this provides endless fuel to the left-right media dingdong that is so poisonous and all-consuming.
I entirely agree of course that compared to mass extinction and climate change, arguments about 'wokeness' are utterly trivial. On the other hand, I think that both are manifestations of some very deep collapse at the heart of our world. And I think that the culture war is likely to get very much worse as the collapse I've been writing about for years digs in.
Thank you!
The first part negates the second. I feel more excited about a three day sloughing off than looking into all the suggested reading!
Well, if you have to choose, I would definitely recommend the sloughing!
So grateful for these links to many new to me and intriguing writers. Your essays are always eye openers and fantastic that you are sharing other voices as well 🙏🏼🧡🙏🏼
Paul. I'm not qualified to comment on the meat and potatoes of this discussion, but I must say "Oh, Bravo" for the photo heading this blog. It is like a photo of the most decadent dessert ever. I just want a piece! Where is this wonderful place?
That is the library of Trinity College Dublin. It is a wonder to behold!
“irreversible damage - the transgender craze seducing our daughters” the name hardly suggests a rational balanced look at the issue. Where is the love, the tolerance and the attempt to bridge the gap and understand. I trawled through your reading suggestions last night and I came away profoundly depressed. Anyone who calls their blog/newsletter “common sense” is probably hawking the opposite. Surely we need to come together in a spirit of tolerance and companionship but instead substack seems full of even more angry people. Substack is just another cog in the machine, another force for the amplification of division. You have been absorbed in to the machine Paul.
Let’s Stop poking sticks in each other’s wounds!
Tolerance has become nothing more than a false idol. The way its used to shield sinful behaviour from rebuke is entirely cynical and selfish; it has nothing to do with love. Wounds and illnesses can be healed with genuine selfless love but the condition is that we first recognise the illness as being an illness. Instead we revel in our depravity without the slightest shame or desire for change; and then we demand tolerance of it.
If progressives want to claim tolerance they have a lot to answer for in their own anti-woman stance. I was shocked to see the intolerant rape and death threats against many women for opinions about their own bodies and rights. As Kingsnorth has stated, it is a trivial matter in the grand scheme of things, but a disturbing symptom of something greater happening in our society.
This is proper hall of mirrors territory here. Let’s not be dragged into this illusionary culture war. The thing is EVERYBODY is “shocked and appalled “ by something. Mostly just stuff they’ve read fourth hand on the internet. I know it sounds abit flaky but I think all of this comes back to a lack of love....and tolerance which shouldn't be confused with appeasement. Just a willingness to try and understand other people’s point of view.
The ability to love, as we ought, is not the territory of flakes. It will take all our might if we really want to dive in an try. I don't think anyone here wants to revel in these widespread debates but when we put Love into action we do have to get messy about specifics. We have to be free to consider and debate because it is complex.
“The part of the philanthropist is indeed a dangerous one; and the man who would do his neighbour good must first study how not to do him evil, and must begin by pulling the beam out of his own eye.”
― George MacDonald, Lilith
"Let’s not be dragged into this illusionary culture war. The thing is EVERYBODY is “shocked and appalled “ by something."
I wish the culture war, or whatever you want to call it, was illusory. Anyone that claims it is illusory is either lying to himself in an attempt to avoid taking a position or is on the prevailing side and is gas-lighting his opponents. I understand the desire to avoid conflict, it is one I share. But we can't claim things which are patently untrue in order to comfort and shield ourselves. It's obvious to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear that what was regarded as normative, moral or virtuous as recently as a few decades ago is now regarded as primitive or ignorant, if not sinful. Conversely what was regarded as base and sinful a few decades ago is in many cases widely celebrated and promoted as the pinnacle of virtue. Simply stating that everybody is shocked by something is to stick your head in the sand and to pretend nothing has happened.
I think there's a potentially interesting conversation here but people are slightly at cross purposes. I'll try to explain what I mean.
Fundamentally, the 'culture war' is a trivial thing in global terms: it's a surface manifestation of the ongoing collapse in confidence in Western nations, and it's also more or less entirely confined, as far as I can see, to the elites of those nations. It is then exacerbated hugely by social media, which is designed to provoke conflict and division, and by pundits and activists who profit further from it. In that sense, Tomac is right: we can all get 'shocked and appalled' by reading about aspects of it, and it is easy then to go off half cocked and deepen the divisions. That is what we're supposed to do, so it behoves us to be more thoughtful.
But - and here is the but - we're at the point now where these divisions can't be avoided. They are real, and vicious, they will get more so and they are beginning to tear the semas of societies apart. The reason I recommended Shrier's essay, for example, is that her subject - the 'transitioning' of children - is no trivial pundit war. An astonishing 36,000 adolescent girls are currently on waiting lists for mastectomies, in the US, I read last week. That's te tip of an iceberg of confusion and tragedy. Here in Europe, though less intensely so far, the same vicious debates over real-world outcomes - the meaning of biology, and its impact on men and women, amongst other things - are deepening.
Personally, I avoided this stuff for years, hoping it would go away, thinking that I could stay out of it - but then it came for me, in the shape of a (dishonest) mob attack on some of my writing. That was upsetting, but it also forced me to look deeper into what was happening, which has clarified a great deal for me. I remain quite clear about wanting to avoid 'taking sides' in the sense of mud-slinging or black and white divisions on the issues. But it's also clear to me that any writers or artists today have to work out where they stand on these things, because they will only get more clarifying, and they will only get nastier.
So, now I am interested in how we can avoid anger and judgement, at the same time as standing our ground, staking our claim and refusing to be intimidated. My view is that this is going to be necessary for everyone operating in the West in years to come. I think often of Jesus's advice to his disciples: "Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves." As ever, perfect advice.
I hope your not suggesting your newsletters are only for people who agree with you! I am very much enjoying your writing Paul so no danger of bowing out at this stage...
I just take issue with people when they start using words like “sin” and making shrill declarations about “false idols” and “depravity”. Its the chat of zealots. There’s just no willingness to try and understand from a position of respect and humility. Only damning judgements from on high. I have a number of gay friends and I will always defend them and I suppose that make me abit sensitive of the trans issue too.
Here’s an interesting take on the adolescent transitioning issue...
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/tavistock-transgender-transition-teenage-girls-female-to-male
Thanks for sharing that; I thought it was a good discussion that brings out the complexity rather than black and white rhetoric. I want to defend the dreaded word sin, though. I found this old book at my Quaker meeting's library called, 'Whatever Became of Sin?' by Karl Menninger. He makes some interesting arguments from the perspective of a psychiatrist about how we need this concept even if we don't need all the things attached to it historically. Of course, sin would include mistreatment of gay people as it includes all cruelty and egocentric action. Also, so many of our ecologically destructive habits that are obviously rooted in a problem with limits and selfishness would qualify as sins. For Christians, talk of sin may not always mean what you think -- the popular caricature of a self righteous jerk pointing fingers at everyone else. It is an important aspect of our faith, how we understand human history, and our own struggles to live with integrity. I realize that the word has other negative associations in pop culture so I wanted to share these thoughts for non Christians who are reading. Jesus spoke about straining at a gnat (other people's flaws that we can identify) while swallowing a camel (our own sin) because this is such a common human activity. I love how He shows our absurdity!
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2397879.Whatever_Became_of_Sin_
What could be more boring than only being read by people who agree with me? I would be extremely disappointed if such an unlikely scenario ever came to pass ...
Talk of sin and false idols (which I don't) isn't the talk of zealots, necessarily, but it is the talk of Christians. I used to feel like you, but having come to understand what terms like this actually mean has been something of a revelation. The Machine being the ultimate idol, for example.
Daming judgements from on high, though, are very un Christian, even though historically many Christians have behaned otherwise.
The Tavisrtock piece is interesting. My wife is a former psychiatrist, and so how things have changed in places like the Tavistock is a topic of conversation for us. The notion here of 'being in the wrong body' being seen as a 'magic bullet' seems apposite. My feeling is that social media plus a highly politicised activist push to see 'trans' as the latest barrier to be broken is damaging many lives. I have children and so this is very personal. A lot of lies are being told. I agree with the conclusion of that piece - I suspect that in a decade or so this will be seen as politicised child abuse.
But more broadly, something is very broken in the culture that this would happen at all. I see many of thse young people (and older ones) as victims of something very disturbing which we are all still trying to put our finger on.
Thanks for replying.
"I just take issue with people when they start using words like “sin” and making shrill declarations about “false idols” and “depravity”. Its the chat of zealots. There’s just no willingness to try and understand from a position of respect and humility. "
This kind of demonstrates what I said previously. When one says that there is no culture war, all it means is that there is one legitimate view on everything and everything else is beyond the pale. In other words the opposition is not allowed to exist. Your own statements are internally inconsistent. You request humility from others as if it implies moral relativism. You demand respect from others for your own beliefs whilst characterising those that believe that there is objective sin as being zealots. Where is your willingness to understand what is meant by the word sin and why many believe it exists? Why do you assume that those that believe in sin only do so because they don't understand or respect others? These are all false assumptions, or dare I say judgements, you've made about other people who have different beliefs to you. You seem to only be able to accept that someone has understanding and humility if they've reached the same conclusions you have.
The central contradiction of our age is that we can do anything and believe anything we want...as long as we do and believe exactly as we are told.
"Fundamentally, the 'culture war' is a trivial thing in global terms: it's a surface manifestation of the ongoing collapse in confidence in Western nations, and it's also more or less entirely confined, as far as I can see, to the elites of those nations. It is then exacerbated hugely by social media, which is designed to provoke conflict and division, and by pundits and activists who profit further from it."
The term "culture war" is indeed fairly misleading, particularly in the UK - it implies that there are two more or less equally balanced blocks with competing moral/cultural views. Most people also don't live their day-to-day lives as conscious participants in a "culture war". However one can recognise this whilst pointing out that the moral/cultural change over at least the last half a century has been on a scale that is unprecedented and which has changed peoples' world views and day to day lives (and not just in one section of society). This is what I wouldn't regard as trivial, whatever view one takes on the changes. What we decide to call this change or process that we're undergoing is secondary. It's probably more accurate to describe the whole thing as a bloodless cultural revolution; there has been no resistance to speak of and it feels like the change is only accelerating.
My personal view is that this change has had, and will have, devastating consequences on peoples' lives. In that limited sense I am "taking a side". I bought into some elements of the modern dogma myself, for example the now widely accepted notion that having multiple sexual partners before marriage was at worst inconsequential and at best highly desirable. I had to learn the hard way how untrue this was and I can't be indifferent to the consequences of this doctrine. I recognise I'm in a small minority and most of the time I simply observe what is going on and stay silent. The prevailing modern culture is so tempting and all-encompassing that I feel a great deal of sympathy for those caught up in its snares. I don't see the trend as being humanly reversible at this point. I think the focus should be on overcoming one’s own flaws and passions. I agree that those who focus on politics or internet debates tend to fall into the delusion of attempting to change everything around them in a subconscious attempt to avoid the pain of having to change themselves. Depending on our success in changing ourselves, we may have the opportunity to help our own family members or immediate community.
By the way I think Solzhenitsyn’s Live not by Lies text is quite relevant when it comes to how to behave when you are in a small minority but being pressured to acquiesce to a prevailing societal dogma:
https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/live-not-by-lies
Thanks Nikola. I'm going to be writing about all of this in more detail later in the series. To clarify: I think that the 'culture war' is trivial in absolute global terms: compared to the ongoing mass extinction or the general collapse of life on Earth, in particular. But in terms of our lives as members of 'Western' culture, it is indeed radical and all-encompassing.
I agree that it is a cultural revolution - and it is very much foreshadowed by the French revolution, which I've recently been reading about for my latest essay. As I said a few essays back, this is the endgame in some ways of the end of Christian culture in the West. What I see in my country is a cultural elite reflexively at war with its past and its own previous sense of self. Everything is being inverted and this will only lead to ongoing disintegration - which to many is the point.
We are living through the end of a culture, and that's hard. You are right about how all-encompassing the paradigm is - and how hard to speak against. I try to avoid the snares and the open partisanship, whilst trying to be clear-eyed about the overall picture.
The growing dislike of books seems to accompany a growing dislike of truth itself. The idea that the world is plastic and we can mould it to suit 'our truth' seems to grow as we 'harden our hearts' and make ourselves the opposite of the 'clay' in the potter's hand.
If we refuse to be the clay (as the 'uberman' does), then other things (and people) have to be marred beyond recognition, because God has not made the world this way; he has actually made it so that WE can be shaped by IT).
I'm seeing things as an arc along the same line which actually turns full circle.
As Jesus is the alpha and omega, so hatred of Him has an alpha and omega - full circle.
I'm thinking of Romans as a universal truth:"...just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to.... do what ought not to be done..."
I'm thinking of how the circle may be nearing completion in Canada, which is possibly at the far end of 'woke' countries, with the detention of a pastor for organising outdoor, socially distanced meetings in order, to sing, pray and read, with 25 or so other people, since they were unable to do so indoors. Unable to promise he would not do so again, he has been refused bail and so now languishes in jail.
So the rebellion against the 'truth' of the world eventually exposes itself in hatred for all talk or celebration of the maker of that world. To rebel against reality is to rebel against God.
'crucify him' becomes 'let it all burn'
yes, Reality is God. No wonder it feels like people are living in different realities. The split is getting wider. Eco-catastrophe is the crucifixion all over again, killing our savior and maker.
Thank you, Paul. Someone in the Orthodox Peace Fellowship forwarded this today. An example of the Machine, for sure:
The Horrifying Rise Of Total Mass Media Blackouts On Inconvenient News
Stories
Caitlin Johnstone
Two different media watchdog outlets, Media Lens and Fairness & Accuracy In
Reporting (FAIR), have published articles on the complete blackout in
mainstream news institutions on the revelation by Icelandic newspaper Stundin
that a US superseding indictment in the case against Julian Assange was based
on false testimony from diagnosed sociopath and convicted child molester
Sigurdur Thordarson.
FAIR's Alan MacLeod writes that "as of Friday, July 2, there has been
literally zero coverage of it in corporate media; not one word in the New
York Times, Washington Post, CNN, NBC News, Fox News or NPR."
"A search online for either 'Assange' or 'Thordarson' will elicit zero
relevant articles from establishment sources, either US or elsewhere in the
Anglosphere, even in tech-focused platforms like the Verge, Wired or
Gizmodo," MacLeod adds.
"We have not found a single report by any `serious´ UK broadcaster or
newspaper," says the report by Media Lens. "But in a sane world, Stundin´s
revelations about a key Assange witness - that Thordarson lied in exchange
for immunity from prosecution - would have been headline news everywhere,
with extensive media coverage on BBC News at Six and Ten, ITV News, Channel 4
News, front-page stories in the Times, Telegraph, the Guardian and more."
See it all here:
https://t.co/QoSYkcQVIg
Not on Substack, but my own Creative Good newsletter (https://creativegood.com/blog) argues similar points - and occasionally points to your work, Paul. Keep up the good work.